Roosevelt Institute: Richard Kirsch- ‘The Politics of Responsibility- Not Envy’

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Derik Schneider

Hillary Clinton

Source:The New Democrat– Hillary R. Clinton (Democrat, New York) when she was Secretary of State.

Americans are looking for politicians who ask the wealthy to take responsibility for their fair share of our society.

According to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers – who is emerging as a key economic advisor to Hillary Clinton – the big political challenge in addressing economic inequality is not to embrace “a politics of envy.”

From the Roosevelt Institute

“Will Hillary Clinton run for president in 2016? Only Bill Clinton knows for sure.”

President Bill Clinton on Hillary Clinton's 2016 Plans - Late Night with Seth Meyers

Source:Late Night With Seth Meyers– President William J. Clinton (Democrat, Arkansas) 42nd President of the United States.

From Late Night With Seth Meyers

If I was advising for Hillary Clinton, which might be a scary thought for both her and me, because I don’t have a lot of respect for her as a politician, which is a different topic: but if she was interested in running a bold inspirational presidential campaign that could bring in more than just radical feminists who are purely only interested in seeing that the next President is a Democratic female and she asked me for advice in how to do that, I would tell her to go big.

Layout an agenda that is about empowerment especially for America who don’t have it regardless of race and ethnicity by empowering them to take control over their own lives so they can live in freedom with the rest of the country.

Push for universal quality education for everyone so you’re not trapped in a bad school simply because of where you live. Talk about public school choice and even charter schools, even if you have to take on teachers unions.

Talk about a real job training system where all Americans adults whether they are working or can finish their education so they can get a good job. Especially if they are low-skilled or are educated, but need additional skills to get another good job.

Talk about a trillion-dollars or more in new infrastructure investment over 5-10 years including a new National Infrastructure Bank that would acquire private sector funding and investors to finance these projects. And especially dedicate a lot of that funding for underserved areas. And talk about incentives for investors and employers to invest in underserved areas. So they can get the economic development that they need and not have to move to live a good life.

Hillary should go big and talk about an American Freedom For All Agenda. Well that is an opportunity for freedom for all Americans. The responsible people who need that opportunity will take advantage of that and live in freedom. Americans want to hear a presidential candidate who can speak to them and tell them how government can work for them to empower them so they can live in freedom. They are tired of divided politics and divide and conquer. They want a real leader that can inspire them. Hillary, shouldn’t play it safe and run for middle or go for the Far-Left. But instead talk about freedom and opportunity for all and she could win in a landslide.

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David Hoffman: ‘Hippies Remember The Glory Days’

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Derik Schneider

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Source:David Hoffman– A 1960s Hippie. (I’m presuming)

“To support my efforts to create more clips please donate to me at http://www.patreon.com/allinaday. I am very proud of the TV series I made for PBS called Making Sense of the Sixties. I had the chance to spend a year examining my youth and how I became an active member of the 60s generation. If you are from that generation or a child of the 60s, I think you would find the entire series of value…

Source:David Hoffman

If you are familiar with leftist publications like Salon, The Nation, The American Prospect, AlterNet, TruthOut and I’m sure I’ve left some other out and the Occupy Wall Street movement and what is left of it today, go back to the 1960s and you’ll see where the members of that movement come from today. Students For A Democratic Society, the counter-culture movement and the anti-war movement and even anti-capitalist and wealth movement of the 1960s are the parents and grandparents of the Occupy today.

They were called the New Left back and people with this really far-leftist mindset at least in America are still the New Left today. People who were not only against the Vietnam War which a lot of the country who was a lot more politically mainstream back then was also against. But they were against the liberal democratic establishment in general. Not the Democratic Party necessarily, but the liberal values that govern America then and today and what the country was founded on. Mostly as it related to our military, law enforcement and foreign policy, but also our economic and political systems.

