Month: June 2019

Iran: Time To Decide

Enough of presidential bullshit! If he thinks he is all that then let this big mouth asshole make the decision……stop waiting for the most advantageous time to do something.

President Trump promised “overwhelming force” against Iran, calling President Rouhani “ignorant and insulting” and saying his attacks on Iran would mean total obliteration in some parts of the country.

Trump also thinks it will be a short conflict…..

Trump now insists the war “wouldn’t last very long,” and he isn’t even contemplating putting “boots on the ground” in Iran. He bragged of what a “very strong position” the US is in for such a war.

To me I think it is nothing more than arrogant lip service……something this so-called “Bully” excels at giving the nation……none of his raving will benefit this nation or the Middle East,,,the only thinbg it will do is allow the Saudis to run rampant around the Middle East applying their will at the drop of a hat.

Scholars in the field of Middle East studies have made their opinions known….

Statement by leading Middle East/Islamic studies scholars, June 22, 2019

We, the undersigned scholars of the Middle East and North Africa and broader Muslim world, call on President Trump immediately to pull back from the brink of a war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is clear to us that the human, diplomatic, legal, political, and economic costs to both countries, the Persian Gulf and larger Middle East, the global economy and the global system of international humanitarian law of a US attack would be even more devastating than was the US invasion of Iraq sixteen years ago. We call upon the political leadership of the country, with a sense of urgency, not only to refrain from any further threats and uses of force against Iran, but also to put forward a new American diplomacy that takes steps to achieve a sustainable peace between our two countries and within the larger region.

We bring to the public’s attention the following points:

https://mondoweiss.net/2019/06/scholars-unmitigated-disaster/

Here is a thought….maybe we should pay attention to what experts in the Middle East have to say…..and let the rantings of DC ass lickers fall on deaf ears.

Time for the people to rein in the war hawks they have had their way for nearly 2 decades…they have made their money now put them to bad.

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”…..(I think; therefore I write)

Trump Wins!

Remember that famous headline from the election where Truman won re-election?  Of course you do not you are not old enough……so here is what I am talking about…..

Dewey was the GOP candidate in 1949….but Harry Truman won that election.

This had nothing to do with this post…..I needed a lead in….sorry for the digression.

I bring up this because I have read that critics and opponents will lose because…….

Pastor Robert Henderson declared that anyone who opposes President Donald Trump is fighting against God. In an interview with televangelist Jim Bakker, Henderson said that no matter what people do, Trump will remain in office because that is God’s rightfully place for him.

“They can try all day long to remove him; they will not remove him. God said, ‘I set him as the president,’ and they can fight, and they can curse, and they can do all that they want; the problem is that ‘they’re fighting against God,” Henderson said.

He went on to share a dream about how God instructed him to pray for Trump.

“We stood in the courts of heaven, in the council of the Lord, and in that council, God told me to make a decree out of James 1:11, which is, ‘All flesh is as grass, and the flower is as the glory of the grass,’” Henderson said. “And He said to me, ‘Here’s what I want you to do, as you stand here, I want you to decree that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is as grass and that she is as the flower of the grass, and the burning, searing, exposing heat of God will come and bring exposure, and she will wither away, and Donald Trump will be the president of the United States.’”

(Raw Story)

Watch this!

https://vimeo.com/338927428

There is no need to have an election because God wills it that Trump will win…..

Sorry I do NOT believe any of that  BS for one minute!

But I do believe the Trump can win re-election (to my chagrin)……for several reasons (my thoughts)…..the economy, warmonger vote, his base is rabid, oligarchs are throwing money at him, the DNC (they are trying to pick the Dem candidate)……

Further reading…..https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2018/06/10/5-reasons-trump-will-win-40-states-in-2020-n2489173

Not to worry about that impeachment thing……God wills Trump to be president……

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-cannot-be-removed-because-he-gods-choice-claims-pastor-who-says-1437943

If you do not buy that CRAP then…..do some reading……

It is possible….no….it is likely…Trump will win re-election….never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter……if you want to change that outcome then….

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

Reparations?

