Neoliberalism: The Ideology That Dares Not Speak Its Name

[David Horn]

(12-31-2016, 07:07 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(12-31-2016, 12:06 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: What examples of subsidizing "failures" can you cite?  Do we presume that you're referring only to government expenditures on the common welfare?  Let me cite a few in the private sphere that could clearly be labeled failures.  How about we start with the most obvious one: the bailouts that followed the financial crash of 2008--Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, GM, private enterprises all, which according to the strict dictates of the "free market" should have been allowed to fail.

Your examples are in fact also examples of the government subsidizing failure, just as much as failing inner city public schools are.  The failing corporations should absolutely have been allowed to fail rather than bailed out.  The bailouts were an egregious example of undermining of the free market, and did incalculable damage to the economy as a result.

If the big banks, GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail, we would have been thrown solidly in the 2nd Great Depression.  Based on the ideological purity of the GOP, we might very well still be there.  Let's agree on something (or not): there is no such thing as a "free market" anywhere in the modern world.  In fact, there never was a free market.  There has always been intervention of some kind.  Wasn't that the entire point of mercantilism?  Of massive railroad subsidies?  Of special tax treatment for <insert the industry of your choice>?

Pure capitalism only exists in Ayn Rand novels.

[David Horn]

(01-01-2017, 06:57 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, what your sister apparently said supports my original point perfectly:  public schools can't teach efficiently, because teachers in public schools have to keep the government happy.  Switch to vouchers that parents can use for private schooling, and the time can be spent teaching instead of pleasing politicians.

Most of the meddling I've encountered raising children on my own has come from politicians trying to overlay their belief structure on the schools.  In Virginia, that's almost universally conservative with an Evangelical spin.  The GOP also likes to cut school funding, since the schools teach "blasphemy".

[Eric the Green]

Truthout interview with Henry Giroux on neo-liberalism, democracy, oligarchy, etc.

[Warren Dew]

(01-03-2017, 03:54 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-31-2016, 07:07 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(12-31-2016, 12:06 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: What examples of subsidizing "failures" can you cite?  Do we presume that you're referring only to government expenditures on the common welfare?  Let me cite a few in the private sphere that could clearly be labeled failures.  How about we start with the most obvious one: the bailouts that followed the financial crash of 2008--Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, GM, private enterprises all, which according to the strict dictates of the "free market" should have been allowed to fail.

Your examples are in fact also examples of the government subsidizing failure, just as much as failing inner city public schools are.  The failing corporations should absolutely have been allowed to fail rather than bailed out.  The bailouts were an egregious example of undermining of the free market, and did incalculable damage to the economy as a result.

If the big banks, GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail, we would have been thrown solidly in the 2nd Great Depression.

Spoken like an unwitting pawn of the Rothschild conspiracy 0.1%.

GM went bankrupt anyway, and Chrysler was a distress sale to Fiat.  The only thing the bailouts changed was to save the unions' gold plated health care at taxpayer expense, while undermining the standing of all corporate bonds, throwing sand in the gears of the financial system.

As for the banks, let's think about what would have happened had they not been bailed out.  Yes, some hedge funds heavily involved in credit default swaps would have been wiped out, and foreign governments heavily invested in securitized housing debt would have taken a hit.  All that would have done is successfully corrected some of the overconcentration of wealth at the upper end.

Meanwhile, ordinary depositors would have been protected by the FDIC.  All Congress would have needed to have done was ensure that the FDIC had an adequate credit line, either with the Treasury department or with the Fed.

Instead, we bailed out rich investors at the expense of ordinary working people.

[Warren Dew]

(01-03-2017, 04:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-01-2017, 06:57 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, what your sister apparently said supports my original point perfectly:  public schools can't teach efficiently, because teachers in public schools have to keep the government happy.  Switch to vouchers that parents can use for private schooling, and the time can be spent teaching instead of pleasing politicians.

Most of the meddling I've encountered raising children on my own has come from politicians trying to overlay their belief structure on the schools.  In Virginia, that's almost universally conservative with an Evangelical spin.  The GOP also likes to cut school funding, since the schools teach "blasphemy".

Same here, except that the politicians here push the liberal progressive belief structure.  And the leftist mayor has pushed through a property tax override to fund a gold plated new high school building so his wannabe athlete kids can have amazing phys. ed. facilities, with no benefit to academics.

Wouldn't we both be better off with vouchers to private schools focused purely on nonpartisan academic excellence?

[Eric the Green]

(01-04-2017, 12:36 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-03-2017, 04:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-01-2017, 06:57 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, what your sister apparently said supports my original point perfectly:  public schools can't teach efficiently, because teachers in public schools have to keep the government happy.  Switch to vouchers that parents can use for private schooling, and the time can be spent teaching instead of pleasing politicians.

