The immediate, radical changes that America needs in order to survive. Lots of them.

Look at what has happened to America in just the last 30 years:

1. Half of working class America's wealth has been lost in the last 4 years.
2. The economy is rapidly descending into a Plutonomy so bad that even immigration is down.
3. Unions are disappearing. We couldn't even get Scott Walker kicked out of office. Unions lost face across most of the country as a result.
4. Global warming is proceeding apace. Ocean acidification. And now the nastiest drought in the United States since the 1930s Dust Bowl. So you can add skyrocketing food prices to what the 99% has got to deal with.
5. A coast to coast assault on women's rights.
6. Rainforests are being cut down like wheat before the scythe.
7. Global water supplies are dwindling into crisis level shortages.
8. America is leading the way with extrajudicial executions and the killing of innocent bystanders on a scale that makes MyLai look like a Facebook internet brawl.
9. Diebold. Citizens United. Foreign nations are intervening in American elections with their multibillion dollar campaign contributions.
10. Our nation's infrastructure is collapsing with funding perpetually coming up short.
11. Mass privatization and disaster capitalism are running amuck. Elected officials are being replaced with private industry managers in Michigan.
12. Public worker pensions are going byebye, and private sector pensions are long gone.
13. Minority unemployment is sky high.
14. The Reagan revolution is still running wild.
15. Corporate profits are running wild, productivity is way up, but wages aren't keeping pace with productivity or inflation.
16. $21 trillion has been moved out of nations' economies into offshore Galt Gulches.

Can anyone explain how we're going to solve this with "small, incremental steps"?

Ya damned right I posted this before. Because these problems are still with us, and if the status quo remains, they will only get worse.

We need to do something about this, now. Something big. Somethings big. We don't have time for bullshit "small incremental steps" out of the hole we're in. We've already got millions sweltering under a killer drought and the world about to be hit with another food crisis. How hard does nature have to hit America in order for America to ditch the loser concept of "small, incremental steps"? How hard does the economy have to hit America?

Stage 4 cancer requires major chemotherapy. Take a look at America's wheat fields and the sheer number of our homeless and ask yourself... what stage is this cancer we're dealing with?

This is my list of SPECIFIC changes that we need to make. NOW.


We need to start building solar plants in America. LOTS of them. Using the technology that is available to us. Germany did it, on a very large scale. Spain has a solar power plant that can run at night. We can do this, and we need to build these plants with American workers and American hardware. We need solar on Every. Damned. Roof. We need to start ditching coal-fired power plants.

The government needs to start subsidizing the construction of urban vertical farms. And subsidies for window farms as well. Food prices are going up, folks. We can attack this problem or we can let it whallop us... what'll it be?

We need countervailing tariffs that strike right at the cheap labor movement among corporations. If you want to exploit cheap labor, prepare to pay a high price to sell that stuff in America. We need tariffs against products made in high-polluting countries. We haven't made pollution go away - all we've done is outsource our pollution to other nations. This cannot continue. Neither can all the tax breaks we give companies to move overseas. That's gotta GO. ASAP.

We need subsidies for electric cars and electric-hybrid cars. And more research into fuel cells. We need better intra-city rail systems and high speed inter-city rail to help cut down on the number of cars on the road.

We need a nationwide law banning all "emergency manager" laws. Elected officials should NEVER be replaced by appointees.

We need to put an immediate end to the use of drones and the policy of summary executions. To hell with the "but it puts our troops in harm's way" excuse - our policy of summary executions is killing innocent civilians and bystanders. To that we must say not just no, but HELL NO!

We need to target those who move their money out of the United States to avoid taxes and put them behind bars. Confiscate their assets. And summarily execute their foreign bank accounts. At the very least, cut them off from their assets. Send an unambiguous and strong message that we won't tolerate that crap. Take their money and use it to fund the rebuilding of our infrastructure using American workers.

Democrat women and all conscientious men need to rise up en masse, 24/7. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Demand the ERA. Every second of every fucking hour, and damn anyone who pushes back. Demonstrate, protest, and if the police thugs jump bad, make them know there's not enough fucking money OR jails to hold your numbers! ERA or bust. ERA or break America in half. ERA or everything, everywhere, grinds to a total screeching halt.