The New Left coming of age in college in the 1960s decided they didn’t like America at least how the country was governed and founded. And put together a movement to not only get us out of the Vietnam War, which I would’ve been against back then as well as today. But they wanted to destroy our system and how our country is governed. And replace it with something a lot more social democratic, that is the democrats who were in this group. I mean if you look at Occupy today and then look at the New Left of the 1960s, they are the same people ideologically and culturally and believe in the same things.

You can also see this post at FreeState MD, on Blogger.

You can also see this post at The Daily Journal, on Blogger.

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The Leadership Conference: ‘Utah Senator Mike Lee Speech on the Need for Criminal Justice Reform’

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Ederik Schneider

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Source:The Leadership Conference– U.S. Senator Mike Lee (Republican, Utah) talking about the need for criminal justice reform.

“On February 11, 2014, Senator Mike Lee, R. Utah, gave a short speech to advocates attending a Washington, D.C. conference on the need to address our mass incarceration and reform the U.S. criminal justice system. The event was cosponsored by The Leadership Conference Education Fund and the Vera Institute of Justice, and was held at the Georgetown University Law Center’s Gerwirz Student Center.
Read full speech here:U.S. Senator Mike Lee.”

From The Leadership Conference

It shouldn’t be surprising that both John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are in favor of real criminal justice reform that reduce sentencing for people convicted of non-violent sentences. They are both from Texas and their state has one of the most expensive criminal justice systems both on a per-capita basis, but also in total budget in America.

Texas as right-wing as it gets stereotyped (and for good reasons) is one of the leaders now when it comes to criminal justice reform and prison rehabilitation. Again because their state has so many people in prison. I believe the largest prison population in the country at least on a per-capita basis. California might have more prisoners as it relates to total numbers.

John Cornyn is the Senate Assistant Majority Leader (the number two Senate Republican right behind Mitch McConnell the Senate Leader) so he has a lot of sway as far as what will come to the Senate floor in this Congress for consideration.

Senator Ted Cruz also from Texas is more of a conservative libertarian or has those leanings. So he’s interested along with Senator Rand Paul and Senator Mike Lee in criminal justice reform.

So having these three Senate Republicans in the same group on an issue with Senate Democrats like Sheldon Whitehouse, an LBJ Progressive, Dick Durbin someone who I would call a Classical Liberal and Pat Leahy the Ranking Member on the Judiciary Committee a strong opponent of the War on Drugs, is actually not that surprising for people who follow Congress on a regular basis.

What this Senate coalition is talking about is reducing sentences and for non-violent offenders and not sending so many of them to prison in the first place. This is really about the War on Drugs and getting drug offenders who were simply arrested for illegal narcotics possession and being high on those drugs, into drug rehab instead of prison.

They are also talking about over-criminalization and arresting people for doing things that actually don’t hurt other people. Online gambling would be an example of that. Marijuana possession would be another one, I would add adult prostitution as another one. And this is something that Congress should’ve done a long time ago.

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The National Interest: Dave Mujumdar: Europe’s Four Deadliest Military Powers

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Rik Schneider

Source:The National Interest

Europe gets stereotyped as socialist, pacifist and isolationist. And for very good reason and those labels tend to go very well together. Democratic Socialists tend to be pacifist and isolationist and at the very least suspicious of military force. And Europe is full of social democracies from Britain in the West, Scandinavia in the North and Greece in the South. But two of the most socialist countries in Europe Britain and France have two of the largest and best militaries in the World. Britain and France and if anything France is perhaps stronger militarily than Britain even if they are more socialist. With currently having a socialist President and administration in power.

My point being that Europe is more than capable of defending themselves. They don’t need a superpower three-thousand miles away that they like to take shots at and make fun of and criticize the size of its military budget and military overall, that being America of course defending them. When Europe is more than capable of defending themselves either as an independent state or as one European defense unit. The main reason why Europe spends of much money on their welfare states and infrastructure as part of their gross domestic product compared with America and spends so little on their own militaries, is because they America defending them for them at American taxpayer expense.

