In Congressional elections this fall, Republicans hope voters’ decisions will be made strictly on local issues. But Democratic strategists increasingly realize that their hopes for victory hinge on their ability to make the fall election a national referendum on Bush, Congressional Republicans and whatever alternative Democrats choose to present. The reasons are clear: Nationally, the Republicans are tied to Bush, whose… return to article
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Reader Comments (12)Page 1 of 1 pagesIf Democrats want to provide the “real security” that matters to most Americans, they must offer protection against these growing risks. That means providing better social insurance: universal health insurance, wage insurance, improved unemployment insurance and expanded public pension programs. It means guaranteeing free college education or equivalent technical training for everyone. And it means advancing a new strategy to regulate the global economy, a strategy that involves not only helping people adjust to global economic changes but ensuring that the benefits of globalization flow primarily to working people in all countries.
In other words, install a socialist bureaucracy to take care of everybodys’ needs. Wonderful idea, it worked to perfection in the old Soviet Union until the old Soviet Union unaccountably crashed, more’s the pity. And it is working now in Old Europe: economic stagnation, moral collapse, and demographic decline.
David Moberg is guilty of plagiarism; the ideas in the article he has written should have been credited to Karl Marx, and the effects of Karl Marx’s ideas should be credited to Groucho Marx, had those effects not been so sad. Communism is just like Duck Soup with about 40 million more dead bodies.
The rational and moral superiority of democracy and free-market capitalism is beyond dispute, compared to socialism. This is more appreciated by those that have experienced valid forms of both systems, such as Eastern Europe. But we still see people like Moberg (never a peasant or worker he) who have a perverse ideological attachment to destructive socialist bureaucracies. For the benefit of the workers and peasants, of course.
When people commit, voluntarily or involuntarily, to the bureaucracy, they are doomed. Thus we see large pockets of poverty in our biggest cities (New Orleans, Detroit, Los Angeles) administered by the Democrat Party bureaucracy. The only way out is to get a real education and/or become an entrepreneur; there are extremely few athletes, rap artists, and lottery winners, compared to the rising ranks of Black entrepreneurs, for example.
Maybe the workers and peasants should stand up on their own hind legs, reject the socialist bureaucrats that wish to control their lives, and build their own lives and futures. It works, while socialism has NEVER worked.
Posted by scorp on May 13, 2006 at 2:07 PM Thus we see large pockets of poverty in our biggest cities (New Orleans, Detroit, Los Angeles) administered by the Democrat Party bureaucracy.
Let’s see 7 million people are living in poverty that used to be in the middle class under clinton, millionaires have doubled under bush, and you say democract has caused large pockets of poverty?We are under a social bureacracy now with bush. The number one growing economy is china, communisim is working pretty good for them. We borrow 2-3 billion dollars a day from china to pay the interest on our national debt.
We owe 23 countries trillons of dollars, Bush is building economic wealth from borrowed money and has made the government into the biggest bureacracy the u.s. has ever seen. As for moral collapse look at the war, scooter libby, karl rove, jack abramoff, number 3 man in the cia fired,nsa,giving up of a cia agent to get back at joe wilson for telling the truth which is treason in time of war.
Even the neo-cons are saying things are going to far. bush at 29% approval and still falling, congress at 23%, oil companies making 30 billion dollars a quarter and bush giving them big tax brakes, hurricane season in 18 days, fema disbanned, people just have had enough.
Posted by brian28 on May 13, 2006 at 11:05 PM universal health insurance, wage insurance, improved unemployment insurance and expanded public pension programs. It means guaranteeing free college education or equivalent technical training for everyone. This works pretty well in canada, england, australia, that is why america is so far behind. How many scientist do we produce? 44 million people without health insurance, unemployment 4.7 if you don’t count people after 18 months when your insurance runs out. It is better to spend trillions of dollars on iraq and government bureacracy,energy bill for oil companies,medicare bill to the pill companies, while over a million people slip into poverty every year.
Posted by brian28 on May 13, 2006 at 11:27 PM If the rate of job loss is up as claimed in the article, how is unemployment at an all-time low?
Posted by Hyjinx22 on May 14, 2006 at 3:15 PM Ummm…we don’t need anymore “labor” protections, we have enough worthless, blood sucking unions for that. Just ask GM.
Posted by Hyjinx22 on May 14, 2006 at 3:17 PM brian28 - China is a communist government with a ruthlessly capitalist economy. They have abandoned the idea of state run economy as evidenced by their privatization of their major banks and acceptance of foreign investment into non-state run industries. China is moving towards a hybrid model of communism/capitalism. It is an interesting experiment but the rulers of China are not accounting for something. The development of a middle class that wields real power. When this occurs, the old system will finally collapse and the Maoists who ruthlessly repress large percentages of their own population will finally pay for their crimes. I’m sure of it, capitalism works every time its tried, our little “poison pill” to the ChiComs. I do acknowledge that they are buying much of our debt, but somebody would if it weren’t them because US Treasuries our highly sought. But this is a function of our domestic spending which has been gratuitious and disgusting, something that needs to be fixed. Please do not confuse this with the trade deficit as many others do, it is ignorant.
Posted by Hyjinx22 on May 14, 2006 at 3:24 PM Iraqis owe America big for 2 favors:
1) relieving them of the Saddam family;
2) tamping down the _inevitable_ follow-on conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.
