The former presidential candidate on his new book, the "Punch and Judy show" of partisan politics, and how "People move into the system, and instead of changing the system, the system changes them."
Aaron Good's work (https://twitter.com/Aaron_Good_) on the tripartite state and his new book coming out shows how easily the three different kinds of powers in the US worked together to immobilize figures like Kucinich. He had to navigate the state (political circus), the corporatocracy (monied financial/media/pharma networks), and the hidden state (surveillance, military and foreign affairs, including the mob).
Understanding Kucinich in this context, really points to his bravery to take an ethical fight to power, but he was very lucky only to be sabotaged politically. There are worse things than that.
Interesting interview. Reminded me of the famous interchange involving Adlai Stevenson. One of his supporters shouted to him, “you have the vote of every thinking person in America”!! Stevenson replied, “yes, but I need a majority”
I might disagree with Kuchinich and Stevenson but I respect their characters and integrity.
Speaking as an atheist, I find Kucinich's seemingly sincere Christian faith very touching.
"Not really ever relying on material comfort and being informed by a Catholic education, I never really felt attached to the material world. So, the offers that could come didn’t mean anything to me.... I’m involved in a world of ideas, principles, things that I believe in. Materiality, I respect it, it’s not where my motivation has been."
"This education that I had, the metaphor of Christ being put up on a mountain and showing the whole world, you can have that as long as you go along with the plan of this other force in the world."
I was raised Catholic, but shed those layers as a young dude.
Still, the point of Christ being offered the whole world is an apt parable. The cynic in me wonders if Kucinch DID make concessions to the Devil. I should read his book, eh?
Contrast his sincere Christian faith with the cynical ruse of Christian faith embodied in George W. Bush. Whereas one walks the walk, the other talks the talk. I've met so many evangelical Christians here in the Bible Belt who support every U.S. military invasion/coup/assassination/torture program/etc. that I don't even bother asking about those things anymore. I really don't see how any of them can call themselves "Christian" if they're truly aware of the teachings of Christ.
I was born in rural Florida, left really young with the death of my father, and returned as a teenager several times to meet with his kin, and the people there paid way more attention to the old testament than the new. I remember talking to one older man, not any relation, who said that the bible called for the separation of the races, basing this on the old testament's injunctions about the tribes not mixing etc.
If people can accept the notion of a chosen people, then it's not far from that to being accepting of racial superiority, and from that, to having no problem with invasion, killing, torture.
Let's just recall the words of the esteemed Madeleine Albight, who thought "it was hard, but worth it" to kill half a million children. all of whom were Semites, but that's another story.
People will always find justification for their worst behavior to include an atheist like myself. Whether it's an avowed atheist like Stalin, or a good Catholic like Franco, only the trappings change. The atrocities remain the same. In this country there was an entire body of Christian work in the South justifying how god supported slavery at the same time there was a body of work arguing arguing slavery was morally wrong in the eyes of their god. In Nazi Germany you has Christians who bowed to Hitler's authority and Christians like St. Maximilian Kolbe who after previously writing some antisemitic things ultimately gave up his own life to death the concentration camp so a Jewish father could be set free in his place.
No where else in society will you see such a veried group of such varied group as you will find in religion since faith in a particular deity is usually the only thing that binds them. While there is no question many if not most Christians share the same hypocrisies we all do, I've found that the rare .001% that are the Maximilian Kolbe's in every culture are almost always religious.
People bring their personalities/natures with them when accepting any ideology, and some people are just born authoritarians, a particularly dangerous trait when paired with either belief in a monotheistic religion or in a belief in an all powerful state government.
I am ill situated to criticize the faith of the faithful -- not being one of the faithful myself -- but professedly "Christian" torture and murder advocates still blow my mind. I don't know what kind of moral gymnastics you have to perform to get to that place mentally and be OK with yourself.
I am like, "You know the person you accept as the Son of God and your personal savior got tortured to death by an imperial bureaucracy, right? How cool do you think He really is with empires and torture?"
Because democracy is the practice of always giving the most power to the biggest sociopath and megalomaniac.
That way they can carry out punishment against our enemies that we would NEVER do ourselves because we know we are better than that. Except when we are part of a mob.
I don't believe late stage democracy in the US is still a democracy. I think we have clearly shifted to an Oligarchy in practice with authoritarian dictatorship next on the list if Polybius was right in "The Histories" as I believe he was. There is a natural progression from democracy, to oligarchy to dictatorship before returning to democracy.
To answer your question, I think the democracy part of the equation is less relevant than the guaranteed protections part, which are two different and competing entities in the case of democracy. I would much rather live under an enlightened tyrant than the authoritarian democracy/oligarchy we have now. If the State chooses to do violence against you for an unjustified reason, it's cold comfort that they unfair punishment was carried out by a mob of voters than a corrupt tyrant.
I have as little faith in a "benevolent dictator" as you have in late stage democracy. I'm not sure I agree with your natural progression; I believe we are suffering from an unnatural progression brought about by unfettered capitalism. Whatever economic system might/should supplant that, I would hope it is in some way democratic.
I hope so too. Also, I don't want to steal the credit from Polybius who wrote about that progression about 2000 years ago after studying the Greek and Roman progression through these phases before him. There's not room for it here, but he makes an excellent argument for how and why each in turn fails and leads to the next phase using Greece and Rome as an example. It's worth looking at if you ever have the time. If nothing else, to help us avoid falling into the same trap, which we appear to be doing with the accumulation of power into the hands of the few over the many. He would argue that once this deteriorates past a certain point, the people will select a tyrant to replace the corrupt oligarchs and the Russians selected Putin to replace the failed oligarchs that followed Perestroika. Fascinating stuff.
So the solution to the rackets of corporate monopolies and corrupt politicians supporting them is to give more power to the "public", aka corrupt politicians, so they can direct things themselves? While I sympathize with Kucinich with his observation of a major problem, his solution, from what I gather, would just create a different problem, potentially even larger. Unless Kucinich directs equal scorn at the corruption of public monopolies, such as teachers unions, as he does private monopolies, I don't see him being a politician I'd actually vote for. I certainly sympathize with his opposition to the two-party duopoly that exists in our country and the factionalism that many people support, but, as an example, I have absolutely zero interest in subsidizing tuition free ethnic studies courses so that anti-intellectual professors can live luxuriously and political factions can indoctrinate the country's youth.
That is exactly what I thought as well, more public power, not being the solution. Ii think that Sowell says it best...There are no solutions, only tradeoffs. The teachers unions, during the scamdemic, have proved your point.
I think you read something into the interview that wasn't there. I could be wrong. OTOH, I generally support the teacher's unions since my dad was a teacher. Granted 50 years ago, but from my remote perspective, I don't see a lot changing since then.
Many of his positions are standard in the AOC wing of the Democratic Party. He was kooky 20 years ago, but now vanilla.
My mom was a teacher. And I worked as both a substitute teacher and a high school librarian in the US and as an English teacher in South Korea. None of that changes the fact that teachers unions are generally corrupt cartels designed to maximize the financial well being of its members regardless of the quality of the product it provides, in the case of public schools: education for children.
If a person thinks that the job security and financial well being of teachers is more important than the quality of education or the freedom of citizens to choose where they spend their money on education, that person has their priorities broken.
There is a lot of talk about selling out in this interview. Teachers who support teachers unions as they exist today are selling out or they are ignorant. Quite simple.
JP - Teachers unions may well be corrupt in your view, you showed no evidence of it though.
The middle class in this country has been hollowed out for 40yrs and because of their union teachers have some of the last remaining middle class jobs.
American schools rank poorly compared to lots of other nations and most of those nations teachers also have unions. So trying to lay the blame for our schools failures at the feet of unions is ridiculous. There is far more to this problem than unions.
I suggest you read Raj Chetty and his research on income mobility if you want to get at the real core problems with poor student outcomes. Or you can just blame unions, that is easiest.
Or you could read Thomas Sowell’s “Charter Schools and their enemies” where he provides overwhelming evidence of the corruption of teachers unions.
Teachers unions simply don’t care about the quality of education. Al Shankar, president of American Federation of Teachers stated “When school children start paying union dues that’s when I’ll start representing children.” Do you need more evidence?
How about simply researching how teachers unions across the country placed the neurotic comfort of teachers in front of the education of children as the pandemic unfolded in 2020 and 2021. Not only did they resist in class teaching when the science demonstrated substantially less risk of transmission from children, they continued to resist after vaccine rollouts, and they have attempted to negotiate more money and more resources for teachers and completely unrelated political goals while doing so. In California 50% of student have still not returned to classrooms.
You concerned about income mobility? I guarantee you that the students hurt the most— children of poorer families and families disproportionately black—will have their income mobility harmed by a year of lost education. The teachers though —well they got a lot of vacation and the same pay.
As for teachers unions around the world — education systems differs substantially from one country to the next even if there is some sort of unionization. Even in the US the corruption of the the unions differ from state to state.
Charter schools in poorer neighborhoods have demonstrated that they can produce the same academic outcomes as schools in rich neighborhoods. All the data is in Sowell’s book. The only justification for people opposing charter schools is ignorance or irrational loyalty to the financial well being and power of government school teachers.
There is nothing Raj Chetty has written to my knowledge that would contradict the arguments of Thomas Sowell. You are welcome to provide a reference. Saying “there are more things than just unions to blame” for school failure is a ridiculous argument for why we shouldn’t blame unions. We should blame unions *and* other things. Did I say unions are to blame for *all school failings*? No I didnt. Eliminating teacher union monopoly on education will not be a sufficient condition to maximize the quality of education in our country but it is a necessary condition.
Simple question. Why is it that nations all over the world have education systems higher ranked than the US and they have teachers unions just like ours?
What is unique about American Teachers unions vs those other nations? Let me help you. Nothing!
Raj Chetty is an actual researcher who’s research is used by experts and is funded and vetted at Stanford and now Harvard. With all due respect to Sowell he is neither an expert in education nor has he done the empirical research Chetty has done.
Chettys research refuted everything Sowell Claims.
"With all due respect to Sowell he is neither an expert in education nor has he done the empirical research Chetty has done."
Um, they are both economists. And he has done a tremendous amount of empirical research.
"Why is it that nations all over the world have education systems higher ranked than the US and they have teachers unions just like ours?"
Some countries have better academic outcomes than the U.S. in general and other countries have worse outcomes. And their unions and their relationship with their governments vary. And it also depends on different regions of any particular country. Sweden, for example, has an education system that embraces for-profit charter schools.
"What is unique about American Teachers unions vs those other nations? Let me help you. Nothing!"
Except that the power of teacher unions in different nations and what they specifically advocate varies. I'm particularly interested in American teacher unions, because, well, we live in America.
"Raj Chetty is an actual researcher who’s research is used by experts and is funded and vetted at Stanford and now Harvard."
ooo fancy. Sowell is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
"Chettys research refuted everything Sowell Claims."
No it doesnt. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion based on that article:
"They[Chetty's team] couldn’t say exactly why, but they concluded that five correlated factors—segregation, family structure, income inequality, local school quality, and social capital—were likely to make a difference."
Sowell claims that Charter schools can improve the academic outcome of black students in New York. How does that article refute that?
For one thing, that article is written poorly in general and doesn't actually cover Chetty's research much. Nor does it have any relationship to Sowell's simple argument. It focuses on the research of Jesse Rothstein, who expresses disagreement with Chetty's views about education and economic mobility. Did you even read the article? Its covers the speculation of Jesse Rothstein based on his correlational data.
Chetty encourages investment in better education to improve economic mobility, and has expressed concern about the effects of the lockdowns on the education of those who are most vulnerable:
He agrees with my point that income mobility will be harmed by what lockdowns did to public schools.
"Public schools were, to some extent, serving to level the playing field and increase social mobility,” Chetty says. With the shift to mostly or only remote learning in many school districts, “you’re going to have massive impacts on inequality.”
You are deeply confused. And clearly Stanford is not funding you.
The difference is work rules. Work rules are there to protect the seniority system to the detriment of competency and expand membership beyond reason for the purposes of collecting and laundering dues back into political activism among other abuses of public trust. Any parent knows that it doesn't take a lot of money to teach a child to read, write and compute. I appreciate the citation from The Atlantic. At one time that would have meant something. Nowadays The Atlantic is an elitist rag and no more than an unapologetic front for the worst of Democrat policies.
Nah I’m right. You can read my response to Piketty for a more detailed explanation of why.
Even without the dubious quote by Al Shanker, the behavior of teachers unions and their resistance to allowing schools that do a better job of educating children to flourish should be sufficient evidence for anyone that the best interest of children is not what drives the behavior of unions—and thus teachers who support the unions despite that knowledge are selling out to their financial interests just as politicians do when they support the interests of corporate monopolies regardless of the fact it will harm their constituents because the politicians benefit financially.
We hire teachers to teach children not to provide teachers with well paying jobs. Teaching isn’t a government jobs program.
JP - I am not saying teachers unions dont have their challenges. No doubt they do. But teachers unions have their challenges in lots of countries and those countreis still get better outcomes than the US...
If our priority is improving schools the focus is, as the research proves, improving the economic security of families that are sending their kids to school.
And Thomas Sowalls Economic policy ideas do the opposite of creating security for these families according to the top ranked economist around the world. There is a reason Sowell and his economic ideas are all but ignored other than by Partisans...
“If our priority is improving schools the focus is, as the research proves, improving the economic security of families that are sending their kids to school.”
The research does not prove that. The link you provided has the guy acknowledging that his stuff is just correlational. And there is nothing in that link you provided in the other comment thread that suggests improving the economic security of families will improve schools—it’s about economic mobility. Your arguments are inept and you have already demonstrated you cannot even properly provide references that support your arguments. The link you provided in the other comment actually argued against the person you referenced, Raj Chetty.
Raj Chetty actually supports my argument, and he was the first “top ranked economist”, you mentioned. The only people who actually ignore Sowell are racists and partisans.
Sowell demonstrated clearly that charter schools in the US can outperform standard public schools in the US that are run by the unions and that is without any need to improve the economic security of the families of the children attending those charter schools. While I won’t argue that improving the economic security of families wouldn’t increase performance even more, improving economic security is not necessary to improve academic outcomes. If people want to help improve the economic security of poorer families, I completely support that, insofar as they are not using violence to take from the economic security and liberty of others to provide it. If you want to improve the economic security of poorer families, please do so—I hope you are not just expecting the state to use violence to do that and actually back your moral convictions with your own resources and not the resources of other people.
So many people such as yourself express faux compassion for the downtrodden but give either none or paltry amounts of your own resources to help them. It’s shameful. There would be no “economic insecurity” for people in the US if all the people who claimed they cared simply voluntarily provided the resources themselves, relative to what they have, to help. That being the case, the only conclusion a person can reach is that the concern is fake virtue signaling to others and themselves or people simply want the benefits that they think may accrue to themselves if the state intervened.
And in the case with charter schools, its perverse, since charter schools are in fact publicly funded, but people who oppose them simply do so because of a sick loyalty to the teachers unions and the political interests and financial well being of union teachers. Even when some charter schools clearly do better in their outcomes, people want to use the law to restrict the freedom of parents who are eager to send their children somewhere beside the school a government coerces them to go to that is shitty. In truth, good teachers will be paid their value in charter schools. Charter schools are not a threat to good teachers, and good teachers don't support the unions attempt to restrict parents from choosing their childrens' schools.
Jeffrey, that's pretty angry stuff you're writing. Try this one on for size: the "public monopolies," as you refer to public employee unions, are still in most cities the best way to fight the institutionalized graft of bankers, real estate developers, and local and national corporations. Are they perfect? Absolutely not! But I'd rather bet on working people than on all the slick MBAs and "Communication Consultants" who have stolen our cities lock, stock, and barrel. When I worked for a sizeable Midwestern city half a century ago, it was the public employees who cared about the city, not the politicians. As far as the latter crowd, there wasn't a one of them who didn't go home at night entertaining fantasies of being President one day; most were sadly (and quickly) disabused of their ambitions, and left after a term or two to work for real estate developers they'd met while on the City Council. Then a whole new crowd of would-be Senators and Congressmen would be elected, much to the delight of the grifters, er, our august downtown businessmen...
It's an important distinction you make between public employees and politicians, which are all too often conflated. I have more faith in the former than the later and it's not the elected councilman down at the water treatment plant ensuring we don't have a Cholera outbreak.
Any issue DK did not raise in this interview is the under investment in our public infrastructure over the past several decades. For several reasons it's easier to find the political will to build public works than to maintain them. A public worker may be the best employee in the world, but if a politician always finds a reason to spend public money on things that are more politically advantageous (the Levee Failure during Katrina is a great example of this) there is little they can do.
The wrong answer is deregulating and turning things over to an Enron, who will tell you they have the money to fix things, but have even less motivation to do it than public system. In fact, the private company will usually find a way to profit off the failure and the private electric companies did this Winter in Texas during the ice storm.
I don't have an easy answer for this. I wonder what DK would say?
For all of the problems with with government ownership, the alternative private model for public utilities has been a complete disaster.
Public Monopolies serve a very important purpose. Depending on the services it has been proven that public monopolies deliver better outcomes than private business (airports, electricity, water, highways and schools)
So stating that one needs to scorn those institutions is challenging intellectually.
All institutions have problems. The question is how to make improvement. And to make improvement you have to first accurately diagnose the problem.
Kucinich issue is with Regulatory and Government CAPTURE.
Luigi Zengalis, the Conservative Economist from Univ of Chicago has written extensively on this and proposed very thoughtful solutions. I don’t always agree with his solutions but he is the most respected public intellectual on the issue that I have read.
Fundamentally Capture is the #1 issue if voters want a “conservative” society. So it is no surprise that in large cities like Cleveland Capture with the Democratic Party is at the heart of slowing progress
"Depending on the services it has been proven that public monopolies deliver better outcomes than private business (airports, electricity, water, highways and schools)"
It certainly has not been proven that government monopoly airports(or the other stuff you mentioned) in essence deliver better outcomes than private airports. It may have been proven that particular government monopoly airports deliver better outcomes (hopefully at equivalent costs) than particular private airports.
