Dockadams Wrote:

Bird Box Challenge?

This is more proof that Americans really are dumb, or stupid, with probably nothing else to do.

usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/...

How about this? I'll blindfold some fool and drive them onto an interstate highway and make them get out onto the pavement and tell them to stroll around till something finds them?

I wonder if people doing the bird box challenge are Trump voters?

Chet Ruminski Wrote:

"Big money and big business is not a resource. It simply is the result of a political economy that allows private ownership of production and protects private property."

You say it is not a resource then you explain how it has been maligned to serve a selfish purpose. Everybody that ever told their kid they need to get an education and work hard to avoid a life of flipping burgers or cleaning bathrooms contributed to the mess we are in. A system that manages money for profit is a resource. It just needs to be guided by human rights. Then it would be a benevolent system. What do you think was the source for:

"and overthrew the tables of themoneychangers" and jubilee"

There have always been people that understood the violation of human rights.

"Tax code for the people."

Big Money and big business is an aggregation of power. Money is the means of keeping score. The system that manages money for profit is the result of a political economy that protects private ownership of production, protects private property and allows for distortion and corruption of knowledge. Money is a means of exchange. In the case of power centers it is used to exchange for favors political or otherwise. Money removed from the context of power can be a resource or rather a tool which can aid the many.

As for guiding a political economy by human rights first a discussion and decision-making process for the definition of human rights is necessary. You will find that Von Hayek and Friedman argued that the so-called free market was an expression of freedom which would be considered a human right. They were arguing from a place that was not occupied by Adam Smith. Even Adam Smith fell victim to what Duncan Foley call's Adam's Fallacy. It is impossible to have the result of a system based upon human immorality, greed, result in a good for the many. Yet you will not find but a handful of people willing to radically change the political economy. Certain half-measures like removal of corporate personhood etc would help but they are not massive remaking of the system.

Multiple problems with Pompeo and other reactionary religionists. We will start with scripture claiming rulers/governments are instituted by God. If this is true then the founders were acting against God’s will. Second, I have never seen anywhere in scripture that says trumpeting your nation is God’s will or your duty. Third, the entire concept of God’s will, god’s plan etc can be summed up as Inshallah. This is merely the use of religion to cover generally violent politics.

No, we don’t need religionist politicians. In many instances the state must act in a manner incompatible with scripture. Enough of the prattle of these people.

TJ Wrote:

The huuuge issue is it relieves stress, pain and anxiety. Various other benefits as well.

Big pharma doesn't rake in the cash though.

Schmidt Wrote:

that guy in AZ Wrote:

Yesterday, Trump signed an executive order freezing civilian employee pay at 2018, in spite of the fact that they were scheduled to receive a miserly 1% increase. Over the summer, President Donald Trump said it was his intention to limit the “long-term fixed costs” of “across-the-board pay increases” as part of a plan to better manage the government’s budget.

Freezing federal workers' pay is just one more vindictive action against a group of workers whom Trump feels are not sympathetic to his presidency. It follows his federal worker hiring freeze of 2017. Of course, many are represented by unions, and Trump hates unions. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the "largest federal employee union representing 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide and overseas. Workers in virtually all functions of government at every federal agency depend upon AFGE for legal representation, legislative advocacy, technical expertise and informational services."

Most all the issues they support are also a part of the Democratic Party platform. In other words, although officially no-partisan, it is not hard to see why this union is a Democratic Party stronghold and therefore would be attacked and undermined by Trump. It is the "deep state" that Trump often refers to.

However, we should also understand that Trump's opposition to federal workers stems mostly from the Tea Party (Freedom Caucus) whose members want to shrink the size of government. So Trump's attacks on federal workers are aligned with Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows...but also Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter.

Ann Coulter, for example, tweeted on August 13, 2018: "All federal salaries should be halved. They get total job security, self-paced work, gold-plated heath plans, holidays off, PLUS a pension. They're not supposed to have higher salaries, too."

So freezing the federal worker pay could be seen as another Ann Coulter type move. When Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh speak, Trump listens. It is a strong part of his voting base.

Schmidt Wrote:

Chet prompted me to go back and reread much of the history of the rise of Hitler to power. I looked at it from a different perspective...how he built a critical mass of supporters and then used threats and intimidation as well as propaganda to make his power secure. Ultimately he was an opportunist taking advantage of massive discontent, telling people what they wanted to hear...casting blame.

Yet the Trump situation is not the same or as dire as that era where a whole country was in discontent following the demands for payment of war reparations from the Great War. It humiliated the German people, and the situation gave rise to an opportunist to take command.

In the USA we have checks and balances that will see Trump ultimately removed from office. However, that's not an excuse for his election in the first place. That process exposed several weaknesses in our electoral system that someone so unqualified could be elected in the first place. Not arguing that point.

There are so many factors at work. Robert Gordon writes about the end of growth due to innovation that does not create jobs and growth on the scale seen from the 19th century through the middle of the twentieth century. Innovation has gone from job-creating to job-destroying. Short term thinking due to financialization as well as intensified globalization has exposed workers everywhere to a race to the bottom. Low skill jobs are being replaced by automation. Higher skilled jobs will suffer the same fate. Charlatans under the guise of populism turn to hatred of “the other” whether Muslims, immigrants, women or just about anyone who isn’t white male to get elected.

Do you want to know the real reason why? People are scared to death of change. When leaders of whatever stripe: political, economic, religious have no solutions that do not involve pain the masses will turn to the charlatan.

Dutch,

What you are describing is the financialization of life. Indeed, in the minds of the Von Hayekians EVERYTHING is decided by the so-called market and therefore by prices which is the only signal that the market can give. All decisions are based upon buying the best value. Yet because humans are social animals such a system is inherently unstable, equality destroying and destructive to human social interaction.

The ultimate goal of the Von Hayekians is everyone competes against everyone else by their "brand" in a worldwide labor/transaction pool. They forget to mention that said system is being imposed with an existing inequality in place as well as rules and political apparatus distorted to favor wealth. THE MANY WILL NEVER BE PART OF THE FEW. As for religion as Marx noted it is the opiate of the masses. Not because of some cries of atheistic communism but because religion offers those being crushed an emotional outlet so that they can return to the arena with the belief that they can survive and advance when "the odds are never in their favor."