(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/defying_donald_trumps_kleptocracy_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?

(01-05-2017, 03:49 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The failure of Reaganomics. And now what do Americans vote for? More trickle-down economics.

(01-05-2017, 09:09 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(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/defying_donald_trumps_kleptocracy_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?

Maybe you'll eventually accept the fact that there are people besides Dems who deem Trump a traitor and a Quisling. "SomeGuy" had a really great link on another thread that laid out the real political landscape. The truth is, real conservatives despise National Bolsheviks / National Socialists / fill in the blank with other suitably terrible populist bilge.

(01-06-2017, 01:00 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 12:28 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 09:09 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 08:49 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 01:45 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: 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?

Maybe you'll eventually accept the fact that there are people besides Dems who deem Trump a traitor and a Quisling. "SomeGuy" had a really great link on another thread that laid out the real political landscape. The truth is, real conservatives despise National Bolsheviks / National Socialists / fill in the blank with other suitably terrible populist bilge.

Opposing Trump I can see.  Supporting Clinton and the Democrats, not so much.

For the mission of stopping Trump I had no other choice. Some things are more important than partisanship. But you can't deal with that because you are a Boomer. So doctrinaire.

(01-06-2017, 04:26 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 03:43 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: I'd like to pivot from privatization to another core element of neoliberalism: deregulation.  Ronald Reagan was not the only champion of deregulation: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," he famously said in his 1981 Inaugural Address.  Jimmy Carter signed into law the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980, which set into slow motion perhaps the most pernicious trend in deregulation: it loosened or eliminated many of the provisions of Regulation Q under the Glass-Steagall Act.  Almost overnight, the once boring and conservative financial industry began to change--and arguably not for the better.  I know, I was an AVP at the largest bank in the Southwest at the time.  (I left the following year, just as a Wild West mentality in commercial lending was taking hold in Texas; nine of the top ten banks in the Lone Star State subsequently failed.)

Deregulation gathered steam under Reagan.  I gave him kudos for eliminating Nixon's price controls, which only exacerbated inflation psychology at the time.  Reagan also removed controls on oil and gas, cable television and long-distance phone service, among other deregulatory actions.  But unfortunately, he furthered the trend of bank deregulation, signing into law the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act in 1982, which removed restrictions on loan-to-value ratios for savings and loan banks.  That, combined with Reagan's budget cuts reducing the regulatory staff at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, led banks to invest in risky real estate ventures.  All of which contributed largely to the Savings and Loan Crisis of 1989, and which roughly echoes the eventual disastrous effects of repealing the Glass-Steagall Act on Bill Clinton's watch.

The point is, both Democrats and Republicans have played their part in deregulating key industries, banking foremost among them in terms of posing systemic risk to the entire global economy.  And it is the financial industry, perhaps above all others, that bears close watching in a Trump administration.  Early indications are not at all encouraging:

"Why Trump's Dodd-Frank Replacement Is Dangerously Weak"
http://theweek.com/articles/669774/why-trumps-doddfrank-replacement-dangerously-weak

"Make Banks Great Again? G.O.P. Push to Ax Key Agency Poses Risks"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-23/make-banks-great-again-g-o-p-push-to-ax-key-agency-poses-risks

Indeed, the cabinet nominees and transition team that Trump is gathering around him promises all manner of deregulation, some of which may aggravate wealth and income inequality, increase the predation of Wall Street, strip consumer protections, and worsen the impact of climate change.

"Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Wrote a Deregulatory Manifesto"
https://www.propublica.org/article/trumps-pick-for-labor-secretary-wrote-a-deregulatory-manifesto

"Trump to Tap Wall Street Lawyer Jay Clayton to Head SEC"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/04/trump-to-tap-wall-street-lawyer-jay-clayton-to-head-sec/?postshare=5951483554967861&tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.26956d7d5c94

"Mnuchin Nomination for Treasury Shines Harsh Light on U.S. Politics"
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2017/01/mnuchin-nomination-for-treasury-shines-harsh-light-on-u-s-politics/


"Billionaire Carl Icahn Will Lead Trump’s ‘Deregulatory Charge,’ Consumer Advocate Says"
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/trump_brings_on_billionaire_carl_icahn_20161222#.WF1Oufm_1pY.gmail

"Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition"
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-climate-skeptic-to-lead-epa-transition/






  [url=http://theweek.com/authors/jeff-spross][/url]

You got that right.

Imagine how things might go if we resume non-mark-to-market and bundling of tranches of risk in the nether regions. It's the functional equivalent of laying out a mine field in your own backyard then forgetting where you laid the mines.

(01-06-2017, 01:00 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 12:28 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 09:09 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 08:49 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 01:45 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: 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?