Other than the fact that private services *can* deliver better outcomes than government services, private services also benefit from the crucial fact that the resources they use are *voluntarily acquired*, rather than acquired through the threat of force. The moral good of private enterprise is not only that private enterprise can deliver better outcomes at lower costs, but also that that cost is voluntary. Hence, it is no sufficient argument for slavery that the outcomes can sometimes be superior than free labor. It may be true that the economic outcome of China's policy with the Uighurs is better than if the Uighurs were as free as American citizens -- however that does not justify the policy; it is still unjust. Even if China's citizens voted on it and they were 90% in agreement, it wouldn't make it any less unjust. Even if the CCP permitted the Uighurs to peacefully leave to another country, it would still be unjust.
Economic liberty -- to have control over what we do with the fruit of our labor -- is intrinsically good. Thus, creating unnecessary government services with tax money, which is acquired by suppressing economic liberty, is bad. That is not determined by democratic appraisal, just as the morality of slavery isn't.
But sure, I agree with you, regulatory capture is bad. Especially when it comes with lots and lots of tax money. And strangely, in your list of public monopolies, you failed to list the military. Im guessing you aren't fond of the military industrial complex. And speaking of schools and regulatory capture, that is what happened with teachers unions and the CDC.
So yes it has been proven that utilities like water, electricity and trash hauling are all Natural Monopolies and are best if either owned by the sate or heavily regulated. Airports fall into that category as well. Schools fall into this category. These are all public goods that can be consumed more efficiently with a monopoly. Again econ 101.
No developed nation on earth has done the wholsale privatization of public good monopolies. And in the random examples of Natural Monopolies that have been privatized (like electricity in much of the US) massive regulation has been required and in the case of companies like PG&E regulation was not tough enough due to regulatory capture.
Slavery = Economic Outcomes were not favorable. FYI.
Having the 'fruit of our labor" paid to us is a fantasy. You know that right. Rent Seeking distorts what we get paid and what the owners of capital get paid. And as long as you have excessive rent seeking few people are getting paid the fruits of their labor.
"Suppressing economic liberty is bad". That is not accurate. Non natural monopolies or Monopsonys can and do occur through political Capture. So until you can prove Political Capture is not being used you must, according to Adam Smith supress economic liberty to prevent monopoly or monopsony ( the later being a more recent phenomena) Right?
"Do you understand the economic definition of a Natural Monopoly? Its sort of Econ 101. It is a non partisan term and is critical to any nation."
Do *you*? While utilities like electricity can be a natural monopoly, *schools* are absolutely not natural monopolies. A natural monopoly, among other things, requires sufficient barriers of entry into the market, such as extraordinarily high initial costs. Schools are relatively cheap to start up -- especially k - 12 schools. The primary barrier of entry into the market for schools is the cartel of the teachers' union and its collusion with the government to legally prevent any competition and to furnish subsidies to the cartel. And of course, there are still lots of private schools, many of which do way better than the average public school.
Your knowledge of economics does not justify your condescending expressions about econ 101. Its apparent you have actually not studied or thought about economics much.
And as for airports, here is an article that discusses the different ways airports are managed. And you will see in the graph that both public and private airports are variable in performance and both can do well:
As I stated in my last comment: It certainly has not been proven that government monopoly airports(or the other stuff you mentioned) in essence deliver better outcomes than private airports.
"No developed nation on earth has done the wholsale privatization of public good monopolies."
When did I ever say that there should be entirely no public services? I think there should be as few as absolutely necessary. Necessary being the key word there.
"Slavery = Economic Outcomes were not favorable. FYI."
While I find the argument against slavery being economically optimal to be good, I don't think that it will apply in all scenarios -- it perhaps doesn't even apply to the U.S. The opinion of your link is neat, but there is nothing air tight about it. I can provide a link arguing that it was more profitable than a free-market:
It ultimately doesn't matter to my argument though -- because it needn't be slavery; it could be any system or institution that delivers some superior output in some sense but has costs not worth the output. The costs of slavery is human freedom. The costs of government services run by taxes based on threat of violence is again human freedom. The difference is one of degree. Its what revolutions are fought over regardless.
"Having the 'fruit of our labor" paid to us is a fantasy. You know that right. Rent Seeking distorts what we get paid and what the owners of capital get paid. And as long as you have excessive rent seeking few people are getting paid the fruits of their labor."
I'd rather call it a dream; and certainly a big part of the American dream. Having the maximal amount of the fruit of our labor within our power is a political good; a mark of a virtuous and enlightened society. We should aim to maximize that dream, not reduce it; and cartels such as the teachers union reduce it. And for sure, so does "rent seeking" behavior. However, having millions in income is no guarantee that an individual has or is engaging in it. And certainly, where we are at now, with people making hundreds of thousands a year and paying over a quarter of their income in taxes is definitely unjust; my dentist is not engaging in rent-seeking behavior, and the fruit of his labor could be most satisfactorily kept if he was not taxed because people think they are more entitled to use the fruit of his labor than him and don't realize stealing the labor of virtuous people is usually always wrong -- even if it is profitable, especially if it is to pay for the often excessive salaries of teachers with a cartel (such as my 9th grade geography teacher) or for worthless military weapons. And speaking of rent-seeking behavior -- that is what the teachers union does. It seeks regulations to cripple competitors, lobbies for unjustified raises in income and benefits, and captures the CDC to keep teachers from having to actually do the job that they are being paid to do with money forced from US citizens.
"So until you can prove Political Capture is not being used you must, according to Adam Smith supress economic liberty to prevent monopoly or monopsony ( the later being a more recent phenomena) Right?"
No, the suppression of economic liberty is not necessary to prevent a monopoly -- monopolies form because economic liberty is suppressed. That's why we should have anti-trust laws(albeit it is debatable how good our current laws are). By regulating a natural monopoly or breaking up an unnatural one, economic liberty is maximized. Although, I will acknowledge that in some philosophical exceptions it could be good, such as a form of punishment for a crime.
But I don't need to even get that abstract and universal. Assume the generalization is false. But particularly, the economic liberty that is taken from people with unnecessary taxes certainly is not justified by the use of those taxes. Just as it would be wrong for me to steal your property, sell it, and then donate that money to charities. Having a gang of people do the same thing -- as is the case with "democratic socialism" -- is no better. Culture is the virtuous engine of charity, not government. Any government that takes on the role of charity is a corrupt one.
"No, the suppression of economic liberty is not necessary to prevent a monopoly -- monopolies form because economic liberty is suppressed."
Who's economic liberty are you talking about, the consumers? The owner of capital? The employees?
It is 2021 and even the University of Chicago is no longer looking at these issues with the simplicity your Schumpeter inspired statement entails. There is nothing actionable from your statement.
Example: Single payer health care is a Monopoly for the buyer. One buyer many sellers. Countries with Single Payer health care have robust health care systems that leverage the public and private markets to produce better economic outcomes than in nations like the US where we have multiple buyers for health care services.
So who has more freedom, citizens that have access to affordable health care or citizens with out access to affordable healthcare?
Tell me, why has no nation ever been able to produce a health care system with out government involvement (reducing "freedom") that is less costly than the health care of nations with Universal Health Care? Answer: Because it wont work in health care
Example: Airports. One provider many buyers. Cities with out robust economies do not have private companies funding airport builds. So states have taxed citizens to fund building of infrastructure like Airports which then grow economic activity in these areas.
The rhetoric you regurgitate is ignored in the real world because it is not actionable. To have a modern capitalist society the state and private capital work together EVERY SINGLE day. And how much they work together changes depending on all sorts of factors.
"Economi Liberty" is not possible with out an economy. And economies that can't compete don't last.
In 2021 the worlds most robust economies are NOT using the Hayek, Schumpeter, Mises Austrian model that you love to regurgitate. NONE of them are. But you keep talking about imaginary FREEDOM, the rest of the world has moved on and is ignoring you and your ideas.
" But you keep talking about imaginary FREEDOM, the rest of the world has moved on and is ignoring you and your ideas."
Yes, we can agree about that; much of the world doesn't care about freedom, you included.
"Tell me, why has no nation ever been able to produce a health care system with out government involvement (reducing "freedom") that is less costly than the health care of nations with Universal Health Care? Answer: Because it wont work in health care"
I would not encourage such a thing -- for a nation to have a health care system without any government involvement. Inevitably absolute freedom cannot be granted, nor is it even good. I don't support companies dumping their toxic waste into rivers. Being less costly though doesn't necessarily equate to something more desirable, particularly if it is not as good. And I have lived in a country where health care was personally less costly to me than in the United States -- South Korea --and the quality was not as good. I'd rather have the health care I have access to here in the U.S. even while it is more expensive at times, than the health care I had access to in South Korea. Additionally, the costs of health care in the United States are due to a myriad of factors, it not being single payer and government distributed isn't a a necessary or sufficient one. There are many proposals on how to reduce health care costs in the U.S. without appealing to a government enforced monopoly.
Furthermore, reducing the costs of some product for some people, while increasing the costs for other people and potentially reducing the quality, by forcing all people to fund it unequally, is usually immoral. This, again, can easily be demonstrated by the fact that it would not be moral to steal food from you and give it to other people. It may reduce the cost of food for those other people, but that isn't sufficient to justify my theft. If you actually want to stand behind your moral reasoning, and not be a hypocrite, you could hand over your income and wealth to me so I can distribute it to people who have less than you.
"The costs of government services run by taxes based on threat of violence is again human freedom"
That is laughable...
Who is more FREE. A man in Canada, with cancer, who has access to government funded health care that wont bankrupt him. Or a man with cancer in the US. who has a 42% chance of losing all of his assets and going bankrupt within two years of a diagnosis?
Again, these statements that you make are right out of Ayne Rand propaganda wing of the Libertarian Fantasy...
There is a reason no developed nation on earth has implemented these crazy ass ideas you have at scale. It is because they do not work at scale. They only works with cherry picked examples (IE Charter schools in NYC) and with evidence that does not pass the test for improving SOCIETY at large.
I will take the form of Freedom that does not bankrupt me if i get Cancer rather than the form that bankrupts me when i get cancer 43% of the time.
That study was only related to Americans. Do you have a study that demonstrates that Canadians don't lose income or assets after being diagnosed with cancer? I have found sources that suggest many Canadians also face financial difficulties after a cancer diagnosis.
And why, exactly, shouldn't people use their savings on something like a cancer diagnosis, or any other form of illness that may affect their capacity to work? Should the money to pay for their care first come from other peoples' potential savings and assets rather than the person who is directly affected? Isn't that part of the reason why people have savings in the first place? For emergencies? I can understand the psychological desire for such an enforced safety net by a government -- as I also have no desire to go into bankruptcy after a diagnosis of an illness, but I also recognize that I have no entitlement to force others to spend their resources on a government monopoly of my choice to ensure that personal security. A violently enforced government monopoly is not a necessary condition for providing a social safety net.
Americans could ensure that other Americans don't find themselves in dire financial situations after a medical diagnosis *without* government intervention. It simply requires voluntary support of those people. Americans could voluntarily pay for peoples' insurance( a substantial amount of people in that study did not have insurance), or provide payments for their medical bills or care. There is nothing preventing all the people who claim to care as much as you about the financial situation of some people in the US from voluntarily helping them, other than the fact that the people who claim to care actually don't care enough to maximally use their own resources. They, and you, only care enough to want to use force to use other peoples' resources. Which actually demonstrates a lack of care.
"I will take the form of Freedom that does not bankrupt me if i get Cancer rather than the form that bankrupts me when i get cancer 43% of the time."
If you embed yourself in a social network that voluntarily cares for its members, your financial burden will decrease in the case of an emergency. And if you support organizations that voluntarily provide financial help for people in emergencies who don't already have those social networks, their financial burdens will also decrease. All without using violence or the threat of it. Violence or the threat of it is not necessary to solve many of the worst of our society's problems, but some people prefer it nonetheless.
No one is denying that some airports can operate as private entities and do just fine. That is not even debatable of course they can. Where your argument is highly flawed is in understanding the role of airports to communities broadly, just like electricity, railroads or broadband access...
With out the government doing the initial investment private enterprise simply does NOT make these kind of investments until the there is enough identifiable revenue. So with out the government going in and investing airports simply don't get opened. That is why GLOBALLY government not private enterprise is the first investor and takes all of the risk. Then the airport is a public good at that point. And if a second or third airport an operate in the area then sure private enterprise may step in.
But look to the middle of the nation. Many of those cities that we call fly over states have airports that lose money. Are you going to argue that he government should try to sell those to private enterprise? If so that is a fantasy. What will happen is those airports will close and those communities will go down the drain even faster than they are now. That is why AIRPORTS should be viewed as public goods not private enterprise. And the few cherry picked examples of profitable private airports, like Charter Schools, do not scale across the country and produce better outcomes than we are getting today.
You like to reference CAPTURE... Private for profit companies are trying to cherry pick Public Good assets by convincing people like you that they can provide a superior product at a better price. And in some limited cases they can.
It is like a health insurance company saying we will take over insuring all HEALTHY people.. But if anyone is old or sick we cant provide them with insurance. Same with Charter Schools. Most motivated parents get a great school everyone else is screwed. Same with Airports, government builds all of the demand, at a loss generally, and then when the demand is there Private Enterpirse will step in and scoop off the profits.
Your arguments on all of these are little more the propaganda funded to help private companies scoop the profits out of large investment the GOVERNMENT made to create public entities for all people not just for a handful of people that private companies can monitize. It is no different than the health insurance company that can insure all healthy people and no one else.
That is why NO (NONE) advanced democracy on earth actually follow these propaganda scams pushed by people like Sowell, at least not at scale.
It is ALWAYS the government that funds the schools or airports or water systems or electricity systems. And only after the government has taken the risk and laid down the ground work for growth that that Private Enterprise comes in and scoops up the best customers so they can profit at the expense of the broader society.
"Schools are relatively cheap to start up -- especially k - 12 schools."
Really? is that a fact?
Please point to an example of where "inexpensive to start up" private schools have provided education to large numbers of entire communities the way public schools have.
If you cant show evidence of than then your statement is at best navel gazing theory and at worst just flat out wrong. Please let me know which of the two it is.
Yes it is a fact. How about since you made the initial idiotic claim that schools were natural monopolies, actually provide evidence for it? Explain to us how schools are akin to something like electricity where the initial capital investment is enormous and the marginal cost is so small that competition with the reigning school (or school system?) becomes impossible. If you make a claim, the burden of proof is first on whoever makes the claim. Perhaps you can ask your beloved professors at Harvard and Stanford, private schools, about your idiotic theory that schools are a natural monopoly.
But as an aside, charter schools *are* public schools, in the sense that they are funded by tax money; they are simply managed by private entities. If the the US tomorrow decided to trash its current union management of the school system, there is nothing that would prevent charter schools from providing all the education to the American public with tax money. Charter schools in New York are limited not by the fact that they are privately managed, but by legal constraints. *Capture* by the unions. Costs don't limit the growth of charter schools, politics does. Just take away the legal barriers and they would rapidly grow. This is demonstrated by the fact in places like New York, the number of charter schools and their enrollment is not capped by their demand, but by their politically controlled restricted supply.
I'm just going to add that a natural monopoly is a theoretical entity, like a mathematical set. Empirically, it may be the case there are actually no true natural monopolies. Those who love government artificial monopolies though are bound to see natural monopolies in more places, such as yourself. I do suspect there are true natural monopolies. Schools though certainly aren't one of them.
I feel like I want to give you points simply for managing to work talking points about ethnic studies into a conversation about public works and political expedience among a city council in Cleveland in the 1960's and 1970's.
Local zoning boards are cess pools-- in New Jersey, the FBI put away mayors and others for bribes, many hands over fists. One town recently lost a massive chunk of forest to a developer when the voters opposed it.
ATK Ammunition, Beretta, Federal Cartidge Co., Sigarms, Archery Trade Association run federal and state wildlife policy, which approximates an abattoir. It's corrupt and privatized.
Kucinich is a decent man. Thanks for giving him the attention he deserves.
Thank you for this seminal interview !! Dennis Kucinich is an American hero. We have a two right-wing parties monopoly - financed and ruled by same donors and -- playing us like a violin.
Lose ALL hope you who still try to idealize Biden administration – see below:
“The Rrrrussians come again.” - Pre-summit nonsense. Patrick Lawrence June 1
“The Rrrrussians come again.” - The Scrum (substack.com)
The Russia-gate hoax and impeachment “entertainments” were concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors. That lying team is now back in full power -- even Kamala Harris (and her sister) is Hillary's protégé.
Remember, Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former Obama 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the now five-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged ALL chemical attacks in Syria to remove its secular government.
When asked about Hunter's laptops Pelosi stated "All roads lead to Putin"; commenting on Capitol invasion Schumer said - "worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11"...
Deep and utter corruption -- DNC leadership is just a bit better in lying. And -- Assange must be silenced -- all the lying players agree. Deranged Trump was to incompetent to realize how important is pardoning Assange now that the old lying team is in power again -- instead he pardoned Black Water criminals who massacred Iraqis in Bagdad’s Nisour square.
Lose ALL hope - all of you who still try to idealize rotten and lying Biden administration -- the War party is back in power.
Don't forget how the Democrats have now managed to launder neocon war criminals and their enablers like John Bolton, George W. Bush, et. al. Gee, I thought they were supposed to be anti-war (though most of their voting records give lie to that fantasy), but I guess that's only when a Republican is in the White House. Of course it's same the other way around, but at least the neocons never pretended to be about anything other than warmongers. The neolibs/Dems have often been called the "faux resistance" during Trump's term, but when it comes to regime change/coups/bombing people halfway around the world and installing corrupt right-wing dictators in Central and South America (not to mention Asia and Africa), they've ALWAYS been the fake resistance.
The future certainly seems uncertain and bound for big changes. But even if a large segment of the population is not currently wedded to one of the parties, is there a realistic chance that any national candidate can, at anytime soon, overcome the two parties with their tentacles sunk deep into every recess of procedural controls along with access to big Wall Street/corporate $$ and the name recognition and opponent slander it can buy?
Yes!! All of that can be over come. How formidable were the odds against MLK getting a fair deal from Washington? Far less than they are of Americans getting higher wages today...
All it ever takes is ORGANIZING and voting in the PRIMARIES for the candidates that support the issues most critical to you. And if you consume biased media then just stop doing it.
