Comments by "Xyz Same" (@xyzsame4081) on "The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder"
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I think it must be a sandwich. OPTION 1) Running grassroots candidates w/o Big Corp. Donor money (and hope that they don't do an Obama = dupe the voters and change course as soon as they are in power - see IDC in New York). Moreover there is always the possibility that they LATER get corrupted, integrated into the machine, intimidated.
For a senator for instance it is approx. USD 172,000 before taxes with good benefits (healtchare). That is not bad, but they need 2 households and one in expensive D.C. So they needed to be content with that pay. Plus going against the machine (which can be exhausting)
Or much more money * and going with the flow.
IDC in New York:
a few renegade "Democrats" in the State Senate caucused with the Republicans so despite the majority nothing (good for The People) could be passed. Needless to say the party bigshots in New York (governor Cuomo !) were O.K. with the IDC, they could govern as Republicans and had always an excuse. The State Senate was the reliable grave for all measures that would have been good for the masses and bad for the Big Donors.
It started out with one (Jeff Klein I think is the name) who defected when the Republicans had a slim majority in 2011. When the Dems took over the Senate in 2012 more Dems were "hired" or bribed by the Republicans to causus with them. So the official Republicans and the IDC Republicans still had the majority.
7 more Democratic defectors eventually joined the IDC (Independent Democratic Congress) - and one of them was a new comer, a Latina, she had run on a Bernie platform and sold out immediately. Perks for the district, better office, more money for staff - chance to hire a relative for instance.
Now she lost her seat of course as well but you bet she calculated (and likely got) a cushy post as compensation for the services rendered. True, she could not make herself a name with the Big Donors so the gamble may not have gone well. On the other hand the others served the oligarchs and Republicans longer so THEY will be taken care of....
6 of the 8 defectors got voted out in September 2018. Only in April 2018 the party leadership could finally be bothered to lean on them (took them only 7 years !). Cynthia Nixon was instrumental in that, she called the IDC and Cuomos silence out when she challenged the govenor in the primaries. So Cuomo had one meeting (!) and brought them into the fold. As far as party "leadership" was concerned all was forgotten and forgiven - but the voters were not having it, they exacted revenge for the years of betrayal.
...... In New York it is about BIG MONEY - for instance when the real estate developers get favored over the population. They can easily buy a few state senators
A possibility to make money OFF the OFFICE
* For instance the SuperPacs can buy up the books. Or hire relatives (or give contracts to relatives). or they get information where to buy real estate. Or they get offered real estate that is seriously underpriced compared to market value.
(the person that was responsible for the "mistake" to purge voters from the rolls in Brooklyn in the 2016 Democratic primaries got such a deal. In that case the civil servant could SELL a house well above market price - to someone with ties to the Clintons).
You bet they would love to buy AOC - if only to shut her up.
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The instinct of the upper / ruling class for individual charity for the deserving (like a CUTE little girl) resurfaces whenever the first go to move is to MEANS TEST assistance, even during the middle of a pandemic, even though it delays rollout, creates unnecessary buraucracy, and they could easily tax the money back LATER when they KNOW the 2019 income for a 70k before taxes family * stayed the same in 2020.
But NO, There. Must. Be. Some. Means. Testing. And. Strings. Attached.
For the citizens and smaller biz, that is.
Big biz got showered with money, early on and no string attached.
*
The same instinct kicked in in 2009.
Glossing over the criminal activities of banksters were glossed over. But finger wagging for the imprudent home buyers who had misled or duped the unsuspecting too big to fail banks.
I guess the media telling unexperienced consumers for years about the real estate prices going up and no context with former real estate bubbles had nothing to do with citizens rushing to buy before it got even more expensive. And no warning by media with their research teams about loans that were obviously meant ton entrap naive home buyers. the interests and payments were low in the beginning.
As for politicians instinct to be wary to help the regular people "too much"
Generous help for big finance. Bailout. After ! that 4.5 TRILLIONS in QE (so the fines that Eric Holder negotiated before he "settled" w/o prosecution did not really hurt the banks. Not only had they made spectacular profits before the bubble burst. They got showered with money, it prettied up their balance sheets. They "swapped" their (unsellable !) assets for money from the Fed / treasury.
