Last week, we received a wonderful comment from a close friend. It was in response to this article:
This piece stumbled into an uninformed tirade: the market economy is booming in European democracies. Even outside of tourist meccas, businesses are thriving with no empty store spaces. Locals buy fresh, mostly organic food; overnight delivery at our building’s doorstep every day; latest smart phones everywhere; cellphone plans and wireless at $25 monthly, so you can stream at will; clean filtered water not just from refrigerators, but in the building. Students don’t just get a free education, they get living expenses for an apartment, and dinner out – even on Mondays. If you are ill, doctor practices are everywhere, excellent doctors at local hospitals take care of you free of charge. Uninsured foreigners pay $170 for a night at the ER alone in a room, including batteries of tests. Expectant mothers take off 6 weeks before childbirth and 8 after (fathers too!), with full pay; one parent can take a three-year job break with job-retention guarantee. At the maternity, spend a week to recover and learn how to take care of baby. The social system guarantees that you have a decent home, but you can refuse help and live in the street (you do see homeless people – with smart phones).
The article was probably not very well written, since while it proposed an affection for the market economy, it was somehow taken as an indictment of European or Nordic countries, a premise being that they are somehow socialist countries. While we are very critical of the nascent social democratic movement by the American Left, we still wanted to address what many perceive as successful socialist states, such as Norway or France. They are not socialist countries at all, as an investigation of Nordic countries such as Norway or Denmark will show (since we are lazy and pressed for time this week, a focus on smaller countries like Norway is what we have).
It is not unusual to hear Democratic Socialists say that their model is the “Nordic”. However, in global ranking of economic liberty, Nordic nations score relatively high, with Denmark and Finland in the top 20. Scandinavian nations do have large welfare states, but otherwise have very laissez-faire economic policies. In Norway, they are geographically blessed with large amounts of oil; the country is very wealthy because of it.
They are leaders in the economic freedom index (Heritage) and ease of doing business according to the World Bank.
Private property is guaranteed by law and citizens’ savings are fully private and free of government control. All Nordic countries have been lowering the tax wedge and — until the recent US tax cuts — had lower corporate tax rates than the US.
The state does not dictate or impose schooling and healthcare (most have co-payment schemes). It simply administers and promotes choice between private and state-run services.
They are leaders in private banking, which finances the vast majority of economic activity (80%).
They are leaders in attracting capital, guaranteeing legal security and private investment.
Nordic countries are also leaders in the privatization of inefficient state-owned entities and applying world-class private company corporate governance and defending shareholder interests in semi-state owned companies (Statoil, etc).
The economy is generated from the private sector, which finances more than 60% of research and development, and government applies private-sector best practices of efficiency and transparency in the management of public services
Nordic countries have carried out successful privatizations of state sectors, from telecommunications to electricity generation and distribution. Even the postal service and some forests were privatized.
They have a labor market that is among the most flexible in the world.
There is also willingness of citizens to work and pull together. Historically, Nordic nations were descended from large family farms
The success of the Nordic countries has been to take pro-market measures, privatize inefficient sectors and guarantee private property, wealth creation as well as legal and investment security.
Theirs is a unique combination of free market capitalism and social benefits that have given rise to a society that enjoys a host of top-quality services, including free education and free healthcare, as well as generous, guaranteed pension payments for retirees.
It is understood that there is no welfare state without a thriving private sector, economic freedom, and private investment and that the public sector is there to facilitate, not absorb the country’s economic activity.
Not so much Socialist, but more robust welfare system in a capitalist society–all the benefits of capitalism, with a huge safety net.
The articles Scandinavian Unexceptionalism by Nima Sanandaji and “The Secret of their Success” in The Economist were referenced here.
Well done!
Very informative.
As a millennial, I tend to laugh when people try to use the word “socialism” as the boogeyman. Other than the prohibitive costs of a cradle to grave welfare state, which do have to be paid for somehow, there is absolutely nothing to dislike about the robust welfare states listed above. Government should provide for the general welfare of its citizens, a fact which is enumerated in our own constitution. Perhaps if America stopped being the worlds uninvited police we could provide universal health coverage and rebuild some of our own crumbling infrastructure, including our schools.
The government can not give you anything that they did not take from someone else. You Liberal Loons need to get off the socialism train, it will not end well for any of you.
I like the Liberal Loon train and plan to ride it until my stop.
Well said, Laurie!
When I said “well said” to Laurie above here, I was referring to this specific statement: Perhaps if America stopped being the world’s uninvited police we could provide universal health coverage and rebuild some of our own crumbling infrastructure, including our schools.
I’m sorry , I couldn’t let this statement go unchallenged –
“Other than the prohibitive costs of a cradle to grave welfare state, which do have to be paid for somehow, there is absolutely nothing to dislike about the robust welfare states listed above.”
That’s a big “Other than”.
Seems in ONE sentence you’ve completely destroyed your own argument so if nothing else, you get high marks for efficiency. ( something other commenters should note)
BTW, as a Millenial you’re most likely unaware of the dangers of socialism. I suggest you challenge your own support for a system that was responsible for 100 million deaths in the 20th century by doing a little research.
But I doubt you will.
I’ll leave you with this –
Socialism – An ideology so great it needs to be mandatory.
That was state sponsored communism. The Nordic states aren’t murdering people.
And they aren’t Socialists.
It is true that these countries are economic successes. What is false is that these countries are socialist.
The myth of Nordic socialism is created by a confusion between socialism through government control of businesses and the welfare state in the form of government-provided social safety net programs.
The reality is that these countries practice mostly free market economics paired with high taxes in exchange for generous government entitlement programs.
First the Nordic counties were economic successes before they built their welfare states. Productive economies, generating good incomes for their workers, allowed the governments to raise the tax revenue needed to pay for the social benefits.
Understand this. It was not the government benefits that created wealth, but wealth that allowed the luxury of such generous government programs.
Second, the fact is that none of these countries have minimum wage laws. Unions are powerful in many industries and negotiate contracts, but the government does nothing to ensure any particular outcome from those negotiations. Workers are paid what they are worth, not based on government’s perception of what is fair.
Third, the Nordic commitment to free markets can be found in their school choice programs. The government provides families with vouchers for each child. These vouchers can be used to attend regular public schools, government-run charter schools, or private, for-profit schools.
Clearly, the use of government funds to pay for private, for-profit schools is NOT socialism.
The Fraser Institute, a pro-free market think tank, compiles a worldwide ranking of countries called the economic freedom index. The ranking is an effort to identify how closely the institutions and policies of a country correspond with a limited government ideal, where the government protects property rights and arranges for the provision of a limited set of public goods, such as national defense and infrastructure but little beyond these core functions.