I understand your optimism and desire for people to believe in and work for a better future -- and I hope you are correct. I am more pessimistic. The difference I see between the accomplishments of MLK and the present situation, is that MLK represented the end of a decades long struggle - against at least 80 years of the Senate blocking Civil Rights legislation, with constant pressure applied through the judiciary culminating in cases like Brown v Board of Ed and with the horror of Jim Crow, lynching, etc., finally getting through to a large segment of the white population after decades of indifference. MLK's accomplishments were incredible, but they built on the work of many, many others and what appeared to be nearly sudden changes in the 6 or 7 years from the first voting rights legislation to the Civil Rights Act, to me, represented the final cracking of a dam that had been hammered on for years and years before finally giving way.
BH - You bring up an excellent point. Not to take away anything from MLK's heroic and noble efforts, but you are absolutely correct there was an infrastructure of protest in place decades before him.
Looping back to my point though. The bottom line is that with organizing the government did take action and that action impacted peoples live.
Americans have been working on Universal Health Care for decades too. What is more. today the evidence from other countries that Universal Health Care is less costly and produces better outcomes for the majority of citizens is irrefutable.
Leaders like Jayapal in the House and Sanders in the Senate are making progress in getting their house members to support a Universal Health Care bill.
My point is that these things can and do happen even when we think the odds are high that they will fail. At the end of the day VOTERS are still more important than corporations even to politicians. And if we dont vote, in PRIMARIES, for the leaders that will vote on the most important policy to all of us we can and will see progress...
As Taibbi has reported effectively, the corporate controlled media intentionally divide voters with endless talk of Identity Politics so prevent voters from coming together and electing leaders that will reverse the work of corporate lobbyist. Dont consume corporate media and VOTE in primaries if you want change.
Kucinich voted against NAFTA, PNTR for The People's Republic of China and The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, against both the Banking Modernization Act and the Futures and Commodities Modernization Act, against the invasion of Iraq, one of the most strikingly successful wars in world history, right up there with our invasion of Afghanistan, so successful we've haven't been defeated there despite being there for 19 years(take that, USSR), and was probably against the Vietnam war, too.
Just why would anyone listen to anyone with such flawed judgment?
Thank God/Yahweh the US people roundly rejected this loon years ago.
I grew up in Cleveland. And I'm sorry to say I never thought much of Kucinich. Reading these pieces, I think about where we could be if he'd been president.
My disgust with the mainstream media grows stronger every day.
Why is it that no one talks about the mob or organized crime? We use euphemisms like "Oligarchy" and then pretend that there are actually two separate parties that represent different "Oligarchs".
Which judges aren't owned by the mob?
Is abortion going to be declared illegal because the prices will rise to get an abortion and it will revert to being practiced by shady characters who haven't the qualifications necessary?
Some readers may have missed it, but organized crime in the classic, Mafia sense of the term is called "The Mob" in Clevelandese and I'm almost sure that is how Kucinich intended it. He wasn't talking about the crime organization that is today's Democratic Party, or a Twitter mob or some such.
But, once you think of the Dems themselves as a crime syndicate, it's hard to stop. They have a smuggling operation (illegal immigration), a numbers racket (Wall Street), drug dealers (Big Pharma) and like all crooked gangs they hate any cop they can't buy.
So Kucinich lays out a fundamental problem with our politics writ large, specifically around the bipartisan privatization of public utilities, and your reply is "the Dems are a crime syndicate"? Never ceases to amaze me how deeply engrained the partisan rooting instinct is for some people.
Well, setting aside my failure to spell "ingrained" correctly, I think we're a deeply partisan country.
I've been searched high & low for this study I came across in college that tracked how much we've changed on this front and it bugs me I cannot find it. The essence of the study was that, since about the Reagan era, voters are increasingly less likely to identify with an ideology ("I'm a progressive" or "I'm a conservative") and increasingly likely to identify with a party.
Even though I wouldn't vote for Trump, I found the Obama/Trump voters kind of heartening and weirdly understandable. Much more coherent than someone who voted for Bush II before voting Trump, certainly.
WWII and the the cold war era many of us grew up in from 1941 until 1990 was an aberration of rare bipartisanship in American history due to a shared external threat. Before that our natural tribal competitiveness would often erupt into open violence, and I don't just mean the civil war:
Just as external threats historically tend to bring people together, pandemics almost always tear communities apart. As ridiculously partisan as things had become since 1990, the pandemic really kicked things into overdrive. the drumbeat of tribalism has always been a distraction, but it is making communication impossible with the need to describe every political wrong with an example from each party since you know a "well that other party" comment will always drag you down that road anyway.
The part that kills me is that there's generally a pretty solid, bipartisan consensus around issues like should civilians have military weapons and the run-away costs of our healthcare (notably, Republican *voters* were more in favor of universal healthcare than the folks who made up the 2020 DNC platform committee (who roundly rejected it of course)). These are life-and-death issues, not shiny objects like campus life but we cannot even get these things debated in Congress.
My question here is: how much of it is the US populous vs how much are our media & politicians to blame for this divide? I agree that the pandemic exacerbated division but it also did so in the same vapid way everything does in America: with dumb culture war bullshit that doesn't ever address underlying issues.
The only optimism I have is coming from the fact that Obama, Trump, and to a lesser extent, Bernie happened: for as different as those guys are, they aren't the candidates that were "supposed" to win. They weren't anointed. Hope that trend continues because I'd rather roll the dice than end up with Buttigieg vs. Yet Another Fucking Bush Brother.
Sas... no spell check from me, i am the worst at it.
I think i have seen research as well talking about the increasing parasitism in the country. I think the CAUSE is corporate America. They fund media that simply cannot do constant and intense reporting on issues corporations dont want discussed.
So the parties, try to attract voters on identity politics rather than policy issues (Climate Change, Wages, Health Care, Regulatory Capture).
The result is lower and lower participation in elections and fewer and fewer Americans that identify with either party... And that is exactly what corporations want. Politicians answer to two bosses. Voters and Lobbyists. And if voters dont vote it makes it very easy to just take the lobbyists money.
Tender - So lets get this straight. Companies all over the country are funding the "knee busters" of the Democratic party, BLM. While the other Knee Busters are not even a group but in the words of the head of the FBI, appointed by Trump, only an IDEA...
Those Dems must be wicked smart... Imagine getting companies to fund your Knee Busters...
Meanwhile QAnon never entered your mind as filling a similar role for the GOP. RIGHT? Of course according to the FBI QAnon is an organization and is a threat to the US....
It is funny talking to people that literally live in fantasy world
The idea that either of those groups are akin to a mafia in any sense is preposterous. You're free to dislike their methods or their ideology but at least understand what you're arguing and try to make a coherent point instead of stringing together conservative scare word Madlibs.
Your idea of what constitutes "the Mafia" is limited by watching too many Godfather movies.
But then, when you say "those groups" perhaps you're referring to something other than the DNC and RNC.
Hmmm... if you mean BLM, yeah there's been a lot of bad press about them lately. Fits snuggly into the meme Kucinich is describing here.
Antifa? Well, here's some confusion. Are they really organized? Listening to a Glenn Greenwald interview last night (I'm pretty sure it was Aaron Mate, Push Back) was very confusing because they were talking about different "stuff".
And your idea of what constitutes the "the Mafia" seems based wholly on your feelings.
Definitionally, organized crime requires organization. You might not like the street protests around BLM or whatever you think antifa is, but this isn't a well-oiled machine. Would you call the yutz parade on January 6th "organized crime" or something else? Because I would call it something else. In all these cases, these are mass movements of citizens upset at very different things. But to call a group of protesters a "mafia" doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Past that your argument for antifa being organized crime is a "very confusing" interview about "stuff." It's not a particularly compelling point.
I'm not about to tell you that the Democrats aren't organized crime, but you're going to have to sell me a pile of s... to convince me that the Republicans are "the good guys" here.
Pretty much, this "failure to communicate" is exactly what Kucinich was talking about.
I have a sad story about Hirono and Kucinich, but it would take way too long to set up. In sum: some Democrats (Hirono) used Kucinich (either without his knowledge or there wasn't a thing he could do about it) as a shield for the crimes they committed.
Never said the Republicans were the good guys. But that case is made a thousand times a day by the corporate media. Making it 1,001 times is boring and not helpful.
Trump and his followers as you put it have only existed, for better or worse, for about 4 years. What Dennis is talking about is institutional corruption going back decades and an ingrained way of life in politics. Trump was a crass outsider who also did not need the drug called money that makes politics run. Peoples obsession with Trump is just a sideshow to distract you from actual massive corruption in the 100's of billions. Trump himself seems to trigger so many rational people. Might be better if they directed their rage and energy toward the real enemies of the people. -- those forces exposed by Dennis and the ongoing military complex that not only steals the nations tax dollars but is responsible for the DEATHS of our sons and daughters thru unnecessary wars and military actions against whoever can justify their unending supply of the materials to wage those wars. Get it! They are killing American kids for PROFIT!! Get a bit outraged about that and Trump will seem like small potatoes.
The issues being discussed are far more important and deeply ingrained within society that any one man. This attack Trump every time political corruption is written about is like kicking the dog because a hurricane wrecked your house. The military industrial complex which fought Trump tooth and nail is responsible for the deaths and maiming of our children for profit and you keep barking about Trump and the mob. Lived in NYC 90% of my life and never saw Trump depicted as a mob associate or anything more that a very rich, spoiled, playboy real estate tycoon. Suddenly he gets elected and he becomes worse that Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot combined. Get get some perspective.
If Trump WAS a front man for the mob, don't you think that would have been very easy to use as an impeachment charge? I wonder why Pelosi and Schumer didn't start there instead of the Urals...
Neither impeachment was meant to actually remove Trump from office. It was nothing more than political theater to promote a Democratic victory in November.
We do have some communication problems here because, as I see it, we are using the same terms for different things and different terms for the same thing.
I find it interesting that you and "Not Me$" think Trump good because the Democrats are bad. Your analysis of the Democrats seems to be sufficient and accurate, but then using that to ignore Trump's crimes seems to me to be incoherent.
Yeah, Russiagate was a hoax. So was the bounty story. So was the gas attack on Duma. So is the "stolen election". There are so many hoaxes being played right now, it is difficult to know the truth.
As an aside, why has the media been so full of the Tulsa race massacre for the last month? What is it being used to distract us from? Reminds me of the way Israel uses the Holocaust, but without the obvious objective yet.
Further if Trump were mobbed up their solution to the Dems. impeachment would have been a bit more vigorous. Something along the lines of what happened to JFK when he crossed those who actually rigged his election in Chicago. That is just one take. Another is the Deep State bureaucracy moved against him. The Warren Commission report was a very inapt cover-up of a terrible crime. Problem is the American public operates in the dark and is fed information by a very compromised and dishonest corporate media. Since anything is possible political operatives spin stories and inject poison into the information flow. The Russian collusion hoax no matter your feelings about Trump is a very public demonstration of the power of disinformation that occurs when the media and political operative cooperate in deceiving Americans. Yet not one media shill lost their job or the perpetrators of the hoax, GPS and Chris Steel, been held accountable. That is because that hoax benefited one political party. Elected officials directly lied daily and testified under oath with lies yet the "system" still rambles on without missing a beat.
Way off base about the Trump element. This two-time Trump voter proudly recalls shaking Kucinich's hand on the Detroit-Superior bridge in 2009. I told him he was a man of character for voting against the TARP.
Tender - The new alignment may well be real. Does not change the FACT that Trump supporters are cult followers. They all share the same traits. They worship one person. The have strong beliefs in one or many lies. They dont believe anyone but their leader.... You know, you!
Tender - I doubt that you can tell where i get my news from because making the observation of Cult Members has nothing to do with News. It is a simple statement of observed truth...
Oh wait, your in the CULT so truth does not matter... Is that right?
This very statement ... "the FACT that Trump supporters are cult followers. They all share the same traits. They worship one person. The have strong beliefs in one or many lies. They don't believe anyone but their leader." is by itself blatantly prejudicial, narrow-minded, uninterested in the FACT that Trump supporters are hugely diverse, and is precisely the sort of attitude that can also be found in people who are racist, sexist, anti-Semitic or otherwise mindlessly mired in a form of hatred that leads to the worst horrors in history. Trump inspired a great variety of opinions and reactions, and there is simply no possible way to lump all Trump voters into one basket of deplorables.
Ladyhawk - You seem to have missed the context. I compared Rachel Maddow following Russian Collusion believers in the same light.
You call my view narrow minded. Lets test your hypothesis against yourself.
If a voter believes Trumps LIE, that he "won" the election, would you say that voter are thinking rationally?
I think i can LUMP all Trump supporters into one basket if they believe his lie. You call them deplorables. Not me. I call them MISINFORMED, Just like the Rachel Maddow beleiving Trump collusion believers on the left.
Can't wait to hear you talk in circles around this one.
Yeah, pick just one measure and then apply it to everything else. We're about to descend into "whataboutism" and nothing will be gained from that. I'll leave it up to someone else who might care to engage you.
Was any of those COVID deaths caused by State governors who issued orders that directly resulted in the deaths of thousands? How about the mixed signals from the CDC and NIH? Trumps travel policies and his fast tracking the vaccine did offset some of his early mistakes and boneheaded remarks. But to lay the entire national death toll at his doorstep is a bridge too far. Nancy prancing around S.F.'s Chinatown encouraging everyone to visit was pretty crazy. Everyone was making errors based on the politics of the day. Who IF anyone got it right? Even the WHO was lying for political reasons. The media bears some responsibility for their lies and political backbiting about the virus and its origins. Trump was a target of convenience to distract from the many stupid and just dumb policies that were enacted and advocated for during the early stages of this pandemic. Trump on balance was often right and as often just wrong.
Why is it that so many, like you, think that because one party is "bad" the other party is "good"? (If you don't think that, then why frame your question in the way you did?)
Kucinich was a Democrat in a Democratic controlled city.
Now, if you want to talk about Mike Pence and Indiana, it is a different "crime family".
John - I never said nor do i think that one party being bad makes the other party good.
You offered zero evidence that the Democratic Party is a crime organization. Your hyperbole is just confusing. The parties literally write the law to think of them as CRIME families is sort of like a Republican thinking Trump won the election, just plane stupid. Right?
When the Democratic Party fought the civil war and then proceeded to nurse the KKK and oppressed black people for 100 years with black laws and Jim Crow, were they a “crime organization”. You must think they found God in the 1960s like other Democratic Party loyalists.
I guess, on the technicality that they were responsible for immoral laws, and they upheld them, they weren’t a “crime organization”. True, I think that using that phrase is misleading, but what they were is worse than any criminal organization and what they are today is only slightly better, but not because of any fundamental change in their principles—that is none, as they declared to the world in court after they torpedoed Bernie Sanders when they said they were not obligated to run a fair democratic primary.
Political parties shift their views over time. The Jim Crow South Democrat of yesteryear is very different than the Democrat of today... The Dwight Eisenower Republican of yesteryear is nothing like the Trump supporting Republian of 2021.
So a blanket hatred of a political party, based on their history, makes no sense. Which version of the party do you oppose and specifically what actions are they taking today that you feel the opposing party is better at?
The US government has been corrupt for 200+ yrs. The trick is understanding what they did RIGHT and how that got done. Because clearly the US government has done enough RIGHT to make it the most powerful country in the history of the world.
Instead of dwelling on how bad each party is maybe focus on what each party can actually do to improve peoples lives.. And there is a LOT
I have a separate question you may be able to help me with.
When people want to define their political enemies they are willing to go back over 100 years to define who they are today.
Yet, when I point out examples of institutional racism like the war on drugs that is still currently being carried out today, I'm regularly told by these people that it's all ancient history, America has move on and so should I.
Can you explain how we arrive that these two very distinct versions of time simultaneously?
Then you need to re-examine your post. Because that is exactly what you said.
Just because it is a "law" doesn't make it "moral". So is it your contention that it can't be a crime unless it violates the law?
Let's assume I can write a law that says you have to give me 95% of your salary. If you don't give it to me, have you committed a crime? Under your definition stated here, it would appear so.
Congratulations, Tender Morsel! That is the silliest, most juvenile comment I've read in years! You're apparently not in the least aware that the Donald Trump and the Republican Party are attempting to install a dictatorship in our country. If, through the combination of vote suppression and convincing state electors to cast their electoral votes for the Republican candidate regardless of the popular vote, Donald Trump becomes President in 2024, there will not be another Presidential election for a long, long time.
Cleveland definitely had...and in some ways still has...olde school Mob stuff. Vegas in the 60's and 70's, public utilities, concrete and public works contractors, union pension fund shenanigans, etc., etc.
Vanessa Baraitser comes immediately to mind. Of course she's in the UK so you can quibble about that if you like.
Brent Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court because of Mitch McConnell.
The definition of "the mob" is rather elusive, but let's just rename it "organized crime". Now look at Pelosi's wealth. Look at McConnell's wealth. Read Lewis' book "Flash Boys" or "The Big Short". Or you might want to find his interview about his new book "Premonition".
It isn't as if there aren't other sources showing the same thing.
But, perhaps, you want to tell me that the judges interpret the "law". The 2008 housing bubble was completely "legal", but was it ethical? Was it moral? If a judge isn't ethical and moral who does he work for but organized crime?
"I have vivid memories of an exchange in Houston, Texas between reporters who one after the other declared how furious they were that Kucinich had not yet dropped out of debates, so that “real” candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards could have more airtime."
I always admired Dennis Kucinich. While I didn’t support many of his positions, I always felt that he was fairly honest and principled. Looking back, it is now obvious that is the reason the Democrat establishment despised him...
Kucinich points out the depth of institutional corruption at the local level. A fair point. But when you look at the US in 2021 most of the damage to this country has been done by Washington, no?
The corrupt entities in Cleveland did not cause poor and middle class wages to stagnate. They did not create this nations awful health care system, they did not negotiate our trade deals, they did not decide to bail out bankers and not homeowners.
Given that he offers literally no solutions other than dont give up hope i have to wonder what is relevant about him.
I have to think his appeal to this board will simply be that he dislikes Democrats. That seems to be the only thing that matters to most people on this board. Ideas to solve real problems always take a back seat to the more important issue of hating liberals.