So Holder had record fines for show - and they had no real financial hardships.
The program for struggling home owners was not nearly as generously funded. It was handled by for-profits who likely had an incentive to forclose not to prevent forclosue. anyway: it was a hassle for the homeowners, they did not know from on quarter to the next if they "qualified" if not they owed the whole 3 months of mortgage right there and then (and did not have it of course).
Then Larry Summers was "worried" about it and suggested it should be shut down earlier .....
If only the U.S. would be a democracy, then citizens would not have to put up with the oligarchs and the politicans that rule on their behalf.
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+Nate - when they deliver you into the hospital after a severe accident or a dramatic display of symbom they probably would not deny services. They would have people dying on the doorsteps. Does not look good. - They are only legally required to "stabilize" a patient - and they have ways to work around that as well.
If uninsured they would charge you at least double what they would bill to a public non-profit insurance agency (in Europe or even to Medicare).
There was a woman that decided to run for office becasue the Corporate Dem (relatively new in office) could not be bothered to be for Single Payer. (TYT covered her - the shill was pathetic in a townhall and she got furious. I think she lost the race sadly).
She is a nurse, her husband is a veteran. Their daughter had insurance (from a job, or from her father. She intended to start a training in autumn and then would have been covered with her father.
But in summer she was in a limbo.
She was always healthy but got pain in a leg and it got really bad. The hospital figured out that her insurance status was at least "unclear", they were eager to get rid of her.
She returned she begged for help. Her mother advised her on the phone (she was not in town, in person she might have rocked the boat big time.) The mother which also was a nurse was incredulous - maybe her daughter did not communicate right with the hospital ? Did they know the pain got worse and worse and unbearable ?
Considering this was a middle class family - even if the daughter had been w/o insurance, the bill would have been paid.
If a healthy young person gets out of the blue pain and it becomes worse over short time, the thing to think of is an embolie. They can check that out with a MR. That they did not want to do however. - If they want to err on the safe side (time is of essence IF it is an embolie) they can give her blood thinning medicaton and/or transfusions.
With the MR they would have found the clog, it caused the pain in the limb, later it swept in the bloodstream (heart attack).
The young woman had been sent away with a prescription for pain medication. - Later they had to take her in - she was delivered into intense care. When her family arrived she was there and in very bad shape. She died some hours later.
Michael Moore showed in Sicko how the hospitals get rid of elderly / poor patients w/o a family that cares for them. The ambulances take them and drop them off a few streets away. Or they just shove them out of the house so to speak. "Letting them leave" is not the correct word, when they have dementia (or are confused because of the sickness, that happens a lot with old people, they can recover from that). They may not need hospital care anymore but they need care and you cannot kick them out to let them fend for themselves.
The ambulance transport likely avoids legal problems - for the hospital.
A charitiy had set up shop in proximity to a hospital that had a reputation for doing that - so that they can rescue such patients. Which means the ambulance drivers or the adminstrative staff (the lower charges) which get maximum pressure from management to execute the ugly schemes will likely be glad to drop off the abandoned patients there - at least they can hope the person is not going to die and they participate in it.
Management likely never gave written orders for these procedures and will play innocent and blame it on the lower charges if sued or called out publicly.
A confused old woman, dragging along with her the cart with the transfusions. She might have landed herself in the nearby street with a lot of traffic had it not been for the intervention of the charity.
Staff (ambulance services and hospital) that do not want to participate in the ugly scheme can go and look for another job. And I would not be surprised if they have a Non Disclosure "agreement" in their work contract.
They cannot go against a dysfunctional system.
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in the presidential elections at least 4 candidates were running. The opposition consist of self-serving oligarchs and despite the economic troubles they could not get their act together and defer to ONE candidate / party that could lead.
Lopez was barred from running (If memory serves he was involved in the 2002 coup against Chavez) and another strong candidate also was not allowed to run: Henrique Capriles who had lost narrowly against Maduro in 2013.
Claim: irregularities, donations from abroad, not sure what to make of it.