Most of the meddling I've encountered raising children on my own has come from politicians trying to overlay their belief structure on the schools.  In Virginia, that's almost universally conservative with an Evangelical spin.  The GOP also likes to cut school funding, since the schools teach "blasphemy".

Same here, except that the politicians here push the liberal progressive belief structure.  And the leftist mayor has pushed through a property tax override to fund a gold plated new high school building so his wannabe athlete kids can have amazing phys. ed. facilities, with no benefit to academics.

Wouldn't we both be better off with vouchers to private schools focused purely on nonpartisan academic excellence?

Or dedicated, well-financed public schools focused on that?

[Warren Dew]

(01-04-2017, 04:36 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-04-2017, 12:36 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-03-2017, 04:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-01-2017, 06:57 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, what your sister apparently said supports my original point perfectly:  public schools can't teach efficiently, because teachers in public schools have to keep the government happy.  Switch to vouchers that parents can use for private schooling, and the time can be spent teaching instead of pleasing politicians.

Most of the meddling I've encountered raising children on my own has come from politicians trying to overlay their belief structure on the schools.  In Virginia, that's almost universally conservative with an Evangelical spin.  The GOP also likes to cut school funding, since the schools teach "blasphemy".

Same here, except that the politicians here push the liberal progressive belief structure.  And the leftist mayor has pushed through a property tax override to fund a gold plated new high school building so his wannabe athlete kids can have amazing phys. ed. facilities, with no benefit to academics.

Wouldn't we both be better off with vouchers to private schools focused purely on nonpartisan academic excellence?

Or dedicated, well-financed public schools focused on that?

As discussed, that doesn't work for this problem because public schools are inherently subject to political pressure.

[Eric the Green]

(01-04-2017, 10:55 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-04-2017, 04:36 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-04-2017, 12:36 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-03-2017, 04:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-01-2017, 06:57 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Actually, what your sister apparently said supports my original point perfectly:  public schools can't teach efficiently, because teachers in public schools have to keep the government happy.  Switch to vouchers that parents can use for private schooling, and the time can be spent teaching instead of pleasing politicians.

Most of the meddling I've encountered raising children on my own has come from politicians trying to overlay their belief structure on the schools.  In Virginia, that's almost universally conservative with an Evangelical spin.  The GOP also likes to cut school funding, since the schools teach "blasphemy".

Same here, except that the politicians here push the liberal progressive belief structure.  And the leftist mayor has pushed through a property tax override to fund a gold plated new high school building so his wannabe athlete kids can have amazing phys. ed. facilities, with no benefit to academics.

Wouldn't we both be better off with vouchers to private schools focused purely on nonpartisan academic excellence?

Or dedicated, well-financed public schools focused on that?

As discussed, that doesn't work for this problem because public schools are inherently subject to political pressure.

I don't see that as a problem, as discussed, it it's the right kind of political pressure. I prefer democracy to capitalism as ruler of education. And I see no point to neo-liberal so-called reforms. They accomplish nothing except to fulfill the wishes of neo-liberal believers. We will have a good public school system, like we had before, if we value it again.

Vouchers seem silly to me, just a "transfer payment." It's still public money, and thus subject to just as much political pressure. Blaming unions and teachers can only take you so far. The only thing that can advance education is a social and political movement for better education. It's the only thing that can advance anything.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quote...00502.html

[The Wonkette]

(01-04-2017, 12:36 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Wouldn't we both be better off with vouchers to private schools focused purely on nonpartisan academic excellence?

Are you suggesting standards, so that high school graduates would have an understanding about such things as evolution?

And what about the "Segregation Academies" prevalent in many places in the South -- would they be funded?

[TeacherinExile]

Diane Ravitch, a preeminent historian of public education in America, wrote the following article in The New York Review of Books last month: "When Public Goes Private, as Trump Wants: What Happens?"

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12...t-happens/

It's the kind of long-form reading that I find most edifying.  Below are excerpts, though I would encourage anyone interested to read the article in its entirety.  I have added boldface for emphasis.

The New York Times recently published a series of articles about the dangers of privatizing public services, the first of which was called “When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers.” Over the years, the Times has published other exposés of privatized services, like hospitals, health care, prisons, ambulances, and preschools for children with disabilities. In some cities and states, even libraries and water have been privatized. No public service is immune from takeover by corporations that say they can provide comparable or better quality at a lower cost. The New York Times said that since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms “have increasingly taken over a wide array of civic and financial services that are central to American life.”

