The best thing I can say about Senator Strom Thurmond, as someone who is not a fan, is that he was a reformed segregationist who reformed his views and rhetoric as the predominant views changed, even in South Carolina, especially as African-Americans became more prominent there. Or perhaps he changed his views because he believed he made mistakes in the past, but he changed his views to the point that he could be reelected in South Carolina overwhelmingly, including winning over African-American voters.
Senator Thurmond is one of the last of the Dixiecrats, those who would be considered perhaps far-right Republicans today in the South. But up until 1970 or so, Dixiecrats were a major part of the Democratic coalition of people who were Federalists, up to the point that they believed that States could deny people access because of race and had the right to run segregated institutions, and State’s rights, as they saw it, outweighed constitutional and individual rights.
You would think people who call themselves Conservatives (and I say that because it is debatable whether these people are conservatives), you would think these so-called Conservatives who are opposed to public assistance, or even the minimum wage would be in favor of raising it modestly. Because it would mean these workers would have more income to pay their own bills and as a result need less in public assistance.
If you’re opposed to Welfare in general, then that means corporate welfare as well. Which is welfare (or subsidies) that go to business’s and even individuals, simply for just being successful. To oil companies simply for drilling oil in America. Which would be just one example. Or allowing a rich individual to right off their losses when their business goes into the ground.
Another example of corporate welfare would be public assistance. That is financial assistance for low-income workers who are simply not paid enough money by their employers to allow for them to live independently and live in freedom. That allows for business’s to pass on the cost of their employees to taxpayers. Business’s pay their low-income workers very little and as a result their cost of doing business goes on to the back of hard-working middle class Americans. Which is another form of welfare.
As far as Ukraine goes, I think Mark Shields had the best line when he said that all we can do is hope for the best there. And that means some peaceful agreement that calls for real elections, with the opposition having a real shot at winning, not stealing or having the elections stolen from them, but actually winning the elections with the ruling party, with the current Ukrainian administration accepting the results of the elections, and that means stepping down from power if they lose or continue to govern if they win.
As far as free trade goes, something I tend to favor, especially as someone who lives in a country of 310 million people that is part of a world of six billion people, we simply can’t afford to close our borders. Our companies and economy, including workers, would be denied billions of dollars every year for not trading with other countries that can afford to buy our products. I think even organized labor now understands that we must trade with other countries.
The real question is how you trade with other countries and have trade agreements that give your products the same access in foreign markets as foreign countries have in this country. Do you encourage companies, foreign and domestic, to invest in America or take those jobs overseas? So of course I want free trade, but we also need to stop encouraging companies to send good American jobs overseas in order for trade to work for America.
At risk of sounding completely inside the beltway and like a congressional junky who knows too much about U.S. Senate rules, Senate Democrats should consider a new rule and even do it with a 51-vote majority necessary and make it permanent: If you don’t show up to vote, you lose your vote and the committee, in this case the Judiciary Committee, will move on without you and vote on these nominees.
Five years ago I would never have guessed that Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, would be so irresponsible an obstructionist that he would go to such lengths to stop President Obama from getting his appointments through the Senate as to tell his members of the Judiciary Committee not to show up to vote because that is the only way to stop the President from getting his appointments through. That is assuming Senator Grassley is behind this immature strategy; I simply don’t know that yet.
I take away from this video a few things. The Tampa Buccaneers were not only a playoff contender in 1979 but made the NFC Playoffs by winning the NFC Central, and this was a club that lost its first 17 games in franchise history from 1976 to 1977. The New Orleans Saints were an actual playoff contender in 1979 as well even though they had 12 straight non-winning seasons before 1979 and never even had a winning season before in franchise history, but they came up a little short in 1979, finishing at 8-8.
I’m not trying to claim that the mainstream far left in America, if there is such a thing, are Communists. But what I am going to imply and frankly just state is that the far left in America for whatever the reasons, and we can speculate why, has a hard time saying that big government dictatorial totalitarian statist philosophies are not only just wrong but also have done a lot of damage throughout the world, whether it was the Communist Republics of the Twentieth Century or the theocratic and military states of this century.
Americans on the far left have a hard time saying those regimes deserve to criticized. Far left magazines like Salon or The Nation or The AlterNet, when topics come up focusing on the awful damage that these authoritarian states have done, whether it is the Communist Republic of Korea or the Communist Republic of China, which I call that it, or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Communist Republic of Cuba just 100 miles south of Miami, Florida, or Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela do not acknowledge the obvious and say that those regimes are disreputable and should be shunned.