Not because Europe has so many pacifists and isolationists and America is full of warmongers. It is because America has Europe’s back when it comes to national security at American taxpayer expense. When Europe is more than capable of defending themselves if they just invested their own resources in their militaries. Or unified their militaries into one European defense unit and then we would probably be talking about the next superpower only trailing America. That Russia would have to pay attention and at least think twice before trying to require their former Slavic republics and satellites in the East. They wouldn’t do that with Europe there that if anything would be a stronger and definitely wealthier force to have to deal with.

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Hoover Institution: Uncommon Knowledge With Peter Robinson: P.J. O’Rourke Reflects on Life in The Sixties to Today

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Rik Schneider

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The Baby Boom is sort of tough for me to blog about as someone who was born in the mid-1970s the tail end of Generation X. And also as someone whose parents were born in the 1930s and are part of he Silent Generation. So I don’t really have much to go on other than my two of my uncles who were both born in 1944 who I didn’t see very often growing up and who I’m not close with today. Other than Boomers that I’ve talked to, but mostly as an adult. So what I have to go on for the most part is history. Which is generally a great reference to go on even if that is all you have.

Boomer stereotypes are people who were Hippies and looking to escape the 1950s and when that finally happened in college in the 1960s they just sort of exploded and freaked out on marijuana trips. Wait, that’s not so much a stereotype, but is actually true. But there’s more to that because this is a generation that is one of the most productive that America has ever produced whether they are on the Far-Left or Far-Right or somewhere in between. If you looked at what they produced for this country in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s and even today. They are a healthy generation and they are living working longer than any generation we’ve ever produced. Because they want to and are still very good at what they do.

There’s an old American saying that when you are young you are more open to alternative views and lifestyles that they establishment sees as immoral and weird. But as you get older and mature you get more educated and realize that you have responsibilities for yourself and your family and people you work with or for and people who work for you. And there’s a limit to how much of a rebel that you can be. The Boomers were Hippies in the 1960s and 70s, but they also grew up and have become perhaps the most educated, productive, tolerant and open-minded generation that we’ve ever produced. And I give them a lot of credit for that.

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The Washington Post: Jonathan Capehart: John Boehner Needs to Follow His Own Advice on DHS Funding

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Erik Schneider

Source:The Washington Post

It is not often that I agree with House Speaker John Boehner on anything and I’ll let you judge for yourself how often that is. But he has a point here. The House did their job at least in round one and passed a Homeland Security funding bill. They passed a bad bill with the immigration defunding and the Senate shouldn’t pass that provision. What the Senate should do is first debate the bad House bill and then try to fix it.

You may already know this if you follow me on this blog, but I hate the motion to proceed rule in the U.S. Senate. And you really need to be a Congressional junkie on Congress to know what the Senate motion to proceed rule is. But the Senate Leader can’t bring a bill up on the Senate floor without sixty votes. Which is stupid because the whole point of being in the majority in the Senate is getting to set the agenda. If the Leader can’t bring up bills on his own and needs sixty votes to do that, it really makes the role of the majority pretty weak.

Another good thing about the Senate is the role of the minority. Unlike in the House the minority can try to change or in this case fix any bill that the Senate majority brings up. They can do that with the amendment process and they can block bills if they have forty-one votes to do so. Senate Democrats having a sizable minority with forty-six votes can block bills on their own. Knowing that what they should be doing instead is saying, “we’ll debate the bad House bill, but we are going to try to fix it as well. And if we are able to strip the immigration defunding in it, we’ll vote for final passage. But if not, then we’ll block the bill on final passage”.

But to try to block a bill before it is even allowed to be debated, is a waste of time. Time that could be spent at least trying to fix the bad House bill and bringing along a few Republican Senators especially Republicans who’ll have tough races next year in the Northeast and Midwest who want to do other things in this Congress and get passed this issue. The House passed their bill a bad bill at that. Senate Republicans brought up the bill that they want. Now its the job of Senate Democrats to fix the bad bill. And if they are successful there, then they can send a clean bill back to the House. But if not then they can block the House bill and work with Senate Republicans on a compromise.