Closing Thought–26Jun19 (Happy Birthday To Me)……

We are having a debate about the possibility of reparations for savagery of slavery…..this debate in Congress was a big thing in the media…..for a couple of weeks and then it died down as the Dem debates came around.

The hearings in Congress on the reparations thingy…..

The topic of reparations for slavery is headed to Capitol Hill for its first hearing in more than a decade, with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and actor Danny Glover set to testify before a House panel next Wednesday. The hearing’s stated purpose: “to examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community, and the path to restorative justice.” The June 19 date of the hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties coincides with Juneteenth, a cultural holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved blacks in America, per the AP. Ex-Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the longtime sponsor of House Resolution 40, first proposed the measure calling for a study of reparations in 1989. Conyers reintroduced the bill every session until his resignation in 2017.

Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, the resolution’s new sponsor, introduced it earlier this year and pushed for the hearing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in February she supports a reparations study, a topic that hasn’t been the subject of a House hearing since 2007. Reparations had been a fringe issue until Coates’ 2014 essay in the Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” thrust the topic back into the national discourse. Lethal Weapon star Glover has spoken in favor of the issue for years. The reparations debate became part of the 2020 presidential race early, as several Democratic primary candidates signaled their support for compensating slaves’ descendants, though not in a traditional sense of direct payouts to black Americans. Most have been vague on specifics, offering policies addressing economic inequality that could disproportionately benefit blacks .

Now reparations are not the focal point of this post just a little background…..what I want to show is just how out of damn touch the GOP truly has become……and to do that all I need is for the Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell to open his mouth…..

When asked about reparations for slavery on the eve of a House hearing on the issue, McConnell said reparations “for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible,” were not a good idea. Besides, he suggested acts, such as electing Barack Obama president, could be considered a form of compensation.

“We tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a Civil War, by passing landmark civil rights legislation, elected an African American president,” McConnell said. “I don’t think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it. First of all, it would be hard to figure out whom to compensate.”

(USA Today)

If you have nothing intelligent to say or to add then throw Obama into the conversation…..(pathetic political BS)……

Do I need to add anything?

That was probably the most moronic statement uttered by a GOP leader.

Yes, We Hate Debates

But unfortunately it is the only way we will thin out the herd of Dem candidates….tonight we begin that process to be continued Thursday night as well…..

I appears that the polls are starting to move….Biden has been in control of the polls for over a month and now he is losing votes and others are started to inch up…..

A poll out of South Carolina reflects what’s going on nationally: Joe Biden’s numbers are dipping while Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg are gaining ground—but not enough to take his place, the Post and Courier reports. Biden still holds a 20-point lead in the upcoming South Carolina primary, but his support has fallen from 46% in May to 37% now, while Warren has risen from 8% to 17% and Buttigieg from 8% to 11%, pushing Sens. Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris from the top three. Composites by Real Clear Politics show similar national trends over the past month. The South Carolina Democratic presidential primary will be held Feb. 29

These debates should help some candidates and hurt others chances of ever getting to the next stage of this election…..

I offered my thoughts shortly after the candidates that made the cut…….https://lobotero.com/2019/06/14/debate-night-is-set/

The line up for the debates is as follows…..

Look for a few to drop out as soon as the debates are over…..money will start getting tight…..donors will be looking for the best person to support.

A Primer for the debates…..

With 20 candidates vying for attention—a number more suited to wrestling’s Royal Rumble than a traditional debate—Democrats have split the field into two groups for debates in Miami on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Republicans who took part in their party’s 10 and 11-person 2016 debates, however, say Democrats could still find it a struggle. “A 10-person debate is a mess,” Sen. Ted Cruz tells the New York Times. “It’s a cacophony.” Chris Christie adds: “With 10 people on the stage, you know, you’ll get seven to nine minutes, usually, of time to talk. So it’s very difficult to break through.” More:

  • No “undercard.” NPR, which profiles all 20 candidates, reports that the Democratic National Committee and NBC wanted to avoid the “undercard” debates that the GOP had for low-polling candidates. Instead, they divided them into those polling above 2% and below 2%, then split them evenly between the two nights through random drawing.
  • The moderators. NBC, which will air the debates starting at 9pm Eastern, says it will have the same five moderators both nights: Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, and Jose Diaz-Balart.
  • The candidates. Wednesday night’s debate will feature Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro, Jay Inslee, Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, John Delaney, and Tulsi Gabbard.
  • The frontrunners. Warren is the only one of the candidates who is polling in the top five. The other four—Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala Harris—will be onstage Thursday.
  • The format. Don’t expect many long-winded speeches: Wired reports that each candidate will get 60 seconds to answer questions and 30 seconds for follow-ups. They will also be allowed to make closing remarks, but not opening ones.
  • The issues. The Washington Post predicts that there will be broad agreement on issues like health care and climate change—but it could get messy when it comes to more controversial questions like socialism, how civil to be to Republicans, how best to defeat President Trump, and whether frontrunner Joe Biden is out of touch.

If you do watch the debate then watch for Warren on Wednesday…she is the only front runner on the stage and should have a commanding spot.  But will she stand out?

I will reserve my analysis until after the last debate on Thursday…..analysis to be posted on Friday.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

Love–Duncan Hunter Style

There are times that politicians show their human side and succumb to the primal needs….Gary Hart comes to mind….. even those accusations against our current standing president……and then there is California’s Duncan Hunter…..seems he got caught with his fingers in the campaign pie to pay for his love travels…..

US Rep. Duncan Hunter of California illegally used campaign money to finance romantic flings with lobbyists and congressional aides, spending thousands of dollars on meals, cocktails, and vacations, federal prosecutors say. A government court filing Monday detailed allegations about the married Republican congressman’s affairs with five women following an indictment last year charging Hunter and his wife with misspending more than $200,000 in campaign funds on trips and other personal expenses, the AP reports. Margaret Hunter, who served as the six-term congressman’s campaign chairwoman, pleaded guilty this month to one count of corruption and agreed to testify against her husband.

In the new motion, prosecutors reconstructed Rep. Hunter’s alleged clandestine lifestyle, providing times when he arrived for and left liaisons and listing a range of expenses he represented as campaign-related activity, such as paying for dates with a woman who had become his lover shortly after she started working in his office. He used his campaign treasury for even seemingly incidental purchases—a $7 beer at a hotel bar while on a ski trip with one of the women, and an Uber ride after a liaison with another lobbyist in October 2015. The government’s filing suggested that Hunter tapped into campaign funds because he had no other money to finance his romantic relationships. During a weekend ski trip with a lobbyist, his personal bank account had a negative balance and he had been hit with $33 fees six times for overdrawing the account, prosecutors said

Yet another turn…..it is rumored that his attorneys will ask for the trial to be moved to a district that voted for Trump.  This guy even threw his son under the bus and accused him of taking money (not for sex like his father but for vid games)…looks like his wife threw him under the bus…..what a great loving family.

It is bad enough that the GOP wants to pick who their voters are with gerrymandering and now they want to decide who gets justice and who does not.

What a pathetic party that allows this sort of crime to continue in its ranks.

Time To Re-Think This War Thing

2020 is around the corner and maybe it is time to find a candidate that is willing to re-think the war thing.

I think the days of massive armies meeting on the field of battle are gone……at least that is the way of thinking that the US masters of war are thinking……their lopsided wins over Saddam on two occasions has them settled into this superiority complex that will defeat us eventually.

For instance while the US is laser focused on defeating non-state entities (and losing the high ground) our super power adversaries have been looking at ways to get around the US.

For the first time in decades, it is possible to imagine the United States fighting—and possibly losing—a large-scale war with a great power. For generations of Americans accustomed to U.S. military superiority and its ability to deter major wars, the idea of armed conflict between great powers may seem highly improbable. The idea that the United States—with the most expensive armed forces in the world by a wide margin—might lose such a war would seem absolutely preposterous. Nevertheless, the possibility of war and U.S. defeat are real and growing.

Given that U.S. armed forces’ last major conventional combat operations were the massively lopsided victories against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and 2003, many Americans might be wondering how this could come to pass. This report makes the case that one salient issue is that the American way of war—the implicit and explicit mental framework for U.S. military strategy and operations—that coalesced after the Gulf War is no longer valid.

