Comments by "Kim O\x27Brien" (@kimobrien.) on "ReasonTV" channel.

  1.  @FifthConcerto  The Chineses had campaign against sparrows to increase the grain harvest where the peasants killed them by chasing them into the air the result was a terrible famine caused by locust swarms that normally would have normally been eaten by sparrows.
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  2. For about 6 cents you can go to a Cuban Baseball game. The stadiums are also full. From $50 to over $1,000 for a MLB game. No luxury air conditioned boxes in Cuban games though.
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  3.  @shuheihisagi7851  Some one who needs to shout and kick like a little baby says nothing worth listening to.
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  4. She has already rejected first the corrupt Chinese Communist (Revisionist) Party and now the US Republican Party and two party system itself by declaring herself to be a candidate of a third party.
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  5. This is the way a capitalist government works they only care about INDUSTRIAL and COMMERCIAL property. Farmers, workers and even middle class homeowners come last. Its all about the money for them and their corrupt two party politicians. When they talk private property they mean THEIR PROPERTY not your personal property, your home or farmland. They will promise a job today and fire a whole factories workers tomorrow. Their promises aren't worth the paper they print them on.
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  6.  @AldrichCarrasco  The US Army has been engaged in gun control for years now. They get real practice when they go to war in foreign countries like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
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  7. Foxconn is known for treating their workers such that some actually committed suicide by jumping off buildings. They have had successful strikes by Chinese workers outside of the official Communist Party unions which have won better conditions and pay. Many are young workers who come from the countryside and live in dormitories.
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  8.  @livefree316  How about one person dying of dehydration in the Milwaukee Jail or the Chicago torture cops of John Burge's midnight crew. Even Che Guevara did not get one of your "Bourgeois Justice" trials. Instead the execution order was to shoot from the neck down to make it look like Che died in battle.
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  9. They were "deterred" by the US Coast Guard. What you mean to say is blockaded. These are libertarians who don't know how to feed themselves and can't get anyone to do anything without payment. This is why the need to use paid smugglers. Now if you think like the typical libertarian would you the smuggler sell the product once inside Cuba or would you just give it away? You do remember Pharma bro. If protest are evidence of Dictatorship then certainly the US is a dictatorship. US officials have arrested hundreds for a failed insurrection on January 6th.
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  10.  Harry Moobs  Why do we need over 800 foreign military bases? Why do we need to build 22 billion dollars worth of nuclear powered submarines along with the nuclear tipped missiles to launch from them. Gov't shouldn't be about the war business but the peace business. We are entering a crisis that will NOT go away in a few weeks. Thousands are losing their jobs and thousands of small businesses are being ordered closed.
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  11.  @joebouret747  That's a really stupid remark since Havana probably looked like LA does today before the revolution in 1959. Kennedy, a Democrat, was the one who ordered the invasion and bombing of Cuba so why should we like the "lesser evil"? When both parties are evil? Even Kim Jong Un understands that Trump like Obama is the representative of the US ruling class. Somehow all these fools think voting DemoPublican is a solution. We say that the working people need to stand up to the bosses attacks on our wages and living standards. To rebuild the unions as a fight force on the job and a new labor party built out of the coming union battles with the capitalists.
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  12.  @dancing4bears  When I grew up you knew enough not to eat lead but we used it without giving it a thought not just in gasoline but fishing sinkers, paint, electronics solder, car batteries and pipe solder. Older homes and cities still have lead pipes and copper pipes soldered with 50/50 leal/tin. The whole water scandal in Flint, MI involved water not properly treated flowing in lead pipes. After all you burned gasoline you didn't eat it like cheerios. When it was initial put in gasoline it was as compound of lead and like I said people were initially lied to about its safety by the oil bosses. It wasn't a "consumer choice." It was quite believable as a lie because after all sodium and chlorine are in table salt which actually a necessary for life yet both atomic chlorine and sodium are highly corrosive and dangerous to both the skin and lung tissue.