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Salon: Bill Moyers: When America Behaved Like ISIS

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Derik Schneider

Salon

Whenever there’s something horrible going on in the world that America officially comes out against and one way or another works to try to end that and punish the people who are responsible for it, the Far-Left in America however you want to label their politics in America just as long as you don’t label them as Liberals like to say, “hey, what about these horrible things that America did way back when. Either as private citizens or what their government did?”

There’s an easy answer to that, actually two easy answers to that. What does lets say slavery have to use as an example have to do with ISIS beheading innocent people today. And how come you can’t talk about present day and acknowledge the horrible actions of ISIS that most of the world has already done.

You can’t compare ISIS with the bad actions of America, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, to use as some examples. No country is innocent when it comes to horrible past behavior. The difference being those countries don’t murder their own people today. They fight against countries and terrorist groups that have. ISIS is in the business of acquiring land in order to establish their so-called Islāmic State. And they’ll murder anyone that they see as a threat to doing that. America at least when it comes to national security and foreign policy is in the business of protecting innocent American lives. And lives of other countries wherever we can help.

The far-left needs to get a real education about history and current affairs and learn that America is not the evil empire. But we are trying to prevent along with our allies another evil empire from emerging. And are we perfect? Of course not, but what other large developed country is when it comes to human rights and everything else.

And just because a country has done some bad things in the past doesn’t mean they can’t acknowledge when others behave bad or even worst in ISIS’s case. What they do instead because they don’t like our military, our constitution, our economic system and everything else that an overwhelming majority of Americans is do whatever they can to make us look bad. And even worst than our enemies.

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The Atlantic: Alana Semuels: A Better Way to Help The Long-Term Unemployed

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Ederik Schneider
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Source: The Atlantic Magazine– Employment applications

“LAS VEGAS—Long-term unemployment was a phrase you heard a lot about during the recession. Numerous studies showed that people who were out of work for long periods of time had a hard time finding a new job—and keeping it. And about one-third of those unemployed workers eventually gave up and stopped looking for work, studies suggested.

For all the recent good news about the booming job market and growing wages, there are still people out there desperately looking for work. Nearly 3 million of them—about one-third of all of the jobless—have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In past recessions, a far smaller share of the jobless had been out of work for so long.

But states grappling with tight budgets have lost their sympathy for the long-term unemployed as the economy turns a corner. In the last two years, seven states have reduced benefits to 20 weeks or fewer—26 weeks of unemployment benefits used to be standard. The share of the unemployed receiving benefits now stands at 27 percent, according to a report from the National Employment Law Project, which is an all-time low.

Until recently, De Ann Jensen was struggling to cope with these changes. The 47-year-old Las Vegas resident lost her job as a construction administrator in January of 2014, and had been looking for work ever since. When her benefits ran out in July, she couldn’t make her mortgage payments anymore, and was forced to sell her home in a short sale and move in with her parents.”

Source:The Atlantic

There are people on public assistance who didn’t even finish high school and now are single parents generally mothers who have very little if any job experience even at low-skilled low-income jobs. Some of these people even have a drug problem either with alcohol or illegal drugs. This is probably the hardest population to help people on Welfare. The only harder population as far as moving people off of Welfare to the workforce with a good job would be people who are disabled and even learning disabled to go along with all their other issues.

But then we have a population of unemployed workers who have been much better with their lives and have lived responsibly for most of their adult lives. Finished high school while they were in high school and even have a college or vocational degree or at least a community college degree. But have been laid off during bad turn in the economy and are not old yet and even not even fifty yet, but lets say are in their forties and have positive work experience that goes back twenty-years or more in a field that they were trained for. But now can’t find another job in that field. Those employers are going for younger cheaper employees, or those jobs simply no longer exist.