Clearly, a socialist country should perform poorly in any ranking based on these principles. What we find, however, is the Nordic countries rank high on this index of economic freedom.
In fact, while Hong Kong and Singapore top the list and the U.S. ranks 12th, the Nordic countries are quite respectable in the rankings. Denmark ranks 15, Finland 17, Norway 25, and Sweden 27. In terms of numerical scores. In contrast, South Korea and Japan, both considered pro-free market, rank 32 and 39, respectively.
Socialism depends on the government controlling or interfering with free markets, nationalizing industries and subsidizing favored ones like green energy.
Yet, clearly from their rankings, the Nordic countries don’t do much of those things.
They do offer government-paid healthcare, tuition-free university education and generous social safety nets, all financed with high taxes. However, it is possible to do these things without interfering in the private sector more than required.
It is allowing businesses to be productive that produces the high corporate and personal incomes that support the tax collections making the government benefits feasible. The Nordic countries are smart enough not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
We are not.
American Liberals insists on making an example of a system of generous government benefits combined with a free market. In the Nordic countries that is misleading to say the least since their governments are running no industries.
It certainly isn’t socialism. In fact, the only reason most such countries can afford those benefits is that their market economies are so productive they can cover the expense of the government’s generosity.
A better name for what the Nordic countries practice would be compassionate capitalism.
Doesn’t seem like oppression. Sounds like they make the economy work for the people, rather than the other way around. People would rebel over the high taxes here, especially because they find government so inefficient. Nevertheless, the United States is certainly wealthy enough to offer some of the same benefits if we prioritized them and were not spending so much on the military.
R. Jay, what say, dude?
You know, Mr. Otton, that you are being very unclear here, and you seem to be conflating all socialism with the National Socialism of the German Nazis, which socialism, as an older gent like you well knows, was only available to Aryans.
And the word “socialism” itself has many meanings, again, as an older gent like yourself who has enough life experience to be well schooled in these kinds of things would well know, as I am sure you do.
With your unsubstantiated claim that socialism was responsible for 100 million deaths in the 20th century, if you are not referring to the Nazis alone, then you are looking at socialism through the jaundiced lens of Marxist theory, where in that scheme of things, and by the way, Marx himself was way out in space in terms of his theories for anywhere but Europe, a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.
There is the fear that everyone in this country cowering behind capitalism has about socialism, that if “we go that route, by God, we’ll all be COMMIES soon enough,” which again, being an older dude, you will well remember from back in the late forties and fifties and even into the sixties, the Democrats connected with the New Deal were all considered soft on Communism, and hence, the New Deal was simply a stepping stone to COMMUNIST DOMINATION in America.
Being younger, of course, Laurie cannot understand how an older dude like yourself who was alive back then would react, and it is an understandable reaction, to the word socialism.
She wasn’t around back then as we were, so she wouldn’t remember back to the debates around the Smith Mundt Act, or US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 402), popularly referred to as the Smith-Mundt Act, which specifies the terms in which the U.S. government can engage in public diplomacy, an originally introduced at the request of the U.S. State Department as the Bloom Bill, after Rep. Sol Bloom (D-IL), the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, in October 1945.
The bill was met with resistance by a Congress that had concerns greater than the recent memories of President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee for Public Information (CPI), President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Office of War Information (OWI), and the Nazi propaganda machine.
Congress harbored significant reservations about empowering the State Department.
The key issue was not whether US Government information activities should be known to the American public, but whether the State Department could be trusted to create and disseminate these products.
When the Bloom Bill (HR 4982) went to the House of Representatives Rules Committee in February 1946, committee Chairman Eugene Cox (D-GA) informed Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs William J. Benton that ten of the twelve committee members were against anything the State Department favored because of its “Communist infiltration and pro-Russian policy.”
Cox publicly characterized the State Department as “chock full of Reds” and “the lousiest outfit in town.”
end quotes
You were there, Mr. Otton, you remember all of that quite vividly, so no wonder the word “socialism” strikes such fear into your heart.
As a fellow old person, albeit one not afraid to the word socialism, I can understand that, where maybe Laurie can’t.
But I don’t fear the word “socialism,” because it has a distinctively Republican (the spirit, not the party) American egalitarian meaning, as follows: a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be regulated by the community as a whole.
A nation of laws, Mr. Ottan – that is what American socialism would provide.
But of course, that will not happen in this country.
As to Marx not knowing what he was talking about, that is high school civics, as we clearly see from pp.62-604 of A Short History Of Western Civilization by Charles Edward Smith, Louisiana State University, and Lynn M. Case, University of Pennsylvania, copyright 1948, to wit:
Adherence to the theories of classic economists, like Smith, Ricardo, Mill, and Bentham, would have meant the perpetuation of the evils of the factory system or the naive expectation of remedial action motivated by enlightened self-interest.
Voices soon were raised against eighteenth century economic “liberalism”.
Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc, and Robert Owen with their various schemes of social reform were called the “Utopian” socialists.
Karl Marx, however, developed a philosophy and program for socialism based on the inevitability of working-class victory in its coming conflict with capitalism.
These socialist reformers declared that goods should be produced for consumption rather than for the accumulation of private fortunes which really depended on the preservation of scarcity.
The acceptance of the Marxist views has been retarded by factors not adequately evaluated by the philosopher.
The tenacious middle class still confounded the prophecies of the progressive widening of class distinctions.
The peasantry of the European countries have become in large measure proprietor cultivators.
Trade unionism has progressed in the attainment of satisfactory working conditions, especially in England.
end quotes
The acceptance of the Marxist views has been retarded by factors not adequately evaluated by the philosopher, Mr. Otton, because Americans like me do not buy into his bull****.
So you can rest easy, Mr. Otton, we are not going Commie tomorrow.
Sir, your comments drip with condescension and it is not appreciated.
Dude this, dude that, Mr. So and so this and blah, blah, blah……. line after dreary line.
Sorry, to break it to you but no one reads your posts beginning to end.
Now, if you’d like to continue the discussion on the PERCEIVED evils of Capitalism vs DOCUMENTED evils of socialism then let’s do. I’m up for a substantive debate on the issue.
However let’s behave as if we were in the same room together, where we’d get to look each other in the eye.
It would stop the rude behavior, one way or another.
Rudeness, as you well know, Mr. Otton, is strictly in the eye of the beholder.
I treat you with the respect your venerable age demands, and you choose to look at that as rudeness and condescension.
So be it – this is America, afterall, and we haven’t gone totally totalitarian yet, so you are still free, at least for the moment, to see things as you wish to see things.
