The Ring of Fire: ‘RFK, Jr: How To Save American Democracy’

Source:The Ring of Fire- Robert F. Kennedy JR. talking about American democracy.

Source:FreeState MD 

“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. gives a speech to a crowd at Mass Torts Made Perfect about how to save our Democracy from Republicans, the Tea Party, and corporate raiders.” 

From The Ring of Fire

Robert F. Kennedy is essentially talking about the Tea Party Right in America. These so-called Conservative populists, that have a big hold on the Republican Party today and essentially labelling them for what he believes they are, which are corporatists, who believe in a corporate state in America, that would replace our liberal democracy, that’s based on individual rights, not corporate rights.

I actually agree with a lot of what Bobby Kennedy isa saying here. I’m sure there a lot of blue-collar, prop-union, voters, in the Tea Party movement. But their leaders are corporatists. You see that now in all of these Republican controlled legislatures that are now controlled by Tea Party people, like in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Republican legislatures that want to make it harder for Americans to vote, at least young Americans, who tend to vote Democratic. As well as make it harder, if not impossible, for workers to organize and bargain collectively.

The Ring of Fire: Mike Papantonio & Jonathan Haidt: 'The Psychology of Republican Voters'

Source:The Ring of Fire- talking to Professor Jonathan Haidt.

"If the Republican Party is good at only one thing, it's getting middle class people to vote against their own best interest. For years the GOP has convinced average voters that their party really cares about them, and that their policies that only benefit the wealthy are still best for the country. And the voters continue to keep buying this worn out line. Mike Papantonio seeks to find out why voters keep voting against their own interests with Dr. Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business." 

From The Ring of Fire

I think there a couple major factors for why the blue-collar voters are moving to the Republican Party and away from the Democratic Party and Mike Papantonio and Jon Haidt covered one of then having to do with the civil rights laws of the 1960s. 

Pre-civil rights movement, the Democratic Party was the home of blue-collar voters, even though it's always had a northern, urban, well-educated, wealthy, yuppie, and hipster wing in it, like it has today. But if you were a blue-collar voter in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and even 1970s, you were probably a Democrat if you voted, because Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and even Jimmy Carter, bothered to speak to those voters and even offered programs and solutions to the problems that these voters were dealing with. 

The reason why the Republican Party was such a minority party in America, even when they did have The White House, because their coalition was so small. Up until the 1960s, the Republican Party was mostly country club, northern, midwestern, and western party, of rich people, including African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, and Asian and Latino-Americans. While the rest of the country of all classes, race, and ethnicities, were Democrats. 

Richard Nixon in the mid and late 1960s, even though he was a highly educated and successful, as well as wealthy Republican, saw a major numbers problem for the Republican Party, as he was planning his next presidential campaign, which would've been 1968. He discovered that Republicans were losing almost everywhere, because they didn't have enough voters. Their coalition was simply too small to compete with the Democratic Party. 

Richard Nixon doesn't win the presidency in the 1968, without his campaigning for Congressional Republicans and the successes that they had both in the House and Senate, but also governor's races in 1966, but also with the voters of blue-collar voters, including Independents, but Democrats as well. And Ronald Reagan picks up on this in the late 1970s and even into his failed presidential run in the Republican Party in 1976 and takes that campaign strategy into 1980. 

If you are well-educated, highly successful, wealthy, and even believe in individual freedom, (even if you a so-called leftist who doesn't publicize your belief in individual freedom) you are probably a Democrat. If you are a blue-collar voter, who perhaps just has a high school diploma, who is very fundamentalist when it comes to religion and believes America has been going to hell since the 1960s, you are probably a Republican today. That's how much the two major political parties have changed.

The Ring of Fire: Mike Papantonio- 'Progressives Need To Unite: The Calvary's Not Coming'

Source:The Ring of Fire- with Mike Papantonio.

"Mike Papantonio talks about the need for every sector of the progressive movement to unite together -- No single group can operate on its own, and together we can help take down the Tea Party GOP's disastrous plans for America."

Source:The Ring of Fire

Mike Papantonio is correct that the so-called Progressives (Democratic Socialists, in actuality) need to come together and unite, for the short-term to prevent a Mitt Romney Presidency and a Tea Party Congress next year. Which is exactly what will happen if so-called Progressive (Socialists, in actuality) Democrats don't show up and vote Democratic in 2012. Which is exactly what they didn't do in 2010. 

The reason why we have a Republican House right now, because Tea Party Republicans showed up and voted Republican in 2010, while Socialists sat at home (staring at their I-phones and laptops, drinking too much coffee) or vote for socialist third-party candidates. . Because President Obama turned out not to be a Socialist that they were expecting in 2008 and that the Democratic Congress wasn't socialist enough for them either.

See, elections do have consequences, which is something that right-wingers figured out a long time ago. That a lot of left-wingers (whether they're democratic or not) haven't figured out yet, that if you don't like who comes to power and one of those reasons why they did come to power, is because you didn't bother to vote, that instead of sitting out and complaining about it, that if you don't do your part to prevent the people who came to power from getting into power, that you don't really have much reason to complain. Because if you just bothered to vote, maybe the people you want in power are still there

The Ring of Fire: Mike Papantonio: 'Why Young Voters Are Leaving GOP'

Source:The Ring of Fire- Ben Adler writes for The Nation Magazine.

"Republicans have done an amazing job in the last few months of alienating essentially every voter that isn't a wealthy, older, white male. Their voter ID laws have affectively alienated minorities, their regressive policies towards women have pushed female voters away from them, and their lack of concern over education and student loans has left young voters looking elsewhere for politicians to vote for. So, at the end of the day, do Republicans have any shot at winning over the hearts and minds of young voters? Mike Papantonio attempts to answer that question with Ben Adler, a contributing writer for the Nation magazine." 

