Bernie Sanders on his honeymoon in the USSR, singing this land is your land shirtless and drunk.
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This land is your land, this land is my land From the California to the New York island From the Redwood Forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me As I went walking that ribbon of highway I saw above me that endless skyway And saw below me that golden valley This land was made for you and me
I roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts And all around me , a voice was sounding This land was made for you and me
When the sun comes shining, then I was strolling In the wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting This land was made for you and me
This land is your land and this land is my land From the California to the New York island From the Redwood Forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me
When the sun comes shining, then I was strolling In wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling The voice come chanting as the fog was lifting This land was made for you and me
So we have this stuff, and we have the guy calling himself socialist for years. But of the available options, people are convinced that Trump - maybe the most conspicuous private property capitalist we have - is the agent of Russia.
Russia has a capitalist economy. Not a good one, but capitalist nonetheless.
Bernie calls himself a socialist yet his positions are invariably social democracy (benevolent government funded by a highly regulated / taxed capitalist economic engine).
Capitalism is marked by private ownership and control of capital. While Russia is certainly more economically free than it was 40 years ago (when Bernie was on honeymoon), the Russian government still employs about 40% of the work force and and controls 40% of the capital. The state also controls about 2/3 of the banking and roughly half the energy sector. ( According to this study , those numbers might be closer to 50%.) Seems a little early to start calling them capitalists.
We have to have some regulation. I don't trust corporations to do the right thing all on their own. Why do you think we have agencies like OSHA and the FDA?
Capitalism is marked by private ownership and control of capital.
Capitalism is marked by the productive resources of the economy being controlled by a small minority of the people. The controlling people can be government officials too.
The Russian government controlling productive resources is state capitalism. That is a very poor form of capitalism but it is capitalism nonetheless.
Both the private sector and government are to blame for crony capitalism. The question, really, is how to fix it. It is human nature for people in power to eventually wield that power for their own interests.
I'll take the U.S.A. capitalism anytime. At least I'm allowed to prosper or fail , ALL ON MY OWN !
So you give an example, in effect, of small-scale capitalism (small business) and say this is what you prefer while in the same breath claim that the people running the show is bad. The people running the show correlates with small businesses prospering and failing by their own choices. The government running the show is an entirely different matter.
Who benefits from having a few dozen (or less) companies control the production and prices of most goods sold in the US? Clinton tested the waters by writing an op-ed in 2015 about the dangers of monopolies. Since she rarely mentioned it again in her run for POTUS, I am wondering if she was leery of also being painted as a communist like Sanders was.
The Republican party has become adept at framing the issues. Somehow, the banksters have painted themselves as the party of the working man. The Democratic party became the driver for the privatization of government services in the 1990s as Clinton signed bills to privatize welfare, public schools and even military housing among other things. I recently read mainstream articles about the deplorable conditions that some military families are living in when residing on US military bases. Privatized prisons are another thing that should NEVER be allowed. I am sure that many benefited from Clinton's Three Strikes legislation.
If citizens don't have money to support and elect their representatives, then isn't the government is owned and controlled by the wealthy? Isn't the privatization of government services a factor in how the 1 percent has become the .01 percent?
As it happens, Clinton did have the germ of exactly such an idea—if one knew where to look. In an October 2015 op-ed , she wrote that “large corporations are concentrating control over markets” and “using their power to raise prices, limit choices for consumers, lower wages for workers, and hold back competition from startups and small businesses. It’s no wonder Americans feel the deck is stacked for those at the top.” In a speech in Toledo last fall , Clinton assailed “old-fashioned monopolies” and vowed to appoint “tough” enforcers “so the big don’t keep getting bigger and bigger.”
Clinton’s words were in keeping with Bernie Sanders’s attacks on big banks, but went further, tracing how concentration is a problem throughout the economy. It was a message seemingly tailor-made for the wrathful electorate of 2016. Yet after the Ohio speech, Clinton rarely touched again on the issue. Few other Democrats even mentioned the word monopoly .