China and Russia have spent almost two decades studying the current American way of war. While the Department of Defense (DoD) has taken its military superiority for granted and focused on defeating nonstate adversaries, China and Russia have been devising strategies and developing new concepts and weapons to defeat the United States in a war should the need arise. They have offset their relative weakness versus the United States by using time and geography to their advantage and by focusing their weapons- and concept-development efforts on finding ways to attack vulnerable nodes in U.S. military operations. The goal of these strategies and concepts is to create a plausible theory of victory whereby China or Russia avoid a “fair fight” with the Joint Force and could therefore defeat the United States and its allies and partners in a regional war. These Chinese and Russian strategies, which once seemed implausible or far in the future, are beginning to pay off. They are shifting military balances in key regions and pushing allies and partners to reconsider U.S. security guarantees.

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/anawow
 
All aspects of war should be studied and practiced…for the US never knows from where the next “major” threat will be presented to us.

June 25, 1950

Closing Thought–25Jun19

That is the date when the North Koreans rushed South of the border….the day the Korean War began.

The Korean War? Some say that it was the first battle against communism (I disagree)…….a quick simple look at the war……

Though the Korean War started on this day 65 years ago—June 25, 1950—when North Korean tanks crossed the 38th parallel, the boundary with South Korea, TIME’s reporting from the following week reveals it took several days for the United States to realize the scope of what had happened.

It was early Sunday morning in Korea, the middle of Saturday afternoon in Independence, Mo. In the former, TIME reported, “North Korean radio broadcast war whoops” as “past terraced hills, green with newly transplanted rice, rumbled tanks.” In the latter, U.S. President Harry Truman was visiting with friends and supporters in his home state when he received a telephone call from Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

http://time.com/3915803/korean-war-1950-history/

https://www.history.com/topics/korea/korean-war

If reading is too difficult then this short video can help……

https://youtu.be/yxaegqvl4aE

My look into the past and the Korean War was made possible by something that I read (I am always finding something for I read a lot)……

North Korea already has China watching their back but it may be that North Korea will once again embrace Russia as it did in the early days of the Korean War……

Both Moscow and Pyongyang have common grievances with Washington and may work together to evade sanctions

It seems almost inevitable that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin at some point in the near future, possibly in the port city of Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East.

The United States should be concerned.

Since this would be the first meeting between the two leaders since Kim came to power in 2011, the summit provides an important opportunity for both Russia and North Korea to advance their interests.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/will-cold-war-allies-russia-and-north-korea-be-reunited-50747

This is something I hope those “experts” on the Asia situations will keep this in their reports and intel…..but with this president I would not bet on anything at all.

Before The Debates

This week (Tomorrow to be exact) will be the Dem debates over two nights…..before they stand up infront of the caring public and answer questions from MSM pundits…let’s look at some things that probably will not be part of the debate process……….

Let’s start with Biden, the front runner for now…..thjis is the Centrist dream candidate…a corporate puppet gthat will do little to change their lot in society……

Don’t worry, billionaires: your standard of living won’t change under a Joe Biden administration. 

That’s the message the Democratic frontrunner delivered to donors Tuesday as he continued a fundraising trip in New York that saw him on Monday tell a room of wealthy Wall Streeters “you guys are great” and ask a Trump-loving supermarket magnate for support. 

In Biden’s comments Tuesday, the former vice president told a room of 100 of the New York financial elite, including bankers Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, both of whom worked in the Treasury Department under Democratic administrations, that he wasn’t their enemy. According to Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Epstein, Biden took pains to separate himself from the rest of the field in his comments.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/19/vowing-not-demonize-rich-biden-tells-billionaires-nothing-would-fundamentally-change
 
The other darling of the Centrists…..Mayor Pete. 

As best as I could determine, Mayor Pete was stalking a constituency of the middle ground, by uttering thoughtful clichés about the Rust Belt, the deficit, sexual equality, cops on the beat in South Bend, and the wars on terror—in which he was a deployed as an onward Christian soldier.