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  13.  @Porelcaminitoyotellevare  Like J F Kennedy who got and accepted a pulitzer prize for a book he never wrote. The only talents real capitalist have is the ability to hire lawyers and give orders.
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  14. Unions are the working people's organizations. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was founded in the Carpenters Union hall. We aren't the bosses slaves without rights to act and bargain collectively. Money doesn't make you the King.
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  15. Build protests outside of the county buildings.
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  16.  @alexstewart8097  Lets stop using communist as swear word in the liberal conservatives category of political oppositions. Who is this guy Brennan anyhow? If the guys a communist how come I've never heard of the guy? CIA is a US capitalist police, dirty tricks, assassination and coup planning team. It severs the US Empire.
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  17.  @alexstewart8097  The Cuban people are not afraid to resist which is why the Imperialist are afraid of them. The'd have Yankee boots in Havana by now if they though that Fidel or Raul was like Hussein in Iraq. Yet even in Iraq they are facing a people insistent upon their departure. More protests against the current Iraqi government and the US occupation. One way or another Uncle Sam has had to wave goodbye to places he thought were his after WW2. China was the biggest loss handed to Congress with each party blaming the other for the loss. Who lost China they would cry. Then Korea here the Imperialist suggested that they and Stalin temporality evacuate Japanese Troops.
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  18. @Reality Lives Onward Always Cuban communism is saving lives that would otherwise be taken by capitalist negelet. Ten Thousand foreign students are training to be Doctors in Havana all at no direct cost to the students. The Russian Bolsheviks signed the first peace treaty to end WW1. A war fought to redivide the world between the two different blocks of Imperialists nations. No one in Cuba was shot for being rich. Those who were shot were either engaging in terrorism or engaged in recognized war crimes. They all received trials open to the foreign media which is more than the captured Che Guevara got from the US CIA and the Military dictatorship in Bolivia. I suppose you want to live next to eye gougers and people who hung bodies from lamp posts and left them in the streets. Does the US government hand out death sentences for terrorist like Tim McVeigh and the Boston Bomber or not? Why were Cuban CIA terrorists like Orlando Boshe and Luis Posada go untried for the bombing of a civilian aircraft Cubana 455. You've got your Cuban political prisoners like "Scarface" and you put them in the Atlanta penitentiary were they rioted to protest your dungeon like conditions. Your recent Cuban "dissident" artist El Sexto is awaiting trial without bail in Miami for Stocking and Death Threats.
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  19.  @arkadycaca  Other reasons for having a permanent organization is to more quickly organize a response along with getting contracts that can be made and enforced company and industry wide. Your shop steward is always the first line of defense.
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  20.  @RebelofIreland  This is a result in the general decline of the middle class layers. As the capitalist slash jobs in social service replacing them with fewer paper pushers. I wouldn't be surprised if Strossels childern don't join in.
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  21. Capitalism and Cronyism a marriage and match made in heaven.
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  22. Cuban Americans were going to bring supplies in their own boats but were deterred by the US Coast Guard. The correct term would be blockaded.
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  23.  @FREEMAYKELOSORBO  I've done voluntary labor if that's what you mean. I suppose you only do something because some one pays you too? Don't you want to cry about how the billionaire could take a big loss of millions? You do realize that US paper money in dollars is created by the government printing office and electronic money is numbers in a computer overseen by the US Federal Reserve Bank?
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  24.  @joebouret747  Where's the pictures of the homeless living in tents and under tarps in Havana like in Los Angeles?
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  25.  @joebouret747  "...And, nobody has enough to do more than survive..." Hay that sounds like 30% of all American families.