The pity is that Clinton’s stance wasn’t simple campaign rhetoric. It was based on a substantial and growing body of research that confirms that consolidation is at the root of many of America’s most pressing economic and political problems.
These include the declining fortunes of rural America as farmers struggle against agriculture conglomerates. It includes the fading of heartland cities like Memphis and Minneapolis as corporate giants in coastal cities buy out local banks and businesses. It includes plunging rates of entrepreneurship and innovation as concentrated markets choke off independent businesses and new start-ups. It includes falling real wages , as decades of mergers have reduced the need for employers to compete to attract and retain workers.
For most of the 20th century the Democratic Party worked hard to prevent such extreme concentration of power. This tradition, which dates to the time of Thomas Jefferson, found expression in anti-monopoly policies designed to protect Americans not just as consumers, but also as citizens and producers, from domination by the powerful. Yet today most Americans associate terms like “freedom” and “liberty” with Republicans, and if that remains the case, Democrats will likely have trouble rebuilding their party as they look to 2018. Many Republicans also oppose the formation of monopolies, but the Democrats in particular would benefit from making it a centerpiece of their platform in the coming years.
The idea that America has a monopoly problem is now beyond dispute. Since 2008 there have been more than $10 trillion in mergers, and the pace of deal-making continues to accelerate, with 2015 setting a record for the most mergers in a year and October 2016 setting the record for the most mergers in a month.
In 2016, The Economist published three cover stories on America’s monopoly problem. The magazine reported that two-thirds of all corporate sectors have become more concentrated since the 1990s, that corporations are far more profitable now than at any time since the 1920s, and that an inordinate amount of profit goes to a very few immense investment funds, such as BlackRock and State Street . In April, the White House Council of Economic Advisers came to much the same conclusion, and called for a “robust reaction to market power abuses.”
Ordinary Americans didn’t need experts to explain the danger of monopoly. Populist movements like the Tea Party, Occupy, and the Sanders campaign have all focused to varying degrees on the threats posed by concentration. Polls show that a majority of Americans now believe big corporations are too powerful. Yet through 2016, mainstream Democrats didn’t acknowledge that this growing fear of monopoly power might affect how citizens vote.
Totally disgusting. That unfortunately is not capitalism.
It is capitalism. Crony capitalism is still capitalism. Not what we want of capitalism, but lying, cheating manipulation does not change the system from capitalism to something else.
Somehow, the banksters have painted themselves as the party of the working man. The Democratic party became the driver for the privatization of government services in the 1990s as Clinton signed bills to privatize welfare, public schools and even military housing among other things.
more info on how the corporations bought and control the US government. It is not the first time and most likely be the last that our government has been owned and controlled by the highest bidder.
Today, after 50 years of attack on government , privatization is a standard conservative response to tight public budgets, a key pillar of attacks on government, and a lucrative market opportunity for domestic and global corporations. Large corporations operate virtually every type of public service including prisons, welfare systems, infrastructure, water and sewer, trash, and schools. For example:
Private prisons didn’t exist thirty years ago. Today, publicly traded, billion-dollar corporations are key players in prisons and immigrant detention. Privatized immigration facilities now house over two-thirds of all detained immigrants.
In 1988 AFT president Al Shanker proposed a new idea: To create charter schools where teachers could experiment and innovate and bring new ideas to the nation’s public schools. Today, nearly 3 million children attend charters, and large corporate chains and billionaires are funding the rapid growth of privatized, publicly funded charters.
Former defense contractors, IT corporations and publicly traded corporations are running welfare, food assistance, and other safety net systems in many states across the country.
Today the federal government employs more than three times as many contract workers as government workers, and state and local governments spend a combined $1.5 trillion on outsourcing.
Across the country, a well-established network of conservative think tanks, industry associations, investors and corporate lobbyists – The State Policy Network, ALEC , and others – are on the front lines developing privatization legislation and proposing privatization projects.
The government then becomes the capitalist. It is still minority control over the productive resources of the economy.
The government is selling US land and resources to foreign governments and foreign companies.
Is this really in the best interests of US citizens?
