YoungDemCA
YoungDemCA's JournalIt's amazing that over the span of two decades, America went from this...
to this:
Twenty years, between 1960 and 1980.
DU'ers who remember that time, or who have any historical knowledge of that period...tell me, no, tell us all what went so horribly wrong, and why.
Silicon Valley, Meet Organized Labor
But that's about to change. Silicon Valley's newest labor challenge is coming from the tech underclass — the blue-collar workers who cook, drive, and clean for all those coddled engineers, and who are getting tired of watching the incredible spoils of the tech boom pass them by.
This week, the Times reported that the Teamsters are attempting to organize bus drivers at Facebook. These drivers aren't actually Facebook employees — they're hired through an outside firm called Loop Transportation. But organizers are hoping that by appealing directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, they'll convince Facebook to either use a unionized contractor instead of Loop, or pressure Loop to let its drivers organize.
"While your employees earn extraordinary wages ... these drivers can't afford to support a family, send their children to school, or, least of all, afford to even dream of buying a house anywhere near where they work," the union reps' letter to Zuckerberg read. "This is reminiscent of a time when noblemen were driven around in their coaches by their servants."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/silicon-valley-meet-organized-labor.html
Rise of the New McCarthyism (2009)
It's amazing that this article is 5 years old now, yet still so relevant.
snip:
snip:
The shame of the Senate, especially the shame of its leaders and moderates on both sides of the aisle, was expressed by historian Robert Griffith when he wrote that McCarthy’s victories were made possible “only by the unwillingness of moderates to take a stand that might expose them to obloquy.” Perhaps, Griffith added, “this was the key to McCarthy’s continued power – not the ranting of demagogues, but the fear and irresolution of honorable men.
snip:
McCarthy was fond of referring to the “Democrat Party” – using the term as a slur. The refusal to use the correct term “Democratic Party” was so associated with McCarthy that it went out of style for decades, but the rhetorical tactic has been resurrected and embraced by the Karl Rove-Newt Gingrich-Frank Luntz Republican Party of today.
Today’s McCarthyism has many faces and voices, including the household names of right-wing cable television, a plethora of radio hosts, Religious Right leaders, right-wing organizations and the bogus “grassroots” campaigns they generate – and Members of Congress and other Republican Party officials. Together they engage in character assassination and challenge the loyalty and patriotism of their targets.
More: http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/rise-of-the-new-mccarthyism-how-right-wing-extremists-try-to-paralyze-government-throug
This is not merely "populist" right-wing paranoia. This is-and has been-a deliberate, well-organized, well-funded, and concerted effort to subvert, undermine, and corrupt government and turn it over to super-wealthy, powerful private interests (the Koch Brothers being one of the more notorious examples of this).
The systemic and deliberate undermining of public trust in government institutions by these right-wingers has successfully driven the vast majority of Americans out of the political process. Or, to paraphrase the Patron Saint of the American Right, Ronald Reagan:
"Government is the problem-and watch now as my allies and I prove that it is!"
The fuckers....
Paul Krugman: In Defense of Obama (Rolling Stone)
And I wasn't wrong. Obama was indeed naive: He faced scorched-earth Republican opposition from Day One, and it took him years to start dealing with that opposition realistically. Furthermore, he came perilously close to doing terrible things to the U.S. safety net in pursuit of a budget Grand Bargain; we were saved from significant cuts to Social Security and a rise in the Medicare age only by Republican greed, the GOP's unwillingness to make even token concessions.
Obama faces trash talk left, right and center – literally – and doesn't deserve it. Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it's working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it's much more effective than you'd think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.
I'll go through those achievements shortly. First, however, let's take a moment to talk about the current wave of Obama-bashing. All Obama-bashing can be divided into three types. One, a constant of his time in office, is the onslaught from the right, which has never stopped portraying him as an Islamic atheist Marxist Kenyan. Nothing has changed on that front, and nothing will.
There's a different story on the left, where you now find a significant number of critics decrying Obama as, to quote Cornel West, someone who ''posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit.'' They're outraged that Wall Street hasn't been punished, that income inequality remains so high, that ''neoliberal'' economic policies are still in place. All of this seems to rest on the belief that if only Obama had put his eloquence behind a radical economic agenda, he could somehow have gotten that agenda past all the political barriers that have con- strained even his much more modest efforts. It's hard to take such claims seriously.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/in-defense-of-obama-20141008#ixzz3FYzM1bj0
Ever notice that the states and areas of the country with less public (government) investment....
...in their respective communities, are more dependent on religious groups, private charities, and other non-governmental groups to provide a lot of social welfare needs?
What do these groups have in common? They are dependent on voluntary donations, and there's not really a sense of formal obligation by the community to take care of those in need. One common way the right-wingers spin it is: "Giving is an act of the heart, not something that can be legislated by the government," (I've heard this several times before).
Maybe this is how "red" states end up being more generous in charitable donations than "blue" states. Religious organizations, like the Mormons in Utah, Idaho, etc. and the right-wing evangelical Christians in much of the South and parts of the Midwest, are (partially) filling the void that public investment-which in some cases, is deliberate under-investment-doesn't fill.