The educated unemployed are the easiest people to help and move off unemployment. Because they are responsible adults who are nowhere near retirement who want to work because they have responsibilities to meet and they actually like working. And simply need a good job to make that happen for them. For people who fit this group of unemployment they should be back in school. Government should help them with the finances for them to go back to school. And either get more skills in their current field. Or learn another trade and work there. This would be major and great investment in human capital that would eventually pay for itself.

It is not everyday, every week, every month or even every year that I agree with Newt Gingrich on anything. But he made this point when he ran for president back in 2011-12 that the amount of time that people who are long-term unemployed who were laid off spend not finding another job, they could be using that time to further their education. That you could extend their Unemployment Insurance, but in it would be a requirement that they further their education. Either at work seminar or a community college and they would have a much better opportunity of finding a good job. Which is something we should’ve been doing as a country ever since the Great Recession hit back in 2008.
The Real News: ‘High Unemployment Due To Lack of Demand, Not Skills or Education’

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The American Mind: Compassionate Conservatism- Charles Kesler Interviewing William Voegeli

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Rik Schneider

Before I almost sound like I’m speaking in favor of George W. Bush a man I was proud to vote against twice for president, I just want to say that if I was a Conservative and if I was a Conservative it would have to be the real thing and more Rand Paul/Barry Goldwater and not a Neoconservative or someone on the Religious-Right, but if I was actually a Conservative I would be insulted by the term compassionate conservative. Why, well think about it. What does that imply? That Conservatives aren’t compassionate, they could care less about people who suffer. “But I’m a compassionate conservative and I’m different. I care about people who suffer, I just want to spend a lot less money helping people who suffer.”

Now to President Bush’s credit what he wanted to do was in sense move the Republican Party past Reagan/Gingrich. A party that was seen as mean and not caring at all for the suffering. Which is sort of ironic because when Newt Gingrich was in the U.S. House and even as Speaker, politically he would’ve been a labeled in the 1980s and 1990s had the term been around as a compassionate conservative. Back then he believed in federal funding for education and job training for the unemployed and low-skilled uneducated adults on Welfare. He was just a lot more fiscally conservative than G.W. Bush as President. And believe the Federal Government should pay for what it does. And that these services should be run by state and local governments.

What President Bush was trying to do but communicated it poorly was to say that government has a role in helping people in poverty and other forms of suffering. But that government especially the Federal Government can go it alone and do everything themselves. That the faith community and non-profits, charities and other private institutions also have a role in helping the less-fortunate in society. And that the Feds can help with financial grants to these private groups to help people meet their basic needs. But that they can also help with things like job training so people in these circumstances can finish their education and get out of poverty. Without 9/11 I think that is the President Bush we would’ve seen in the first term.

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Burns 1876: ‘Western Boot Fitting- Cowgirl Boots and Riding Boots’

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Rik Schneider
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Source:Burns 1876– Cowgirl boots for cowgirls.

“Burns Saddlery & Burns Cowboy Shop, offers quality western wear, boots, hats, saddles, tack, western home decor. Durable custom Indian blanket auto seat covers and our custom leather & repair shop where you can get specialized products made to order.”

Source:Burns 1876

The right cowgirl boots are essential for cowgirls. The most important part probably being coming from someone who doesn’t live out west or in rural America and never has, but that they have to be functional.

Women need to be able to move and move well in them. They need to be comfortable enough to do that so their feet aren’t always sore and getting blisters. But they need to look good and be stylish at the same time.

They need to go with the cowgirls jeans and other western wear that she would wear. And the style part is also important because guys cowboys and otherwise love the look of cowgirls.

That is sexy cowgirls who look good and are well-built and look sexy in their cowgirl outfits. And I think this something that these cowgirls in this video more than understand.

You can also see this post at The Action Blog, on WordPress.

You can also see this post at The Daily Post, on WordPress. (No pun intended)

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