US farmland is becoming a target for international investors, according to a handful of recent reports. The amount of foreign-owned US farmland has roughly doubled between 2004 and 2014—with Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany owning the most—the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting uncovered in June. And a New Food Economy report released Monday shows that figure is increasing.
The most recent US Department of Agriculture data, from 2011, revealed international buyers own more than 25 million acres of US farmland, about 2 percent overall. But since the USDA report was published, New Food Economy found that Italian buyers have purchased 102,000 acres, New Zealand has bought around 18,000, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have gone in on more than 15,000 acres.
Another potential drawback: As American farms become more desirable, land prices are increasing—which is bad news for American farmers and their communities. Often, when a foreign investor buys up land, the local population loses farming rights, which can lead to people losing their homes, livelihoods, and access to resources like water.
Some states, like Iowa, have outlawed selling farmland to foreign buyers to protect their resources. But Lindsey Shute, director of the National Young Farmers Coalition , warns that states without such laws may soon face a dilemma. The median age of the American farmer is 55, and it is anticipated that in the next five years, about 92,000,000 acres will go up for sale. Shute is concerned that the rising prices will push out farmers, paving the way for investors: “With two-thirds of our nation’s farmland set to change hands in the next few decades, we cannot afford to see the price of farmland driven up beyond what a working farmer can compete with.”
WASHINGTON — Companies in Canada and seven other foreign countries have obtained hardrock mining rights on one-fifth of all current and former public lands in the United States, an environmental group’s analysis said.
Some 28,000 companies and individuals paid less than $5 an acre to patent land with precious metals and minerals under terms of the 1872 Mining Law, the Environmental Working Group said, citing figures from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management.
Those claims account for 5.6 million acres of public lands, the group reported Monday on a Web site in a study titled “Who Owns the West?”
But, it said, just 94 companies — 82 from Canada, three each from Australia and Britain, two from Mexico and one each from Barbados, Germany, Japan and Russia — control those rights on 1.2 million acres.
The site provides public access to federal information on hardrock minerals such as gold, silver and copper, and is organized by state and county.
An analyst for the group, Dusty Horwitt, said the aim was to highlight the need to change the 132-year-old law. Environmentalists have long criticized the act, saying it gives public resources to private companies for a small fraction of their real value.
Six foreign companies on top-10 list The federal data shows that six of the top eight claimants are foreign-owned companies; the other two are based in Denver and Phoenix. Two people from Utah and Nevada, each with nearly 50,000 acres, round out the top 10.
In 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and in 1988, Reagan himself spoke in Moscow’s Red Square. One year later brought the fall of the Berlin Wall. Three years later, the Soviet Union collapsed.
Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist , [234] and progressive who admires the Nordic model of social democracy and has been a proponent of workplace democracy . [235] [231] [236] In November 2015, Sanders gave a speech at Georgetown University about his view of democratic socialism, including its place in the policies of presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson . [237] [238] In defining what democratic socialism means to him, Sanders said: "I don't believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down. I do believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America, companies that create jobs here, rather than companies that are shutting down in America and increasing their profits by exploiting low-wage labor abroad. " [ 237] Based on Sanders's positions and votes throughout his political career, Noam Chomsky and Thomas Frank have described Sanders as "a New Dealer ". [b] [239]
I must say I was not surprised that the video in the article was posted on You Tube by someone who also posts videos in support of Infowars, Trump, Roger Stone, and anti-immigrant videos, as well as conspiracy videos and ones that are broadly anti-Muslim ( " Muslim Call To Prayer in Brooklyn 5 Times A Day!!! ") . It never seems to fail.
You have to hear it in the original Russian.
that's funny I don't care who you are
So we have this stuff, and we have the guy calling himself socialist for years. But of the available options, people are convinced that Trump - maybe the most conspicuous private property capitalist we have - is the agent of Russia.
Russia has a capitalist economy. Not a good one, but capitalist nonetheless.
Bernie calls himself a socialist yet his positions are invariably social democracy (benevolent government funded by a highly regulated / taxed capitalist economic engine).
Who would own the productive resources of the top 500 companies per this plan?