ONE - Falcon - broke ranks and DID run against Maduro (he is well known and polled like Lopez in the beginning): He was expelled from his party and of course the other parties told the voters to not vote at all in the election. He was also smeared as colluding with Maduro - well THAT was NOT helpful in challenging Maduro. He lost heavily against Maduro.
The U.S. btw threatenrd him with sanctions. Now THAT is weird: Sanctions for challenging an incumbent that the U.S. wants to see beaten - even though the narrative was that the election was not legitimate because the opposition was banned from running ??
Falcon WAS from the opposition and from one of the parties under the MUD umbrella, and he had chances ....
Just to repeat: TWO were banned. Lopez is a highly shady character, so that leave Capriles who might have been deprived of running under a pretext (but it is entirely possible that he is corrupt and the ban was legitimate).
And the opposition (before united under the umbrella of MUD - the united opposition) could not come up with one convincing candidate in the national crisis ? ? Falcon would have been ONE logical choice.
Likely they were not at all sure they could win - or they were too self-serving to let this or that party and candidate have the advantage of winning. (The U.S. might have settled that, and might have backed up the claims of some actors recently).
it tells you something about the opposition when they cannot find ONE convincing candidate (or support the one that IS running) even when the economy is doing badly.
The voters of Venezuela might not even like Maduro - but they realize some things about the "opposition". They had them before 1998 - see per capita GDP and extreme poverty in the decades before 1998 when Chavez was voted in.
Malnutrition of children, favellas around the cities, no or bad access to schools or medical care !
Falcon GAVE the voters an option to stick it to Maduro - so why didn't they seize the chance to get rid of Maduro - never, mind if the opposition got their act together or told them to stay home. You bet the situation was hotly debated everywhere- and private media was not banned from reporting.
no doubt the U.S. assured the incompetent, fractured oppostion, that if they would refuse to participate - that it would be woven into the narrative and would help create the mythos that the elections were not legitimate.
The press and privately owned major TV channels could report negatively on Madura and they did.
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The "elites" in the party have major double think going on - and Sanders reminds them of how they SHOULD work for their constituents. And they detest him for it. - They try to convince the voters that they are for the regular people - but they are funded by the same corporations that also finance the Republicans.
They also work for the upper 20 - 30 % of the population with a STRONG emphasis on promoting the interests of the 1 %. That colludes usually (almost always) with the interests of the 70 - 80 %.
What is more: they do not like to have the (cynically honest) self assessment of being sell-outs and cowards.
Or to watch the effects when they - the Corporate Dems - roll over before being pushed. When they FAIL to fight the Republicans tooth and nail.
Well, that is not what the Big Donors pay them for. Their most important role is not to win general elections. They are supposed to win primaries to keep the progessives out. If they were obedient to the party establishment and the Big Donors they will get a cushy position if they end their political career. So losing a GE is not the end of the world for THEM.
The donors and the top of the party honor such "obligations". It reassures the shills that still hold seats that is better for them to serve the Big Donors and to do as they are told by the party leadership - as opposed to serving their constituents. The lower ranks of the political class have to earn their status with the big shots in the party (true for both parties). So the leadership can easily fulfill their obligation towards the Big Donors - make everyone fall in line.
Big money in political campaigns also provides some of the necessary employment opportunities for obedient ex-politicians. Stratgists, consultants, lobbyists - media gets a lot of campaign ads and will help out with contracts as well to keep the cozy scheme going.
So the sell-outs that claim that they represent The People prefer to stay in the insider bubble, and to avoid to SEE the effects of their policies on the voters.
That psychological mechanism made the Clinton campaign so tone deaf and unable to see the writing on the wall in 2016. Their need to protect their good self-image (typical for homo sapiens) while being sell-outs interferes very much with a fact based, honest if cynical assessment of what is going on with the electorate.
Homo sapiens is a very social species. Only outright sociapaths have the fortitude to be unashamedly selfish and corrupt and be fully AWARE of it (they do not tell others, but this is about self image).
Selfishness goes against our instincts honed by evolution: group cohesion, solidarity and avoiding infighting was crucial for survival. So we all are very much inclined to find excuses when we are selfish or cowards, to sugar-coat non-social behavior.