His dream is to survive long enough in the primaries so that as a last man standing he could offer himself as an alternative either to the Democratic Shining Path (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) or Joe Biden’s Walmart he’s-hopeless-but-he-can-win Amtrak centrism.

 
I agree that Mayor Pete is a lightweight, a Centrist, and just another candidate of doing business as normal…..
 
Biden and the Mayor are just a few of the candidates that Wall Street will be promoting……the others are Booker, Harris …this should tell the voter who will run the country if elected…..

Having already determined that two of the top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination—Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders—are completely unacceptable and must be stopped at all costs, Wall Street financiers have reportedly begun to narrow down their list of 2020 favorites as candidates’ fundraising efforts reach a “fevered peak” ahead of the June filing deadline.

As the New York Times reported on Sunday, “three candidates are generating most of the buzz” among powerful Wall Street donors: South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/17/everything-you-need-know-warren-and-sanders-not-option-wall-street-abuzz-over-biden

The only thing that got me to take a second look at Mayor Pete as a possibility…was what he had to say at the NYT Forum….

the New York Times published a Democratic presidential forum of video interviews, including the hot potato: “Do you think Israel meets international standards of human rights?” And even the Times seems a bit surprised by the result:

“we thought this question would gauge Democrats’ willingness to criticize Israel, and found few candidates who would do so.”

Yes, what is most striking about the candidates’ short responses is the extreme reluctance to say a word critical of Israel’s human rights abuses. The exceptions were Bernie Sanders (though not as critical as he was to the AJC); Rep. Seth Moulton, who kinda stands up for Betty McCollum’s bill that would strip funds from Israel over its detention and interrogation of children; Tulsi Gabbard; and– the surprise– South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who all but answers the question, No. Israel’s record is “problematic and moving in the wrong direction.”

https://mondoweiss.net/2019/06/buttigieg-klobuchar-excuses/

We probably will not see much of this forum for the Media wants Pete in this race and his criticism of Israel will rule him out.

My pick of the Dems as candidate is Tulsi Gabbard for she is the antiwar, true antiwar, candidate….the only thing about Tulsi that worries me is her stand on the War on Terror…..

ut there is one major flaw in Gabbard’s rhetoric and policy, the way she views the War on Terror. Her most well-known quote on it saying, “when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” which she follows up with, “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”

One member of the audience at the town hall asked Gabbard about that quote and expressed his concern with it, wondering why she considers the war on terror and regime change wars so different. She answered, “When I say that I’m a hawk on this war on terror against groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, I believe that we have to be tough and defeat that threat in order to keep the American people safe. That’s a fact.”

The Flaw in Tulsi Gabbard’s Foreign Policy

Even with this questionable stance she is still my choice and I will be watching her and the others in the debates over the two nights.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

Mayor Pete Steps In It

Mayor Pete of South Bend a Dem candidate for president had to handle a problem in his city and had to step off the campaign trail to handle a city in pain……but just how did he do?

It’s Debate Week for the Democratic candidates, but South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has a major hometown issue brewing that threatens to overshadow his national ambitions. Earlier this month, a white police officer in his city fatally shot a black man, prompting Buttigieg to leave the campaign trail to deal with the aftermath. On Sunday night, anger among black residents boiled over at a town hall meeting, with much of that anger directed at Buttigieg himself. Details:

  • The town hall: The word “emotional” is common in coverage as Buttigieg and Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski addressed the crowd. One woman yelled they must get “racist” officers off the streets. A man yelled to Buttigieg, “You got to get back to South Carolina like you were yesterday?” per CNN. Another said: “How long before you take action? The people who are here angry and yelling and upset have asked this of you before.” And maybe the most cutting slam of all: “We don’t trust you!” per the Washington Post.
  • Promises: Buttigieg said he’d ask the Department of Justice’s civil rights division to investigate the shooting and will tell the local prosecutor that he wants an independent investigator, reports the AP. “The effort to recruit more minority officers to the police department and the effort to introduce body cameras have not succeeded and I accept responsibility for that,” he said.
  • The shooting: Police Sgt. Ryan O’Neill shot Eric Jack Logan, 54, on June 16 after receiving a report about someone going through cars. O’Neill says he fired after Logan approached him with a knife raised, though city officials say there is no body cam footage of the incident, reports the Indianapolis Star. Black residents don’t buy the police version of events, notes the Los Angeles Times.
  • As a candidate: Buttigieg has struggled to connect with minority voters, and “his difficulty quelling the frustrations and concerns among black residents here threatens to upend his well-crafted pitch about South Bend’s rebuilt downtown and overall economic strides,” write Mitch Smith and Alexander Burns in the New York Times.
  • Ditto: For Buttigieg, the shooting has exposed “what has long been considered an Achilles’ heel of his candidacy: his frosty relationship with South Bend’s black residents,” writes Wesley Lowery in the Washington Post. South Bend has a population of about 101,000, and the police force is 90% white, even though the city is about 27% black, per the AP and StatisticalAtlas.
  • Showing emotion: Buttigieg is seen as unflappable on the campaign trail, but “for the first time, cracks in Buttigieg’s composure have publicly emerged,” writes Josh Lederman at NBC News. “He’s struggled to find the right tone to respond to piercing questions” about race. Here is CNN’s take in regard to the town hall: “Buttigieg kept his emotions in check, something that has become a trademark of the candidate on the campaign trail but did let out a mix of frustration at being interrupted and visible sadness at the fact that these issues plague the city he has led for eight years.”

I have been a person that has been watching Mayor Pete…..and I can say now that his handling of the crisis in South Bend precludes my support.

I showed NO empathy for the people and seem to give a canned response to questions all to save his campaign not solve a problem.  This should not hurt him in white Democratic America but he has an uphill struggle with black voters.

He is out of my political equation.

Did Neoliberals Get The Memo?

I smell a new war brewing……

Neoliberalism is the bane of humanity and it has been a driving force in politics for decades…..these are the people that fear that “creeping socialism” because they are doing more damage to a country that anything socialist.

But first for those that are scratching their heads and thinking this is something about Dems need to step back and read…….neoliberalism knows NO political party……

What is this magical thing called “Neoliberalism”?

The main points of neo-liberalism include:

  1. THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers’ rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say “an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.” It’s like Reagan’s “supply-side” and “trickle-down” economics — but somehow the wealth didn’t trickle down very much.
  2. CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply — again in the name of reducing government’s role. Of course, they don’t oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.

3. DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including protecting the environmentand safety on the job.

4. PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.

5. ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF “THE PUBLIC GOOD” or “COMMUNITY” and replacing it with “individual responsibility.” Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves — then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy.”

But if they is too confusing and you need a visual…..

Most everything was written by me awhile back……https://lobotero.com/2018/08/24/is-neoliberalism-dead/

I bring this up because too many of the Dems are in the column for neoliberalism and it is a dying or dead political philosophy and yet candidates like Biden keep pushing neoliberal ideas as solutions to this world’s problems….and we see how those solutions have worked out, huh?

The evidence keeps piling up. Neoliberalism is dead.

Just look at the record. Trump—a cross between a carney barker and a conman—beat a neoliberal in 2016. Right-wing populists have scored big in Austria, Italy, Britain, and Brazil since then.  Just recently, Australia’s right-of-center Labor coalition won their election. And in the European Union’s latest contest, Greens won big while right-wing parties made gains in some areas.  All these victories came at the expense of neoliberal centrists.

Bottom line: Across the world, people are finally wising up to the fact that neoliberalism has failed them economically, politically, and environmentally. In fact, the climate crisis—an existential threat to human civilization—is a direct result of the global neoliberal juggernaut that has swept the developed world.  So are the record levels of income and wealth disparity, and the subversion of democracy by a powerful oligarchy—particularly in the US.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/03/neoliberalism-dead-neoliberal-elite-didnt-get-memo

Please look at the candidates carefully.  Please make a decision that will produce solutions or at least real solutions.

Most of the candidates are in the pocket of corporate America and their solutions will only help their handlers….not the people.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Vote!