Maybe you'll eventually accept the fact that there are people besides Dems who deem Trump a traitor and a Quisling. "SomeGuy" had a really great link on another thread that laid out the real political landscape. The truth is, real conservatives despise National Bolsheviks / National Socialists / fill in the blank with other suitably terrible populist bilge.

Opposing Trump I can see.  Supporting Clinton and the Democrats, not so much.

For the mission of stopping Trump I had no other choice. Some things are more important than partisanship. But you can't deal with that because you are a Boomer. So doctrinaire.

Quote:A committed neo-liberal like Warren is not going to support a Democrat. 

(01-06-2017, 04:51 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:A committed neo-liberal like Warren is not going to support a Democrat. 

You meant Warren Buffett, right?  I was initially trying to parse that sentence with Elizabeth Warren and my brain was kicking up all sorts of errors.

(01-06-2017, 05:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 04:51 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:A committed neo-liberal like Warren is not going to support a Democrat. 

You meant Warren Buffett, right?  I was initially trying to parse that sentence with Elizabeth Warren and my brain was kicking up all sorts of errors.

No silly, it's Warren Dew, here, whom Mr. X is discussing with about voting for Hillary and not Trump.

(01-06-2017, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Boomer or not is irrelevant. Neo-liberals are even more common among Xers, I think. At least they used to be.

(01-06-2017, 02:39 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 02:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 01:00 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 12:28 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 09:09 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Maybe you'll eventually accept the fact that there are people besides Dems who deem Trump a traitor and a Quisling. "SomeGuy" had a really great link on another thread that laid out the real political landscape. The truth is, real conservatives despise National Bolsheviks / National Socialists / fill in the blank with other suitably terrible populist bilge.

Opposing Trump I can see.  Supporting Clinton and the Democrats, not so much.

For the mission of stopping Trump I had no other choice. Some things are more important than partisanship. But you can't deal with that because you are a Boomer. So doctrinaire.

So were you pushing hard for Cruz during the primary?

Yeap.

(01-06-2017, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: A committed neo-liberal like Warren is not going to support a Democrat. 

Boomer or not is irrelevant. Neo-liberals are even more common among Xers, I think. At least they used to be.

(01-05-2017, 08:49 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: How in the world does someone who gives all that sensible advice end up supporting the party of entitlement?

(01-06-2017, 07:08 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Big Economic Theory Underpinning Libertarian Economics Is Total Baloney

Friedrich Hayek argued that centralized economic planning would lead to totalitarianism, but that's totally wrong.
By Michael Coblenz / AlterNet February 2, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/economy/big-economic-theory-underpinning-libertarian-economics-total-baloney

Since the 2014 midterm elections, Democrats have been trying to figure out what happened. There are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of reasons for the Democratic bloodbath. But one reason, in my opinion, is that Democrats never discuss, much less analyze, the fundamental theories of modern conservatism. As a result, erudite-sounding nonsense is passed off as wisdom, and sways an electorate grasping for answers. Republican calls for limited government find fertile ground with workers whose wages are stagnating.

One of the intellectual foundations of this idea of limiting government comes from an Austrian émigré economist named Friedrich A. Hayek, in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom. Conservatives use that term as shorthand for the idea is that socialism and centralized economic planning don’t work and ultimately lead to totalitarianism, which ends up enslaving the people and impoverishing a nation. That idea taken alone isn’t necessarily wrong, but the theory actually takes a step back and says that any form of centralized economic planning, including government regulation of business, is the first step on the road to serfdom.......

(01-07-2017, 10:40 AM)flbones too Wrote: neo liberalism needs to die. Republicans need to wake and realize that trickle down economics doesn't work. Any extra money the rich get are going to get invested or shored off seas. Any republican who thinks it does work needs to get their head examined. 30 years of stagnant wages and increasing income inequality isn't proof enough for them?

(01-07-2017, 10:14 AM)Odin Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 08:49 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: How in the world does someone who gives all that sensible advice end up supporting the party of entitlement?

Because the notion that the Dems are the "party of entitlement" is a lie? All those people who voted for Trump because they refuse to retrain themselves or go back to school and just want their old jobs back are some of the most entitled fucks around.

(01-06-2017, 02:39 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 02:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 01:00 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-06-2017, 12:28 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-05-2017, 09:09 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Maybe you'll eventually accept the fact that there are people besides Dems who deem Trump a traitor and a Quisling. "SomeGuy" had a really great link on another thread that laid out the real political landscape. The truth is, real conservatives despise National Bolsheviks / National Socialists / fill in the blank with other suitably terrible populist bilge.

Opposing Trump I can see.  Supporting Clinton and the Democrats, not so much.

For the mission of stopping Trump I had no other choice. Some things are more important than partisanship. But you can't deal with that because you are a Boomer. So doctrinaire.

So were you pushing hard for Cruz during the primary?

Yeap.