They instead point to the damage the West, especially America, has done even though it is a liberal democracy. The far left is the “blame the America first crowd,” because we are the military and foreign policy and economic superpower, even if China passes us with a larger economy. We’ll still dwarf them when it comes to standard of living and per capita income, probably for the rest of this century. They like to put America down because of these things but also because we are not a socialist republic or a social democracy. We are not Scandinavia and we allow all sorts of debate, speech, opposition, and points of view instead of closing off opposition speech as in Venezuela.
There was a post in Salon about a month or so ago that is on this blog arguing in favor of nationalizing the news in America because of the success of FOX News. The far-left radio talk show host Thom Hartmann, again about a month ago, which is also on this blog, was arguing in favor of abolishing the Right to Self Defense, the Second Amendment. That is where the far left in America is and they are not Progressives, but people who believe there is just too much private and individual power and that government needs to take much of that away. They are now sounding like Communists and the Left’s version of the Christian Right than they sound like Democrats.
One thing I tend to agree on with Progressive economists on is that there isn’t any magic number to attach to how big the public sector has to be or how small it has to be that is the signal that government is too big and must be trimmed down. Before the Great Recession, America was doing very well economically for about 25 years, with a few slow-downs in between and periods of high unemployment, with our public sector to Gross Domestic Product ratio somewhere around 20 percent. The European Union as a whole did well economically also, especially Germany, with its public sector to GDP ratio around 45 percent during the same time period. And Scandinavia, among the biggest governments in the developed world during the same period, grew well at around 65 to 70 percent.
When it comes to economic growth and the public sector, it is all about what you need government to do. What do people need to do for themselves and what do government and the people need when it comes to resources to be able to do for themselves so the society as a whole can prosper?With Scandinavia being rich in natural resources and land and with its socialist culture, it can afford expansive welfare states that come with higher taxes because it also has very small populations.
This situation is similar to Canada’s but if you actually looked at the Canadian federal budget, the size of its government is not that much different fromAmerica’s, the difference being that it has a much smaller national security budget and spends a lot more on public social insurance programs and on infrastructure. Canada also has a great deal of land and is energy independent. It also has a small population considering the vast physical size of the country.
America is different because we are rich in land and in natural resources but for whatever reason, we are still importing a hell of a lot of oil and gas when we are capable of producing all of the natural resources in the world, including oil and gas, and even though we are a country of 310 million people, we have thousands of square miles of land with very few people, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah. And we could easily produce all of the energy we need for ourselves if we just got around to doing it
My point is that a Scandinavian welfare state, considering the size of our population and the fact that we are still importing a hell of a lot of energy and have a large deficit when it comes to infrastructure, would not be the right economic model for us with those factors alone. Since that is not the right economic model for us, it doesn’t mean it can’t work in other countries and has worked in other countries, but not all countries are the same and they have different needs and populations.
It’s all about what government needs to do and what you need people to do for themselves and what businesses need to be productive and profitable. Once you get those factors figured out, then you get to how big the national government should be and how much it should tax to finance those operations that is consistent with strong economic and job growth, where most of the country has well-paid jobs and can pay its bills without government overtaxing it.
How good would the New England Patriots have been in the 1970s had they just been able to protect the great talented quarterback Jim Plunkett, who had all the tools in the world to be a great quarterback but never had a good offensive line or running game while in Boston and was always under pressure, having to get himself back up with all of the punishment he took for the Patriots. If he had had a solid offense around him, he probably would not have ended up a two-time Super Bowl Champion with the Raiders.
I’m all in favor of increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour; actually I would even go up to 12.00 dollars an hour over a 5-year period and even index the minimum wage for inflation so it keeps up with cost of living increases, just as long as it comes with a 30-percent tax break for small employers and nonprofit employers, who are responsible to their employees and customers but simply can’t afford big increases to their payrolls. If you increased the minimum wage this way, you would get some Republican votes for it as well and get it passed in more places.
Sure, why take your frustrations out on your spouse when you can take them out on your mistress. Instead, you could just say, “Honey, look, I don’t want to argue this with you,” and go meet your mistress and have it out with her instead and then if there’s anything you didn’t cover with her, your wife will be there at home for you to finish off your critical arguments about whose turn it was to wash the dishes or pick up the kids from school or pay the monthly porno bill.
Football Stadium Digest covers major stories and events in the planning, construction and operations of NCAA and professional NFL football stadiums across the United States and Canada.
Derik Schneider
Ederik Schneider
Erik Schneider
FredSchneiderUS
kireschneider
The Daily Review
Rik Schneider
TheActionBlogUSA
The New Democrat
The New Democrat 
You must be logged in to post a comment.