Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder" channel.

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  16. Australian here: What Elise Stefanik (and others are doing) is what David Pakman labelled "toxic sport politics" which is where a politician DOES NOT care at all about what they are saying. All they care about is what will score POLITICAL POINTS right at this instant in the current news cycle and enable them to claim some sort of political victory. Although it might be most visible in America it is NOT simply an American phenomenon. We see the same sort of garbage from our politicians here in Australia and see it in other nations via the news. The rhetoric is similar, the behavior is similar, and the lack of caring at all about the consequences is similar and most importantly these sorts of politicians DO NOT CARE about the actual job they were elected for which is run the country (or state, or city or town) they were elected to run. I hear reports all the time how the current US House of Representatives has passed a record LOW number of bills and this its not simply low but less than 1/2 the previous record. This is NOT isolated to America either. We have the same sort of issues here, where promises to take things from policy to actions and/or legislation simply never happens. Go look at the complete disaster that Brexit has become for the British people. The failure of our political parties should be one of the most pressing issues across the entire Western Democratic World. At its core is the insane influence peddling of the super wealthy. Thom Hartman reported a while back that someone analysed the funding from billionaires in the 2022 American Midterms. America has over 500 Billionaires (by some reports). They collectively spent over $900 Million supporting candidates and of that money over $800 Million came from a small group of about 25 people. Here in Australia we less than 1/13th the population of America and as such have fewer billionaires. But our super wealthy and/or their companies have learned from your super wealthy on HOW TO INFLUENCE POLITICS. So we too have influential think tanks that they fund and other organisations that peddle various causes. I keep seeing here on YouTube short blurbs that support various mining interests and its pitched as if we all benefit. Notably Glencore the Swiss based multinational is one of those peddling political influence campaigns. Glencore might be Swiss but it was founded by American Billionaire Marc Rich who was pardoned (by Bill Clinton) for tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and sanction busting. I would also warn any American about complaining about foreign influence to any British person. Many of them know the disastrous Brexit vote was influenced by the work of Cambridge Analytica which was funded by American Billionaire Robert Mercer. This is the major problem of our time. Garbage politicians only interested in toxic sport politics who are funded by the super wealthy to keep our governments from functioning properly.
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  35. ​ @CuriousKey  I absolutely agree with that. I recently checked something. Bush 2.0 went to Harvard for his MBA Clinton went to Yale as well as Hilary for their Law Degrees while Al Gore went to Harvard for his BA. Obama went to Harvard as well as Michelle for their Law Degrees. Trump went to U. Penn another of the Ivy League colleges. Of the 9 SCOTUS judges 4 went to Harvard and 4 went to Yale. The other (Amy Barrett) who is also a Federalist Society member went to Notre Dame. Do you see the pattern? FYI - The Federalist Society was started by students from Harvard, Yale and the university of Chicago. In Britain the vast vast majority of government control in both the parties and public service is held by Oxford and Cambridge graduates. In Australia its less obvious but we have the same issue. Its not just a case of very narrow education (as in Law degrees) but also the concentration of power among graduates of a small number of select universities. This also explains that no matter which party is in power in our nations nothing seems to actually change. Either the elected members are lawyers or they have a legal advisor or they are economists or have an economics advisor and in both the Law and Economics the education is highly concentrated to a few colleges. I am actually an engineer and have been looking into the economics issue because of the incredible amount of interference in the engineering space by economists. That's how I know their education is so narrowly focused.
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  36. I AM LIKE Marc Andreessen in that I am ALSO an engineering graduate (aerospace) of the University of Illinois. I graduated the year before Marc Andreessen started his degree in computer science. So I never met him BUT I DO KNOW the environment into which he was able to develop his skills. In the late 80s UIUC was the World Center of Computing. Cray Supercomputers had moved the head quarters to Champaign and UIUC had NOT 1 but 3 Cray Supercomputers at that time. It was also heavily funded by both the Illinois State and the US Federal Government. UIUC hosted the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). On top of that UIUC hosted the core of the PLATO System which was a forerunner of the Internet. We also had rooms full of Apple, IBM and other desk tops we could just use however we wanted AND THAT'S the SHORT story. So for anyone doing a degree in computer science it was one of the best places you could be AND AT THE RIGHT TIME. When I was there the Plato system was a text based system which you are all lucky to have never used. So they was an opportunity to make this awful system look like and be user friendly like the Apple Macs we used to do our term papers on. Marc Andreessen stepped into that opportunity and developed (along with Eric Bina) the Mosaic program which was the first practical web browser. They renamed it Netscape and eventually sold it to AOL for $4.3 Billion. I do not begrudge Marc Andreessen for his success or wealth. He had an opportunity and made it work and with it helped to make the Internet function. WHAT I OBJECT to are his public stances on funding education. He got what he got because the State of Illinois and the US Federal Government FUNDED the university where he got that opportunity. So for him to come out and denigrate the US Federal Government as he often does is INCREDIBLY NARCISSISTIC and UNGRATEFUL. Marc Andreessen has what he has because the American people helped to fund his opportunity. To try try and deny similar opportunities going to others is disgusting.