We must demand a total moratorium on fracking and blowing off mountaintops for coal. Put an immediate end to the poisoning of our environment and our water supplies. We ain't got much of that left, folks.

America must enact laws that impose automatic eminent domain on bank-held houses that are not sold within a year. And we need to work out an eminent domain program for houses whose mortgages are underwater. To hell with the banks and Wall Street.

Eliminate the Social Security taxable maximum. Make payroll taxes apply to the first ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of earnings. Tie the Social Security COLA to 1% above inflation or the consumer price index, WHICHEVER IS HIGHER.

Adjust unemployment insurance coverage to cover workers indefinitely in states with unemployment over 8%. Across the board.

Make the CAPITAL GAINS TAX equal to the TAXES ON WAGES. Go back to the top marginal individual income tax rate of 70.1% in the pre-Reagan years.

Institute a national LIVABLE WAGE law that is significantly higher than the national minimum wage. Tie it to inflation.

End the "war on terror". Use that money to fund free higher public education for everyone, and better salaries for ALL teachers.

Medicare For All. NOW.

Make it ILLEGAL for background checking services, medical companies or financial institutions to move personal information overseas. Offer a FAT BOUNTY for anyone who breaks this law.

Follow STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA's example and pass a national law guaranteeing that in case of a municipal bankruptcy, the pensioners get covered first.

Nationalize the banks.

95% taxation on any CEO pay that exceeds 50 times the average wages of their employees. If they don't like it they can take their company elsewhere and enjoy very high tariffs while trying to sell their bullshit here.

Overturn Citizens United... by any means necessary. Along with corporate personhood.

Edited to add: KILL the USAPATRIOT Act, completely demilitarize the police forces across the country, eliminate warrantless surveillance, and abolish the death penalty, nationwide.

It hasn't always been the case that workers fought like starving rats over jobs.

It used to be that employers competed for workers, even in low-end manufacturing.

Free trade killed that.

Oh and did I forget to mention the economy was doing just fine back then, and wages were keeping up with the cost of living?

An honest question for proponents of free trade on the DU

Where can Americans go to find jobs?

Those jobs that offshoring was supposed to create? They are few and most pay precious little compared to the jobs we let leave the country. That is reality and that is the future of things. As long as we keep sending manufacturing and tech jobs out of the country there is no bright future for America's working class, especially not in America.

Ultimately, there aren't enough jobs of any type, combined, to handle our workforce, much less the growth in the size of our workforce. Even if we get back to "full employment" that still means that the working-age population is 5% larger than the number of jobs that will ever be available. This is reality, and it will endure indefinitely. There is no "over the rainbow" here. There is only a future of lower wages, higher costs of living, and a process of competition for jobs that simply gets more ludicrous, gratuitously difficult, and in many cases openly sadistic: a metaphorical "Hunger Games" fight with the increasingly elusive prize being a job that will get ever closer to minimum wage.

So what I want to ask the free traders is, where can America go to find work? The jobs aren't here in America. Can we go to Mexico? China? How easy is it to move there for a job?

Free traders wanted the jobs to go to "someone else besides Americans". So where can 6 million (actually, closer to 16 million) unemployed working-age Americans expect to go to find work?

Can we get an answer to this? Or maybe a discussion? Or is the answer simply, "Let them do without a job"?

Is it just me or are most new PC games coming out as MMORPG's?

I'm being irritated enough with Blizzard poisoning single-player play in Starcraft II and utterly making a joke of it in Diablo-III by forcing you to be online all the time, and now Electronic Arts is saying the same thing will be true of the next Sim City. My wife LOVES The Sims 3 and she's worried the next version, if it comes out, will require you to be online. The warning signs are quite obvious with that new Simport feature. Mass Effect 3 has done all but make the multi-player element essential to getting a good (much less perfect) ending. Fortunately this should be the last Mass Effect game made.

But in cruising PC Gamer Online, I see most of the announcements are about MMO's, which make solo play irrelevant. Fallout has been flirting with MMO play (the Project V13 fiasco notwithstanding), and Elder Scrolls Online is in the planning stages. One has to wonder if there'll be a Fallout 4 much less 5, and Skyrim could well be the last single player Elder Scrolls game. Even X-Com is going multiplayer!