Would it have been better for Iraqis to wait 30 more years to get rid of Saddam’s sons by themselves and then suffer a 10 times worse civil war?—10 times worse because no foreign army would be around to keep some kind of lid on while a peaceful shakeout could be at least attempted.The Democrats have a political problem critizing Bush’s abysmal handling of the aftermath. Anytime I hear Democrats complain about the admittedly crazy incompetence of the war’s management I get nervous—and so do a lot of other midwest progressives. A lot of today’s liberals would not have supported the civil war between the states—if they had to view it on television—certainly not if they had to send their kids to fight in it.
L.B.J. passed most of today’s progessive legislation 40 years ago—including a $9.25/hr minimum wage (at half of today’s average income level)! But L.B.J. was willing to use military force to fight evil in the world. (His basic tenet in Vietnam was that if we did not fight the craziest communist leader—Ho Chi Mihn—who was willing to kill millions to take over his little peice of territory—the Southern half of Vietnam—his less beligerent fellows would be encouraged to moved in militarily everywhere else.)
Unfortunately, until voters in the red states feel that the Democrats can be trusted to defend the country from outside threats, the red states are going to be that much more difficult to turn blue.
Posted by ddrew2u on May 14, 2006 at 4:49 PM There are several reasons why we have poverty in our big cities.
1. Dropouts ... too many high school dropouts. Now these kids have no chance. Have any of you liberals went into our cities and talked to the dropouts? Go talk to a 19-25 year old dropout. Ask him/her some basic questions ... like who are their U.S. Senators ... or how much money do they think tution for a semester is at a state school ... or how many U.S. Senators we have in America ... or how many Justices we have on the Supreme Court. Better yet, ask them if they worked in a factory and made $20 / hour, and they get paid time/half for overtime, and they work 50 hours .. how much would they gross that week.
2. Poor people having kids ... too many dropouts and poor people have too many kids. Now imagine that after talk to a dropout from #1, and he/she can’t answer any of those questions I listed ... then you find out that he/she has is 23 and has 2 kids. Now how is a stupid dropout going to teach those 2 kids? Now those 2 kids will be stupid, dropout, and the cycle continues.
And it’s amazine that every Mayor in Detroit since 1962 has been a Democrat and starting in 74’ with Young, all of the mayors are Black.
1962-1970 Jerome Cavanagh
1970-1974 Roman Gribbs
1974-1994 Coleman Young
1994-2002 Dennis Archer
2002-present Kwame KilpatrickAnd isn’t amazing that every Mayor of New Orleans since the 1930’s has been a Democrat. And every Mayor since 1978 has been Black.
Also, Louisiana has had only 2 Republican Governors in the past 100 years, and both of them got voted out after 1 term. Louisiana has never had any Republicans in Congress and only 1 Senator that is GOP.
TO SUM IT UP: In the last 100 years both Louisiana and New Orleans have been almost 100% controlled by the Democrats.
SO WHO’S FAULT IS IT?
What is funny, despite these facts, Liberals will still say it’s the Republicans fault. lol…
That is called “delusion”. Believing something is true, when its not.
Posted by tina1 on May 16, 2006 at 12:51 AM Let’s see 7 million people are living in poverty that used to be in the middle class under clinton,
Posted by brian28 on May 13, 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:
46% of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
76% of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36% of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe.
Nearly 75% of poor households own a car; 30% own two or more cars.
97% of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
78% have a VCR or DVD player; 62% have cable or satellite TV reception.
73% own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm
Posted by tina1 on May 16, 2006 at 3:47 AM Good ol’ Heritage Foundation! Cherry-picking a few “facts” while ignoring the overall picture.
Posted by LegumeSam on May 16, 2006 at 6:29 PM Hyjinx22
“If the rate of job loss is up as claimed in the article, how is unemployment at an all-time low?”
It is really very simple — they lie. Well, not quite, it can be found, but hardly anyone bothers.
The government numbers are baloney.
CPI, PPI, GDP — you name it — They are all skewed to look good. In Illinois when unemployment is used up you are ineligible to reapply until you have worked at a single employer for one year, full time. My son has been working part time for over three years and earns a little over one third as much as he did ten years ago in the same kind of work.
The CPI is largely based on housing. Not the price of your house you buy, but on something called “equivalent rent.” (only 20 some percent of people rent)
Numbers are reported with very short term comparisons. Go to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census and read the report, “Changes in Median Household Income: 1969-1996” (P23-196 Issued July 1998)
We have been losing ground for forty years.
Posted by whattheheck on May 18, 2006 at 8:19 PM Crete Carrier Corporation is hiring truck drivers in every state. A truck driver can start at over $60,000 per year. Crete also has these benefits for all employees.
These benefits include:
Major medical
Prescription card
Dental * Vision
Paid vacation
Short term disability
401k plan/match
Company paid profit sharing
$20,000/50,000 life insurance coverage (with ability to purchase coverage for your dependents)
Retirement/Profit SharingCrete Carrier contributes a portion of its yearly pretax profits to the individual profit sharing accounts of every company driver and company non-driving employee. As a result of the success of Crete Carrier, this contribution, for the drivers, over time can equal more than an additional one to two cents per mile.
401(k)
This program, which is in addition to the company paid profit sharing, allows the driver to set aside a percentage of his or her earnings prior to the deduction of taxes. Crete Carrier will match a percentage of the employee’s contribution. This type of program is a real benefit to company drivers who are actively planning their retirement. Combine your 401K and the Crete Carrier Profit Sharing Plan and you have a retirement plan second to none in the truckload industry.
http://www.classadrivers.com/truckingcompanies.php?Cid=45
Posted by tina1 on May 22, 2006 at 9:39 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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