And Mr. Otton, the Cape Charles Mirror is a global publication, so unless you have taken a poll of everyone in the world who reads the Cape Charles Mirror, you can’t possibly know who reads anything, including your posts on the glories of capitalism, which have given the world Tulipmania, the South Sea Bubble, the Mississippi Bubble, the Florida Real Estate Craze of 1926, the Great Depression of 1929, the Crash of 1987, the Asian Crisis of 1997, the Dotcom Crash of 2000-2002, and the Housing Bubble and Credit Crisis 2007-2009, which gave us the GREAT RECESSION.
With that said, if you would like to continue the discussion on the PERCEIVED evils of Capitalism vs DOCUMENTED evils of socialism then let’s do, with the permission of the Cape Charles Mirror, of course, for I’m up for a substantive debate on the issue, and so is the candid world, to be truthful.
And indeed, let us continue as we have been doing, behaving as if we were in the same room together, where we’d get to look each other in the eye.
What other way is there, afterall?
So, Mr. Otton, you’re up.
Fire away, and we’ll soon know whether or not I can hit fast pitching.
And for the record, I am an old dude, so I hearken back to the words of renowned jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.”
Holmes put forth the proposition, which I find very hard to argue with, that because we cannot know immediately which ideas are good and true and useful, and which are not, we must let them vie against one another in the faith that after full disclosure and discussion, which is a service the Cape Charles Mirror so admirably provides, the truth will win out.
And you must assuredly remember Louis Dembitz Brandeis, the American lawyer and associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.
Brandeis saw free speech as an essential aspect of citizenship, as do I.
Men and women have the duty in a democracy to know all the facts.
Afterall, how can citizens judge which side has the better argument unless they can hear both sides and then join in the debate?
Brandeis thus provided a positive justification for protection of speech – the necessity for the citizenry to be fully informed about issues and to be aware of all viewpoints, so fire away, Mr. Otton.
Paul, I refuse to be sucked into a conversation with you as the condescension is out of hand.
Good day.
That’s probably as good an excuse you are able to come up with, Mr. Otton, in an effort to cover over the fact that you have no evidence to support your contentions above about glorious capitalism doing so much for the people in this country who can’t afford it.
So you have a real nice day, as well.
Um,Laurie? Did you even READ the article? It is REBUTTAL of the false PERCEPTION that the Nordic states are socialist at all.
Now let’s look at your second sentence……”Other than the PROHIBITIVE costs, which do have to be paid for……….errr, Laurie, when one claims something is PROHIBITIVE, one is usually saying ‘it cannot be done”.
Any progress in Europe has been because WE have been paying for their defense for better than half a century. It is easy to be generous when others are paying the bills.
Ya know, it’s why you kids LOVE socialism……..Mom and Dad have been paying the bills, and frankly responsibility scares you all. Why NOT support a system that maintains your status quo?
Universal health coverage. You are aware that is has been against the law to refuse someone care at a hospital since the 1980’s, right? So we already have universal health COVERAGE. But, TANSTAAFL. The hospitals had to overcharge others(with insurance and or cash) to cover the Federal law requiring they treat without regard to pay. Which led to overuse of hospital services, which drove the call for socialized medicine.
Be careful what you wish for.
Crumbling infrastructure? After CC spent all that infrastructure money on trails and bike paths? Multiply that times 50 times however many municipalities and you start talking about real money wasted. But hey, bike paths.
As for schools, no need to spend dime one on them. Schools cannot be fixed until the CULTURE is fixed.
If Mom and dad don’t care about your school work, no amount of money will change it.
Let me suggest some reading to you:
Milton Friedman
Alexis De Tocqueville-specifically “Democracy in America”
William Bradford’s “History of Plymouth Plantation”
The last one especially. It shows the story of Socialism’s first attempt herein America, and how badly it failed and why.
The last thing I’ll say is to reiterate a quote that really should hit home:
“A government big enough to give you everything is also big enough to take it all away.”
In Liberty,
MK
Millennial’s status quo is pretty terrible. The collective student debt is 1.5 trillion dollars and wages are stagnant. Housing and living costs have continued to rise, especially in desirable areas such as San Francisco.
Whatever our bike paths look like, our bridges, roads, and schools could badly use some repairs. I used to work in the high school, and when I opened the door, mice would scamper around. In poor schools around the country, high levels of asbestos and lead in water have been found. One young boy was hospitalized for eating paint chips that contained lead in them. I assume by your cavalier tone that you don’t have kids in the schools. If you did, you might worry that their environment is genuinely unsanitary and unsafe. As schools are “in loco parentis” a major lawsuit could be made if a student was injured by a crumbling building. Personally, I thought it might be nice to have kids and parents do some of the smaller projects as it would build community pride. However, the major repairs need to be left to the professionals.
I’ll ignore the cheap shot at millenialls, as bashing the younger generation has been popular since time immemorial. I pay my bills and do my best to save money.
I fear government tyranny less than a world of economic deprivation and chronic insecurity (which is a tyranny of its own). Others perhaps choose differently. The Nordic countries do not seem oppressed to me.
“I fear government tyranny less than a world of economic deprivation and chronic insecurity”
This may be the single scariest thing I’ve ever read, especially coming from an American.
For the record –
Economic deprivation is solved by capitalism.
Chronic insecurity decreases as economic deprivation fades.
In case you don’t believe me, check out how some African nations are finally coming around to these truths.
Government tyranny is OK?
Yeah, not so much.
Check history.
The warm embrace of totalitarianism never ends well.
Never.
Economic deprivation is solved by capitalism?
Seriously, Mr. Otton, this may well be the single scariest thing I’ve ever read, especially coming from an American.
As to government tyranny and capitalism in America being inextricably intertwined, hand in glove, here is a prime example of it from a corrupt town in New York state just to the east of Progressive Democrat Young Andy Cuomo’s capitol city of Albany, New York:
POESTENKILL CITIZEN NEWS
“The Anatomy of a Sell-out by the Poestenkill Town Board”
According to the POESTENKILL TOWN BOARD MEETING MINUTES posted by Conservative Republican Poestenkill Councilman Eric Wohlleber at p.8 of the19 July 2018 Advertiser, on Thursday, June 28, 2018, under “Waste Management Host Community Agreement,” a motion was made by Poestenkill Town Councilperson Harold Van Slyke and seconded by Supervisor Jacangelo to accept the Waste Management Host Benefit Proposal.
The motion passed 4-1 with Councilman Hass voting no.