It is easier to harm / neglect people if they are stripped of their humanity, individuality, personhood. It also manifests in the technocratic language of war: humans are "soft targets". Killed civilians are "collateral damage", the soldiers of the other side are "the enemy".
The next level is to riducle or villify people to make it easier to neglect them. If they are seen as humans, "like us", they are automatically "members of the tribe". It is very difficult for homo sapiens to wrong a "tribe member" millions of years of evolution made sure of that.
What works best: to suppress knowledge. Stay inside the bubble. Don't dwell on conflicting information.
Well, that does not help with a brutally honest assessment of what is going on with the electorate. Self-serving politicians fall victim to their own rosy narratives.
[Edit: the real estate developers in New York can breathe a sigh of relief. Nixon was defeated by Cuomo in the primaries in Sep. 2018. He (the Big Donors) threw millions into the race. He outspent her by factor 20 or 40 - something like that. The INCUMBENT.
The mayor of New York and the governor of the state COULD do a lot for social housing and restricting WHO is allowed to buy up real estate for "investment" with the effect that rent becomes unaffordable for the people that live and work in the region.
But usually the politicians in power are bribed to side with the landlord class and the rich investors and those who build for the investors. In the U.S. they can be bribed directly, in other nations it is done with the help of donations to parties - campaign spending is restricted but not necessarily donations, and then there are cushy jobs for ex-politicians, family members, .....]
Politicians learn the sound bites that the think tanks and lobbyists are glad to provide: The thought stopping clichés that help to sugar coat policies that are hardly better than that of the GOP. *
So Sanders very uncomfortably reminds them of what THEY SHOULD BE. And they detest him for it. He shows to the public what is possible and he very much distrubs their double think.
As is usual with humans: they had once made the choice for SELFHISNESS,COMPLACENCY and COWARDICE - instead of integrity which is more challenging and much less lucrative. Such anti-social choices are usualy not revised (those crosroads lead to one direction streets so to speak, those who will have integrity make the choice early on). The usual behavior is to double down and develop contempt for anyone who threatens to burst their bubble - that way they can continue to profit from selfishness and can prevent feeling bad about themselves - even under more "difficult" conditions.
* The 2017 spring townhalls were challenging for the Republicans which were confronted by angry voters. Remarkable also the Corporate Dems when they were asked about healthcare:
They delivered the obfuscating rightwing talking points and misrepresentations.
Listen to Debbie Wasserman-Schulz or Nancy Pelosi for instance.
Even in summer 2018 when Medicare for All polled excellently even among Republicans:
Amy Goodman cornered Tom Perez, he was protesting at the border the separation of children from migrants - "access to healthcare, opportunities, values ... " the usual phrases.
He could not bring himself to even mention the word "Universal healthcare" even though Goodman used that phrase in her question (What do you think about Universal healthcare, are you for it ?)
Then he turned away to the other mics. He is not even good at lying.
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Other well meaning, active abortion opponents are incapable to transcend their own circumstances, belief system and experiences. If a family WANTS a child they are overjoyed when finding out. They talk about the baby, it is already real to them, everybody congratulates, "When is the baby due ?" "What names do you consider ? etc.
Almost always their religion tells them it counts as human from the beginning, when the sperm unites with the egg, even before it attaches to the uterus. - It is fine to have that view - but the medical, legal, scientific view is that it is not yet a human, does not have personhood, it is a clump of cells, later a fetus.
And these nice people are not able to let go of THEIR view of things and accept that OTHER people have other spititual beliefs (or none), do not share their idea that a zygote, embryo, fetus is a human baby, and do not want to add a child to their life in some months. Or cannot or do not want to cope with a child with severe disabilities.
They do not come so much from a place of bigotry - but they are self-centered, often blissfully and willfully ignorant about the troubles of other people - and are very certain that their's is the right god and the right gospel - and they have the moral compass, so in the end they can tell other people to accept a massive responsibility for the next 18 years.
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Let me quote Dr. Richard Wolff who has a degree in economics from Harvard and also degrees from Yale and I think Stanford. From 3 Ivy League institutions, that I am sure about. He did not find them that superior. when it comes to content. He had a regular background with a father influenced by the French Labour movement, so I assume it was outstanding academic achievements and being bright and eloquent what got him in.