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  26. If they don't employee that number for some reason or another their lawyer`s will get them out of it. They'll claim adverse business conditions. They basically steam rolled this thing through. Trump Walker and Ryan will take credit. Afterall you don't think it's just a coincidence that it's going in Speaker Ryan's district. Who knows what kind of arm twisting and secret deals we'll never even hear about that went into this thing. Maybe Trump told Silicon Valley Foxconn and others you can't have all the electronics manufacturing in the far east (China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia.) if they actually do build this plant it will be one of the largest if not the largest manufacturing facility in the US and the Western Hemisphere by number of workers
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  27. It's hard to believe they'd build a single plant with that many workers just to make flat screens.
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  28. The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the second workers revolution after the Paris commune. It came about in Russia after 3 years of world war. The Bolsheviks slogan was all power to the Soviets. In Russian Soviet means council. These councils were formed by Soldiers, Sailors, Workers, and Peasants. The Bolsheviks negotiated a separate peace with Germany without regards to previous Imperialist alliances. They weren't really sure they could hold out without help from a German revolution that never materialized. Trotsky as Ist Commissar of War with his armored train defeated white counterrevolutionaries and 14 invading armies.
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  29.  @dancing4bears  First the producers of leaded gasoline lied about its safety. If it had NOT been rushed into the market than alternatives would have been used and while the automobile industry may not have developed as quickly we lived for 1,000's of years without automobiles. An estimated 100 million people died early deaths due to leaded gasoline. Just because someone can buy something or puts a label on it does mean it should be built, sold or used in the first place. Leaded gasoline was taken out of the marketplace because it was poisoning the air that all of life depends on.
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  30. The idea is to put everything off by planning to do everything ten years latter.
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  31. That's what Imperialism is. The movement of capital to foreign nations for greater profits where it can more easily defended by military force. USMC Major General Smedley Butler explained it in "War is a Racket" as did Lenin in "Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism."
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  32.  Raymond Babcock  Right as if other capitalist politicians don't do that also. Most of them hire book "ghost" writers like J F Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. The actual writer Ted Sorensen is not mentioned as author. It's the only known case where the person who did write a book got a pulitzer prize for it.
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  33.  @samgamblewhite8600  Look I'm not signing on to some theory about how the bosses just want to treat us like individuals and pay us what we are worth. What the bosses want is a divided workforce bickering over stupid things. Their idea of individuality is to get you to cut corners unless you go to far, get caught, which is when you will get the blame.
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  34.  @samgamblewhite8600  Your already an individual just in case you haven't figured that out yet. Your also a social animal like the rest of us. Our species has to labor together to make a life for ourselves. Our ancestors used simple tools and fire. They were organized into small independent groups that new little about what the rest of us were doing. Today you live in a world where communications to the most obscure places is almost instantaneous. A world where people still living in the remote conditions of tribal societies are connected by world trade wearing T shirts with slogans on them.
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  35.  @samgamblewhite8600  Over all you only have to pay dues if you have a contract that has a dues checkoff clause. You have no other obligation to the union. Just cross picket lines at your own pearl. The dues checkoff was something added during WW2 to get union officials on board with the war effort and the unpopular FDR no strike during the Imperialist war. After the war the largest strike wave in history occurred. The bosses passed the Taft Hartley slave labor act in Congress. It among other things allowed states to forbid union dues check offs. Janus is part of the state apparatus for represion. AFSCME should have never taken his job category into the labor movement. He like the cops and other bosses should be excluded. The industrial unions of the CIO were built without dues check offs since the workers collected dues without boss approval.
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  36.  @samgamblewhite8600  On the one hand dues checkoff makes collecting dues easier. On the other hand it allows less democratic control by the members of the union. A union that consistently fights for its members will have no problem collecting dues. Freeloaders will be asked to pay or find work elsewhere. With a checkoff the boss will take out dues with or without your permission. Instead of it being called dues it is called an agency fee for those with religious objections and it can not be used to support candidates for elections.
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  37.  @samgamblewhite8600  The reason for collecting dues is it cost money to run an organization. If you need picket signs, a meeting hall, strike headquarters or a lawyer you have expenses that have to be paid even if you can run an organization on a shoestring. Teamsters usually get a monthly union button that shows they have paid their dues.