Setting aside the debate over how local and Federal Politics has failed us in different ways, I suspect DK's appeal is a willingness to stand up to financial and politically self interested parties who do not care about the public good. It doesn't hurt that he has been correct on a series of big issues (against the war on Iraq, for gay marriage etc) at a time when the majority were proven wrong. I think a willingness to protect the public interest and a track record of being right on several large issues is more relevant than you imagine
There was an excellent article recently in the Intercept called "Empire" that tracks the political career of Joe Biden since he was first elected in 1972. You will see there is not a single core issue we was not on six sides of (sometimes all at the same time) over the past 50 years before ultimately landing on the most expedient option that had the worst outcomes. That is the norm.
Perhaps you underestimate just how low the expectations for politicians has become in recent years. Like Tulsi Gabbard, I probably disagree with DK on many issues, but I am willing to support someone who sometimes disagrees with me on principle when I know it is not an entirely self interested decision on their part.
Ar - As a supporter of both Warren and then Sanders in the Primaries i absolutely hear you in your analysis of what a "tool" Biden is. He goes with the wind chasing votes.
If you look at History leaders like FDR and LBJ were no different. Much of their landmark legislation was not passed because they passionately believed the cause but because they simply wanted votes. If you think Trump is a racist he is nothing compared to what LBJ was... FDR got social security passed, i doubt he ever met much less knew or cared about a elderly person living in poverty..
That is Democracy.. Voters don's seem to realize that the President of the US is NOT the CEO of the country. He or she does not have the authority to simply take their ideas and get them executed.
I love that Kucinich, and Bernie were so right on those issues. I love that Warren has actually created programs that truly protect consumers from banks.
But at the end of the day only currency of any politician is votes. And voters that are made aware of issues and that fight for them generally get their way. In the 1960's one of those issues was Civil Rights and voters go behind that issue and it got passed.
In the 1990's encarceration is what voters wanted and that is what they got from leaders like Biden. Voters also wanted a WAR with Iraq.
Today voters are demanding more help for the poor and middle class who have been devastated by policy under Dems and GOP... The massive spending bill Biden is pushing is certainly a stop closer to that than anything Bush2, Obama or Trump ever proposed.
Personally i think M4A and $15 min wage and the laws to help unions organize are more important. But what Biden is showing is us that he is responding to what voters want today.
Yes DC is corrupt. It always has been. That does not mean voters cannot get change. It means they have to work HARDER for the change
I agree with much of what you say here generally about politics.
I'm not a Trump fan, but have know idea or concern if he was racist or not. Like you, I'm more interested in policy than the personal views of politicians. I don't care if LBJ was the head of the clan in Texas when he gave us the civil rights act any more than I care of Truman was racist when he made the decision to integrate the Army. I also don't care about purity of motivation, although I do think in LBJ's case he was so personally objectionable people assign more racism to his decisions in later life than he deserves (yes he said this will guarantee n***** votes for a 100 years, but he also said it would cost the party the South for 100 years, which his opponents conveniently leaves out).
My response was specifically to your question:
"Given that he offers literally no solutions other than don't give up hope i have to wonder what is relevant about him."
His relevance is a proven track record of standing on principle and being right on the big issues. I would not say the same for Warren or Sanders (standing on principle for the former and being right on many of the big issues for the later, although both would have been better than Biden).
I really don't believe the outcome of this last election made a significant difference. By choosing Joe Biden, the Democrats nominated the politician who embodies the worst of both parties for the past 50 years. I really do encourage everyone to read the article Empire I attached that covers his history in office. Joe Biden might be marginally better on social issues than Trump, but is exponentially worse on foreign issues if you are generally against war.
The one thing Joe Biden could have done that would have distinguished him from President Trump was delivering on a $15 minimum wage. That was more important than all the temporary welfare he handed out instead, which Trump was also happy to do if re-elected. The corporate elite will accept all the short term welfare in the world as long as they are never asked to make a long term commitment to the dignity of work for the poor.
I agree with you that DC is corrupt and things can be improved. I think DK would be a good man for the job if he ever took an interest.
AR -AR - I see. Your core point is that Biden has been wrong on issue after issue and Kuchinch has proven to be right on big issues that at the time were not popular..
I totally get it and wont argue your point.
Given that the US has a Representative Democracy being 'right" on an issue does not really matter if you cant win office or get a bill passed other than effecting public opinion (which is very important). So it is not surprising that politicians are going to be WRONG on their vote when the group they are trying to please is WRONG.... So in the 90's most Americans wanted an incarceration state. In the 1960's they wanted Civil Rights.
Politicians are the layer between mob rule and representative democracy.
My point is that politicians don't usually win office for "being right". They win office when they stand for issues in line with how voters think. And more recently they simply win office by getting voters not to vote. When that happens politicians can vote the please their donors rather than voters. Right?
I worked for and donated to Bernie and Warren. But the reality is that neither of them won even the Primary. So in their case Being Right (at least more so than Biden) did not translate to victory. Why should Kuchinich being "right" translate to victory?
Going back to Johnson. In the early 60's Johnson worked tirelessly to get civil rights passed, not because he was not a racist but because that was how he could get votes. In the 1990's Biden pushed mass incarceration because that is where the votes were.
Now we are in 2021 and The American Rescue Plan and if passed the Infrastructure Bill will do more to improve the lives of poor and middle class Americans than anything Clinton, Bush2, Obama or Trump ever did for them.
So perhaps the bigger queston than WHO we elect is WHAT voters think and want. In the 1960's our views on Civil Rights were good. In the 1990's our views on mass encarceration were horrific.
Perhaps we should fight harder to change he minds of VOTERS than we need to work on getting politicians elected because they say they stand for what we want today.... Voters get what we elect. No?
This appears to be a double post, which happens to me all the time. I answered most of this in the 1st post above, but it appears this last paragraph is slightly different so I will address there here.
It's an interesting question. Do we fight to get people elected, then push for them to do what we want, or do we try to change hearts and minds on key arguments so those running for election add those items to their plank? Joe Biden was the drug warriors drug warrior along with many other politicians in the 90's and 2000's. He was also against Gay Marriage. From an electability standpoint he has been more successful that DK who held the right views at the wrong time, which is democracy.
Yet, Biden today has changed his position on both these issues. As a practical matter, no one is going to challenge and electorate where 65%+ of the electorate is for legalizing marijuana and better than 70% are for marriage equality. That does not make him evil, it makes him a politician listening to his base. There was enormous money propping up the war on drugs and until Eric Holder removed that financial incentive at the Federal Level, the DEA to the prison union along with prosecutor and police unions across the country were going to defend the war on drugs. Asset Forfeiture still has them clinging to it, but most of them have admitted it's a lost cause and moved on to enforcing lucrative prostitution stings instead. Well, they call it human trafficking, but I think we know what that means after decades of watching drug users put away from being drug traffickers.
I'm going to apply the wildly overused Overton Window here. At what point is a politician both the right person on an issue that is possible. Clearly DK was not that person in 2004, but having a failed record that proves prophetic is not a bad thing. Obama would have lost badly if he had run against the Iraqi war in 2002, but by 2008 those same views allowed is to steamroll both Clinton and McCain and that he held those views during unpopular times gave him added appeal with the voters.
I think a DK could easily position himself the same way. His campaign could be "The guy should should have elected in 2004 is the guy you can now elect for in 2024." Not perfect, but a whole lot better than "Make America Great Again."
AR - I see. Your core point is that Biden has been wrong on issue after issue and Kuchinch has proven to be right on big issues that at the time were not popular..
I totally get it and wont argue your point.
Given that the US has a Representative Democracy being 'right" on an issue does not really matter if you cant win office. And winning office many times requires that politicians are WRONG on issues.
Here is where i think you might consider looking at Political leaders from a different lense.
Obama said and stood for policy issues much more in line with my "liberal" policy beliefs. He too was opposed to the Iraq war. He campaigned on Universal Health Care.
But none of that changes the fact that Bidens American Rescue plan and if passed his infrastructure Bill will have far more positive effect on the lives of poor and middle class Americans than anything passed by Clinton, Bush2, Obama or Trump...
So sure it is great if a leader "gets it right". And certainly Kucinich has don that. I will argue Sanders and Warren did as well but we can table that for another day. But it is BIDEN that won and BIDEN that is getting the Bills passed. Not Kusinich not Sanders not Obama.
Perhaps my original and probably poorly stated point about Joe Biden is that without counterfactuals it's hard to determine if a candidate is good or bad choice. It's not enough to argue if President Biden passing the American Rescue plan and perhaps his infrastructure Bill helps. It must be shown that it is substantially different than anything Trump would have done and let's face it, say what we want about Trump, he was no deficit hawk. I'm not at all surprised to see that President Biden is continuing many of the policies I liked least about the Trump admin.
Presidents are like quarterbacks. They're blamed far too much when things go wrong and thanked way to much when things go right. I actually place less emphasis on their yes than their no power. That is, what are they willing to stop dead in its tracks with a veto. This is an area where having principles really matters. The area where presidents still have enormous yes power, starting wars, I'm probably more aligned with Sanders, DK and Trump than I am with Biden.
The unknowable for me is if DK could get elected. As you say correctly, democracy is the process of getting votes, but as Stalin said it does not matter who gets the votes as much as who counts them. I find it hard to imagine those with real power would ever allow us to count the votes for someone like DK for all the reasons their perfectly happy to allow that count for Biden. Like most things, I hope I'm wrong about this.
"We now know that Bank of America routinely conspired with other banks to make sure it paid low prices for the privilege of managing the moneys of various cities and towns. If the city of Baltimore or the University of Mississippi or the Guam Power Authority issued bonds to raise money, the bank would huddle up with the likes of Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley and decide whose "turn" it was to win the bid."
To a great extent it was in fact corrupt local entities like city governments that have hurt the middle class, especially in ways that Kucinich talks about. Redlining for one. Or the way that cities allow for monopolies like cab companies or the big power company that tried to take over Muny.
That said, it's big money and banker interests that hurt cities and their citizens.
In a way "redlining" hurt whites too. It never allowed the two races to live together or get to know one an other as neighbors. I lived in a segregated area of NYC and only after entering a multi-racial workplace did I get to know and appreciate people of all races and backgrounds. Before that I was fed media and social stereotypes full of lies and exaggerations. When your neighbor's kids and yours are playing and interacting and your talking on a daily basis it is almost impossible to buy the crap that is being pushed by the forces of hate.
«In a way "redlining" hurt whites too. It never allowed the two races to live together or get to know one an other as neighbors.»
That is a very smart comment, and the purpose of redlining is precisely to prevent that mixing, and that started decades ago, with mortgage guarantee rules:
Note: the article and book say "The U.S. Government Segregated America", but that of course is propaganda: "the government" as such, as an emerging entity, has no interest in policies to further segregation, it is the lobbies that "sponsor" the politicians who run the government the ones who shaped those policies. In the case of segregationist mortgage guarantee policies it was because the Democrats at the time relied on a big mass of House and Senate votes from Dixie, and those were sponsored by segregationists.
But it is not just redlining, there is a much, much bigger issue: most new suburban/exurban residential developments are rigorously segregated by income (which in the USA largely implies by race in areas with large minorities).
This is done implicitly by having the houses in each development priced at around a target price-point, that excludes most people of inferior castes, and most people of superior castes would spend more for a house in a development with better housing standards. It is also sometimes done explicitly by having zoning rules and estate covenants that effectively forbid changing the intended destination of the housing, e.g. not allowing splitting single family homes into smaller flat etc.
This segregation by primarily income has had huge impacts on society and also on voting patterns, in particular to attitude to taxation and spending.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It's such an important point. There are people who invest an enormous amount of mental work in not seeing examples of institutional racism like red lining because they're afraid it will cost them something if they admit it exists.
The truth is that institutional racism like you describe and criminalization hurt all of us in just the way you described. Solving institutional racism is not about writing checks, it's about removing impediments to create a more perfect union.
Yes, redlining and other discriminatory practices hurt blacks on a huge scale - in fact directly leading to the high levels of poverty in Black America due in large part to the inability to pass down generational wealth in the form of valuable real estate. That has influenced the crime rate, the crack and opioid epidemics, the carceral state and the overall economy (incl. the middle class at large).
Not trying to be rude, but you didn't actually note any specific federal issues; you just said that policy/ies in Washington D.C. have done great harm to the American middle class. What did you have in mind, exactly? I'm sure I'll agree with most if not all of it.
Mango - Yes i believe i mentioned policy such as our current health care policy, trade policy and the policy to bail out bankers and not home owners. There are many more.
My argument, similar to what Francis Fukuyama argues, is that governments should be judged by their outcomes first and foremost. And his research shows that Democracies in aggregate produce better outcomes than authoritarian non democracies.. For now China is proving him wrong but broadly his views have held up.
So yes, the big cities suffer from CAPTURE as Kucinich points out. But the evidence is that big cities, corrupt as their local governments have been have produced significantly better outcomes for their citizens than say Washington which for the past 40yrs, and due to policies such as the ones i pointed to and many many others, has not produced for poor and middle class Americans as well as big cities have produced for their residence.
«But the evidence is that big cities, corrupt as their local governments have been have produced significantly better outcomes for their citizens than say Washington»
I think that is a huge misunderstanding: the primary determinant of a city's inhabitants well being is whether it attracts businesses and jobs, and that is largely outside the power of the local administration, however much they try.
One of the biggest determinants of where businesses and jobs tend to concentrate is central government policy; as a major example if the central government had not bailed out Wall Street with a few trillions of fresh handouts, today NYC would probably look like Detroit; also if the central government had not spent fantastic amounts to establish Los Angeles as the port from which the Navy could control the Pacific nobody would have bet that a chunk of the south-western desert would have agglomerated as it has.
"...the primary determinant of a city's inhabitants well being is whether it attracts businesses and jobs, and that is largely outside the power of the local administration, however much they try...."
Queens, NY, residents overwhelmingly supported plans for Amazon's HQ bringing in 25,000 new jobs with an average wage of $150,000, despite protests from Ocasio-Cortez and other politicians over $3.2 billion in capital grants and tax incentives, polls have shown.
The Long Island City deal would have also seen Amazon invest in a 600-seat public school; a workforce development and training space; an artists’ workspace; and 149,650-square-feet of public open space among other projects — all of which is now lost.
BH - While i think i agree with you in theory i am not sure your hypothesis for supporting your theory is aligned as neatly with the facts as it might be.
Lets start with bailing out the banks. Had the government focused more on bailing out home owners than banks then primary party hurt would have been share holders. The government could have easily, as they do frequently, taken over the assets of the failed banks (IE the employees) and sold them off to other entities.
So i am confident NYC would be just fine had Obama bailed out homeowners instead. HOmes in the Hamptons may has had slower appreciation but asside from that NYC would have survived quite well.
In terms of cities attracting business I would frame that different. Large cities that have a culture of investment in proper infrastructure can actually produce their own businesses and industries. I would agree, cities don't just pitch a power point deck and get companies into their city (sure Dallas has done that but broadly that is not a scalable solution).
So back to my point NYC and Boston and LA and SF have internally and with their state and federal government invested in the infrastructure (schools, parks, roads, electricity, stores, restaurants etc...) to actually produce innovative businesses and industries in everything from finance (NY) to entertainment (LA) to tech (SF). This allows these cities to then diversify and evolve over time as these industries come and go. And all of this has happened in spite of clear corruption.
Not saying corruption is okay. It slows down progress in many ways and stunts democracy. But in 2021 the corruption in DC has had a far more negative impact on the lives of the poor and middle class than the corruption of big cities.
Aaron Good's work (https://twitter.com/Aaron_Good_) on the tripartite state and his new book coming out shows how easily the three different kinds of powers in the US worked together to immobilize figures like Kucinich. He had to navigate the state (political circus), the corporatocracy (monied financial/media/pharma networks), and the hidden state (surveillance, military and foreign affairs, including the mob).
Understanding Kucinich in this context, really points to his bravery to take an ethical fight to power, but he was very lucky only to be sabotaged politically. There are worse things than that.
Interesting interview. Reminded me of the famous interchange involving Adlai Stevenson. One of his supporters shouted to him, “you have the vote of every thinking person in America”!! Stevenson replied, “yes, but I need a majority”
I might disagree with Kuchinich and Stevenson but I respect their characters and integrity.
Speaking as an atheist, I find Kucinich's seemingly sincere Christian faith very touching.
"Not really ever relying on material comfort and being informed by a Catholic education, I never really felt attached to the material world. So, the offers that could come didn’t mean anything to me.... I’m involved in a world of ideas, principles, things that I believe in. Materiality, I respect it, it’s not where my motivation has been."
"This education that I had, the metaphor of Christ being put up on a mountain and showing the whole world, you can have that as long as you go along with the plan of this other force in the world."
I was raised Catholic, but shed those layers as a young dude.
Still, the point of Christ being offered the whole world is an apt parable. The cynic in me wonders if Kucinch DID make concessions to the Devil. I should read his book, eh?
You got 700 pages worth of guts?
Contrast his sincere Christian faith with the cynical ruse of Christian faith embodied in George W. Bush. Whereas one walks the walk, the other talks the talk. I've met so many evangelical Christians here in the Bible Belt who support every U.S. military invasion/coup/assassination/torture program/etc. that I don't even bother asking about those things anymore. I really don't see how any of them can call themselves "Christian" if they're truly aware of the teachings of Christ.
I was born in rural Florida, left really young with the death of my father, and returned as a teenager several times to meet with his kin, and the people there paid way more attention to the old testament than the new. I remember talking to one older man, not any relation, who said that the bible called for the separation of the races, basing this on the old testament's injunctions about the tribes not mixing etc.
If people can accept the notion of a chosen people, then it's not far from that to being accepting of racial superiority, and from that, to having no problem with invasion, killing, torture.
Let's just recall the words of the esteemed Madeleine Albight, who thought "it was hard, but worth it" to kill half a million children. all of whom were Semites, but that's another story.
People will always find justification for their worst behavior to include an atheist like myself. Whether it's an avowed atheist like Stalin, or a good Catholic like Franco, only the trappings change. The atrocities remain the same. In this country there was an entire body of Christian work in the South justifying how god supported slavery at the same time there was a body of work arguing arguing slavery was morally wrong in the eyes of their god. In Nazi Germany you has Christians who bowed to Hitler's authority and Christians like St. Maximilian Kolbe who after previously writing some antisemitic things ultimately gave up his own life to death the concentration camp so a Jewish father could be set free in his place.