The essential provisions of this document are as followe:
COMMUNITY BENEFIT AGREEMENT between the TOWN OF POESTENKILL and WASTE MANAGEMENT of NEW YORK, LLC
This agreement made this __ day of ___, 2018, by and between Waste Management of New York, LLC, a limited liability company of the State of Delaware, (hereinafter referred to as “Waste Management”), and the Town of Poestenkill, a municipal corporation of the State of New York (hereinafter referred to as “Poestenkill” and/or “Town”).
WITNESSETH
WHEREAS, Waste Management owns and operates a solid waste transfer station located at Routes 66 and 351, Poestenkill, New York (hereinafter, the Transfer Station); and
WHEREAS, Waste Management operates the Transfer Station pursuant to a solid waste facility permit issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (hereinafter referred to as “NYSDEC”), and receives and transfers Solid Waste (as defined in 6 NYCRR Part 360); and
WHEREAS, Poestenkill is familiar with the current and past operation of Waste Management’s Transfer Station and has confidence in the ability of Waste Management to continue to operate same in compliance with all applicable laws, rules and regulations; further Waste Management agrees that Poestenkill will enforce applicable rules and regulations of the Town; and
WHEREAS, Poestenkill recognizes that a Planned Development District was established for the operation of the transfer station in 1993 which allows for the continued or future use of the Transfer Station by Waste Management to service solid waste generators other than those within Poestenkill, and
WHEREAS, Poestenkill and Waste Management have agreed that the community benefits to be provided to the Town shall be defined by the terms and conditions of this agreement.
*****
7. The provisions of this Agreement shall (a) constitute the entire agreement between the parties, superseding all prior agreements, and negotiations and (b) be modified only by written agreement duly executed by Poestenkill and Waste Management.
end quotes
Note the third WHEREAS, as follows: Poestenkill is familiar with the current and past operation of Waste Management’s Transfer Station and has confidence in the ability of Waste Management to continue to operate same in compliance with all applicable laws, rules and regulations.
First of all, according to the history of the transfer station posted by Councilman Hass at p.5 of the 17 May 2018 Advertiser, Waste Management “suspended” operations at the transfer station nine years ago in 2009, so there have not been any operations for the last nine years for the Town of Poestenkill to be familiar with.
As to the past operations, they were a subject of an Albany Times Union article entitled “Residents denounce DEC’s trash deal – Waste Management’s fine fails to satisfy townspeople, who vow further action in state court” by Michelle Morgan Bolton, staff writer, on March 25, 1999, as follows:
While Waste Management has agreed to pay the State Department of Environmental Conservation $20,000 for alleged infractions of its operating permit, neighbors of the routes 66 and 351 transfer station claim the DEC has sold them out and plan to sue.
Waste Management signed a $25,000 consent order March 19 after months of negotiations – but the DEC suspended $5,000 as long as the company remains in compliance.
Neighbors have complained all along that their homes and lawns have been deluged with dust, trash, rodents and huge black blowflies, along with ear-splitting noise at all hours of the day and night.
“They’ve given the company a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Paul Plante, one of the residents who claims the company is violating its permit.
“For $20,000, the DEC will keep its back turned.”
“We have been severed from any protection of the law whatsoever.”
Waste Management denied the violations named in the consent order, yet signed it and paid the fine.
All pending action against the company, including citations issued by the town’s code enforcement officer, along with the DEC’s criminal and administrative actions, are now null and void, the order states.
According to the document, 15 of the hauler’s trucks idled for more than five consecutive minutes on July 15, 1998, and July 30, 1998, and the business was open before its regulated 7 a.m. start time.
Waste Management was also cited for dumping trash on the floor, a direct violation of its operating permit.
end quotes
So where then, besides from thin air, does Poestenkill get this “confidence in the ability of Waste Management to continue to operate same in compliance with all applicable laws, rules and regulations” from, given Waste Management’s proven track record of not operating this facility in compliance with all applicable rules and regulations?
That statement by the Town of Poestenkill is a solid indication that Poestenkill intends to do as it did before, which is to turn the blind eye to how this transfer station is operated, especially as Poestenkill Town Supervisor and Waste Management booster Dominic Jacangelo has already put into writing that he considers any Poestenkill town codes applying to the transfer station to be mere suggestions.
As to Waste Management’s track record, it was the subject of a NYSDEC hearing on the application of Waste Management of New York to operate a solid waste management facility in New York State (Towpath), on December 31, 1999, as follows:
Ruling, December 31, 1999
STATE OF NEW YORK : DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION
In the Matter of the Application of WASTE MANAGEMENT OF NEW YORK, LLC for permits to operate a solid waste management facility, the Towpath Environmental & Recycling Center, in the Town of Albion, Orleans County.
(DEC Application No. 8-3420-00019/00005)
RULINGS OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE ON PARTY STATUS AND ISSUES
– WMNY Record of Compliance
As a required supplement to its application, WMNY (then known as Waste Management of New York, Inc.) completed a record of compliance form identifying other permits it had been issued under the ECL as well as various administrative law violations committed within the last 10 years.
Because the list of violations had not been updated since August, 1997, I directed that the Applicant furnish a supplement, which it did on July 30, 1999.
In addition, DEC Staff, in a submission of November 2, 1999, identified two more Region 8 consent orders which for some reason had not been referenced in WMNY’s disclosure.
All combined, the identified violations of the ECL and Department regulations, permits and consent orders raise enough doubt about the Applicant’s fitness that a reasonable person would inquire further into the circumstances of those that appear most significant.
The information already available indicates various violations the circumstances of which need to be explored.
For instance, according to DEC Staff, WMNY’s compliance record in Region 8 includes a 1991 order (modified in 1992) assessing a $71,000 penalty for placing waste at a not yet permitted location at the High Acres Landfill in Fairport, as well as a 1991 order assessing a $4,500 penalty for installing gas recovery wells at the Monroe Livingston Landfill prior to receiving a DEC permit to do so.
Apparently neither of these orders was mentioned by WMNY as part of its record of compliance disclosure, which raises a second ground for inquiry under the EGM: whether the Applicant made materially false or inaccurate statements in the permit application. (EGM, page 5.)
Also requiring further scrutiny are various more recent DEC violations related to waste handling by WMNY and its former subsidiary Waste Management of New York City, which is now part of the parent company.
