Tag: Neoliberalism

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!

Closing Thought–14Jun19

Today is Flag Day…..a day when most Americans should spend some time a learn how to properly display the American flag.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt…the Iranians did it! (Pompeo and Bolton’s accusation)

We have had two more attacks in the Persian Gulf and as usual the US is blaming Iran……

Two tankers traveling through the Gulf of Oman were attacked on Thursday, forcing the crews to abandon the ships, and which left one of the ships on fire. One of the sailors was reported “slightly injured” in the incidents.

The ships were the Front Altair, a tanker owned by Frontline which was shipping naphtha to Taiwan, and the Kokuka Courageous, a ship owned by Japanese company Kokuka Sangyo, was transporting methanol to Singapore. They departed from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The ships were apparently hit with sea mines, potentially magnetic mines. The US Navy claimed to have seen an unexploded mine on one of the two ships. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other US officials immediately blamed Iran.

Pompeo’s declaration of Iran’s guilt was based chiefly on similar incidents happening in mid-May. John Bolton and Pompeo blamed Iran then, and since this was the same sort of thing, they blame Iran now. The problem is, they have offered no evidence Iran was responsible for the first incidents, let alone today’s, and are just tying them all together. Pompeo rattled off a list of things to blame Iran for, including multiple incidents that were done by Yemen’s Houthis, a rocket fired in Iraq that was never convincingly blamed on anyone, and an Afghanistan bombing that clearly was nothing to do with Iran at all.

(antiwar.com)

Where’s the evidence?

In a press conference that immediately evoked memories of the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday claimed Iran was behind alleged attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman without presenting one single shred of evidence.

“This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high-degree of sophistication,” said Pompeo, who did not provide any details on the intelligence he cited.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/13/deja-vu-iraq-war-lies-mike-pompeo-blames-iran-tanker-attack-without-single-shred

Is this the same intel that our President refuses to accept elsewhere?

For me the question is…..The big questions are, as always, motive. Iran has no conceivable reason to attack such ships. 

Plus the Japanese ship is attacked while Japan’s Abe is on a state visit to Iran….again it smells like cow manure.

Just thinking out loud……

Guaido: An American Puppet

Meanwhile back to Venezuela.

The US is in the process of a regime change and the person they have chosen to do their bidding in the country is this dude name Guaido…….apparently corporate America likes this guy……

Donald Trump imagines Juan Guaidó is the rightful president of Venezuela. Mr. Guaidó, a man of impeccable illegitimacy, was exposed by Cohen and Blumenthal as “a product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers.” Argentinian sociologist Marco Teruggi described Guaidó in the same article as “a character that has been created for this circumstance” of regime change. Here, his constitutional credentials to be interim president of Venezuela are deconstructed.

Educated at George Washington University in DC, Guaidó was virtually unknown in his native Venezuela before being thrust on to the world stage in a rapidly unfolding series of events. In a poll conducted a little more than a week before Guaidó appointed himself president of the country, 81% of Venezuelans had never even heard of the 35-year-old.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/08/juan-guaido-the-man-who-would-be-president-of-venezuela-doesnt-have-a-constitutional-leg-to-stand-on/

This PUPPET will help with the rape of Venezuela by the US through neoliberal policies like extreme austerity……. It takes from the basic principles of neoclassical economics, suggesting that governments must limit subsidies, make reforms to tax laws in order to expand the tax base, reduce deficit spending, limit protectionism and open markets up to trade. It also seeks to abolish fixed exchange rates, back deregulation, permit private property and privatize businesses run by the state.

He will RAPE his country in the name of democracy….

The Wall Street Journal reported that Venezuela’s US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó has already drafted plans for “opening up Venezuela’s vast oil sector to private investment” and “privatizing assets held by state enterprises.”

The report confirms what The Grayzone previously reported.

“Juan Guaidó, recognized by Washington as the rightful leader, said he would sell state assets and invite private investment in the energy industry,” read the  Wall Street Journal’s January 31 article.

https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/02/03/wsj-venezuela-coup-leader-juan-guaido-neoliberal-capitalist-shock-therapy/

NOTHING the US is doing will make Venezuela a democracy……let the rape begin!

Will our “really smart person” president call the usurper in Venezuela Guido instead of Guaido?  Just wondering.

Is Neoliberalism Dead?

We live in the time of the neoliberal….not to be confused with a “liberal” not the same thing in today’s terms….how can we best describe neoliberalism?

A short video will help…..can you spare the 3 minutes?

I have let my

I have let my feelings about neoliberalism be known on several occasions…..

https://lobotero.com/2016/04/29/neoliberalism-is-destroying-almost-everybodys-lives/

https://lobotero.com/2016/08/18/neoliberalism-against-capitalism/

In recent days and years this country has been governed under the tenets of neoliberalism……and then we elected Our Dear Leader and he has set about destroying the system under which this country has embraced for decades, at least embraced by the politicians and their owners…..

Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

The concept that rules the world……

….researchers at the International Monetary Fund settled a long and bitter debate over “neoliberalism”: they admitted it exists. Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not known for its incaution, published a paper questioning the benefits of neoliberalism. In so doing, they helped put to rest the idea that the word is nothing more than a political slur, or a term without any analytic power. The paper gently called out a “neoliberal agenda” for pushing deregulation on economies around the world, for forcing open national markets to trade and capital, and for demanding that governments shrink themselves via austerity or privatisation. The authors cited statistical evidence for the spread of neoliberal policies since 1980, and their correlation with anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world

Can Our Dear Leader,Trump, be successful in the destruction?  After all his supporters believe he is a genius…..