He found the approach to economics biased and narrow minded and influenced by the Cold War (all hail capitalism).
He got interested in exploring Marx - the economic and philisophic academic - if only to refute him or to compare his ideas to let's say Adam Smith (which is misquoted and misunderstood anyway, he is not nearly as libertarian as presented today). Well, he found out that it was not "allowed" to have such academic curiosity -Studying him does not even mean agreement - but Marx was taboo.
Given that then the Soviet Union and China claimed ! to follow the economic ideas of Marx and that his writings (from 1840 and later !) contunied to be considered relevant - pf course any serious academic in economcs should have known first hand what Marx did and did not say.
China and the Soviet Union had suffered extreme difficulties, war, famine during the 1920s/ 1930s and in WW2. Both countries were desperately poor agrarian feudal societies, and behind in their development (that lead to the revolution). Once the internal fighting for power was over (which cost millions of lifes) - they DID massively improved survival of their citizens, literacy rate, etc.
Despite the negative commenting - in the 1930s the U.S. state department was worried about the leap forward that the Soviet Union had made and commented on that in reports. That in 1917 there had been a revolution in Russia (where the rich were dispossessed and fled the country) likely helped FDR to push the New Deal through in 1933. It was not that long ago and showed what the under class could do to the upper class if they were not willing to improve the situation for the lower classes.
To quote Mark Blyth: "Redistribution of wealth is asset insurance for the rich." And: "The Hamptons are flat country, and not a defensible position."
(Now imagine what would have been possible in Russia resp. the Soviet Union w/o the terrible dictatorship of the Bolshevics that ended that experiment of the fledgeling democracy - an experiment that had started after the czar had been unseated and put under house arrest - the democratic phase did not last long though. As the saying goes: the Revolution eats it's children.)
During WW1 Russia was ruled by the czar and the war allies of Russia forced the Revolutionaries to continue fighting - the troops of the czar got support from the U.S. France, U.K and they even invaded Russia. So that prolonged the Civil War.
If fighting is necessary, usually the most ruthless forces take over. Those who are most likely to win in such battles are usually not the moderates that are willing to share power.
Marxism is the critique of capitalism - and a remarkable academic achievement. So it should be part of the curriculum, like Adam Smith is part of it.
The buildings in the Ivy League colleges are fine, the instructions should at least be good (if not superior) maybe they are better funded to do research in the STEM areas. The Ivy League colleges have ONE important function - to facilitate the networking of those that are destined to become the future "elite" of the country. and in former days the ladies from wealthy families had their choice for a future adequate husband.
Wolff said the value of having those Ivy League degrees were not WHAT he learned there (that he found unimpressive). Later he could inhabit the outsider niche of non-orthodox economics. And if challenged by some defenders of the established and "allowed" academic range he could always refer to his "distinguished" education from those "elite" institutions and they would back off. So when challenged why he did not think that the current system was the greatest ever and why he even thought a lot of critique was appropriate - those degrees were useful as cover.
he did not take advantage of the networking opportunities with graduates from well-off and well connected families.
Three unorthodox economists (incl. Wolff) succeeded in being hired by a university (I think in Massachussetts) - the university found the rogue economists an interesting addition. True to form they did collective bargaining and the university was so eager to get them that it accepted their demand for immediate tenure. (Wolff said then he had no real idea of the VALUE of having immediate tenure).
Then the governor had to approve of tenure (intersting - no ? politicians decide WHO gets full academic freedom w/o endangering their economic safety) - and they got short term information that the governor was influenced against them. So they came up with some impressive letters of recommendation within a few days - and the govenor approved their hiring, tenure and all.
Noam Chomsky said that in the 1940s and 1950s the Ivy League institutions (like Havard) did not accept a lot of Jews. Therefore many of them went to MIT (and maybe Yale). Like Chomsky went to MIT (then almost 100 % military funded) - it was brimming with Jewish STEM talent.
So then they tried to keep people of Jewish background out of "The Ivy Club". Well those Jews had money and good education and were not having it.
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