Privatization means that a public service is taken over by a for-profit business, whose highest goal is profit. Investors expect a profit when a business moves into a new venture. The new corporation operating the hospital or the prison or the fire department cuts costs by every means to increase profits. When possible it eliminates unions, raises prices to consumers (even charging homeowners for putting out fires), cuts workers’ benefits, expands working hours, and lays off veteran employees who earn the most. The consequences can be dangerous to ordinary citizens. Doctors in privatized hospitals may perform unnecessary surgeries to increase revenues or avoid treating patients whose care may be too expensive.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons recently concluded that privatized prisons were not as safe as those run by the bureau itself and were less likely to provide effective programs for education and job training to reduce recidivism. Consequently, the federal government has begun phasing out privately managed prisons, which hold about 15 percent of federal prisoners. That decision was based on an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, who cited a May 2012 riot at a Mississippi correctional center in which a score of people were injured and a correctional officer was killed. Two hundred and fifty inmates participated in the riot to protest the poor quality of the food and medical care. Since the election, the stock price of for-profit prisons has soared.

There is an ongoing debate about whether the Veterans Administration should privatize health care for military veterans. Republicans have proposed privatizing Social Security and Medicare. President George W. Bush used to point to Chile as a model nation that had successfully privatized Social Security, but The New York Times recently reported that privatization of pensions in Chile was a disaster, leaving many older people impoverished.

For the past fifteen years, the nation’s public schools have been a prime target for privatization. Unbeknownst to the public, those who would privatize the public schools call themselves “reformers” to disguise their goal. Who could be opposed to “reform”? These days, those who call themselves “education reformers” are likely to be hedge fund managers, entrepreneurs, and billionaires, not educators. The “reform” movement loudly proclaims the failure of American public education and seeks to turn public dollars over to entrepreneurs, corporate chains, mom-and-pop operations, religious organizations, and almost anyone else who wants to open a school.

In early September, Donald Trump declared his commitment to privatization of the nation’s public schools. He held a press conference at a low-performing charter school in Cleveland run by a for-profit entrepreneur. He announced that if elected president, he would turn $20 billion in existing federal education expenditures into a block grant to states, which they could use for vouchers for religious schools, charter schools, private schools, or public schools. These are funds that currently subsidize public schools that enroll large numbers of poor students. Like most Republicans, Trump believes that “school choice” and competition produce better education, even though there is no evidence for this belief. As president, Trump will encourage competition among public and private providers of education, which will reduce funding for public schools. No high-performing nation in the world has privatized its schools.

The motives for the privatization movement are various. Some privatizers have an ideological commitment to free-market capitalism; they decry public schools as “government schools,” hobbled by unions and bureaucracy. Some are certain that schools need to be run like businesses, and that people with business experience can manage schools far better than educators. Others have a profit motive, and they hope to make money in the burgeoning “education industry.” The adherents of the business approach oppose unions and tenure, preferring employees without any adequate job protection and merit pay tied to test scores. They never say, “We want to privatize public schools.” They say, “We want to save poor children from failing schools.” Therefore, “We must open privately managed charter schools to give children a choice,” and “We must provide vouchers so that poor families can escape the public schools.”

The privatization movement has a powerful lobby to advance its cause. Most of those who support privatization are political conservatives...

If the privatization movement were confined to Republicans, there might be a vigorous political debate about the wisdom of privatizing the nation’s public schools. But the Obama administration has been just as enthusiastic about privately managed charter schools as the Republicans. In 2009, its own education reform program, Race to the Top, offered a prize of $4.35 billion that states could compete for...

Charters have several [unfair, I would add] advantages over regular public schools: they can admit the students they want, exclude those they do not want, and push out the ones who do not meet their academic or behavioral standards. Even though some public schools have selective admissions, the public school system must enroll every student, at every point in the school year. Typically, charter schools have smaller numbers of students whose native language is not English and smaller numbers of students with serious disabilities as compared to neighborhood public schools. Both charters and vouchers drain away resources from the public schools, even as they leave the neediest, most expensive students to the public schools to educate. Competition from charters and vouchers does not improve public schools, which still enroll 94 percent of all students; it weakens them...

Given the near-complete absence of public information and debate about the stealth effort to privatize public schools, this is the right time for the appearance of two new books on the subject. Samuel E. Abrams, a veteran teacher and administrator, has written an elegant analysis of the workings of market forces in education in his book Education and the Commercial Mindset. Abrams is now director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. The other book, School Choice: The End of Public Education, was written by Mercedes K. Schneider, a high school teacher in Louisiana with a doctorate in research methods and statistics who left college teaching to teach adolescents...