The last big single player games I see coming out are Borderlands 2, Dead Space 3, Torchlight 2 and Crysis 3, and even Torchlight's developers have been thinking of a MMO.

On the other hand if I went through the list of major MMO productions Skinner would be buying a new hard drive just to store this post.

Ugh.

Stupid Chuck Norris ad. I'm already registered to vote!

Why did Chuck Norris call for Texas to secede from the Union? Because he's scared of UNITED STATES President Barack Hussein OBAMA, baby.

Uh, what is our response to the Tea Party...?

Exactly how are they getting these victories? Over our sleeping asses?

http://news.yahoo.com/tea-party-evolves-achieves-state-policy-victories-134909326--finance.html

ATLANTA (AP) — Tea party activists in Georgia helped kill a proposed sales tax increase that would have raised billions of dollars for transportation projects. In Pennsylvania, tea partyers pushed to have taxpayers send public school children to private schools. In Ohio, they drove a referendum to block state health insurance mandates.

These and other battles are evidence of the latest phase of the conservative movement, influencing state and local policy, perhaps more effectively than on a national level. Tea party organizers are refocusing, sometimes without the party label, to build broader support for their initiatives. The strategy has produced victories that activists say prove their staying power.

"I call it Tea Party 2.0," said Amy Kremer, a Delta flight attendant who leads Tea Party Express. The California-based group, co-founded by GOP strategist Sal Russo, claims it's the largest tea party political action committee.

The movement first showed its strength in Washington in 2009 as an umbrella for voters angry over President George W. Bush's Wall Street rescue and President Barack Obama's stimulus package and auto manufacturer bailout, as well as the health care debate...

A teachable moment for Sharon Osbourne?

The woman who said "I do think it's quite fabulous" in response to an innocent man getting his penis cut off by his wife Catherine Kieu, recently blew her lid over her son being fired over what she calls a case of discrimination.

Perhaps this will teach her that it's wrong to sit around and laugh at other people's horrific misfortunes? Victimization is always funny when it's not happening to you or yours. Maybe it's not funny when it happens to others, either?

Here's a lesson about who the police really serve...

If you hear someone breaking down your door with an axe and you call the cops, how long will it take for the cops to respond?

If you interrupt a politician or a corporate executive during a speech at an expensive luncheon, how long will it take for the cops to respond?

You can't stop the evolution of automation, but you can put a complete end to the working class.

Myth: increased automation will make life better for everyone, and reduce the need for work.

Reality: more people will be put out of work. No jobs means no income for 99% of the unemployed. No income means no food. Automation won't come for free - you won't get robots given to you for free to take care of you. That, and you need to own or rent land in order to have a standard of living. (Homeless people can't farm or build shelters on someone else's property.) Without a job, 99% of people cannot rent or buy property. Without a pot to piss in, nobody's going to let someone squat on their land and let robots create a living for these landless folk. Logically speaking the bridge is out and there is no way to complete the path from the real world to the fantasy world of automation and high productivity leading to a better life for all.

Over the next decade unemployment is projected to rise to from 200 million to 600 million. There are CURRENTLY 1.1 BILLION people either unemployed or working yet living in poverty. They are not, and will not ever share in the benefits of increased automation. Automation is not creating any jobs for them. Yet worker productivity is skyrocketing.

The going argument is that automation and improved productivity will create more jobs and raise everyone's standard of living. No sane person can say that history has ever shown this to be true, except for SOME of the people who still have jobs. The exploding number of global unemployed and poor people, are living testaments to the fact that this argument isn't panning out in reality.

It's not working. To hide behind the "Luddite" word as a means to avoid talking about the fact that the great automation and productivity dream isn't working, is outright intellectual dishonesty. It is a deliberate act of deception. And screaming "You want us all to go back to horses and carts" is a deliberate attempt to bury the plight of the over 200 million global unemployed and declare it irrelevant.

The Religion of Total Automation and Infinite Productivity is based on utopian theories - aka fantasies and myths. Technology is not God; it can be questioned, and limits are a legitimate concept.

Stepping on millions of workers in the name of progress is NOT A LIBERAL POSITION.

Paul Krugman, former defender of offshoring, delivers a steel-toe boot to its Smeagol-like face.