Capitalism is marked by private ownership and control of capital. While Russia is certainly more economically free than it was 40 years ago (when Bernie was on honeymoon), the Russian government still employs about 40% of the work force and and controls 40% of the capital. The state also controls about 2/3 of the banking and roughly half the energy sector. ( According to this study , those numbers might be closer to 50%.) Seems a little early to start calling them capitalists.
Then we have state capitalism. The government then becomes the capitalist. It is still minority control over the productive resources of the economy.
Bad idea - history shows this.
We have to have some regulation. I don't trust corporations to do the right thing all on their own. Why do you think we have agencies like OSHA and the FDA?
Capitalism is marked by the productive resources of the economy being controlled by a small minority of the people. The controlling people can be government officials too.
The Russian government controlling productive resources is state capitalism. That is a very poor form of capitalism but it is capitalism nonetheless.
I agree. Unfortunately we cannot trust the government or the private sector.
hmmmmmmm …….. "The People" running the show would be much better !
I'll take the U.S.A. capitalism anytime. At least I'm allowed to prosper or fail , ALL ON MY OWN !
Both the private sector and government are to blame for crony capitalism. The question, really, is how to fix it. It is human nature for people in power to eventually wield that power for their own interests.
True. No country is 100% free-market capitalism, but we are closer to that ideal than most.
So you give an example, in effect, of small-scale capitalism (small business) and say this is what you prefer while in the same breath claim that the people running the show is bad. The people running the show correlates with small businesses prospering and failing by their own choices. The government running the show is an entirely different matter.
I said no such thing !
Without the FDA you would be eating lead in your green beans
Who benefits from having a few dozen (or less) companies control the production and prices of most goods sold in the US? Clinton tested the waters by writing an op-ed in 2015 about the dangers of monopolies. Since she rarely mentioned it again in her run for POTUS, I am wondering if she was leery of also being painted as a communist like Sanders was.
The Republican party has become adept at framing the issues. Somehow, the banksters have painted themselves as the party of the working man. The Democratic party became the driver for the privatization of government services in the 1990s as Clinton signed bills to privatize welfare, public schools and even military housing among other things. I recently read mainstream articles about the deplorable conditions that some military families are living in when residing on US military bases. Privatized prisons are another thing that should NEVER be allowed. I am sure that many benefited from Clinton's Three Strikes legislation.
If citizens don't have money to support and elect their representatives, then isn't the government is owned and controlled by the wealthy? Isn't the privatization of government services a factor in how the 1 percent has become the .01 percent?
Sure you did:
Or should we not take the above as sarcasm?
[deleted]
Like I originally said that you refuted without further investigation:
"I said no such thing" !
It is capitalism. Crony capitalism is still capitalism. Not what we want of capitalism, but lying, cheating manipulation does not change the system from capitalism to something else.
more info on how the corporations bought and control the US government. It is not the first time and most likely be the last that our government has been owned and controlled by the highest bidder.
The government is selling US land and resources to foreign governments and foreign companies.
Is this really in the best interests of US citizens?
Having a hard time seeing how this is good for the USA.
more....
Is this in the best interests of US citizens?
I just heard on the news this morning that some children's juice drinks, possibly others, had high levels of heavy metals, including lead.
How the hell does that happen?
Lack of FDA inspectors? There was a recent shutdown....
Why isn't Muller bothering Sanders? There might be some collusion or something to investigate here?
Why isn't he bothering Sanders?
Why isn't he bothering Reagan?
Ooops, maybe because Reagan has already passed?
Freedom is good! Oppression is bad! USSR, Red China, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. = opposite of economic freedom.
Seriously, BF, if people would stop using labels and just talk about the concepts we would see that most people agree far more than they think.
I must say I was not surprised that the video in the article was posted on You Tube by someone who also posts videos in support of Infowars, Trump, Roger Stone, and anti-immigrant videos, as well as conspiracy videos and ones that are broadly anti-Muslim ( " Muslim Call To Prayer in Brooklyn 5 Times A Day!!! ") . It never seems to fail.