Acknowledged by the Applicant, many of these violations resulted in substantial penalties:
• $50,000 for 1999 violations including operating over permitted tonnage limits and beyond authorized hours, at a Goshen recycling facility (Northern Recycling);
• $50,000 for 1998 violations including exceeding operating hours, at an Averill Park transfer station (Poestenkill);
• $20,000 for 1999 violations including acceptance of unauthorized materials, at a Brooklyn transfer station (NYC Hauling);
• $20,000 for 1998 violations including alterations to the physical plant and facility operations beyond those authorized by permit, at another Brooklyn transfer station (Varick 1);
• $20,000 for 1998 violations involving physical plant modifications which resulted in changes to plans, at a third Brooklyn transfer station (BQE);
• $40,000 for a 1998 violation of operating beyond the borders of the permitted area, at a fourth Brooklyn transfer station (Woodyard).
end quotes
Note the $50,000 for 1998 violations including exceeding operating hours at this same Poestenkill transfer station, and ask yourself why it is that Poestenkill Supervisor Dominic Jacangelo along with Poestenkill Councilpersons Eric Wohlleber, Harold Van Slyke and June Butler are shoving these violations under the rug and are openly lying to us about the ability of Waste Management yo operate this transfer station in accordance with the law when the history proves otherwise?
Getting back to that history from the DEC official records:
Finally, it appears from WMNY’s disclosure that it and Waste Management of Virginia, a sister corporation, were penalized $150,000 by a Virginia Court in 1999, and enjoined from transporting or receiving loads of solid waste that include regulated medical waste.
Also, Virginia imposed a $125,000 penalty after blood, bloody fluids and “sharps” were found in waste bales from a WMNY facility in East Rochester, which were to be disposed of at a Virginia solid waste management facility.
end quotes
Note that before this facility in Poestenkill was closed, eye-witnesses observed bloody fluids and “sharps” in the mountains of garbage that were being piled up on the ground outside the transfer station.
Getting back to the official DEC records:
– – Waste Management, Inc. Record of Compliance
The fitness issue in this case shall encompass a review of the compliance history not only of WMNY, but also its parent company, Waste Management, Inc. (“WMI”).
This is necessary to conform with the EGM, which provides that its guidelines should be applicable not only to the “immediate entity” (WMNY) but to any corporation which “holds a substantial interest” in the permittee or applicant.
WMI holds a substantial interest in WMNY because it owns it; WMNY is its subsidiary.
The compliance record of WMI is the principal concern of SPOC, as is clear from its filing for party status (Exhibit No. 9 A -D).
By a letter of November 12, 1999, Mr. Bernstein responded to the comments on behalf of the Applicant.
According to the Applicant’s disclosure, WMI is a large company in the waste management business, with over 70,000 employees and 292 landfills, 295 transfer stations, 104 material recycling facilities, and 615 collection companies in the United States.
Consistent with my directive, the 16-page disclosure summarizes 37 incidents resulting in criminal convictions or civil penalties of $25,000 or more.
Among the most serious is a 1991 incident in which Waste Management of Pennsylvania, a WMI subsidiary, paid a $3.8 million civil penalty for its employees’ creating inaccurate records about the volume of waste received at the Lake View Landfill in Erie, which resulted in the acceptance of waste in excess of the permitted maximum and average daily tonnages.
According to the disclosure, Chemical Waste Management, Inc., another WMI subsidiary, has also been the subject of substantial assessments: $10.1 million in penalties, costs, restitution and contributions for a 1992 guilty plea in a federal case involving failure to report hazardous waste spills during the clean-up of a Pennsylvania Superfund site, and a $1.9 million civil penalty for unspecified 1991 “permit interpretation issues and alleged violations of Illinois Environmental Law.”
The incidents described in the preceding paragraph are of sufficient gravity that the underlying documentation must be brought into the hearing record.
end quotes
This all serves to make an absolute mockery out of the statements of Supervisor Jacangelo and Councilpersons Wohlleber, Van Slyke and Butler that they have “confidence in the ability of Waste Management to continue to operate same in compliance with all applicable laws, rules and regulations.”
And then there is the falsehood in the fourth WHEREAS, to wit: Poestenkill recognizes that a Planned Development District was established for the operation of the transfer station in 1993 which allows for the continued or future use of the Transfer Station by Waste Management to service solid waste generators other than those within Poestenkill.
That is a willfully false statement because the PDD, according to official Town records, was created for the exclusive use of Benson Brothers Disposal, Inc., not Waste Management.
Why are we being lied to by Dominic Jacangelo, Eric Wohlleber, Harold Van Slyke and June Butler?
As to the myth that economic deprivation is solved by capitalism:
CNBC
“Trump triumphant: ‘We’re going to go a lot higher’ than 4.1% GDP growth” by Tucker Higgins 27 JULY 2018:
President Donald Trump pitched his economic record to voters Friday, boasting that strong numbers released earlier in the morning were “sustainable” and blasting Democrats for wanting to “raise everybody’s taxes.”
It’s not clear that the Republican tax plan has resulted in increased wages.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis noted Friday that personal income growth, in the form of wages and salaries, decelerated in the second quarter despite the GDP increase.
Real wages have remained stagnant over the past year, according to government data.
Meanwhile, corporations have boosted their stock buybacks and cash distributions to shareholders, which have accelerated at a record pace.
Bloomberg reported in May that 2018 was on track to be the first year in which shareholders saw a $1 trillion windfall from stock buybacks.
end quotes
Capitalism is great for the capitalists, but not so great for the average American who does the work and pays the freight while the capitalist sits back and reaps the rewards, at taxpayer expense in this case.
A trillion dollars in debt for “Studies’ Programs that will never ever pay enough to warrant the expense.
Laurie, money spent on bike paths is money that CANNOT be spent on roads, bridges and schools. I agree with you that those areas need addressing, but was pointing out to you that instead, we get bike paths…………
As for kids, yes I have a daughter in middle school. But we taught her not to stick paint chips in her mouth as toddler. Guess what? Parental involvement WORKS. THAT is how you will ‘fix’ schools.
Unsanitary and unsafe. Kid, I went to Trenton NJ public and Catholic schools, I know plenty about those conditions and guess what? Still stand by my statement that PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT is more important than a pretty building.
A good idea you had, wanting kids and parents to do some of the work. BUT liberals have so empowered the unions that God himself would not be allowed to do even the slightest amount of work.
There was no cheap shot at kids. Stating the truth is not a shot. Kids are always at the vanguard of socialist resurgence simply because they lack real world experience and have been supported by their family structure.
Your last paragraph is so inimically anti-American-opposed to what the country was founded on- that I can’t even begin to tell you why, except to leave you with this quote:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”.
B. Franklin
Mike, I can’t argue with you about the underlying political philosophy, because in truth I share it, having grown up poor and out in the country after WWII in a place that used to get quite cold, before global warming, with a father who had been seriously injured in the Army during WWII.
I learned self-sufficiency at a very early age, and then had that reinforced day by day every day, including and especially at school.
Life afforded the weak and sloppy no rewards that made it worthwhile being weak and sloppy.
But I am older now, Mike, like you, and having seen enough turns of the wheel, for that is what time really is, a thing Jung knew quite well, the mix of “personality types” in any and every society is constantly changing.
