Thom Hartmann: Peter Ferrara- 'Is Shared Sacrifice Socialism?'

Source:Thom Hartmann- talking about socialism.

"Thom Hartmann speaks with Peter Ferrara, Senior Fellow for Entitlement and Budget Policy-The Heartland Institute / Author-"America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb", about whether shared sacrifice is socialism. If you liked this clip of The Thom Hartmann Program, please do us a big favor and share it with your friends... and hit that "like" button!" 

From Thom Hartmann

To answer the question that Thom Hartmann asked Peter Ferrara, is shared sacrifice socialism: the answer is yes. Shared sacrifice is a form of collectivism to fund the government that our Congress and Administration decided that we should have. 

I'll give you another one: a progressive tax system (that America still technically has) is another form of socialism as well, but my point is so what and I'm a Liberal and I believe that free people in a free society (which is what America is) has the right to go out and earn as much money as their skills and production will allow, but pay taxes based on what they earn. With the wealthy paying the most and go down from there. But that are tax rates should still be low enough to encourage the making of wealth in America. So everyone can benefit from it. 

MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell (who I call Larry because I'm not a preppy snob that he apparently is) said (and by the way I agree with Larry O'Donnell as often as I drink a dry glass of water) but he's dead right here. There's good capitalism and there's bad capitalism and there's good socialism and bad socialism. 

It's not often as far as I'm concern that Socialists get anything right at least not in America, Europeans can speak for themselves. But shared sacrifice is a form of good socialism, because it demands and let's be honest here, it's rare if ever that government asks people to do anything, they always demand it and with shared sacrifice they demand that people contribute to the financing of government based on their ability to pay for it. But not to the point that it discourages people from earning a good living. 

Shared sacrifice is also very important when we are as we are now talking about debt and deficit reduction, because when we need to cut back as we are doing now, we have to do it in a way that hurts the least and doesn't hurt anyone in a way that devastates them. And that includes the people who've benefited most from America and our system, Constitution, economic freedom, and everything else. Shared sacrifice is about everyone contributing to pay their fair share but not in a way that devastates anyone.

So again to answer the question, shared sacrifice is a form of socialism, but a good form of it. Not the form that try's to nationalize industries or limit peoples economic freedom or any other freedom. Or tax people to the point that there's not enough incentive in the economy for people to work hard, be productive and be successful. Which would be a form of bad socialism.

The Young Turks: Ana Kasparian & Cenk Uygur- 'Prisoners: America's New Cheap Labor (ALEC Exposed)'

Source:The Young Turks- I believe a California prison, but don't quote me on that.

"ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is exploiting private prison labor for profit and lobbying for harsh crime and pro drug-war legislation to create more cheap workers for corporate America. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss." 

From The Young Turks

The modern version of slave labor is a bit extreme. (Coming from TYT) Prison inmates are technically compensated and actually do get paid. Wages that you might see in, I don't Haiti (to use as an example,) 20 cents an hour. But they do get free room and board, food, health care, laundry, recreation, etc. Fine, I can go along with that. 

The fact is their living conditions wouldn't be tolerated perhaps anywhere else in the developed free world. And we can do much better than this to the point that would help the inmates, the prisons, society, and our governments budgets, by giving our prison inmates real jobs and compensate them based on what they produce and have them do jobs that they are educated, trained, and qualified to do. Jobs that just keep the prison running and then prisons wouldn't have to bring in private companies to do the work. 

Jobs like the mess hall like maybe turning mess halls into real cafeteria's (instead of mess halls, where they eat a lot of mess, pun intended) with real food and making inmates pay for their food. 

Laundry. make the inmates do the laundry and then charge the inmates for their laundry and clothing. 

Jobs in construction, have the inmates to the work when it comes to renovation of prisons or prison expansion. Jobs like real wood shops and factories that would build the furniture for the prisons, but also the furniture in other government offices and have these agency's pay for the work and then compensate the inmates for their work. 

