01-06-2017, 01:31 AM
(01-05-2017, 08:49 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: [ -> ](01-05-2017, 01:45 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: [ -> ](01-05-2017, 12:39 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: [ -> ]Some final thoughts on privatization before moving on to another tenet of neoliberalism, that being deregulation...
I have read every book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chris Hedges who also publishes a weekly column in Truthdig. Let me say for the record that I am not the socialist that he is. I am acquainted with Marxist thought--as indeed every open-minded citizen should be--but I am not a Marxist. Too, his prognostications often veer toward catastrophizing, even as some have proved remarkably accurate. Having issued that disclaimer, his most recent column ("Defying Donald Trump's Kleptocracy") sums up well my opposition to--and fear of--a looming privatization in overdrive. I have added boldface to the following excerpts for emphasis:
The final stages of capitalism, Karl Marx predicted, would be marked by global capital being unable to expand and generate profits at former levels. Capitalists would begin to consume the government along with the physical and social structures that sustained them. Democracy, social welfare, electoral participation, the common good and investment in public transportation, roads, bridges, utilities, industry, education, ecosystem protection and health care would be sacrificed to feed the mania for short-term profit. These assaults would destroy the host. This is the stage of late capitalism that Donald Trump represents...
Trump plans to oversee the last great campaign of corporate pillaging of America. It will be as crass and brazen as the fleecing of the desperate people, hoping for a miracle in the face of dead-end jobs and ruinous personal debt, who visited his casinos or shelled out thousands of dollars for the sham of Trump University. He will attempt to unleash a kleptocracy—the word comes from the Greek [i]klépto, meaning thieves, and kratos, meaning rule, so it is literally “rule by thieves”—one that will rival the kleptocracies...[/i]
The Trump transition team is busy anointing its coterie of kleptocrats. The appointment of Betsy DeVos (from a family with a net worth in excess of $5 billion) to become secretary of education means she will oversee the more than $70 billion spent annually on the Department of Education. DeVos—the sister of Eric Prince, who founded the notorious private security firm Blackwater Worldwide—has no direct experience as an educator. She promoted a series of for-profit charter schools in Michigan that make money but have had dismal academic results. She sees vouchers as an effective tool to funnel government money into schools run by the Christian right. Her goal is to indoctrinate, not educate. She calls education reform a way to “advance God’s kingdom.” Trump has already proposed using $20 billion of the department’s budget for vouchers. The American system of public education, already crippled by funding cuts, will be destroyed if Trump and DeVos succeed...
The biggest pot of gold is the $2.79 trillion contained in or owed to the Social Security fund. The kleptocrats will work hard under Trump to divert this money into the hands of hucksters and crooks on Wall Street. Tom Leppert (net worth $12 million), the former mayor of Dallas, whom Trump is expected to name to head the Social Security Administration, not surprisingly advocates the privatization of Social Security and Medicare...
Social services and government programs under Trump will be continually degraded. Profits for those who oversee privatized educational, health and Social Security funds will skyrocket. This orgy of predation—the dream of the 1 percent—will be accompanied by further austerity among the citizenry, along with soaring personal costs for health care, utilities and basic services and a crippling debt peonage...
Link to the full article: http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/def...y_20170101
Hopefully some of the dummies who use the internet to buy useless shit, watch teevee / porn, endlessly text each other, etc ... will read the following advice:
1) If you can't afford to buy the phone, then you can't have that type of phone. Go get an old one and do a pay it forward plan.
2) Diet soda = death.
3) Sugar = even quicker death.
4) Most TV is poisonous to your mind.
5) Always ask, how can I not drive there? What are the alternatives to firing up the motor vehicle?
6) If you can't afford at least a 20% down payment, you have no business trying to buy property. And you better be able to pay off any mortgage you get into in 15, ideally 10 years. Otherwise, rent, and rent as low COL as you can stand.
7) If you can't afford to buy a home, support a spouse 100% for at least 5 years, pre-fund college through grad school, and several other enablers, then you have no business pumping out even one bambino. Say fuck it to all the peer pressure and go child free by choice.
8) If you think you have no time to make your own meals, and think fast food / other pre-made is quicker, then you are missing a key point about all the time you will lose to illness, and all the time you will need to make more money to pay for convenience.
9) Speaking of time ... you spend so much time texting. Imagine what else you could do with that time. Now for the dark side of connectivity. The Man steals your time when you let him snap your electronic leash taught. Obviously, don't get fired, but at least consider this point, and how you will renegotiate the boundaries between your life and your employer(s) over the long run. Think about codependency and the techniques to conquer it.
10) Learn how to grow food. Even a few plants in pots in a small apartment.
Thanks for your time.
How in the world does someone who gives all that sensible advice end up supporting the party of entitlement?
Entitlements are perfectly sensible. It's the GOP that feels entitled to its ideology of greed and, some of them anyway, to their exaggerated salaries and financial gains made on the backs of 99% of the people.
The opinion on Social Security seems to more of an age based![[Image: SDT-next-america-03-07-2014-2-08.png]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2015/08/SDT-next-america-03-07-2014-2-08.png)