Sons are not the same as the fathers, nor are daughters necessarily their mothers.
Sons who grew up in luxury afforded to them by the hard work of the parent who grew up in poverty, as the parents of people like myself did in the GREAT DEPRESSION, know only the luxury.
So this world has changed greatly in values since I was young, to the point of where more and more of it is simply incomprehensible, starting with this obsession so many people have today of staring at their one hand while pawing at the palm of it with a finger of their other hand, regardless of what their body might otherwise be doing, like walking down a sidewalk.
I always feel like I want to come up to them and ask them, “What are you looking for in there?”
But I don’t, Mike.
And I doubt they would know themselves.
Such it is today, Mike.
What will it be tomorrow?
All I know is stay tuned.
Fear of government tyranny is quintessentially American.
Yo, Mike, what it is, dude!
Interesting commentary, as always, and this American appreciates your input, as it spurs more discussion, which is the hallmark of a functioning democracy.
As to the Plymouth Colony, there is an interesting article about it in Slate entitled “The People’s Republic of Plymouth – The strange and persistent right-wing myth that Thanksgiving celebrates the pilgrims’ triumph over socialism” by Joshua Keating on Nov. 25, 2014 that provides us with the following fodder for discussion:
This Thursday, Americans will gather together for an evening of family, food, football, and arguing with the relatives about politics.
And why shouldn’t that argument extend to the meaning of the holiday itself?
But the right has its own version of Thanksgiving revisionist history—the idea that the holiday is a celebration of the pilgrims’ abandonment of socialism in favor of free enterprise.
The storyline goes like this: The early settlers at Plymouth at first experimented with a system of collective ownership of farmland, which, as with their compatriots at Jamestown, led to widespread famine.
When they eventually abandoned this system in favor of private ownership, farmers were more productive, the harvest was bountiful, and a feast was held in celebration.
Pass the stuffing!
This tale has its roots in the Cold War.
“Let us be thankful for this valued lesson from our Fathers—and yield not to the temptations of socialism,” advised a 1968 column by the popular midcentury conservative newspaper columnist Henry Hazlitt.
end quotes
You’re an older, more mature dude in here, Mike, surely you well remember those times, and Henry Stuart Hazlitt, the American journalist who wrote about business and economics for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times, a man widely cited in both libertarian and conservative circles.
Interestingly, if you study his bio, you come across the fact that one of his early heroes was Herbert Spencer, who is responsible for giving us the doctrine or political philosophy of Social Darwinism, which was the belief that white, wealthy, Anglo-Saxon Americans were biologically superior to other groups, a political philosophy that not surprisingly fueled many social and political trends of the Gilded Age.
As a study of our own history beyond that of the Plymouth Colony reveals, many Social Darwinists embraced laissez-faire capitalism and racism, believing that government should not interfere in the “survival of the fittest” by helping the poor.
Not only American president Calvin “Cool Cal” Coolidge embraced that political philosophy, but so did the Fuller Court (United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice Fuller), so the concept is still very much imbedded in the American psyche, right up to this day.
No less illustrious member of the United States Supreme Court than Oliver Wendell Holmes criticized what is called the “Fuller Court (Supreme Court between 1888-1910 under Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller) for reading Social Darwinism into the Constitution in 1905.
The ideas of Social Darwinism pervaded many aspects of American society in the Gilded Age, including policies that affected public health.
Social Darwinism came about when some sociologists and others took up words and ideas which Darwin had used to describe the biological world, and they adopted them to their own ideas and theories about the human social world.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these Social Darwinists took up the language of evolution to frame an understanding of the growing gulf between the rich and the poor as well as the many differences between cultures all over the world.
The explanation they arrived at was that businessmen and others who were economically and socially successful were so because they were biologically and socially “naturally” the fittest.
Conversely, they reasoned that the poor were “naturally” weak and unfit and it would be an error to allow the weak of the species to continue to breed.
The believed that the dictum “survival of the fittest” (a term coined not by Charles Darwin but by sociologist Herbert Spencer) meant that only the fittest should survive.
That is what fueled the belief system of writers like Henry Hazlitt in 1968, and commentators today, like Rush Limbo, notwithstanding that while Darwin’s theory remains a cornerstone of modern biology to this day, the views of the Social Darwinists are no longer accepted, as they were based on an erroneous interpretation of the theory of evolution.
Getting back to the Plymouth Colony, which I have studied in some detail, many sociologists and political theorists turned to Social Darwinism to argue against government programs to aid the poor, as they believed that poverty was the result of natural inferiority, which should be bred out of the human population.
With respect to Rush Limbo specifically, who is a die-hard advocate to Social Darwinism, during and after World War II, the arguments of Social Darwinists and eugenicists lost popularity in the United States due to their association with Nazi racial propaganda.
As I said above, modern biological science has completely discredited the theory of Social Darwinism, but that does not bother Rush Limbo, who is a classic science denier.
Getting back to the Slate article, the notion of Thanksgiving as an anti-socialist parable has been given new life with the rise of the Tea Party, with versions of it reappearing on conservative and libertarian blogs and newspaper op-ed pages every year around this time.
“The Pilgrims tried ‘it takes a village’ socialism and almost starved,” remarks a column in Sunday’s Salem (Ohio) News, for instance.
Fox News’ John Stossel is also fond of the tale, as is George Will.
Not surprisingly, the leading exponent of the theory may be Rush Limbaugh, who repeats the “true” story of Thanksgiving every year around this time on his radio show.
“Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism.”
“And what happened?”
“It didn’t work!” he told his listeners last year.
end quote
As an aside, I am amazed that anyone wastes a moment of their time listening to Rush Limbo, who we all recall was the subject of a CBS news story by Jarrett Murphy on June 27, 2006 entitled “Rush Limbaugh Detained With Viagra,” as follows:
Rush Limbaugh could see a deal with prosecutors in a long-running prescription fraud case collapse after authorities found a bottle of Viagra in his bag at Palm Beach International Airport.
The prescription was not in his name.
Limbaugh was detained for more than three hours Monday at the airport after returning from a vacation in the Dominican Republic.
Customs officials found the Viagra in his luggage but his name was not on the prescription, said Paul Miller, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
Under the deal reached last month with prosecutors, Limbaugh was not to be arrested for any infraction for 18 months in exchange for authorities deferring a charge of “doctor shopping.”
Prosecutors had alleged the conservative talk-show host illegally deceived multiple physicians to receive overlapping painkiller prescriptions.
Limbaugh’s doctor had prescribed the Viagra, but it was “labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh for privacy purposes,” Roy Black, Limbaugh’s attorney, said in a statement.
