10 thoughts on “Get More Smarter on Wednesday (July 8)”

1. I'd missed this one, some shenanigans a few days ago. 

   Jefferson County "Students First," the pro-Board-Majority education "reformers" you'll remember from way back, have outdone themselves — hijacking the well-established anti-Board-Majority Twitter hashtag #standup4kids this past week to misrepresent themselves as being in favor of the recall, all in an effort to raise money:

   

   Of course, clicking those two identical links takes one to their generic donation page, which is so generic it — surprise — doesn't mention their huge role in helping get the board majority elected. To say nothing of the fact that board member Julie Williams' father-in-law Tim Neville sat on the board of JeffCoSF. 

   The actual donation page to support the recall effort, as a few Twitter users point out, is https://fundly.com/jeffco-united-for-action

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2. The current Bipartisan Consensus in Washington, DC is that:

   1. Welfare for the poor should be very limited. By definition the poor are less worthy of "our" support and are "taking" from those who've created their own wealth. Further, the poor should also be punished for being poor and failing within our capitalist system. 

   The Greeks deserve this treatment because bad (profligate, lazy) people deserve to suffer when they fall. Welfare, when given to "the wrong people," should come with thorns; bailout money, when given to "the wrong people," should come with some pain, with strings. 

   This philosophy has come to be known as Neo-Liberalism. Some of its adherents, though they most likely won't say so publicly, are Obama, Clinton the First, Mark Udall, and Michael Bennet.

   The "Neo-Liberal Project" 

   I call the above-described form of privatization (monetization) of government-held property the "neo-liberal project." Notice that while neo-liberals share goals with big-money conservatives on the right, most of these privatizers are what we otherwise call "liberals" — like Mayor Richard Daley, for example; or the helpful people at the IMF and the European Central Bank; or Bill Clinton, who wanted to privatize Social Security in 1997, if it weren't for a certain blue dress and the woman inside it.

   …

   When the game is played from the right, they call it Milton Friedman conservatism. When it's played from the left, they call it neo-liberalism ("new" liberalism, like Tony Blair's "New" Labour in the U.K.; like what it was, only not).

   The privatizing game is mainly played from the left, because that's where most of the players are. The Western world is mostly run by "liberals" like these. When Democrats vote for mainstream "liberals," this is what they put into office.

   And this is where bipartisanship is critical.

   2. Welfare for corporations and the rich is acceptable; the purpose of government is to facilitate that welfare through tax structures, business regulations, and the courts By definition the wealthy are more worthy of "our" support and deserve to keep as much of that earned wealth as possible. Further, they they shouldn't have to pay any more than the minimal taxes that might go to any of those poor slacker losers. 

   British Taxpayers are handing businesses £93bn a year – a transfer of more than £3,500 from each household in the UK.

   The total emerges from the first comprehensive account of what Britons give away to companies in grants, subsidies and tax breaks, published exclusively in the Guardian.

   Many of the companies receiving the largest public grants over the past few years previously paid little or zero corporation tax, the analysis shows. They include some of the best-known names in Britain, such as Amazon, Ford and Nissan. The figures intensify the pressure on George Osborne, the chancellor, just as he puts the finishing touches to his budget. At the heart of Wednesday’s announcement will be his plans to cut £12bn more from the social welfare bill.

   Yet that sum is less than the £14.5bn given to companies in direct subsidies and grants alone.

   And here?

   Closing the CEO pay loophole would save taxpayers $50 billion over 10 years.

   Walmart dodged $104 million in federal taxes over the past six years by exploiting the CEO pay loophole.

   Voters strongly oppose the CEO pay loophole. By nearly 2 to 1 (63% to 34%) they want to “prevent corporations from avoiding taxes when they award their executives millions of dollars in stock options (Hart Research, Q 12).

   CEOs of major corporations earn nearly 300 times more than an average worker.This is 10 times more than the CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1978 when CEOs earned 30 times more.

   CEOs often get their “performance-based” bonuses even when they don’t reach performance goals.

    

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   1. Zap,

      I made it through the #1 section of the above thesis. The foreign policy stuff is pretty interesting, but it does not show that neo-liberals think that"Welfare for the poor should be very limited."

      I'd like to think that Bill Clinton would not have privatized social security; but he did put TANF in place, kicking lots of families deeper into poverty when they"timed off" of their cash grants. While fiscal conservatives approved of this, the reality was that it takes more than 60 months to get trained for a job which pays enough to support a single parent and kids. And its almost impossible to find quality, affordable child care while being trained. And, of course, corporate welfare continued unchecked.

      So maybe Big Bill would have betrayed the elderly poor the way he did the young working poor. I don't know. The article you linked to seems to say that Monica Lewinsky saved Social Security by distracting Bill and the nation with the subsequent "scandal". And maybe he was the first well-known "neo-liberal". I'm still skeptical of these claims.

       

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3. From the Up Next At 11:00: Sun Rises in East department…

   Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years

    

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4. Brownback in Kansas has an especially evil pushback to the marriage equality decision. He issued an executive order that prohibits state action against religious organizations which discriminate against gays. In other words, its an "OK to discriminate" order.

   The order means “a homeless shelter that received a state contract or grant could refuse family housing to a gay couple with a child, or a foster care agency could refuse to place a child in their custody with the child’s family member just because the family member was in a same-sex relationship – and the state could not require them to treat all families equally,” said Micah Kubic, executive director of the Kansas chapter of the ACLU.

   So Brownback has wrecked Kansas' economy with austerity measures – and now he hopes Kansans will feel better about everything cause now they are free to hate on their LBGTQ neighbors? Something tells me this will not end well.

   Does anyone know if we have refugee camps for our neighbors from the east?

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5. Why should we take them in? They elected the dope governor, and that was after they’d seen him in action as a senator. Their only hope is to catch him in a scandal of some sort. Well, he is a Teavangelist, so there's probably a skeleton in some closet in his house.

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   1. Except it's usually the best and brightest that leave. 

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      1. OK.  But only If they swear they voted for Democrats, making them an oppressed minority. We don't need any more voters stupid enough to vote in that Governor and his pet legislative majorities. Somebody was doing that voting.

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         1. 

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6. If those members of the Jefferson County School Board get recalled, I'd like to think, in this instance, it will be as a result of "Intelligent Design."

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