No where else in society will you see such a veried group of such varied group as you will find in religion since faith in a particular deity is usually the only thing that binds them. While there is no question many if not most Christians share the same hypocrisies we all do, I've found that the rare .001% that are the Maximilian Kolbe's in every culture are almost always religious.
People bring their personalities/natures with them when accepting any ideology, and some people are just born authoritarians, a particularly dangerous trait when paired with either belief in a monotheistic religion or in a belief in an all powerful state government.
It's wild.
I am ill situated to criticize the faith of the faithful -- not being one of the faithful myself -- but professedly "Christian" torture and murder advocates still blow my mind. I don't know what kind of moral gymnastics you have to perform to get to that place mentally and be OK with yourself.
I am like, "You know the person you accept as the Son of God and your personal savior got tortured to death by an imperial bureaucracy, right? How cool do you think He really is with empires and torture?"
Plus, along the way, he found one real hot wife, hell, even his mother in law was easy to look at.
I always loved him. Why is his integrity so rare? Are we really such a craven species?
Because democracy is the practice of always giving the most power to the biggest sociopath and megalomaniac.
That way they can carry out punishment against our enemies that we would NEVER do ourselves because we know we are better than that. Except when we are part of a mob.
Not the way I define democracy, but... Which system of government do you prefer?
I don't believe late stage democracy in the US is still a democracy. I think we have clearly shifted to an Oligarchy in practice with authoritarian dictatorship next on the list if Polybius was right in "The Histories" as I believe he was. There is a natural progression from democracy, to oligarchy to dictatorship before returning to democracy.
To answer your question, I think the democracy part of the equation is less relevant than the guaranteed protections part, which are two different and competing entities in the case of democracy. I would much rather live under an enlightened tyrant than the authoritarian democracy/oligarchy we have now. If the State chooses to do violence against you for an unjustified reason, it's cold comfort that they unfair punishment was carried out by a mob of voters than a corrupt tyrant.
I have as little faith in a "benevolent dictator" as you have in late stage democracy. I'm not sure I agree with your natural progression; I believe we are suffering from an unnatural progression brought about by unfettered capitalism. Whatever economic system might/should supplant that, I would hope it is in some way democratic.
I hope so too. Also, I don't want to steal the credit from Polybius who wrote about that progression about 2000 years ago after studying the Greek and Roman progression through these phases before him. There's not room for it here, but he makes an excellent argument for how and why each in turn fails and leads to the next phase using Greece and Rome as an example. It's worth looking at if you ever have the time. If nothing else, to help us avoid falling into the same trap, which we appear to be doing with the accumulation of power into the hands of the few over the many. He would argue that once this deteriorates past a certain point, the people will select a tyrant to replace the corrupt oligarchs and the Russians selected Putin to replace the failed oligarchs that followed Perestroika. Fascinating stuff.
Sounds very interesting - I'll check it out. Here's an article I just read, that I found interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2021/05/what-ancient-rome-tells-us-about-todays-senate/619025/
So the solution to the rackets of corporate monopolies and corrupt politicians supporting them is to give more power to the "public", aka corrupt politicians, so they can direct things themselves? While I sympathize with Kucinich with his observation of a major problem, his solution, from what I gather, would just create a different problem, potentially even larger. Unless Kucinich directs equal scorn at the corruption of public monopolies, such as teachers unions, as he does private monopolies, I don't see him being a politician I'd actually vote for. I certainly sympathize with his opposition to the two-party duopoly that exists in our country and the factionalism that many people support, but, as an example, I have absolutely zero interest in subsidizing tuition free ethnic studies courses so that anti-intellectual professors can live luxuriously and political factions can indoctrinate the country's youth.
Exactly; I myself have no interest in subsidizing someone else's dream to attend an overpriced college of their choosing.
That is exactly what I thought as well, more public power, not being the solution. Ii think that Sowell says it best...There are no solutions, only tradeoffs. The teachers unions, during the scamdemic, have proved your point.
I think you read something into the interview that wasn't there. I could be wrong. OTOH, I generally support the teacher's unions since my dad was a teacher. Granted 50 years ago, but from my remote perspective, I don't see a lot changing since then.
Many of his positions are standard in the AOC wing of the Democratic Party. He was kooky 20 years ago, but now vanilla.
My mom was a teacher. And I worked as both a substitute teacher and a high school librarian in the US and as an English teacher in South Korea. None of that changes the fact that teachers unions are generally corrupt cartels designed to maximize the financial well being of its members regardless of the quality of the product it provides, in the case of public schools: education for children.
If a person thinks that the job security and financial well being of teachers is more important than the quality of education or the freedom of citizens to choose where they spend their money on education, that person has their priorities broken.
There is a lot of talk about selling out in this interview. Teachers who support teachers unions as they exist today are selling out or they are ignorant. Quite simple.
JP - Teachers unions may well be corrupt in your view, you showed no evidence of it though.
The middle class in this country has been hollowed out for 40yrs and because of their union teachers have some of the last remaining middle class jobs.
American schools rank poorly compared to lots of other nations and most of those nations teachers also have unions. So trying to lay the blame for our schools failures at the feet of unions is ridiculous. There is far more to this problem than unions.
I suggest you read Raj Chetty and his research on income mobility if you want to get at the real core problems with poor student outcomes. Or you can just blame unions, that is easiest.
Or you could read Thomas Sowell’s “Charter Schools and their enemies” where he provides overwhelming evidence of the corruption of teachers unions.
Teachers unions simply don’t care about the quality of education. Al Shankar, president of American Federation of Teachers stated “When school children start paying union dues that’s when I’ll start representing children.” Do you need more evidence?
How about simply researching how teachers unions across the country placed the neurotic comfort of teachers in front of the education of children as the pandemic unfolded in 2020 and 2021. Not only did they resist in class teaching when the science demonstrated substantially less risk of transmission from children, they continued to resist after vaccine rollouts, and they have attempted to negotiate more money and more resources for teachers and completely unrelated political goals while doing so. In California 50% of student have still not returned to classrooms.
You concerned about income mobility? I guarantee you that the students hurt the most— children of poorer families and families disproportionately black—will have their income mobility harmed by a year of lost education. The teachers though —well they got a lot of vacation and the same pay.
As for teachers unions around the world — education systems differs substantially from one country to the next even if there is some sort of unionization. Even in the US the corruption of the the unions differ from state to state.
Charter schools in poorer neighborhoods have demonstrated that they can produce the same academic outcomes as schools in rich neighborhoods. All the data is in Sowell’s book. The only justification for people opposing charter schools is ignorance or irrational loyalty to the financial well being and power of government school teachers.
There is nothing Raj Chetty has written to my knowledge that would contradict the arguments of Thomas Sowell. You are welcome to provide a reference. Saying “there are more things than just unions to blame” for school failure is a ridiculous argument for why we shouldn’t blame unions. We should blame unions *and* other things. Did I say unions are to blame for *all school failings*? No I didnt. Eliminating teacher union monopoly on education will not be a sufficient condition to maximize the quality of education in our country but it is a necessary condition.
Chicago Teachers Union....I rest my case.
Simple question. Why is it that nations all over the world have education systems higher ranked than the US and they have teachers unions just like ours?
What is unique about American Teachers unions vs those other nations? Let me help you. Nothing!
Raj Chetty is an actual researcher who’s research is used by experts and is funded and vetted at Stanford and now Harvard. With all due respect to Sowell he is neither an expert in education nor has he done the empirical research Chetty has done.
Chettys research refuted everything Sowell Claims.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/education-and-economic-mobility/541041/
Your crass dismissal of Sowell's work leads one to conclude only one thing. You're a racist.
"With all due respect to Sowell he is neither an expert in education nor has he done the empirical research Chetty has done."
Um, they are both economists. And he has done a tremendous amount of empirical research.
"Why is it that nations all over the world have education systems higher ranked than the US and they have teachers unions just like ours?"
Some countries have better academic outcomes than the U.S. in general and other countries have worse outcomes. And their unions and their relationship with their governments vary. And it also depends on different regions of any particular country. Sweden, for example, has an education system that embraces for-profit charter schools.
"What is unique about American Teachers unions vs those other nations? Let me help you. Nothing!"
Except that the power of teacher unions in different nations and what they specifically advocate varies. I'm particularly interested in American teacher unions, because, well, we live in America.
"Raj Chetty is an actual researcher who’s research is used by experts and is funded and vetted at Stanford and now Harvard."
ooo fancy. Sowell is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
"Chettys research refuted everything Sowell Claims."
No it doesnt. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion based on that article:
"They[Chetty's team] couldn’t say exactly why, but they concluded that five correlated factors—segregation, family structure, income inequality, local school quality, and social capital—were likely to make a difference."
Sowell claims that Charter schools can improve the academic outcome of black students in New York. How does that article refute that?
For one thing, that article is written poorly in general and doesn't actually cover Chetty's research much. Nor does it have any relationship to Sowell's simple argument. It focuses on the research of Jesse Rothstein, who expresses disagreement with Chetty's views about education and economic mobility. Did you even read the article? Its covers the speculation of Jesse Rothstein based on his correlational data.
Chetty encourages investment in better education to improve economic mobility, and has expressed concern about the effects of the lockdowns on the education of those who are most vulnerable:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-09-24/harvard-economist-raj-chetty-creates-god-s-eye-view-of-pandemic-damage
He agrees with my point that income mobility will be harmed by what lockdowns did to public schools.
"Public schools were, to some extent, serving to level the playing field and increase social mobility,” Chetty says. With the shift to mostly or only remote learning in many school districts, “you’re going to have massive impacts on inequality.”
You are deeply confused. And clearly Stanford is not funding you.
The difference is work rules. Work rules are there to protect the seniority system to the detriment of competency and expand membership beyond reason for the purposes of collecting and laundering dues back into political activism among other abuses of public trust. Any parent knows that it doesn't take a lot of money to teach a child to read, write and compute. I appreciate the citation from The Atlantic. At one time that would have meant something. Nowadays The Atlantic is an elitist rag and no more than an unapologetic front for the worst of Democrat policies.
"Teachers who support teachers unions as they exist today are selling out or they are ignorant."
That is a much more complicated question. You might be right. You might be wrong. Corruption spreads so...
Nah I’m right. You can read my response to Piketty for a more detailed explanation of why.
Even without the dubious quote by Al Shanker, the behavior of teachers unions and their resistance to allowing schools that do a better job of educating children to flourish should be sufficient evidence for anyone that the best interest of children is not what drives the behavior of unions—and thus teachers who support the unions despite that knowledge are selling out to their financial interests just as politicians do when they support the interests of corporate monopolies regardless of the fact it will harm their constituents because the politicians benefit financially.
We hire teachers to teach children not to provide teachers with well paying jobs. Teaching isn’t a government jobs program.
JP - I am not saying teachers unions dont have their challenges. No doubt they do. But teachers unions have their challenges in lots of countries and those countreis still get better outcomes than the US...
If our priority is improving schools the focus is, as the research proves, improving the economic security of families that are sending their kids to school.
And Thomas Sowalls Economic policy ideas do the opposite of creating security for these families according to the top ranked economist around the world. There is a reason Sowell and his economic ideas are all but ignored other than by Partisans...
“If our priority is improving schools the focus is, as the research proves, improving the economic security of families that are sending their kids to school.”
The research does not prove that. The link you provided has the guy acknowledging that his stuff is just correlational. And there is nothing in that link you provided in the other comment thread that suggests improving the economic security of families will improve schools—it’s about economic mobility. Your arguments are inept and you have already demonstrated you cannot even properly provide references that support your arguments. The link you provided in the other comment actually argued against the person you referenced, Raj Chetty.
Raj Chetty actually supports my argument, and he was the first “top ranked economist”, you mentioned. The only people who actually ignore Sowell are racists and partisans.
Sowell demonstrated clearly that charter schools in the US can outperform standard public schools in the US that are run by the unions and that is without any need to improve the economic security of the families of the children attending those charter schools. While I won’t argue that improving the economic security of families wouldn’t increase performance even more, improving economic security is not necessary to improve academic outcomes. If people want to help improve the economic security of poorer families, I completely support that, insofar as they are not using violence to take from the economic security and liberty of others to provide it. If you want to improve the economic security of poorer families, please do so—I hope you are not just expecting the state to use violence to do that and actually back your moral convictions with your own resources and not the resources of other people.
So many people such as yourself express faux compassion for the downtrodden but give either none or paltry amounts of your own resources to help them. It’s shameful. There would be no “economic insecurity” for people in the US if all the people who claimed they cared simply voluntarily provided the resources themselves, relative to what they have, to help. That being the case, the only conclusion a person can reach is that the concern is fake virtue signaling to others and themselves or people simply want the benefits that they think may accrue to themselves if the state intervened.
And in the case with charter schools, its perverse, since charter schools are in fact publicly funded, but people who oppose them simply do so because of a sick loyalty to the teachers unions and the political interests and financial well being of union teachers. Even when some charter schools clearly do better in their outcomes, people want to use the law to restrict the freedom of parents who are eager to send their children somewhere beside the school a government coerces them to go to that is shitty. In truth, good teachers will be paid their value in charter schools. Charter schools are not a threat to good teachers, and good teachers don't support the unions attempt to restrict parents from choosing their childrens' schools.
Jeffrey, that's pretty angry stuff you're writing. Try this one on for size: the "public monopolies," as you refer to public employee unions, are still in most cities the best way to fight the institutionalized graft of bankers, real estate developers, and local and national corporations. Are they perfect? Absolutely not! But I'd rather bet on working people than on all the slick MBAs and "Communication Consultants" who have stolen our cities lock, stock, and barrel. When I worked for a sizeable Midwestern city half a century ago, it was the public employees who cared about the city, not the politicians. As far as the latter crowd, there wasn't a one of them who didn't go home at night entertaining fantasies of being President one day; most were sadly (and quickly) disabused of their ambitions, and left after a term or two to work for real estate developers they'd met while on the City Council. Then a whole new crowd of would-be Senators and Congressmen would be elected, much to the delight of the grifters, er, our august downtown businessmen...
It's an important distinction you make between public employees and politicians, which are all too often conflated. I have more faith in the former than the later and it's not the elected councilman down at the water treatment plant ensuring we don't have a Cholera outbreak.
Any issue DK did not raise in this interview is the under investment in our public infrastructure over the past several decades. For several reasons it's easier to find the political will to build public works than to maintain them. A public worker may be the best employee in the world, but if a politician always finds a reason to spend public money on things that are more politically advantageous (the Levee Failure during Katrina is a great example of this) there is little they can do.
The wrong answer is deregulating and turning things over to an Enron, who will tell you they have the money to fix things, but have even less motivation to do it than public system. In fact, the private company will usually find a way to profit off the failure and the private electric companies did this Winter in Texas during the ice storm.
I don't have an easy answer for this. I wonder what DK would say?
For all of the problems with with government ownership, the alternative private model for public utilities has been a complete disaster.
Public Monopolies serve a very important purpose. Depending on the services it has been proven that public monopolies deliver better outcomes than private business (airports, electricity, water, highways and schools)
So stating that one needs to scorn those institutions is challenging intellectually.
All institutions have problems. The question is how to make improvement. And to make improvement you have to first accurately diagnose the problem.
Kucinich issue is with Regulatory and Government CAPTURE.
Luigi Zengalis, the Conservative Economist from Univ of Chicago has written extensively on this and proposed very thoughtful solutions. I don’t always agree with his solutions but he is the most respected public intellectual on the issue that I have read.
Fundamentally Capture is the #1 issue if voters want a “conservative” society. So it is no surprise that in large cities like Cleveland Capture with the Democratic Party is at the heart of slowing progress
"Depending on the services it has been proven that public monopolies deliver better outcomes than private business (airports, electricity, water, highways and schools)"
It certainly has not been proven that government monopoly airports(or the other stuff you mentioned) in essence deliver better outcomes than private airports. It may have been proven that particular government monopoly airports deliver better outcomes (hopefully at equivalent costs) than particular private airports.
Other than the fact that private services *can* deliver better outcomes than government services, private services also benefit from the crucial fact that the resources they use are *voluntarily acquired*, rather than acquired through the threat of force. The moral good of private enterprise is not only that private enterprise can deliver better outcomes at lower costs, but also that that cost is voluntary. Hence, it is no sufficient argument for slavery that the outcomes can sometimes be superior than free labor. It may be true that the economic outcome of China's policy with the Uighurs is better than if the Uighurs were as free as American citizens -- however that does not justify the policy; it is still unjust. Even if China's citizens voted on it and they were 90% in agreement, it wouldn't make it any less unjust. Even if the CCP permitted the Uighurs to peacefully leave to another country, it would still be unjust.
Economic liberty -- to have control over what we do with the fruit of our labor -- is intrinsically good. Thus, creating unnecessary government services with tax money, which is acquired by suppressing economic liberty, is bad. That is not determined by democratic appraisal, just as the morality of slavery isn't.
But sure, I agree with you, regulatory capture is bad. Especially when it comes with lots and lots of tax money. And strangely, in your list of public monopolies, you failed to list the military. Im guessing you aren't fond of the military industrial complex. And speaking of schools and regulatory capture, that is what happened with teachers unions and the CDC.
JP - Do you understand the economic definition of a Natural Monopoly? Its sort of Econ 101. It is a non partisan term and is critical to any nation.
https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=3267#:~:text=Definition%3A,of%20two%20or%20more%20firms.
So yes it has been proven that utilities like water, electricity and trash hauling are all Natural Monopolies and are best if either owned by the sate or heavily regulated. Airports fall into that category as well. Schools fall into this category. These are all public goods that can be consumed more efficiently with a monopoly. Again econ 101.
No developed nation on earth has done the wholsale privatization of public good monopolies. And in the random examples of Natural Monopolies that have been privatized (like electricity in much of the US) massive regulation has been required and in the case of companies like PG&E regulation was not tough enough due to regulatory capture.
Slavery = Economic Outcomes were not favorable. FYI.
https://fee.org/articles/slavery-was-never-economically-efficient/
Having the 'fruit of our labor" paid to us is a fantasy. You know that right. Rent Seeking distorts what we get paid and what the owners of capital get paid. And as long as you have excessive rent seeking few people are getting paid the fruits of their labor.