Jobs like auto mechanics like with the prison buses and other automobiles as well as bring in private automobiles for repairs as well as police cars. 

Barbershops, you could also have inmates working in jobs on the street, well-supervised, of course like street repair and other things, but pay them for what their work is worth. And not the 20 cents an hour that they get, but what a free person would be making for that work. 

If we just had a corrections system that brought back real prison industries that didn't compete with private industries unfairly, our prisons could pay for themselves and wouldn't have to compete with education and infrastructure and other priorities for taxpayer funds, because these industries would make money and the inmates would make money do the jobs and could then pay for their room and board. 

Not all inmates are qualified for well-trained  jobs and some of them need to be in tight supervision until they are ready for general population. But our general population inmates should be working and working full time to pay for their room and board. And to keep the prisons running where they live and to make our corrections system less of a burden on our government budgets. 

Also, not all inmates are ready to work once they get there and it might not just be they can't function in general population. It's hard to find a group of people in society that has as low as an education level then prison inmates. Thats a main reason why they are in prison to begin with because they don't have the skills to make it legally on the outside. So these people first need to be educated in prison before they are ready to work but we can do this as well: high school and college that they could later pay for. 

America unfortunately already had a slave era and we certainly don't need to try to repeat that or come anywhere close. But our inmates need to work, for their good, for the good of the prisons and for the good of society once they get out of prison. But we need to do it in a way that benefits everyone involved and as humanly as possible.

The Real News: Paul Jay- Robert Pollin: 'Why Austerity and Not Stimulus?'

 

Source:The Real News- what Socialist call the government's money. They say it's the people's money, but want government to spend the people's money for them, instead of letting the people spend their own money.

"Bob Pollin: Main objective of austerity is to demolish the welfare state and public ownership." 

From The Real News

It's hard to argue that the 2009 Recovery Act was a success, if you look at the fact that today's unemployment rate and economic growth is both lower today than it was in late 2009, when the Great Recession officially ended, but we would be a hell of a lot worse off without the Recovery Act even though its not a great success. 

But why wasn't the Recovery Act more successful, because it wasn't big enough and wasn't targeted properly. Which is what happens when you legislate in crisis mode and you try to and I'll clean this up, fly by the seat of your pants without a gage (perhaps you are drunk and blind as well) to tell you where your going and how to get there but the fact is we needed something like this but it should've been done better. 

I argued in a blog post in early 2010 at the one year anniversary of the Obama Administration as well as during President Obama's first 100 Days that the Recovery Act wasn't big enough and not properly targeted. And if you are going to have a borrow and spend Economic policy (which I'm generally against, except in an economy this bad where no one has any money to spend) and the Federal Government is the only one capable of printing money with their control of the currency, that you should borrow as much money as it takes to deal with the Great Recession to get economic and job growth going again. Instead of borrowing 45B$ for infrastructure, that you should borrow about ten times that, to fix a lot of these projects that the Core of Engineers said has to be done. 

That instead of cutting taxes and regulations and expanding lending authority for small business in the summer of 2010, that you do that during the heart of the Great Recession. And this is not Monday morning quarterbacking on my part, I wrote this in a blog post on this site two 1/2 years ago. 

The idea National Infrastructure Bank that has a bipartisan bill in the Senate that would be self-financed and prioritize a lot of these infrastructure projects, should've been in the Recovery Act and we could've borrowed the money to start it up and it would've had a two year head start and up in running right now. And be taking care a lot of this work and putting a lot of people back to work today and our unemployment rate would've fallen. 

And because the Recovery Act was badly designed, today we have an economy thats as bad or not much better than when the Great Recession started and we are left with a bad economy and national debt and deficit that have to be dealt with at the same time. Partially because of the Recovery Act, but also because of a lot of bad fiscal policies that the Obama Administration inherited from the Bush Administration. So we are in a situation today in the summer of 2011, where we have to both, stimulate the economy and pay our bills and cut our costs. 