From The Ring of Fire

Young American voters (let's say people 18-34) get stereotyped and this has been going on at least since the 1960s when the Baby Boomer started coming of age, as left-wingers, people who love big government socialism, who think the Federal Government should be doing a lot more for them and the country as a whole, who claim that they don't mind paying higher taxes to get more government in their lives. And yet, there's no such thing as a monolithic voting bloq in America. 

Young voters regardless of their political ideology and party, vote for and follow the politicians who speak to them and talk about the issues that they care about and say they're going to address the issues that this group faces, if they get elected. The Ron Paul movement which has a lot voters who are under 30 in his movement, is a pretty good example of that. 

When Americans are very young, they tend to be the least ideological, simply because they have the least amount or real-world experience as everyone else. They're just starting to figure out what they believe. 

The Ring of Fire: Mike Papantonio- 'Heartland Institute Kicks Off Climate Change Denial-a-Palooza'

Source:The Ring of Fire- Mike Papantonio, talking about the Heartland Institute and climate change.

"The conservative Heartland Institute is holding their annual climate change summit, where they hope to convince those in attendance that climate change is just a liberal hoax. It should come as no surprise that Heartland was founded and is funded by some of the biggest polluters in America. Mike Papantonio talks about what's really driving Heartland's climate change denial with Brendan DeMelle, executive director and managing editor of:Des Moq." 

From The Ring of Fire

I don't believe anyone in their right mind believes that there's no such thing as climate change. Of course I'm not a mindreader but thats my feeling. All you have to look at the weather to see that, with longer summers and colder winters and with ice melting in areas with frigid weather. 

The question is at least from the United States point of view is, what should we do on our part about it to fix it. Should we pass cap and trade and force American business's to live under regulations and taxes that foreign business's don't live under, or should we do something that would make us more competitive in the energy industry both at home and globally, that would also benefit our economy. 

As a Liberal who believes in primate markets and capitalism, I lean towards making us more competitive, economically but that would also make us more competitive when it comes to energy policy as well as our foreign policy. A national energy policy for America, that moves us towards energy independence and finally off of foreign oil, would accomplish three things by doing several things. 

First, it would benefit our economy in multiple ways, because we would open up new energy industries which would create good jobs. 

It would get us off of foreign oil, because would be relying on domestic energy instead, which would create jobs. But it would also create more competition in the energy sector, because of just oil, gas and electricity which are the three main energy industries right now. 

With a comprehensive national energy policy, there would also be a solar industry, wind industry, natural gas would be bigger in America, nuclear would be bigger in America and so would clean coal. We will need to still drill for oil and gas in America for at least ten years after we create an energy policy. But at least we would be drilling for American oil and gas and no longer importing it. 

A comprehensive national energy policy would benefit our economy because of the good jobs it would create. It would benefit our foreign policy because countries that we are currently importing oil from. We would no longer have to do that, giving them lest leverage over us. And it would benefit our environmental policy because we would be finally using cleaner sources of energy. 

If we are going to have some climate Change policy, it should be a global treaty, so that everyone is operating under the same rules.

The Ring of Fire: Mike Papantonio- 'How Capitalism Has Failed Us'

Source:The Ring of Fire- talking to Justin Jones, from Political Voice.

"Protesters in Wisconsin have taken to the streets to protest Republican Governor Scott Walker and his disastrous plan for their state. These protesters have been at it since February of this year. But in other areas of the country, Republicans are working to strip us of our rights, but the streets are empty. We don't have protesters shining a spotlight on the corruption in other parts of the country, and because of this, the abuse just keeps coming. That's why my next guest is so inspiring -- Justin Jones is only 17, and yet he is more politically active than most people in this country, and we were pleased to have him back on Ring of Fire with us recently." 

From The Ring of Fire 

The reason why American capitalism hasn't worked very well the last ten years, is because we as a country and especially our government have moved away from what works well. 

America has stop paying for our government operations. We stop regulating American corporations and Wall Street. And we stopped educating our students. And we cut taxes for the wealthy thinking they would spread the wealth (so to speak) for the rest of society to the point that we no longer have enough well educated students in America and we now have to import foreign workers to fill the good jobs that are left, that 10-15 years ago would've been filled by well-educated American workers. 

10-15 years ago America had the strongest economy the world (not just the largest) because we did what we are currently not doing. And where our economy was growing around 4-5% a year, 4.5% unemployment rate, no inflation, and a Federal budget surplus, and actually talking about paying down our national debt too soon, because we paid for the government we had. We were well regulating American business as well as Wall Street, we had good public schools across the country and high-earners were paying their fair share of taxes. This is the system that works, why American capitalism works. 

Our current economic system is not American capitalism, its corporate capitalism. American capitalism is about maximize choice and fair and free well regulated competition. That puts the people in charge of how they live their lives and how much money they make, where everyone including high-earners pay low taxes compared with the rest of the developed world. But we all pay our fair share of taxes based on our income. 

American capitalism is where people can make as much money as their skills and production will allow while paying their fair share of taxes. Because we have a public education system and college system that produces enough high-skilled workers. 

What we shouldn't be doing as a country is move from Cowboy Capitalism, to democratic socialism with higher taxes and a larger welfare state, to the point where the people are dependent on government to pay their bills. Instead of having the Economic Freedom to make as much money as their skills and production will allow. We need to return to American capitalism, not move to democratic socialism.