Investigators confiscated the drugs, which treat erectile dysfunction.
For now, Limbaugh is joking about his brush with the law.
He joked about the search on his radio show Tuesday, saying Customs officials didn’t believe him when he said he got the pills at the Clinton Library and he was told they were blue M&Ms.
He later added, chuckling: “I had a great time in the Dominican Republic.”
“Wish I could tell you about it.”
end quotes
Rush was down there with his supply of Viagra putting Social Darwinism into action.
Whether little boys were involved remains to this day a subject of much speculation.
Getting back to the Slate article:
The idea, which has the twin virtues of reaffirming the wisdom of the free-market system and discounting the modern multiculturalist notion that the pilgrims succeeded with the help of Native Americans, is rooted in historical accounts.
It has some flaws, though.
As Kate Zernike of the New York Times pointed out in 2010, the timeline doesn’t quite work.
The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621.
The system of collective ownership known as the “common course” was abandoned in 1623.
And it was abandoned not because of famine but because the settlers wanted to make more money.
As for Jamestown, their biggest problems were drought and malaria, not socialism.
It is true that the Plymouth settlers abandoned a system of common ownership in favor of private property, and found it much more to their liking.
In his memoirs, William Bradford, the colony’s first governor, writes that the communal lifestyle was “found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment … [f]or the Young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.”
After every family was assigned its own parcel of land to farm, “this had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”
end quotes
It should be noted that the Iroquois Indians, who were quite successful as a nation up to the American Revolution, where they took the wrong side, engaged in communal farming, which brings us back to the Slate article:
Communal farming arrangements were common in the pilgrims’ day.
Many of the towns they came from in England were run according to the “open-field” system, in which the land holdings of a manor are divided into strips to be harvested by tenant farmers.
As Nick Bunker writes in 2010’s Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, “Open field farming was not some kind of communism.”
“All the villagers were tenants of the landlord.”
There was no local baron in Plymouth, but it was a commercial project as much as a religious one, and the colonists still had to answer to their investors back in England.
It was this, not socialist ideals, that accounted for the common course.
Bunker writes, “Far from being a commune, the Mayflower was a common stock: the very words employed in the contract.”
“All the land in the Plymouth Colony, its houses, its tools, and its trading profits (if they appeared) were to belong to a joint-stock company owned by the shareholders as a whole.”
He continues: “Under the terms of the contract … for the first seven years no individual settler could own a plot of land.”
“To ensure that each farmer received his fair share of good or bad land, the slices were rotated each year, but this was counterproductive.”
“Nobody had any reason to put in extra hours and effort to improve a plot if next season another family received the benefit.”
end quotes
Just saying.
And in case the point got missed, and it is a vital one, the Plymouth Colony was very much an experiment in capitalism, not socialism, regardless of what Rush Limbo might think about it, presuming Rush Limbo has any capacity whatsoever to think about anything beyond his next hit of Viagra.
The History of Massachusetts Blog gives us this necessary background as to the capitalist nature of the failed experiment in “The Economy of Plymouth Colony” by Rebecca Beatrice Brooks on September 28, 2016, as follows:
The economy of Plymouth Colony was based on agriculture, fishing, whaling, timber and fur.
The Plymouth Company investors initially invested about £1200 to £1600 in the colony before the Mayflower even sailed.
end quotes
That, people, is what is known as “Finance Capitalism” or financial capitalism, which is the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system.
Getting back to the history of the Plymouth Colony:
The colonists had to pay this money back over seven years by harvesting supplies and shipping them back to the investors in England to be sold.
Each investor in the Plymouth Company was issued shares worth £10 and each adult colonist received one share and were given options to purchase more shares later on.
For the first seven years, everything was to remain in the “common stock” which was owned by all the shareholders.
The common stock helped supply the colonists with things like food, tools and clothing.
At the end of the seven years, the shareholders would divide the profits and capital (which included houses, land and goods) equally.
Yet, in 1623, the common-stock plan was abandoned and the land and houses were divided so that each colonist could reap the rewards of their own labor.
The colony had been barely producing enough food to survive and the Governor of the colony, William Bradford, felt that the communal aspect of the colony was discouraging many of the colonists from working hard because they felt they were working for others rather than themselves.
When the common-stock plan was abandoned and the new plan put into place, the colony suddenly began to flourish and they soon had an abundance of food.
Corn production dramatically increased and famine was averted.
Bradford described in his diary, which was later published under the title Of Plymouth Plantation, the reasoning behind the change of plans and why it worked:
“The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.”
“For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”
“For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.”
“The strong, or man of parts, had no more division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter than the other could; this was thought injustice.”
“The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours, victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them.”
“And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.”
The fur trade industry was the colony’s economic salvation.
For the first few years that the colony existed, the colonists struggled to make enough money to pay the investors back.
In fact, they had to ask for more money just to keep the colony running and by the mid to late 1620s, they were deeply in debt to the investors.
To help pay down the debt they still owed, the colonists established a beaver fur trading base in Kennebec, Maine by 1625.
Beaver were plentiful in Maine where the local Native-Americans tribe had hunted them for generations.
This fur trading business was very successful for the colonists and quickly became an essential part of their economy.
Their success in this trade continued well into the 1630s and 1640s but by the 1650s beaver became scarce in New England.
Unable to expand their hunting grounds due to pressure from other colonies, the colonists finally sold their land in Kennebec in the 1660s and fish and lumber eventually became the staples of the colony’s economy.
According to the book Cape Cod and Plymouth Colony in the 17th Century, whaling was a particularly vital part of the economy in Plymouth:
“The whale processed on Cape Cod were Atlantic right whales, so called because they were the correct, or ‘right,’ whales for human use.”
“They were a coastal, migratory whale, which floated when dead, and produced a good quality oil.”
However obtained, whales, and especially their oil, were an important item in the economy of Plymouth Colony.
In 1627, the Plymouth Company investors were unhappy with the lack of return they saw from the colony and the colonists agreed to buy them out for £1800, which was to be paid in installments of 200 pounds a year over nine years.
Eight colonists pledged their personal credit to buy the investor’s shares.
These colonists were William Bradford, John Howland, Myles Standish, Isaac Allerton, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, John Alden and Thomas Prence.
In reality, it took much longer than nine years to pay back the money and the pilgrims didn’t finish paying it off until over 20 years later in 1648.
Ultimately, Plymouth colony never achieved the level of economic success that its neighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, did and was eventually merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691 and became a royal colony known as the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
Sources:
Wilkins, Mira. The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914. Harvard University Press, 1989.