The debt deal of last week is a solid start but should've been a lot better and hopefully round two ofdDebt reduction will be a lot better and more balanced. But as we are doing this we need to put people back to work and spending money again, which is the easiest way to pay down our debt with economic growth. 

A National Infrastructure Bank, free trade, and energy bill ,more targeted tax cuts to encourage consumer spending, would be a good start and we can pay for all these things as well, without hurting the economy. 

Thom Hartmann: 'Is the Era of Big Government Over & The Era of Hostage Taking here?'

Source:Russia Today- Thom Hartmann talking about big government and the Tea Party.

"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a state-controlled international television network funded by the Russian federal tax budget.[5][6] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

RT operates as a multilingual service with conventional channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[7] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also offer some locally based content." 

From Wikipedia 

"Since President Obama gave in to the demands of Republican hostage takers during the debt-limit debate - Republicans will use the same, "give us what we want or we'll pull the trigger" tactic over and over and over again." 

From Russia Today

Is the era of Big Government over? And what I mean by that is not just socialist big government (that Thom Hartmann prays for and makes love to every day and night) but authoritarian big government with limited personal freedom. Well, thanks to President Ronald Reagan whether you think this is a good or not, the era of socialist big government never had a chance to come to existence in America. Socialists best shot at bringing socialism to America, was with Senator George McGovern in 1972. (Read up on you history if you're not familiar with McGovernism) 

It's hard to imagine how socialism makes a comeback in America. What we have when it comes to social insurance, is what we have and if anything those programs will be reformed to make more cost-effective and hopefully more efficient and if anything competition will added to them. And there called social insurance programs for a reason: they are there for people who fall on hard times economically, they are not designed to take care of people indefinitely and babysit grownups.

So when President Bill Clinton said back in the 1996 State of the Union Address that: "The era of Big Government is over" he was stating a fact, but that statement was about fifteen years late. It was a statement from Captain Obvious, but 15 years later. Bill Clinton did not run for President to expand big government in America to begin with and did not set out to expand it either. Even though the era of big government socialism is over (even though it really never got started in America) and as a Liberal I see that as a good thing. 

The era of big government authoritarianism from the Far-Right is alive and well, with the Far-Right pushing legislation to make collective bargaining harder or impossible. The Far-Right pushing anti- pornography laws, anti-gay marriage laws. Laws that would actually make adultery illegal. Anti- gambling laws, marijuana is still illegal in America. The Patriot Act that I believe violates the Fourth Amendment with government being able to search what people read just because they might seem suspicious to them. Or being able to search people without search warrants. 

With the rise of the Christian-Right thirty plus years ago pushing their "Moral Agenda" on what they believe all Americans should be like and with the rise of neoconservatism ten years ago, believing national security is more important then constitutional rights, the era of Big Government is alive and well in America but in a different form.  One thing that Liberals, Libertarians, and Conservative-Libertarians all agree on. 

CNN: Elliot Spitzer- Bill Maher: 'President Obama Never Blames Republicans'

Source:CNN- Elliot Spitzer, interviewing comedian Bill Maher.

"Comedian Bill Maher says many Americans do not vote in their economic interest and discusses the possible reasons why." 

From CNN

Apparently Bill Maher is making the argument that President Obama should forget about 40% of the electorate and act more like a party leader like in Europe with their parliamentary systems where the Prime Minister or President there just runs to keep their party happy, because they know they don't need 50% or more to get reelected. 

The problem with that is that only 53% of the electorate voted for him in 2008. You can't screw off 47% of the electorate and just concentrate on 53%, because that would leave the President without a lot of room for error. And with an economy that will still have an unemployment rate of at least 8.5% unemployment going into the 2012 general elections and with no President ever getting reelected with an unemployment rate higher than 7%. (At least in modern times) 

The President is going to have to broaden his base, not to win everybody but to get as many votes as possible. He's going to have to lock down the Democratic Party and win the Independent vote to get reelected. And it's possible that the President could get reelected with a Republican Congress. Especially since 2/3 of the Senators up for reelection are Democratic seats. 