With the outrageous decision by the Trump White House to bar a CNN propagandist posing as a reporter, more people are now starting to make the connection between press freedom and the issue of the “right to know” and of unimpeded information. But we have to ask once again, where was this concern when democrats under Obama were using the espionage act to jail whistleblowers and prosecuting journalists? Why no outrage on the eve of the Ecuadorian government turning over Julian Assange to be prosecuted by Western intelligence for the crime of publishing accounts of their nefarious actions? Where were these objective defenders of the right to information when the state was collaborating with private corporations like Google, Twitter, and Facebook to alter and limit political speech and information?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/01/trump-and-the-politics-of-neoliberal-destruction/

Is it possible that this person could actually destroy neoliberal hold on our government?

I have my doubts…..he , the president, may be the most powerful man in the world he has little hope of a defeat of the power brokers that rule the capital….

Restore American Leadership

Guess what?  IST although an opinion blog prides itself at giving everyone that visits the whole story around an issue…..I try to read all thoughts on the different issues and try to pass them on to my readers…..I refuse to be a one trick pony blog.

These days the US foreign policy is ruled by the neolibs and the neocons….or what is smilingly called the “war hawks”…..but not all Americans see our continuing interventionism as a good thing…..

In  all fairness I read a paper in “World Affairs Journal” that illustrates the neoliberal vision for US foreign policy…..

U.S. foreign policy today is failing every test by which a great power’s foreign policy can be judged. America is not feared by her enemies, nor trusted by her friends. Neither the American people nor the world-at-large understand any more the purposes of American power, or, even worse, the principles that shape them. Indeed, after a decade and a half of conflict in the Middle East and South Asia, some Americans have concluded that the best thing to do is to pull back from the world and its troubles. Some argue that America’s role as guarantor of global order is no longer necessary, history having “ended” with the Cold War; others think that “nation-building at home” is some kind of alternative to engagement abroad.

Source: Presidential Priority: Restore American Leadership | World Affairs Journal

Both of our major candidates in one form or another believe that this report is the fact by which our foreign policy should be ruled.

Please Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger

The plea of the worthless Democrats…..they have caved on the idea of limited interventionism…..this will NOT make America safer!

Normally I do not pay much attention to the US elections….they are so boring and mundane that it is just a waste of my time….but this year, 2016, has been a completely different horse all together….as the general creeps closer and closer….there are a couple of things that need to be considered.

Our choices are a divisive candidate and a war hawk which is more neocon than Dem……fascinating choices indeed….

I have read many opinion pieces both pro and con….as an anti-war person I can safey say that neither of these two candidates will get my vote but beyond that many are seeing it as a necessity to elect the war hawk over the…..I’m not sure what to call the other…..

An explanation for why defeating Donald Trump—despite what we know about Hillary Clinton—should be the left’s primary national electoral objective this November

In 1991, former Klansman and American Nazi Party functionary David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana and made the runoff election against Democrat Edwin Edwards, the popular but scandal-plagued three-term former governor. Duke had made the runoff between the two top vote-getters since no one received a majority in the first primary. Duke had received just over 31% of the vote in the first primary, and Edwards had just over 33% in a twelve-person field.

Source: Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

I do not agree…..that is just a long way of saying “vote for the best of two evils”…..I will not do that……She is not acceptable to me for one good reason……

The modern Democratic Party has had a potent anti-war wing since Eugene McCarthy called for a swift withdrawal from Vietnam during the 1968 primary. Democratic anti-war highlights in this millennium include California Rep. Barbara Lee’s opposition to the 2001 Afghanistan invasion, the 126 House Democratic votes against the Iraq War resolution in 2002 and Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign.

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton does not follow in this tradition, leaving Democrats who want to “give peace a chance” a difficult choice in November.

Source: Clinton’s Foreign Policy Would Be More Like Bush’s Than Obama’s | The Fiscal Times

Just what this country needs another GW war hawk running foreign policy.  (Sarcasm intended)

And to show where her, Clinton, mind will be if elected…..

In an interview, Paul Wolfowitz, 72, an advisor to former President Bush, discusses the dangers of a Donald Trump presidency, why he will likely vote for the Democrat’s candidate this year and mistakes made during the Iraq war.

Source: Paul Wolfowitz Says He Will Likely Vote for Clinton – SPIEGEL ONLINE

You should remember this warwonger for he and Cheney and Rumsfield were the cheerleaders that convinced GW into the 2003 Iraq invasion and we know that turned out….now don’t we?

I will NOT vote for this woman…….I will search for an alternative……….I’m thinking Green!

Neoliberalism against capitalism?

My regular readers have heard me rail against neoliberalism….I have, in the past, called it nothing more than a conservative ideology trying to hide among progressives…..

Neil Davidson on how the current neo-liberal project has been almost too successful as a ruling class strategy, creating a form of capitalism which endangers the long-term security of capital itself and edges society ever closer to barbarism.

Source: Neoliberalism against capitalism? – Neil Davidson

Neoliberal thought has done more damage to the nation than any other ideology that has been deemed dangerous to our way of life…..