"Suppressing economic liberty is bad". That is not accurate. Non natural monopolies or Monopsonys can and do occur through political Capture. So until you can prove Political Capture is not being used you must, according to Adam Smith supress economic liberty to prevent monopoly or monopsony ( the later being a more recent phenomena) Right?
"Do you understand the economic definition of a Natural Monopoly? Its sort of Econ 101. It is a non partisan term and is critical to any nation."
Do *you*? While utilities like electricity can be a natural monopoly, *schools* are absolutely not natural monopolies. A natural monopoly, among other things, requires sufficient barriers of entry into the market, such as extraordinarily high initial costs. Schools are relatively cheap to start up -- especially k - 12 schools. The primary barrier of entry into the market for schools is the cartel of the teachers' union and its collusion with the government to legally prevent any competition and to furnish subsidies to the cartel. And of course, there are still lots of private schools, many of which do way better than the average public school.
Your knowledge of economics does not justify your condescending expressions about econ 101. Its apparent you have actually not studied or thought about economics much.
And as for airports, here is an article that discusses the different ways airports are managed. And you will see in the graph that both public and private airports are variable in performance and both can do well:
https://blogs.worldbank.org/ppps/tale-two-airports-public-vs-private
As I stated in my last comment: It certainly has not been proven that government monopoly airports(or the other stuff you mentioned) in essence deliver better outcomes than private airports.
"No developed nation on earth has done the wholsale privatization of public good monopolies."
When did I ever say that there should be entirely no public services? I think there should be as few as absolutely necessary. Necessary being the key word there.
"Slavery = Economic Outcomes were not favorable. FYI."
While I find the argument against slavery being economically optimal to be good, I don't think that it will apply in all scenarios -- it perhaps doesn't even apply to the U.S. The opinion of your link is neat, but there is nothing air tight about it. I can provide a link arguing that it was more profitable than a free-market:
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/16/20806069/slavery-economy-capitalism-violence-cotton-edward-baptist
It ultimately doesn't matter to my argument though -- because it needn't be slavery; it could be any system or institution that delivers some superior output in some sense but has costs not worth the output. The costs of slavery is human freedom. The costs of government services run by taxes based on threat of violence is again human freedom. The difference is one of degree. Its what revolutions are fought over regardless.
"Having the 'fruit of our labor" paid to us is a fantasy. You know that right. Rent Seeking distorts what we get paid and what the owners of capital get paid. And as long as you have excessive rent seeking few people are getting paid the fruits of their labor."
I'd rather call it a dream; and certainly a big part of the American dream. Having the maximal amount of the fruit of our labor within our power is a political good; a mark of a virtuous and enlightened society. We should aim to maximize that dream, not reduce it; and cartels such as the teachers union reduce it. And for sure, so does "rent seeking" behavior. However, having millions in income is no guarantee that an individual has or is engaging in it. And certainly, where we are at now, with people making hundreds of thousands a year and paying over a quarter of their income in taxes is definitely unjust; my dentist is not engaging in rent-seeking behavior, and the fruit of his labor could be most satisfactorily kept if he was not taxed because people think they are more entitled to use the fruit of his labor than him and don't realize stealing the labor of virtuous people is usually always wrong -- even if it is profitable, especially if it is to pay for the often excessive salaries of teachers with a cartel (such as my 9th grade geography teacher) or for worthless military weapons. And speaking of rent-seeking behavior -- that is what the teachers union does. It seeks regulations to cripple competitors, lobbies for unjustified raises in income and benefits, and captures the CDC to keep teachers from having to actually do the job that they are being paid to do with money forced from US citizens.
"So until you can prove Political Capture is not being used you must, according to Adam Smith supress economic liberty to prevent monopoly or monopsony ( the later being a more recent phenomena) Right?"
No, the suppression of economic liberty is not necessary to prevent a monopoly -- monopolies form because economic liberty is suppressed. That's why we should have anti-trust laws(albeit it is debatable how good our current laws are). By regulating a natural monopoly or breaking up an unnatural one, economic liberty is maximized. Although, I will acknowledge that in some philosophical exceptions it could be good, such as a form of punishment for a crime.
But I don't need to even get that abstract and universal. Assume the generalization is false. But particularly, the economic liberty that is taken from people with unnecessary taxes certainly is not justified by the use of those taxes. Just as it would be wrong for me to steal your property, sell it, and then donate that money to charities. Having a gang of people do the same thing -- as is the case with "democratic socialism" -- is no better. Culture is the virtuous engine of charity, not government. Any government that takes on the role of charity is a corrupt one.
JP -
"No, the suppression of economic liberty is not necessary to prevent a monopoly -- monopolies form because economic liberty is suppressed."
Who's economic liberty are you talking about, the consumers? The owner of capital? The employees?
It is 2021 and even the University of Chicago is no longer looking at these issues with the simplicity your Schumpeter inspired statement entails. There is nothing actionable from your statement.
Example: Single payer health care is a Monopoly for the buyer. One buyer many sellers. Countries with Single Payer health care have robust health care systems that leverage the public and private markets to produce better economic outcomes than in nations like the US where we have multiple buyers for health care services.
So who has more freedom, citizens that have access to affordable health care or citizens with out access to affordable healthcare?
Tell me, why has no nation ever been able to produce a health care system with out government involvement (reducing "freedom") that is less costly than the health care of nations with Universal Health Care? Answer: Because it wont work in health care
Example: Airports. One provider many buyers. Cities with out robust economies do not have private companies funding airport builds. So states have taxed citizens to fund building of infrastructure like Airports which then grow economic activity in these areas.
The rhetoric you regurgitate is ignored in the real world because it is not actionable. To have a modern capitalist society the state and private capital work together EVERY SINGLE day. And how much they work together changes depending on all sorts of factors.
"Economi Liberty" is not possible with out an economy. And economies that can't compete don't last.
In 2021 the worlds most robust economies are NOT using the Hayek, Schumpeter, Mises Austrian model that you love to regurgitate. NONE of them are. But you keep talking about imaginary FREEDOM, the rest of the world has moved on and is ignoring you and your ideas.
" But you keep talking about imaginary FREEDOM, the rest of the world has moved on and is ignoring you and your ideas."
Yes, we can agree about that; much of the world doesn't care about freedom, you included.
"Tell me, why has no nation ever been able to produce a health care system with out government involvement (reducing "freedom") that is less costly than the health care of nations with Universal Health Care? Answer: Because it wont work in health care"
I would not encourage such a thing -- for a nation to have a health care system without any government involvement. Inevitably absolute freedom cannot be granted, nor is it even good. I don't support companies dumping their toxic waste into rivers. Being less costly though doesn't necessarily equate to something more desirable, particularly if it is not as good. And I have lived in a country where health care was personally less costly to me than in the United States -- South Korea --and the quality was not as good. I'd rather have the health care I have access to here in the U.S. even while it is more expensive at times, than the health care I had access to in South Korea. Additionally, the costs of health care in the United States are due to a myriad of factors, it not being single payer and government distributed isn't a a necessary or sufficient one. There are many proposals on how to reduce health care costs in the U.S. without appealing to a government enforced monopoly.
Furthermore, reducing the costs of some product for some people, while increasing the costs for other people and potentially reducing the quality, by forcing all people to fund it unequally, is usually immoral. This, again, can easily be demonstrated by the fact that it would not be moral to steal food from you and give it to other people. It may reduce the cost of food for those other people, but that isn't sufficient to justify my theft. If you actually want to stand behind your moral reasoning, and not be a hypocrite, you could hand over your income and wealth to me so I can distribute it to people who have less than you.
JP
"The costs of government services run by taxes based on threat of violence is again human freedom"
That is laughable...
Who is more FREE. A man in Canada, with cancer, who has access to government funded health care that wont bankrupt him. Or a man with cancer in the US. who has a 42% chance of losing all of his assets and going bankrupt within two years of a diagnosis?
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cancer-forces-42-of-patients-to-exhaust-life-savings-in-2-years-study-finds.html
Again, these statements that you make are right out of Ayne Rand propaganda wing of the Libertarian Fantasy...
There is a reason no developed nation on earth has implemented these crazy ass ideas you have at scale. It is because they do not work at scale. They only works with cherry picked examples (IE Charter schools in NYC) and with evidence that does not pass the test for improving SOCIETY at large.
I will take the form of Freedom that does not bankrupt me if i get Cancer rather than the form that bankrupts me when i get cancer 43% of the time.
That study was only related to Americans. Do you have a study that demonstrates that Canadians don't lose income or assets after being diagnosed with cancer? I have found sources that suggest many Canadians also face financial difficulties after a cancer diagnosis.
https://www.cancer.ca/~/media/cancer.ca/MB/get%20involved/take%20action/financial%20hardship%20of%20cancer%20in%20canada/aliteraturereview-MB.pdf?la=en
https://globalnews.ca/news/1654757/canadian-patients-struggle-to-finance-cancer-treatment/
And why, exactly, shouldn't people use their savings on something like a cancer diagnosis, or any other form of illness that may affect their capacity to work? Should the money to pay for their care first come from other peoples' potential savings and assets rather than the person who is directly affected? Isn't that part of the reason why people have savings in the first place? For emergencies? I can understand the psychological desire for such an enforced safety net by a government -- as I also have no desire to go into bankruptcy after a diagnosis of an illness, but I also recognize that I have no entitlement to force others to spend their resources on a government monopoly of my choice to ensure that personal security. A violently enforced government monopoly is not a necessary condition for providing a social safety net.
Americans could ensure that other Americans don't find themselves in dire financial situations after a medical diagnosis *without* government intervention. It simply requires voluntary support of those people. Americans could voluntarily pay for peoples' insurance( a substantial amount of people in that study did not have insurance), or provide payments for their medical bills or care. There is nothing preventing all the people who claim to care as much as you about the financial situation of some people in the US from voluntarily helping them, other than the fact that the people who claim to care actually don't care enough to maximally use their own resources. They, and you, only care enough to want to use force to use other peoples' resources. Which actually demonstrates a lack of care.
"I will take the form of Freedom that does not bankrupt me if i get Cancer rather than the form that bankrupts me when i get cancer 43% of the time."
If you embed yourself in a social network that voluntarily cares for its members, your financial burden will decrease in the case of an emergency. And if you support organizations that voluntarily provide financial help for people in emergencies who don't already have those social networks, their financial burdens will also decrease. All without using violence or the threat of it. Violence or the threat of it is not necessary to solve many of the worst of our society's problems, but some people prefer it nonetheless.
JP - Airports...
No one is denying that some airports can operate as private entities and do just fine. That is not even debatable of course they can. Where your argument is highly flawed is in understanding the role of airports to communities broadly, just like electricity, railroads or broadband access...
With out the government doing the initial investment private enterprise simply does NOT make these kind of investments until the there is enough identifiable revenue. So with out the government going in and investing airports simply don't get opened. That is why GLOBALLY government not private enterprise is the first investor and takes all of the risk. Then the airport is a public good at that point. And if a second or third airport an operate in the area then sure private enterprise may step in.
But look to the middle of the nation. Many of those cities that we call fly over states have airports that lose money. Are you going to argue that he government should try to sell those to private enterprise? If so that is a fantasy. What will happen is those airports will close and those communities will go down the drain even faster than they are now. That is why AIRPORTS should be viewed as public goods not private enterprise. And the few cherry picked examples of profitable private airports, like Charter Schools, do not scale across the country and produce better outcomes than we are getting today.
You like to reference CAPTURE... Private for profit companies are trying to cherry pick Public Good assets by convincing people like you that they can provide a superior product at a better price. And in some limited cases they can.
It is like a health insurance company saying we will take over insuring all HEALTHY people.. But if anyone is old or sick we cant provide them with insurance. Same with Charter Schools. Most motivated parents get a great school everyone else is screwed. Same with Airports, government builds all of the demand, at a loss generally, and then when the demand is there Private Enterpirse will step in and scoop off the profits.
Your arguments on all of these are little more the propaganda funded to help private companies scoop the profits out of large investment the GOVERNMENT made to create public entities for all people not just for a handful of people that private companies can monitize. It is no different than the health insurance company that can insure all healthy people and no one else.
That is why NO (NONE) advanced democracy on earth actually follow these propaganda scams pushed by people like Sowell, at least not at scale.
It is ALWAYS the government that funds the schools or airports or water systems or electricity systems. And only after the government has taken the risk and laid down the ground work for growth that that Private Enterprise comes in and scoops up the best customers so they can profit at the expense of the broader society.
"Schools are relatively cheap to start up -- especially k - 12 schools."
Really? is that a fact?
Please point to an example of where "inexpensive to start up" private schools have provided education to large numbers of entire communities the way public schools have.
If you cant show evidence of than then your statement is at best navel gazing theory and at worst just flat out wrong. Please let me know which of the two it is.
Yes it is a fact. How about since you made the initial idiotic claim that schools were natural monopolies, actually provide evidence for it? Explain to us how schools are akin to something like electricity where the initial capital investment is enormous and the marginal cost is so small that competition with the reigning school (or school system?) becomes impossible. If you make a claim, the burden of proof is first on whoever makes the claim. Perhaps you can ask your beloved professors at Harvard and Stanford, private schools, about your idiotic theory that schools are a natural monopoly.
But as an aside, charter schools *are* public schools, in the sense that they are funded by tax money; they are simply managed by private entities. If the the US tomorrow decided to trash its current union management of the school system, there is nothing that would prevent charter schools from providing all the education to the American public with tax money. Charter schools in New York are limited not by the fact that they are privately managed, but by legal constraints. *Capture* by the unions. Costs don't limit the growth of charter schools, politics does. Just take away the legal barriers and they would rapidly grow. This is demonstrated by the fact in places like New York, the number of charter schools and their enrollment is not capped by their demand, but by their politically controlled restricted supply.
I'm just going to add that a natural monopoly is a theoretical entity, like a mathematical set. Empirically, it may be the case there are actually no true natural monopolies. Those who love government artificial monopolies though are bound to see natural monopolies in more places, such as yourself. I do suspect there are true natural monopolies. Schools though certainly aren't one of them.
I feel like I want to give you points simply for managing to work talking points about ethnic studies into a conversation about public works and political expedience among a city council in Cleveland in the 1960's and 1970's.
I like peanut butter, do you sky?
Interesting is right. I am going to buy the book.
Local zoning boards are cess pools-- in New Jersey, the FBI put away mayors and others for bribes, many hands over fists. One town recently lost a massive chunk of forest to a developer when the voters opposed it.
ATK Ammunition, Beretta, Federal Cartidge Co., Sigarms, Archery Trade Association run federal and state wildlife policy, which approximates an abattoir. It's corrupt and privatized.
Kucinich is a decent man. Thanks for giving him the attention he deserves.
Thank you for this seminal interview !! Dennis Kucinich is an American hero. We have a two right-wing parties monopoly - financed and ruled by same donors and -- playing us like a violin.
Lose ALL hope you who still try to idealize Biden administration – see below:
“The Rrrrussians come again.” - Pre-summit nonsense. Patrick Lawrence June 1
“The Rrrrussians come again.” - The Scrum (substack.com)
The Russia-gate hoax and impeachment “entertainments” were concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors. That lying team is now back in full power -- even Kamala Harris (and her sister) is Hillary's protégé.
Remember, Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former Obama 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the now five-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged ALL chemical attacks in Syria to remove its secular government.
When asked about Hunter's laptops Pelosi stated "All roads lead to Putin"; commenting on Capitol invasion Schumer said - "worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11"...
Deep and utter corruption -- DNC leadership is just a bit better in lying. And -- Assange must be silenced -- all the lying players agree. Deranged Trump was to incompetent to realize how important is pardoning Assange now that the old lying team is in power again -- instead he pardoned Black Water criminals who massacred Iraqis in Bagdad’s Nisour square.
Lose ALL hope - all of you who still try to idealize rotten and lying Biden administration -- the War party is back in power.
Don't forget how the Democrats have now managed to launder neocon war criminals and their enablers like John Bolton, George W. Bush, et. al. Gee, I thought they were supposed to be anti-war (though most of their voting records give lie to that fantasy), but I guess that's only when a Republican is in the White House. Of course it's same the other way around, but at least the neocons never pretended to be about anything other than warmongers. The neolibs/Dems have often been called the "faux resistance" during Trump's term, but when it comes to regime change/coups/bombing people halfway around the world and installing corrupt right-wing dictators in Central and South America (not to mention Asia and Africa), they've ALWAYS been the fake resistance.
Here is the recent link to the superb "Scrum" article:
“The Rrrrussians come again.” - The Scrum (substack.com)
https://thescrum.substack.com/p/the-rrrrussians-come-again
Best comment so far. Thank you.
And -- here is the link to the "Scrum" article:
“The Rrrrussians come again.” - The Scrum (substack.com)
https://thescrum.substack.com/p/the-rrrrussians-come-again
Thank you -- the War party is playing all of us like a violin. Microsoft is one of the CIA's misinformation and lying HiTech players.
“The Rrrrussians come again.” - Pre-summit nonsense. Patrick Lawrence June 1
“The Rrrrussians come again.” - The Scrum (substack.com)
The future certainly seems uncertain and bound for big changes. But even if a large segment of the population is not currently wedded to one of the parties, is there a realistic chance that any national candidate can, at anytime soon, overcome the two parties with their tentacles sunk deep into every recess of procedural controls along with access to big Wall Street/corporate $$ and the name recognition and opponent slander it can buy?
Yes!! All of that can be over come. How formidable were the odds against MLK getting a fair deal from Washington? Far less than they are of Americans getting higher wages today...
All it ever takes is ORGANIZING and voting in the PRIMARIES for the candidates that support the issues most critical to you. And if you consume biased media then just stop doing it.
I understand your optimism and desire for people to believe in and work for a better future -- and I hope you are correct. I am more pessimistic. The difference I see between the accomplishments of MLK and the present situation, is that MLK represented the end of a decades long struggle - against at least 80 years of the Senate blocking Civil Rights legislation, with constant pressure applied through the judiciary culminating in cases like Brown v Board of Ed and with the horror of Jim Crow, lynching, etc., finally getting through to a large segment of the white population after decades of indifference. MLK's accomplishments were incredible, but they built on the work of many, many others and what appeared to be nearly sudden changes in the 6 or 7 years from the first voting rights legislation to the Civil Rights Act, to me, represented the final cracking of a dam that had been hammered on for years and years before finally giving way.