And I believe the chances are good better then 50-50 that Democrats will win back the House, but with this economy, thats not a guarantee. The biggest thing that President Obama has going for him right now, is his competition. (Or lack of it) Which doesn't highlight a strength of the President but the weakness of the Republican opposition right now. 

The Republican Party right now doesn't have a presidential candidate that can both win the nomination and the general election. Their best candidate in the general election is Mitt Romney, but both the Tea Party and Christian-Right really dislike him (if not hate him) and probably believe he's as bad as Barack Obama. Which is why Mitt Romney has been going out-of- his-way to look like a Religious-Conservative, with coming out for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. But its all politics, he's Northeastern Republican and they tend to be moderate-liberal on social issues. 

The President's biggest strength is Republican weakness. But this is what President Obama can do to win the Democratic Socialist-Left back or enough of them to get reelected, make the next fifteen months about jobs. Along with the Democratic Senate, all they should be doing right now is pushing legislation to create jobs. And the President and Congressional Democrats both have a jobs agenda to do this. Infrastructure, energy, and Free Trade which would all be a boost to our manufacturing industry, because we would need new supplies for our infrastructure projects, repairing old ones and building new one. 

A comprehensive energy plan would be a boost to our manufacturing industry because again the supplies that would be needed. There's three trade deals stuck in Congress right now: Central America, Columbia, and Korea, which is a bipartisan problem that the President should try to fix. That would be a boost to our manufacturing industry as well, because we would be able to sell more products in foreign markets. 

The next fifteen months should be all about jobs for President and the Democratic Senate and the House Democratic Leadership should be pushing a jobs agenda as well. And using that against the House GOP by telling then what have you done to create jobs and what are you going to do. It would also be a great campaign issue as well. 

President Obama is clearly not going to win everyone back, the entire Republican Party won't vote for him most likely. But he can't get reelected without the Democratic Party united behind him and voting for him. And then communicating a jobs agenda to enough Independents to win the election. And to do that going forward is has to nothing other than about jobs, pushing jobs legislation through the rest of this Congress. And going forward on the campaign trail. 

Russia Today: Lawrence Korb- 'US Defense Budget Higher Than Ever'

Source:Russia Today- Lawrence Korb: Assistant Secretary of Defense, in the Reagan Administration.

"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a state-controlled international television network funded by the Russian federal tax budget.[5][6] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

RT operates as a multilingual service with conventional channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[7] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also offer some locally based content." 

From Wikipedia 

"When it comes to making decisions about how to save the US from the economic crisis, many people claim the cuts should come from defense spending. 20 percent of the US total budget goes to defense spending, which has many Americans disgusted, but the US' Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, begs to differ.  Will cuts damage US security? Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, gives us his take on how defense cuts will affect the US. 

From Russia Today

Anytime you are involved in deficit reduction you have to look at the entire Federal budget to get the most savings as possible while hurting the least as possible. And you especially have to look at areas where you spend the most and the Defense budget represents around 20% of our Federal budget and 5% of our GDP. But you shouldn't cut defense in ways that hurts your national security obviously, but what you do is cut in areas that you don't need to spend as much or shouldn't be spending at all. 

According to GAO (Government Accountability Office) we can't even get an audit of the Defense Department and we don't know how large our Defense budget is. And the Defense Department also wastes around 100B$ a year in a 700B$ Budget which should be more evidence for the need to cut here. Because they are not very good with the money they get as far as spending it properly. 

What we shouldn't be doing is cutting in areas that directly relate to our national security if we were under attacked in some way. And we needed to respond right away but where we can cut is in some of the areas where we are currently responsible for the national security of other nations. And I'm talking about defending developed nations, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Korea, and demand that they play a bigger role in their own national security. And bringing our troops home and using that revenue to help pay down the debt and deficit. 