In his final chapters, Abrams offers Finland as a nation that has chosen a different path and avoided school choice. It performs well on international tests, even though its students seldom encounter standardized tests. Its national goal is to make every school a good school. Teaching is a highly respected profession, requiring five years of education and preparation. While many American schools have abandoned recess to make more time for testing, Finnish schools offer recess after every class. While American students begin learning their letters and numbers in kindergarten or even in pre-kindergarten, Finnish students do not begin formal instruction in reading and mathematics until they reach the age of seven. Until then, the focus in school is on play. The schools emphasize creativity, joy in learning, the arts, and physical education. Child poverty is low, and children get free medical care. Teachers are trusted to write their own tests. Critics say that American society is too diverse to copy a nation that is homogeneous, but it is hard to see why racial and social diversity cancels out the value of anything done in Finnish schools to make children healthier, happier, and more engaged in learning...

Why is Wall Street willing to spend millions of dollars to promote charter schools? As Schneider shows, charters can be a very profitable business. Unlike the Edison Project, which first banked on vouchers, then entered into contracts with school districts to run low-performing public schools, the charters get public money, and they start fresh, free to exclude the students they don’t want. These are huge advantages...

At present, proponents of school choice have the upper hand because they are backed by some of the nation’s richest people, whose campaign donations give them an outsize voice in shaping public policy. The issue that the American public must resolve in local and state as well as national elections is whether voters will preserve and protect the public school system, or allow it to be raided and controlled by the one percent and financial elites...

As the recent state election returns in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Washington State suggest, the tide may be turning against privatization as the public recognizes what is at stake. This shift of public opinion was surely advanced by the national NAACP in October, which called for a moratorium on new charter schools until they are held to the same standards of transparency and accountability as public schools, until they stop expelling the students that public schools are required to educate, until they stop segregating the highest-performing students from others, and until “public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system.”

Whatever its faults, the public school system is a hallmark of democracy, doors open to all. It is an essential part of the common good. It must be improved for all who attend and paid for by all. Privatizing portions of it, as Trump wants, will undermine public support and will provide neither equity nor better education.


Generally speaking, I am not for the expropriation of private property, as pure socialism dictates, though in the case of the bank bailouts of 2008-09, I could have been persuaded to nationalize the worst actors (Citigroup, Chase...).  But neither am I for the privatization of public services, given the spotty record so far.  And I am definitely not in thrall to the ideological notion that private enterprise is the ultimate good.  Some--if not most--public services the government can--and does--deliver more equitably and efficiently than private enterprise could ever hope to do.

[Warren Dew]

(01-04-2017, 01:33 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(01-04-2017, 12:36 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Wouldn't we both be better off with vouchers to private schools focused purely on nonpartisan academic excellence?

Are you suggesting standards, so that high school graduates would have an understanding about such things as evolution?

I'm just suggesting that both David Horn and myself would choose schools based on nonpartisan academic excellence for our own kids.  For me that would mean a school that taught evolution, and I presume it would be for David as well.

Eric would be free to continue to send his kids to schools that like my public schools push his politically progressive belief structure, if he preferred.

[Eric the Green]

(01-04-2017, 04:55 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-04-2017, 01:33 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(01-04-2017, 12:36 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Wouldn't we both be better off with vouchers to private schools focused purely on nonpartisan academic excellence?

Are you suggesting standards, so that high school graduates would have an understanding about such things as evolution?

I'm just suggesting that both David Horn and myself would choose schools based on nonpartisan academic excellence for our own kids.  For me that would mean a school that taught evolution, and I presume it would be for David as well.

Eric would be free to continue to send his kids to schools that like my public schools push his politically progressive belief structure, if he preferred.

I don't know what "progressive beliefs" MA is pushing, if that's not "evolution" and such as Wonkette implied. But in CA there is no such effort on the part of public schools. At least I haven't seen it, as a recent substitute teacher in them. In the main, "progressive belief structure" is likely to mean willingness to learn and teach the facts and the truth; certainly not neo-liberal doctrine.

[Eric the Green]

[Eric the Green]

Come on folks; ditch the Republican ideology of free market economics NOW! 37 years and counting; I think it has long passed its sell-by date. Wake up, and throw it over. Here's Henry Giroux again, telling it exactly as it is:

[Eric the Green]

The failure of Reaganomics. And now what do Americans vote for? More trickle-down economics.

[TeacherinExile]

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

[Eric the Green]

Without any doubt at all, if you are for neo-liberalism (aka trickle-down economics, free market economics, Reaganomics, libertarian economics...), you are ALL IN FAVOR of ever and rapidly-increasing inequality and poverty.

http://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and...inequality

[Eric the Green]

[Warren Dew]

(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?

[Eric the Green]

(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/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?

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.

Republicans who didn't support Trump turned out to be rare. Most of them "came home." So, they support him and didn't consider him a traitor.