BH - You bring up an excellent point. Not to take away anything from MLK's heroic and noble efforts, but you are absolutely correct there was an infrastructure of protest in place decades before him.
Looping back to my point though. The bottom line is that with organizing the government did take action and that action impacted peoples live.
Americans have been working on Universal Health Care for decades too. What is more. today the evidence from other countries that Universal Health Care is less costly and produces better outcomes for the majority of citizens is irrefutable.
Leaders like Jayapal in the House and Sanders in the Senate are making progress in getting their house members to support a Universal Health Care bill.
My point is that these things can and do happen even when we think the odds are high that they will fail. At the end of the day VOTERS are still more important than corporations even to politicians. And if we dont vote, in PRIMARIES, for the leaders that will vote on the most important policy to all of us we can and will see progress...
As Taibbi has reported effectively, the corporate controlled media intentionally divide voters with endless talk of Identity Politics so prevent voters from coming together and electing leaders that will reverse the work of corporate lobbyist. Dont consume corporate media and VOTE in primaries if you want change.
FYI - I do not mean that the struggle ended with MLK. Merely, that he represented, at that time, the culmination of a long struggle.
Kucinich voted against NAFTA, PNTR for The People's Republic of China and The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, against both the Banking Modernization Act and the Futures and Commodities Modernization Act, against the invasion of Iraq, one of the most strikingly successful wars in world history, right up there with our invasion of Afghanistan, so successful we've haven't been defeated there despite being there for 19 years(take that, USSR), and was probably against the Vietnam war, too.
Just why would anyone listen to anyone with such flawed judgment?
Thank God/Yahweh the US people roundly rejected this loon years ago.
Sarcasm, right?
On my part, yes. However, among the elites of both parties, really one posing as two, it would be received knowledge.
I grew up in Cleveland. And I'm sorry to say I never thought much of Kucinich. Reading these pieces, I think about where we could be if he'd been president.
My disgust with the mainstream media grows stronger every day.
Mine too.
"And the mob."
Why is it that no one talks about the mob or organized crime? We use euphemisms like "Oligarchy" and then pretend that there are actually two separate parties that represent different "Oligarchs".
Which judges aren't owned by the mob?
Is abortion going to be declared illegal because the prices will rise to get an abortion and it will revert to being practiced by shady characters who haven't the qualifications necessary?
Some readers may have missed it, but organized crime in the classic, Mafia sense of the term is called "The Mob" in Clevelandese and I'm almost sure that is how Kucinich intended it. He wasn't talking about the crime organization that is today's Democratic Party, or a Twitter mob or some such.
But, once you think of the Dems themselves as a crime syndicate, it's hard to stop. They have a smuggling operation (illegal immigration), a numbers racket (Wall Street), drug dealers (Big Pharma) and like all crooked gangs they hate any cop they can't buy.
Looking forward to reading Kucinich's book!
So Kucinich lays out a fundamental problem with our politics writ large, specifically around the bipartisan privatization of public utilities, and your reply is "the Dems are a crime syndicate"? Never ceases to amaze me how deeply engrained the partisan rooting instinct is for some people.
Sas - How have so many Americans developed this "engrained" partisanism in your view?
Well, setting aside my failure to spell "ingrained" correctly, I think we're a deeply partisan country.
I've been searched high & low for this study I came across in college that tracked how much we've changed on this front and it bugs me I cannot find it. The essence of the study was that, since about the Reagan era, voters are increasingly less likely to identify with an ideology ("I'm a progressive" or "I'm a conservative") and increasingly likely to identify with a party.
Even though I wouldn't vote for Trump, I found the Obama/Trump voters kind of heartening and weirdly understandable. Much more coherent than someone who voted for Bush II before voting Trump, certainly.
I think our history supports your view.
WWII and the the cold war era many of us grew up in from 1941 until 1990 was an aberration of rare bipartisanship in American history due to a shared external threat. Before that our natural tribal competitiveness would often erupt into open violence, and I don't just mean the civil war:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
Just as external threats historically tend to bring people together, pandemics almost always tear communities apart. As ridiculously partisan as things had become since 1990, the pandemic really kicked things into overdrive. the drumbeat of tribalism has always been a distraction, but it is making communication impossible with the need to describe every political wrong with an example from each party since you know a "well that other party" comment will always drag you down that road anyway.
The part that kills me is that there's generally a pretty solid, bipartisan consensus around issues like should civilians have military weapons and the run-away costs of our healthcare (notably, Republican *voters* were more in favor of universal healthcare than the folks who made up the 2020 DNC platform committee (who roundly rejected it of course)). These are life-and-death issues, not shiny objects like campus life but we cannot even get these things debated in Congress.
My question here is: how much of it is the US populous vs how much are our media & politicians to blame for this divide? I agree that the pandemic exacerbated division but it also did so in the same vapid way everything does in America: with dumb culture war bullshit that doesn't ever address underlying issues.
The only optimism I have is coming from the fact that Obama, Trump, and to a lesser extent, Bernie happened: for as different as those guys are, they aren't the candidates that were "supposed" to win. They weren't anointed. Hope that trend continues because I'd rather roll the dice than end up with Buttigieg vs. Yet Another Fucking Bush Brother.
Sas... no spell check from me, i am the worst at it.
I think i have seen research as well talking about the increasing parasitism in the country. I think the CAUSE is corporate America. They fund media that simply cannot do constant and intense reporting on issues corporations dont want discussed.
So the parties, try to attract voters on identity politics rather than policy issues (Climate Change, Wages, Health Care, Regulatory Capture).
The result is lower and lower participation in elections and fewer and fewer Americans that identify with either party... And that is exactly what corporations want. Politicians answer to two bosses. Voters and Lobbyists. And if voters dont vote it makes it very easy to just take the lobbyists money.
The legacy GOP has its problems but the crime analogy doesn't work with them.
The Dems even have a gang of kneebusters (BLM and Antifa). Shall I go on?
Tender - So lets get this straight. Companies all over the country are funding the "knee busters" of the Democratic party, BLM. While the other Knee Busters are not even a group but in the words of the head of the FBI, appointed by Trump, only an IDEA...
Those Dems must be wicked smart... Imagine getting companies to fund your Knee Busters...
Meanwhile QAnon never entered your mind as filling a similar role for the GOP. RIGHT? Of course according to the FBI QAnon is an organization and is a threat to the US....
It is funny talking to people that literally live in fantasy world
According to the FBI, QAnon stole the gardenias from John Brennan's mother's flower garden.
TM... is that your way of saying you know more about the threat to national security that Qanon is than the FBI? Please tell me your sources
The idea that either of those groups are akin to a mafia in any sense is preposterous. You're free to dislike their methods or their ideology but at least understand what you're arguing and try to make a coherent point instead of stringing together conservative scare word Madlibs.
Your idea of what constitutes "the Mafia" is limited by watching too many Godfather movies.
But then, when you say "those groups" perhaps you're referring to something other than the DNC and RNC.
Hmmm... if you mean BLM, yeah there's been a lot of bad press about them lately. Fits snuggly into the meme Kucinich is describing here.
Antifa? Well, here's some confusion. Are they really organized? Listening to a Glenn Greenwald interview last night (I'm pretty sure it was Aaron Mate, Push Back) was very confusing because they were talking about different "stuff".
Still, in that context, yeah, mafia!
And your idea of what constitutes the "the Mafia" seems based wholly on your feelings.
Definitionally, organized crime requires organization. You might not like the street protests around BLM or whatever you think antifa is, but this isn't a well-oiled machine. Would you call the yutz parade on January 6th "organized crime" or something else? Because I would call it something else. In all these cases, these are mass movements of citizens upset at very different things. But to call a group of protesters a "mafia" doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Past that your argument for antifa being organized crime is a "very confusing" interview about "stuff." It's not a particularly compelling point.
Please do go on.
I'm not about to tell you that the Democrats aren't organized crime, but you're going to have to sell me a pile of s... to convince me that the Republicans are "the good guys" here.
Pretty much, this "failure to communicate" is exactly what Kucinich was talking about.
I have a sad story about Hirono and Kucinich, but it would take way too long to set up. In sum: some Democrats (Hirono) used Kucinich (either without his knowledge or there wasn't a thing he could do about it) as a shield for the crimes they committed.
Never said the Republicans were the good guys. But that case is made a thousand times a day by the corporate media. Making it 1,001 times is boring and not helpful.
And neither does denying the GOP crimes. If you didn't mean to do that, let's just say, that's what it sounds like.
Tender - So the Democratic Party is a "crime organization". Is that right? What is Trump and his followers, a cult?
Trump and his followers as you put it have only existed, for better or worse, for about 4 years. What Dennis is talking about is institutional corruption going back decades and an ingrained way of life in politics. Trump was a crass outsider who also did not need the drug called money that makes politics run. Peoples obsession with Trump is just a sideshow to distract you from actual massive corruption in the 100's of billions. Trump himself seems to trigger so many rational people. Might be better if they directed their rage and energy toward the real enemies of the people. -- those forces exposed by Dennis and the ongoing military complex that not only steals the nations tax dollars but is responsible for the DEATHS of our sons and daughters thru unnecessary wars and military actions against whoever can justify their unending supply of the materials to wage those wars. Get it! They are killing American kids for PROFIT!! Get a bit outraged about that and Trump will seem like small potatoes.
"Trump was a crass outsider who also did not need the drug called money that makes politics run."
I really don't understand this statement. Are you trying to tell me that Trump isn't a front-man for "the mob"?
Perhaps our definitions of "organized crime" are so different that we would first have to spend hours talking to one another about it.
Claiming Trump "doesn't need money"... I dunno... what do you mean by that?
The issues being discussed are far more important and deeply ingrained within society that any one man. This attack Trump every time political corruption is written about is like kicking the dog because a hurricane wrecked your house. The military industrial complex which fought Trump tooth and nail is responsible for the deaths and maiming of our children for profit and you keep barking about Trump and the mob. Lived in NYC 90% of my life and never saw Trump depicted as a mob associate or anything more that a very rich, spoiled, playboy real estate tycoon. Suddenly he gets elected and he becomes worse that Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot combined. Get get some perspective.
Well - he did run in the building trades and Atlantic City casinos... there's that.
If Trump WAS a front man for the mob, don't you think that would have been very easy to use as an impeachment charge? I wonder why Pelosi and Schumer didn't start there instead of the Urals...
Neither impeachment was meant to actually remove Trump from office. It was nothing more than political theater to promote a Democratic victory in November.
We do have some communication problems here because, as I see it, we are using the same terms for different things and different terms for the same thing.
I find it interesting that you and "Not Me$" think Trump good because the Democrats are bad. Your analysis of the Democrats seems to be sufficient and accurate, but then using that to ignore Trump's crimes seems to me to be incoherent.
Yeah, Russiagate was a hoax. So was the bounty story. So was the gas attack on Duma. So is the "stolen election". There are so many hoaxes being played right now, it is difficult to know the truth.
As an aside, why has the media been so full of the Tulsa race massacre for the last month? What is it being used to distract us from? Reminds me of the way Israel uses the Holocaust, but without the obvious objective yet.
Further if Trump were mobbed up their solution to the Dems. impeachment would have been a bit more vigorous. Something along the lines of what happened to JFK when he crossed those who actually rigged his election in Chicago. That is just one take. Another is the Deep State bureaucracy moved against him. The Warren Commission report was a very inapt cover-up of a terrible crime. Problem is the American public operates in the dark and is fed information by a very compromised and dishonest corporate media. Since anything is possible political operatives spin stories and inject poison into the information flow. The Russian collusion hoax no matter your feelings about Trump is a very public demonstration of the power of disinformation that occurs when the media and political operative cooperate in deceiving Americans. Yet not one media shill lost their job or the perpetrators of the hoax, GPS and Chris Steel, been held accountable. That is because that hoax benefited one political party. Elected officials directly lied daily and testified under oath with lies yet the "system" still rambles on without missing a beat.
Way off base about the Trump element. This two-time Trump voter proudly recalls shaking Kucinich's hand on the Detroit-Superior bridge in 2009. I told him he was a man of character for voting against the TARP.
The new alignment is real.
Tender - The new alignment may well be real. Does not change the FACT that Trump supporters are cult followers. They all share the same traits. They worship one person. The have strong beliefs in one or many lies. They dont believe anyone but their leader.... You know, you!
LOL. I can tell from this comment where you get your news from.
Tender - I doubt that you can tell where i get my news from because making the observation of Cult Members has nothing to do with News. It is a simple statement of observed truth...
Oh wait, your in the CULT so truth does not matter... Is that right?
Exactly...so self righteous
This very statement ... "the FACT that Trump supporters are cult followers. They all share the same traits. They worship one person. The have strong beliefs in one or many lies. They don't believe anyone but their leader." is by itself blatantly prejudicial, narrow-minded, uninterested in the FACT that Trump supporters are hugely diverse, and is precisely the sort of attitude that can also be found in people who are racist, sexist, anti-Semitic or otherwise mindlessly mired in a form of hatred that leads to the worst horrors in history. Trump inspired a great variety of opinions and reactions, and there is simply no possible way to lump all Trump voters into one basket of deplorables.
Ladyhawk - You seem to have missed the context. I compared Rachel Maddow following Russian Collusion believers in the same light.
You call my view narrow minded. Lets test your hypothesis against yourself.
If a voter believes Trumps LIE, that he "won" the election, would you say that voter are thinking rationally?
I think i can LUMP all Trump supporters into one basket if they believe his lie. You call them deplorables. Not me. I call them MISINFORMED, Just like the Rachel Maddow beleiving Trump collusion believers on the left.
Can't wait to hear you talk in circles around this one.
While I surely cannot understand why anyone would have voted for Trump, I stand up and loudly applaud you for for not voting for Clinton or Biden.
I voted for the American Shopping Party.
John - You are funny. The US has 5% of the worlds population and 20% of the Covid Deaths... Tell me again how Hillary would have done worse?
Yeah, pick just one measure and then apply it to everything else. We're about to descend into "whataboutism" and nothing will be gained from that. I'll leave it up to someone else who might care to engage you.
Was any of those COVID deaths caused by State governors who issued orders that directly resulted in the deaths of thousands? How about the mixed signals from the CDC and NIH? Trumps travel policies and his fast tracking the vaccine did offset some of his early mistakes and boneheaded remarks. But to lay the entire national death toll at his doorstep is a bridge too far. Nancy prancing around S.F.'s Chinatown encouraging everyone to visit was pretty crazy. Everyone was making errors based on the politics of the day. Who IF anyone got it right? Even the WHO was lying for political reasons. The media bears some responsibility for their lies and political backbiting about the virus and its origins. Trump was a target of convenience to distract from the many stupid and just dumb policies that were enacted and advocated for during the early stages of this pandemic. Trump on balance was often right and as often just wrong.
Those numbers would be true if you believe the numbers China reported and Hillary is the ultimate crime family
For the EU it's 6% and 35%. Thank God for Africa, eh?!
Why is it that so many, like you, think that because one party is "bad" the other party is "good"? (If you don't think that, then why frame your question in the way you did?)
Kucinich was a Democrat in a Democratic controlled city.
Now, if you want to talk about Mike Pence and Indiana, it is a different "crime family".
John - I never said nor do i think that one party being bad makes the other party good.
You offered zero evidence that the Democratic Party is a crime organization. Your hyperbole is just confusing. The parties literally write the law to think of them as CRIME families is sort of like a Republican thinking Trump won the election, just plane stupid. Right?
When the Democratic Party fought the civil war and then proceeded to nurse the KKK and oppressed black people for 100 years with black laws and Jim Crow, were they a “crime organization”. You must think they found God in the 1960s like other Democratic Party loyalists.
I guess, on the technicality that they were responsible for immoral laws, and they upheld them, they weren’t a “crime organization”. True, I think that using that phrase is misleading, but what they were is worse than any criminal organization and what they are today is only slightly better, but not because of any fundamental change in their principles—that is none, as they declared to the world in court after they torpedoed Bernie Sanders when they said they were not obligated to run a fair democratic primary.
Political parties shift their views over time. The Jim Crow South Democrat of yesteryear is very different than the Democrat of today... The Dwight Eisenower Republican of yesteryear is nothing like the Trump supporting Republian of 2021.
So a blanket hatred of a political party, based on their history, makes no sense. Which version of the party do you oppose and specifically what actions are they taking today that you feel the opposing party is better at?
The US government has been corrupt for 200+ yrs. The trick is understanding what they did RIGHT and how that got done. Because clearly the US government has done enough RIGHT to make it the most powerful country in the history of the world.
Instead of dwelling on how bad each party is maybe focus on what each party can actually do to improve peoples lives.. And there is a LOT
I have a separate question you may be able to help me with.
When people want to define their political enemies they are willing to go back over 100 years to define who they are today.
Yet, when I point out examples of institutional racism like the war on drugs that is still currently being carried out today, I'm regularly told by these people that it's all ancient history, America has move on and so should I.
Can you explain how we arrive that these two very distinct versions of time simultaneously?
Then you need to re-examine your post. Because that is exactly what you said.
Just because it is a "law" doesn't make it "moral". So is it your contention that it can't be a crime unless it violates the law?
Let's assume I can write a law that says you have to give me 95% of your salary. If you don't give it to me, have you committed a crime? Under your definition stated here, it would appear so.
John… Laws are not morals. There is a big difference.
If my son cheats on his test I am going to work on his morals. I don’t need him going to prison.
If a Democratic society votes in leaders that want to tax 95% of my income or yours we can and should be legally responsible to pay.
If we were smart we would only tax at 95% every dollar after your first $10m annually but that is what democracy is for. Debate, vote, action
Congratulations, Tender Morsel! That is the silliest, most juvenile comment I've read in years! You're apparently not in the least aware that the Donald Trump and the Republican Party are attempting to install a dictatorship in our country. If, through the combination of vote suppression and convincing state electors to cast their electoral votes for the Republican candidate regardless of the popular vote, Donald Trump becomes President in 2024, there will not be another Presidential election for a long, long time.
Baa, baa. Show us on the doll where the bad fascist touched you.
Tender Morsel, the maturity of your response is simply breathtaking. Do you always resort to juvenile sarcasm when someone questions your reasoning?
Cleveland definitely had...and in some ways still has...olde school Mob stuff. Vegas in the 60's and 70's, public utilities, concrete and public works contractors, union pension fund shenanigans, etc., etc.