Does this make any sense? 
How much are politicians influenced by public opinion? Is public opinion itself even reliable?
On the one hand, there really does seem to be a profound disconnect between what the majority of Americans want, and what we end up getting from Washington, D.C.
On the other hand, I do think that politicians are influenced by public opinion at a basic level, in the sense that Presidents regularly looks at the national polls, Senators look at their state's polls, Congresspeople look at their district's polls...etc.
The question, though is: Can we even rely on public opinion? Which public are we talking about-the public that votes for a Republican Congressperson or Senator in a particular district or state, or the national public that elected the Democratic President?
Furthermore, public opinion can very easily be manipulated, because most Americans simply don't know or understand the nuances of government even at a basic level (To name one example, "Obamacare" is a lot less popular than the "Affordable Care Act." 
) Most people don't have the time, knowledge, inclination, and analytical skills to seed through all the bullshit that is out there to find reliable and credible sources of information-let alone, to interpret and analyze that information.
People who lack that basic knowledge base, that level of education and critical thinking/skepticism toward agenda-driven narratives, can be more manipulated by the corporate-mass media propaganda complex that we are all subject to on a daily basis. Misinformation, disinformation, and simple social prejudice masquerades as "common sense" for a lot of politically-involved Americans (The Tea Party movement is an great case study of this phenomenon). And not only do many of these people vote, they have been going into politics themselves as activists and even candidates-with predictably disastrous results.
So, in light of all of this-does public opinion matter to American politicians? Does it also matter how we define "public opinion"? And finally-do the American people-broadly and individually-have the ability to make informed, educated political decisions? This last question, I believe is critical to consider for those of us who believe in democracy, and democratic legitimacy.
Just a few questions that I am pondering. As always, curious to read people's responses! 
Why the Republican Party's tactics make perfect sense from their standpoint
The nice thing for the Republicans about believing what they believe- that the problem with America today is that the government does too much for most Americans (and not enough for business owners and other rich people )- is that, once in office, they don't actually have to propose any new policies or even come up with actual ideas for policies. Why? Because they've already gotten most of what they've wanted.
Ever since the Reagan years, economic, social, and racial inequality have all increased, the whole political spectrum has swung to the Right, lliberals are constantly on the defensive, words like "liberal" and "feminist" are dirty words for a lot of Americans, and the mainstream media and the corporations that back them are being driven ever right by the craziness of Fox News and talk radio. They've gotten what they wanted, in more ways than one. Now, they're doing their damndest to *get rid of* policies and programs that they DON'T want.
Once in office, all Republicans have to do is throw red meat out to their True Believers (like voting to repeal Obamacare every other week, or investigating Benghazi to find out WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, or petitioning to put Ronald Reagan's face on Mount Rushmore...OK, I doubt that that last one is true, but you never know!) and they'll get voted back in, time and time again. Haven't we seen a lot of this from Tea Partiers and right-wingers? "The problem with the government is government itself!" "The less they do, the better off America is!" "Gridlock is GOOD!' etc.
Remember, this is a party that-at least, nowadays-prides itself on its lack of legislative accomplishments. You can't fix an organization when most of their members and leaders believe that the only issue is that they haven't doubled down enough on their current tactics.
The amount of visceral, white-hot hatred against this President is unbelievable...
But not so unbelievable, unfortunately, when you consider that this President is the first black man to hold an office that up until his election in 2008, was reserved (de facto) for white men.
The racists and bigots of this country can't stand the fact that a black man-who, just an aside, is more intelligent, more articulate, more knowledgeable, more family-oriented, more compassionate, and IMHO, more representative of where America is going (and thanks heavens for that!) than all of the lousy, pathetic racists and bigots in the country combined-they can't stand the fact that a black man has power and authority over the United States as President, and that a majority of voters elected him to represent ALL Americans-including the racists/bigots, whether they like it or not.
THAT is what is driving the hatred and furor against President Obama.
For the record, I do believe that many rich, powerful Saudis-including individuals within the govt.
and quite possibly, even some members of the House of Saud (which has 15,000 members, FWIW-of which only 2,000 or so exercise most of the power over official Saudi state policy), actively have supported-and continue to support-or sponsored Sunni extremist groups around the world. All of this is not only possible, but very probable.
The thing is: the House of Saud, as we are all aware, is a heavy-handed autocracy that has zero accountability to the Saudi people. But moreover, they are loyal to each other, based on long-lasted family and tribal ties, as well as on their common religious/political ideology of Wahhabi Islam. Consequently, the House of Saud's members have a lot of latitude in "private activities"-which for at least some of them, almost certainly includes exporting their ideology abroad via fanatical, violent extremist groups that have included Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
Furthermore, it is also quite plausible that within the Saudi government (particularly its intelligence agencies), Al-Qaeda has agents or sympathetic individuals, at least, represented.
All of this is speculation/conjecture on my part, though. We won't know for sure until those 28 pages are declassified. The fact that they haven't fuels the conspiracy theories and suspicions of complicity and coverup. So for that reason-and more importantly, because the 9/11 victims' families deserve to know the full truth-the pages ought to be released.
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