Libertarians and Democratic Socialists believe that since the United States spends the most on defense than any other nation in the world combined, that we should move towards a European style defense Budget, where they on average only spend around 1.5% of their GDP on defense. But the problem with that is the reason why Europe only spends around 1.5% of their GDP on defense, is because they know America has its back in their own national security. If we took that money away from them, as well as personal and other resources, they would have to make up the difference or see their defense get weaken. 

I don't want to see America go down to 1.5% of our GDP on defense. We still have too many threats facing us and need to be strong. But we could get by with 200B$ a year less on defense 500B$ a year for our Defense budget or 3% of GDP and be fine. 

What America needs to do as a country is take a bigger lead in securing its own national security and deal with its own domestic problems, which we have plenty of. And let these other developed nations take the lead and responsibility in defending themselves. This saying is starting to sound old but thats because of only how true it is: America can no longer afford to be the sole policemen of the world. Other developed nations need to step up to the plate and play their part as well. 

Bernie Sanders: The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer- 'Talks about No Vote on Debt Deal'

Source:U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders- CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, interviewing Senator Bernie Sanders (Democratic Socialist, Socialist Republic of Vermont) about the debt ceiling agreement.

"Senator Sanders explains why he voted "No" on the deficit reduction deal, as well as the deal's consequences, with CNN's Wolf Blitzer." 

From Bernie Sanders 

This will be the fourth time I'll say this in two days, but this is not a good deal that no one likes, that both the Far-Right and Far-Left dislike. But both sides got some things that they like. 

Here's the list, for Democrats and Liberals ( the real Liberals) An eighteen month extension in the debt ceiling, but there's still a possibility of a government shutdown in November and December, because the Federal budget of course is still not done, that can be blamed on both the White House and Congress. Democrats and Liberals also cut about a trillion over ten years in defense cuts, something we've been fighting for, for over four years now or since the start of the Bush Administration. And Democrats and Liberals were able to protect entitlement programs from drastic cuts. 

What did Republicans and conservatives get - 2T$ in budget cuts and cutting more than the Federal Government will be allowed to borrow with the debt ceiling. And they were able to keep tax hikes out of the debt deal including cutting tax loopholes and corporate welfare. 

Both sides get to be able to negotiate tax and entitlement reform in round two of deficit reduction, which both sides want, that includes cutting expensive tax loopholes and cutting corporate welfare, they'll be on the table.

What the Socialist-Left in the Democratic Party America as well as Senator Bernie Sanders, is that they got an inside seat and look at what divided government looks like. You don't want to compromise with Republicans, take the time out to vote in the next election, as well as elect more of your own ideological members. You don't want to compromise even with Center-Left Democrats, then knock them out of office and win those seats with your own people, instead of Republicans winning solid Democratic seats.

This is what happens when you put the Far Right in America in charged of the House Representatives, where the Speaker who's generally a responsible, adult but is now scared as hell of the Far-Right, because he doesn't want to lose his job, which means he's willing to go to the mat for them, even if that means risk sending the United States Government in default. Which is what happened here. 

The President and the Senate Leader had to give the Senate Minority Leader and the House Speaker a lot of what they were asking. Or the House would've never passed anything that would pass the House or get signed by the President. And the Senate Minority Leader with his 47 votes would've blocked anything that Senate Democrats would've tried to pass on their own that the President would've wanted.

If Democratic Socialists in America want more of their policy's in place and get to sit with the adults at dinner time (instead of sitting at the kiddy table) then they are going to have to get more members elected to Congress, including in the Senate where they only have a few out of 100 Senators. And get more members elected statewide. This is something the Far-Right has already done with people in the Tea Party (now Theocratic Tea Party) with Representative Michele Bachmann and others. 

Otherwise the Democratic Leadership is going to continue to take the attitude: "What can we pass without the Progressive Caucus if we need to." Thats how real Liberals (the adults on the room) treat the so-called Progressive Caucus (Democratic Socialists, in actuality) today and for a long time.