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  38.  @samgamblewhite8600  You only have to pay the dues or agency fees. If you don't want a union contract with dues check off all you have to do is hold a representation election and than all of you slackers can go and get paid what you are really worth or if you want to be an individual slacker you can always find a boss job or open a lemonade stand. That way you can claim to be true blue and a renaissance era thinker.
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  39.  @samgamblewhite8600  Right now the unions are at a low ebb so the bosses want to further weaken them by denying dues money where possible. Now if the are on the upswing then you'll be bitching about how the bosses aren't allowed to join or go to union meetings. .
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  40.  @samgamblewhite8600  You don't have to join just pay dues. You will be told when your hired if you will be required to pay union dues. If you don't think it's worth your money just move on and go look for another job. Seems simple to me. If they tell you to bring your own tools or buy them from the company can you just wine about that, have a temper tantrum and get away with telling the boss I don't want to buy the tools but you must give me the job even though I refuse to buy or provide the tools. Do you think you can have a union apprenticeship in the construction trades and say hey I want the apprenticeship but I don't want to pay union dues? You live in a society where everything is bought and sold so why the big deal about paying union dues?
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  41.  @bobjacobson858  The basic response to any emergency in the US is for the Chief of Police to appear on TV and annonce "YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN". They were no better prepared for the Corona virus then they were for hurricane Katrina. We are now basically "On Our Own" at this point.
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  42.  @invictusdude3881  It will slow automation because automation requires profits to invests. Automation raise capital value and reduces living labor time. However the profits come out of the surplus value we create less labor time ends up lowering the price. Now you have a lower rate of return on investment. No capitalist wants a lower rate of return on investment. He must automate or prices will fall to the cost of production leaving him without a profit. Also profits shift to the capitalist industries or firms that can take advantage of automation vs those which can't do much automating.
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  43. If there's one thing these corrupt politicians of both parties fear it's working people coming together and protesting in front of government buildings. No Rambo or hollywood hero is coming to save these people from this obvious injustice.
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  44.  @Johnjackjack  At business school they teach the prospective bosses that unions cost the bosses in overall profits,.That's why bosses oppose unions unless they are faced with no other choice. They agreed to accept unions because of strikes and protest demanding union representation.
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  45. @Max Wylde Since only about 9% of workers belong to unions there is plenty of non union jobs for you. That gives you plenty of say to work elsewhere. In fact what's keeping you from opening up another Microsoft and being another Bill Gates?
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  46. The whole community should have had the ability to decide for themselves first not being subjected to a we the state and federal government are going to do this regardless of what you want or say. They don't even need all the property for the factory. A lot of it will be used to build a company town to the liking of the Foxconn Bosses. Plus the giveaway of tax revenue to Foxconn. Down the road the same politicians will be talking about how the government is broke and can't keep schools open five days a week.
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  47.  @landonpowell6296  You're seeing how well for profit Insurance company healthcare works right now.
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  48.  @donlebo6824  This is the typical two party way of choosing a president. In Nixon vs JFK it was said afterwards that Nixon's 5 o'clock shadow lost to Kennedy's youthful appearance after the debate in which issues don't matter but make up for the camera does.
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  49.  gnbutler  First if the company had their way you wouldn't get any hearing whatsoever. You be an "employee at will" on the outside looking in. That said arbitration always favors the bosses and the unions need to use union power to negotiate not arbitrate.
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  50.  @timpoolsbeanie2296  Libertarians start with assumptions like voluntary trade being free, private property being necessary due to limited resources and a state being only necessary to defend property rights. The when their assumptions which are at the core of modern capitalism don't produce a good outcome they blame it on state intervention. So in essence their reasoning is circular. The choose the axioms for their ideal system and when it doesn't produce a desired result blame the state but who is the state if not the executive committee of the property owners.
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