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  38. I sort of agree but there's a lot NOT being said about Powell in this sort of discussion. Other than admitting what he said at the UN was wrong. Powell actually tried to stop the invasion, which is not as widely known as it should be. Its all covered in the 2004 PBS Frontline episode "Rumsfled's War." I saw it here in Australia circa 2005/06 and it blew the lid of who the people who'd caused that mess. A lot of finger pointing was at Powell because of his UN speech but that's only 1 part of it. Powell tried his hardest to get Bush to back away. He even had a private dinner with Bush and bluntly told Bush that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton and others were NOT military men and weren't experts in military matters while he and others were. That's why a lot of the political people ended up hanging Powell out to take the blame. The one military guy who is NOT mentioned enough is a Colonel named Douglas Macgregor who had made a name for himself as a tank commander in the first Gulf War at the Battle of 73 Easting. People like Powell and Eric Shinseki said invading Iraq would take several hundred thousand TO SECURE THE COUNTRY. Macgregor told Rumsfled, Wolfowitz and others that was nonsense and it would only take around 80,00 because the Iraqi was weak and disorganised from the sanctions. In that Frontline episode he's actually interviewed and says that. Powell, Shinseki and others tried to tell Bush and Congress that wasn't the point. The point was SECURING the country AFTERWARDS, which we know was a disaster. The Iraqi militias raided the military supply depots because there just wasn't anyone there to stop them. I hate the fact that despite making some mistakes that its ignored that Powell tried to stop the invasion. These days I find it despicable that Macgregor has NEVER been held accountable and these days he's trotted out as an expert by various think tanks and parts of the media.
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  42. That's a reasonably nuanced answer with merit but what we are talking about is a group of people who claim to be the ONLY GROUP capable of interpreting something written by people who are no longer alive. This is not simply a problem with the US Constitution its a problem with so many social & political institutions and the dogmas created by people in these "We know the truth!" groups. On another subject but equally plagued with dogma is economics and that currently has an incredible effect on our lives. There's the 2 competing ideologies of capitalism that came from people like Adam Smith and David Ricardo versus the socialism & communism that came from people like Karl Marx. Right now we are dominated by Chicago School neoliberal economics that was formulated by people like Hayek and Freidman. Most of us have NO IDEA what any of them were on about. We rely on people interpreting what they meant. There are 100s of acolytes who will all happily explain the virtues of what Smith, Marx and Ricardo wrote and champion their causes AND they will do it no matter what evidence there is that the systems they put in place HAVE FAILED. The pure socialism and communism of Eastern Europe FAILED, but you can't tell that to a Marxist Lefty. The pure capitalism of America and the West is FAILING but you can't tell that to a Freidmanite Capitalist. I'm Australian but went to college in America. I think the US Constitution is one of the greatest achievements in human history BUT BECAUSE of these people who claim to be the true interpreters its now regarded as a joke around the world. I think the original Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments) is sublime genius but its been trampled on by packs of ideological M0R0Ns who act of of pure selfishness and arrogance.
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  44. AUSTRALIAN HERE - After our last major bushfires in 2019-20 the Right Wing scumbags at Murdoch Media did the same sort of crap and garbage. The smoke hadn't settled and they started making all sorts of claims especially arson and it wasn't just their Australian people. There's an infamous Tomi Lauren rant where she literally screeches that Australia is a nation of arsonists. Due to all the claims a full police inquiry was held. Sort of like one of your congressional hearings. Out of the 30+ major fires they investigated NOT 1 was found to be arson but a couple were inconclusive. Most were the result of lightning strikes combined with high fuel loads. YES in the end it was found that the severity of our fires in 2019-20 were compounded by several good years of growth from higher rainfall followed by several years of drought that dried it all out. Additional to that is that Australia's most common native tree species are Eucalyptus varieties which contain high amounts of natural oils. Go and watch either of the interviews Daniel Swain gave Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Adam Conover in recent days here on YouTube. California has been through an almost identical few years to what Australia had experienced. PLUS the native scrub in California is also like Australia's Eucalyptus high in oil content. What's going on with these Right Wing nutcases in America right now is the same garbage we had to deal with in 2020. At some point someone is going to lose it with these people and their garbage.
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