John - Which judges ARE owned by the mob? Evidence?
Vanessa Baraitser comes immediately to mind. Of course she's in the UK so you can quibble about that if you like.
Brent Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court because of Mitch McConnell.
The definition of "the mob" is rather elusive, but let's just rename it "organized crime". Now look at Pelosi's wealth. Look at McConnell's wealth. Read Lewis' book "Flash Boys" or "The Big Short". Or you might want to find his interview about his new book "Premonition".
It isn't as if there aren't other sources showing the same thing.
But, perhaps, you want to tell me that the judges interpret the "law". The 2008 housing bubble was completely "legal", but was it ethical? Was it moral? If a judge isn't ethical and moral who does he work for but organized crime?
Or are you saying that "crime" depends?
Your hyperbole makes you sound like a very unserious thinker
Thornton Melon tried to warn us all.
For those who, Like me, don't know what you're talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSLscJ2cY04
Hope it is on Netflix. Looks like it would be fun.
"I have vivid memories of an exchange in Houston, Texas between reporters who one after the other declared how furious they were that Kucinich had not yet dropped out of debates, so that “real” candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards could have more airtime."
In a sentence, the problem.
I always admired Dennis Kucinich. While I didn’t support many of his positions, I always felt that he was fairly honest and principled. Looking back, it is now obvious that is the reason the Democrat establishment despised him...
Kucinich points out the depth of institutional corruption at the local level. A fair point. But when you look at the US in 2021 most of the damage to this country has been done by Washington, no?
The corrupt entities in Cleveland did not cause poor and middle class wages to stagnate. They did not create this nations awful health care system, they did not negotiate our trade deals, they did not decide to bail out bankers and not homeowners.
Given that he offers literally no solutions other than dont give up hope i have to wonder what is relevant about him.
I have to think his appeal to this board will simply be that he dislikes Democrats. That seems to be the only thing that matters to most people on this board. Ideas to solve real problems always take a back seat to the more important issue of hating liberals.
Setting aside the debate over how local and Federal Politics has failed us in different ways, I suspect DK's appeal is a willingness to stand up to financial and politically self interested parties who do not care about the public good. It doesn't hurt that he has been correct on a series of big issues (against the war on Iraq, for gay marriage etc) at a time when the majority were proven wrong. I think a willingness to protect the public interest and a track record of being right on several large issues is more relevant than you imagine
There was an excellent article recently in the Intercept called "Empire" that tracks the political career of Joe Biden since he was first elected in 1972. You will see there is not a single core issue we was not on six sides of (sometimes all at the same time) over the past 50 years before ultimately landing on the most expedient option that had the worst outcomes. That is the norm.
https://theintercept.com/empire-politician/
Perhaps you underestimate just how low the expectations for politicians has become in recent years. Like Tulsi Gabbard, I probably disagree with DK on many issues, but I am willing to support someone who sometimes disagrees with me on principle when I know it is not an entirely self interested decision on their part.
Ar - As a supporter of both Warren and then Sanders in the Primaries i absolutely hear you in your analysis of what a "tool" Biden is. He goes with the wind chasing votes.
If you look at History leaders like FDR and LBJ were no different. Much of their landmark legislation was not passed because they passionately believed the cause but because they simply wanted votes. If you think Trump is a racist he is nothing compared to what LBJ was... FDR got social security passed, i doubt he ever met much less knew or cared about a elderly person living in poverty..
That is Democracy.. Voters don's seem to realize that the President of the US is NOT the CEO of the country. He or she does not have the authority to simply take their ideas and get them executed.
I love that Kucinich, and Bernie were so right on those issues. I love that Warren has actually created programs that truly protect consumers from banks.
But at the end of the day only currency of any politician is votes. And voters that are made aware of issues and that fight for them generally get their way. In the 1960's one of those issues was Civil Rights and voters go behind that issue and it got passed.
In the 1990's encarceration is what voters wanted and that is what they got from leaders like Biden. Voters also wanted a WAR with Iraq.
Today voters are demanding more help for the poor and middle class who have been devastated by policy under Dems and GOP... The massive spending bill Biden is pushing is certainly a stop closer to that than anything Bush2, Obama or Trump ever proposed.
Personally i think M4A and $15 min wage and the laws to help unions organize are more important. But what Biden is showing is us that he is responding to what voters want today.
Yes DC is corrupt. It always has been. That does not mean voters cannot get change. It means they have to work HARDER for the change
I agree with much of what you say here generally about politics.
I'm not a Trump fan, but have know idea or concern if he was racist or not. Like you, I'm more interested in policy than the personal views of politicians. I don't care if LBJ was the head of the clan in Texas when he gave us the civil rights act any more than I care of Truman was racist when he made the decision to integrate the Army. I also don't care about purity of motivation, although I do think in LBJ's case he was so personally objectionable people assign more racism to his decisions in later life than he deserves (yes he said this will guarantee n***** votes for a 100 years, but he also said it would cost the party the South for 100 years, which his opponents conveniently leaves out).
My response was specifically to your question:
"Given that he offers literally no solutions other than don't give up hope i have to wonder what is relevant about him."
His relevance is a proven track record of standing on principle and being right on the big issues. I would not say the same for Warren or Sanders (standing on principle for the former and being right on many of the big issues for the later, although both would have been better than Biden).
I really don't believe the outcome of this last election made a significant difference. By choosing Joe Biden, the Democrats nominated the politician who embodies the worst of both parties for the past 50 years. I really do encourage everyone to read the article Empire I attached that covers his history in office. Joe Biden might be marginally better on social issues than Trump, but is exponentially worse on foreign issues if you are generally against war.
The one thing Joe Biden could have done that would have distinguished him from President Trump was delivering on a $15 minimum wage. That was more important than all the temporary welfare he handed out instead, which Trump was also happy to do if re-elected. The corporate elite will accept all the short term welfare in the world as long as they are never asked to make a long term commitment to the dignity of work for the poor.
I agree with you that DC is corrupt and things can be improved. I think DK would be a good man for the job if he ever took an interest.
AR -AR - I see. Your core point is that Biden has been wrong on issue after issue and Kuchinch has proven to be right on big issues that at the time were not popular..
I totally get it and wont argue your point.
Given that the US has a Representative Democracy being 'right" on an issue does not really matter if you cant win office or get a bill passed other than effecting public opinion (which is very important). So it is not surprising that politicians are going to be WRONG on their vote when the group they are trying to please is WRONG.... So in the 90's most Americans wanted an incarceration state. In the 1960's they wanted Civil Rights.
Politicians are the layer between mob rule and representative democracy.
My point is that politicians don't usually win office for "being right". They win office when they stand for issues in line with how voters think. And more recently they simply win office by getting voters not to vote. When that happens politicians can vote the please their donors rather than voters. Right?
I worked for and donated to Bernie and Warren. But the reality is that neither of them won even the Primary. So in their case Being Right (at least more so than Biden) did not translate to victory. Why should Kuchinich being "right" translate to victory?
Going back to Johnson. In the early 60's Johnson worked tirelessly to get civil rights passed, not because he was not a racist but because that was how he could get votes. In the 1990's Biden pushed mass incarceration because that is where the votes were.
Now we are in 2021 and The American Rescue Plan and if passed the Infrastructure Bill will do more to improve the lives of poor and middle class Americans than anything Clinton, Bush2, Obama or Trump ever did for them.
So perhaps the bigger queston than WHO we elect is WHAT voters think and want. In the 1960's our views on Civil Rights were good. In the 1990's our views on mass encarceration were horrific.
Perhaps we should fight harder to change he minds of VOTERS than we need to work on getting politicians elected because they say they stand for what we want today.... Voters get what we elect. No?
This appears to be a double post, which happens to me all the time. I answered most of this in the 1st post above, but it appears this last paragraph is slightly different so I will address there here.
It's an interesting question. Do we fight to get people elected, then push for them to do what we want, or do we try to change hearts and minds on key arguments so those running for election add those items to their plank? Joe Biden was the drug warriors drug warrior along with many other politicians in the 90's and 2000's. He was also against Gay Marriage. From an electability standpoint he has been more successful that DK who held the right views at the wrong time, which is democracy.
Yet, Biden today has changed his position on both these issues. As a practical matter, no one is going to challenge and electorate where 65%+ of the electorate is for legalizing marijuana and better than 70% are for marriage equality. That does not make him evil, it makes him a politician listening to his base. There was enormous money propping up the war on drugs and until Eric Holder removed that financial incentive at the Federal Level, the DEA to the prison union along with prosecutor and police unions across the country were going to defend the war on drugs. Asset Forfeiture still has them clinging to it, but most of them have admitted it's a lost cause and moved on to enforcing lucrative prostitution stings instead. Well, they call it human trafficking, but I think we know what that means after decades of watching drug users put away from being drug traffickers.
I'm going to apply the wildly overused Overton Window here. At what point is a politician both the right person on an issue that is possible. Clearly DK was not that person in 2004, but having a failed record that proves prophetic is not a bad thing. Obama would have lost badly if he had run against the Iraqi war in 2002, but by 2008 those same views allowed is to steamroll both Clinton and McCain and that he held those views during unpopular times gave him added appeal with the voters.
I think a DK could easily position himself the same way. His campaign could be "The guy should should have elected in 2004 is the guy you can now elect for in 2024." Not perfect, but a whole lot better than "Make America Great Again."
AR - I see. Your core point is that Biden has been wrong on issue after issue and Kuchinch has proven to be right on big issues that at the time were not popular..
I totally get it and wont argue your point.
Given that the US has a Representative Democracy being 'right" on an issue does not really matter if you cant win office. And winning office many times requires that politicians are WRONG on issues.
Here is where i think you might consider looking at Political leaders from a different lense.
Obama said and stood for policy issues much more in line with my "liberal" policy beliefs. He too was opposed to the Iraq war. He campaigned on Universal Health Care.
But none of that changes the fact that Bidens American Rescue plan and if passed his infrastructure Bill will have far more positive effect on the lives of poor and middle class Americans than anything passed by Clinton, Bush2, Obama or Trump...
So sure it is great if a leader "gets it right". And certainly Kucinich has don that. I will argue Sanders and Warren did as well but we can table that for another day. But it is BIDEN that won and BIDEN that is getting the Bills passed. Not Kusinich not Sanders not Obama.
This is how Republican Democracy works.
Perhaps my original and probably poorly stated point about Joe Biden is that without counterfactuals it's hard to determine if a candidate is good or bad choice. It's not enough to argue if President Biden passing the American Rescue plan and perhaps his infrastructure Bill helps. It must be shown that it is substantially different than anything Trump would have done and let's face it, say what we want about Trump, he was no deficit hawk. I'm not at all surprised to see that President Biden is continuing many of the policies I liked least about the Trump admin.
Presidents are like quarterbacks. They're blamed far too much when things go wrong and thanked way to much when things go right. I actually place less emphasis on their yes than their no power. That is, what are they willing to stop dead in its tracks with a veto. This is an area where having principles really matters. The area where presidents still have enormous yes power, starting wars, I'm probably more aligned with Sanders, DK and Trump than I am with Biden.
The unknowable for me is if DK could get elected. As you say correctly, democracy is the process of getting votes, but as Stalin said it does not matter who gets the votes as much as who counts them. I find it hard to imagine those with real power would ever allow us to count the votes for someone like DK for all the reasons their perfectly happy to allow that count for Biden. Like most things, I hope I'm wrong about this.
If you want an example of a candidate I would crawl through broken glass to get elected it's Ron Wyden. Unfortunately, he's too smart to run.
"We now know that Bank of America routinely conspired with other banks to make sure it paid low prices for the privilege of managing the moneys of various cities and towns. If the city of Baltimore or the University of Mississippi or the Guam Power Authority issued bonds to raise money, the bank would huddle up with the likes of Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley and decide whose "turn" it was to win the bid."
Mango- I did not know that but not shocking if it’s true.
His issue is with Regulatory and Government CAPTURE.
There is a great deal of research on this and depending where a society is in its development it can be good or bad.
To a great extent it was in fact corrupt local entities like city governments that have hurt the middle class, especially in ways that Kucinich talks about. Redlining for one. Or the way that cities allow for monopolies like cab companies or the big power company that tried to take over Muny.
That said, it's big money and banker interests that hurt cities and their citizens.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/matt-taibbis-newest-rolling-stone-120421796.html
Redlining hurt blacks for sure as do our local policing laws.
My point is that the Federal Issues I noted have hurt the middle class far more than corruption on the local level.
In a way "redlining" hurt whites too. It never allowed the two races to live together or get to know one an other as neighbors. I lived in a segregated area of NYC and only after entering a multi-racial workplace did I get to know and appreciate people of all races and backgrounds. Before that I was fed media and social stereotypes full of lies and exaggerations. When your neighbor's kids and yours are playing and interacting and your talking on a daily basis it is almost impossible to buy the crap that is being pushed by the forces of hate.
«In a way "redlining" hurt whites too. It never allowed the two races to live together or get to know one an other as neighbors.»
That is a very smart comment, and the purpose of redlining is precisely to prevent that mixing, and that started decades ago, with mortgage guarantee rules:
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america
Note: the article and book say "The U.S. Government Segregated America", but that of course is propaganda: "the government" as such, as an emerging entity, has no interest in policies to further segregation, it is the lobbies that "sponsor" the politicians who run the government the ones who shaped those policies. In the case of segregationist mortgage guarantee policies it was because the Democrats at the time relied on a big mass of House and Senate votes from Dixie, and those were sponsored by segregationists.
But it is not just redlining, there is a much, much bigger issue: most new suburban/exurban residential developments are rigorously segregated by income (which in the USA largely implies by race in areas with large minorities).
This is done implicitly by having the houses in each development priced at around a target price-point, that excludes most people of inferior castes, and most people of superior castes would spend more for a house in a development with better housing standards. It is also sometimes done explicitly by having zoning rules and estate covenants that effectively forbid changing the intended destination of the housing, e.g. not allowing splitting single family homes into smaller flat etc.
This segregation by primarily income has had huge impacts on society and also on voting patterns, in particular to attitude to taxation and spending.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It's such an important point. There are people who invest an enormous amount of mental work in not seeing examples of institutional racism like red lining because they're afraid it will cost them something if they admit it exists.
The truth is that institutional racism like you describe and criminalization hurt all of us in just the way you described. Solving institutional racism is not about writing checks, it's about removing impediments to create a more perfect union.
Yes, redlining and other discriminatory practices hurt blacks on a huge scale - in fact directly leading to the high levels of poverty in Black America due in large part to the inability to pass down generational wealth in the form of valuable real estate. That has influenced the crime rate, the crack and opioid epidemics, the carceral state and the overall economy (incl. the middle class at large).
Not trying to be rude, but you didn't actually note any specific federal issues; you just said that policy/ies in Washington D.C. have done great harm to the American middle class. What did you have in mind, exactly? I'm sure I'll agree with most if not all of it.
Mango - Yes i believe i mentioned policy such as our current health care policy, trade policy and the policy to bail out bankers and not home owners. There are many more.
My argument, similar to what Francis Fukuyama argues, is that governments should be judged by their outcomes first and foremost. And his research shows that Democracies in aggregate produce better outcomes than authoritarian non democracies.. For now China is proving him wrong but broadly his views have held up.
So yes, the big cities suffer from CAPTURE as Kucinich points out. But the evidence is that big cities, corrupt as their local governments have been have produced significantly better outcomes for their citizens than say Washington which for the past 40yrs, and due to policies such as the ones i pointed to and many many others, has not produced for poor and middle class Americans as well as big cities have produced for their residence.
«But the evidence is that big cities, corrupt as their local governments have been have produced significantly better outcomes for their citizens than say Washington»
I think that is a huge misunderstanding: the primary determinant of a city's inhabitants well being is whether it attracts businesses and jobs, and that is largely outside the power of the local administration, however much they try.
One of the biggest determinants of where businesses and jobs tend to concentrate is central government policy; as a major example if the central government had not bailed out Wall Street with a few trillions of fresh handouts, today NYC would probably look like Detroit; also if the central government had not spent fantastic amounts to establish Los Angeles as the port from which the Navy could control the Pacific nobody would have bet that a chunk of the south-western desert would have agglomerated as it has.
"...the primary determinant of a city's inhabitants well being is whether it attracts businesses and jobs, and that is largely outside the power of the local administration, however much they try...."
Queens, NY, residents overwhelmingly supported plans for Amazon's HQ bringing in 25,000 new jobs with an average wage of $150,000, despite protests from Ocasio-Cortez and other politicians over $3.2 billion in capital grants and tax incentives, polls have shown.
The Long Island City deal would have also seen Amazon invest in a 600-seat public school; a workforce development and training space; an artists’ workspace; and 149,650-square-feet of public open space among other projects — all of which is now lost.
BH - While i think i agree with you in theory i am not sure your hypothesis for supporting your theory is aligned as neatly with the facts as it might be.
Lets start with bailing out the banks. Had the government focused more on bailing out home owners than banks then primary party hurt would have been share holders. The government could have easily, as they do frequently, taken over the assets of the failed banks (IE the employees) and sold them off to other entities.
So i am confident NYC would be just fine had Obama bailed out homeowners instead. HOmes in the Hamptons may has had slower appreciation but asside from that NYC would have survived quite well.
In terms of cities attracting business I would frame that different. Large cities that have a culture of investment in proper infrastructure can actually produce their own businesses and industries. I would agree, cities don't just pitch a power point deck and get companies into their city (sure Dallas has done that but broadly that is not a scalable solution).
So back to my point NYC and Boston and LA and SF have internally and with their state and federal government invested in the infrastructure (schools, parks, roads, electricity, stores, restaurants etc...) to actually produce innovative businesses and industries in everything from finance (NY) to entertainment (LA) to tech (SF). This allows these cities to then diversify and evolve over time as these industries come and go. And all of this has happened in spite of clear corruption.
Not saying corruption is okay. It slows down progress in many ways and stunts democracy. But in 2021 the corruption in DC has had a far more negative impact on the lives of the poor and middle class than the corruption of big cities.
Was pulling for Kucinich back in 2008 so it's always good to hear from him.
Thank you for this. I always liked Kucinich and the media’s portrayal of his being a kook in order to serve the status quo isn’t surprising.