King, H. Roger. Cape Cod and Plymouth Colony in the Seventeenth Century. University Press of America, 1994.
“Beyond the Pilgrim Story.” Pilgrim Hall Museum, n.d., http://www.pilgrimhallmuseum.org/bradford_17th_century_documents.htm
“Why the Pilgrims Abandoned Communism.” Free Republic, 22 Nov. 2004, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1285981/posts
Bower, Jerry. “Occupy Plymouth Colony: How a Failed Commune Led to Thanksgiving;.” Forbes, 23 Nov. 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jerrybowyer/2011/11/23/occupy-plymouth-colony-how-a-failed-commune-led-to-thanksgiving/#192076afbcd1
McIntyre, Ruth. “What You Didn’t Know About the Pilgrims: They Had Massive Debt.” PBS.org, Public Broadcast Service, 2 Nov. 2015, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/what-you-didnt-know-about-the-pilgrims-they-had-massive-debt/
“Were Pilgrims America’s Original Economic Migrants?.” PBS.org, Public Broadcast Service, 26 Nov. 2015, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/were-pilgrims-americas-original-economic-migrants/
“The Pilgrims and the Fur Trade.” Pilgrim Hall Museum, n.d., http://www.pilgrimhallmuseum.org/pdf/The_Pilgrims_Fur_Trade.pdf
end quotes
Ah, yes, the Plymouth Colony – the day finance capitalism came to America to stay.
Um, to me you are conflating social Darwinism with the desire to remove Government from areas where societies(Masons, Elk, Moose) or charities( Catholic, Jewish, Protestant etc…) or groups of neighbors took care of things that Government SHOULD NOT BE INVOLVED IN.
And I stand by my comment regarding Bradford and his thoughts on what happened. As for what was(back in the old countries) we are speaking of what IS (now in America). Whatever the situation back in merry old, all the people on that boat KNEW they were going to where the old ways WEREN’T.
Ergo, the ‘communal’ was consigned to the dustbin of history, and we find that collectivism is antithetical to human nature, unbound from the chains of the Regent.
BUT and I am sure you will be glad to hear it, my kid has a new bestie who happens to be a vegetarian, and I have stocked up on SEVERAL different brands of veggie burgers for her. No, I haven’t tried on yet, but I am much closer to doing so than ever before!!!!!
I keep one aside, in case you ever feel loony enough to enter the People’s republic of Jersey. I’ll even toast yer’ bun!!!!!
😉
Ah, Mike, you are the living essence of what I know democracy to be in America.
You engage with forthrightness and you respond with candor as you know it, or think it to be.
And those people DID NOT know they were going.
Essentially, those Pilgrims were religious sheep being exploited by “THE ADVENTEREURS” in England.
They thought they were going to Northern Virginia, for that is where their CHARTER was for.
They didn’t know they were going to Massachusetts Bay because their CHARTER was not for Massachusetts, which is basic American history, as we see from Pilgrim Hall Museum site, to wit:
Colonies in British North America needed permission, in the form of a “patent” or charter, from the king or from a company authorized by him.
Before the Mayflower sailed, the Pilgrims obtained the First Peirce Patent for a settlement in the northern part of the Virginia Colony.
The Pilgrims landed north of the patent’s boundaries.
When the Mayflower reached Cape Cod, anchoring in today’s Provincetown Harbor, in November of 1620, some passengers questioned the authority of the group’s leaders.
That authority had been granted by a patent (or charter) for a settlement in the northern part of the Virginia Colony.
The patent was not valid in New England.
The Pilgrims drew up an agreement that the passengers would stay together in a “civil body politic.”
That agreement, known as the “Mayflower Compact,” was signed on November 21, 1620.
The original Mayflower Compact has disappeared; we know its wording from the writings of William Bradford.
The Pilgrims then requested a new patent from England.
In 1621, the Council for New England issued the Second Peirce Patent, granting the Pilgrims permission to remain in Plymouth.
The patent was provisional – if the settlement survived for seven years, the Pilgrims could apply for a more “permanent” patent.
The Colony did survive.
The Warwick/Bradford Patent, signed by the Earl of Warwick and addressed to William Bradford, was issued in 1629.
end quotes
So it’s November 11, 1620, Mike, and there these Pilgrims, city-folk, really, soft people, by and large, are, off the coast of Massachusetts, after a voyage of 66 days. when they had originally intended to settle near the Hudson River in New York.
Instead, dangerous shoals and poor winds forced the ship to seek shelter at Cape Cod, and there they were, about to die, because winter was coming, and you like the cold, so you know what winter is, but those Pilgrims didn’t.
So they had to live communally, Mike, because they couldn’t have survived, otherwise.
And what did they do when they got off the boat, Mike?
Think about it and recall First Encounter Beach on the bayside of Cape Cod.
The Pilgrims went and raided a COMMUNAL SUPPLY of corn that the natives, who lived communally, had stored for their winter food supply.
Think LONG HOUSES, Mike.
The Indians lived communally in long houses.
Anyway, Mike, the Pilgrims were HOLY ROLLERS.
Theirs was a very stifling religion, and it is that which chafed on the young men, because not everyone on that ship belonged to that religion, and did not like being under its control so they ran away to live with the Indians.
I don’t know how much Bradford, considered an authoritative, deeply pious leader, delved into that, but, Mike, you would be the first to agree that with respect to anything he wrote, it’s very important to understand his political, religious, and economic biases and see the subjective nature of his supposedly objective history of Plymouth.
There is where you are getting sucked in, is my thought, because you take him as an objective authority, when he was anything but.
Interestingly, and this remains a subject of great debate to this day, when the exploring party including Bradford made their way back on board the Mayflower, Bradford learned of the death of his wife Dorothy, who is said to have fallen overboard off the deck of the Mayflower during his absence and drowned.
What’s up with that do you think, Mike?
Getting back to some actual facts here, since facts are important, even if Donald Trump thinks otherwise, you cannot have forgotten about the Maypole that infuriated the Puritans.
As the New England Historical Society website tells the story, had it not been for his May Day party with a giant Maypole, Thomas Morton might have established a New England colony more tolerant, easygoing and fun than his dour Puritan neighbors created at Plymouth Plantation.
Morton was a well-educated, well-connected, free-thinking Englishman who came to America in 1624.
He held a senior partnership in a trading venture sponsored by the Crown.
He sailed aboard the Unity with Capt. Wollaston and 30 indentured servants.
They settled in what is now Quincy, Mass., and began trading with the Indians for furs.
Morton wrote that he found two sorts of people in New England: the Christians and the Infidels.
The Infidels he found ‘most full of humanity, and more friendly than the other.’
end quotes
Now, Mike, you are a thinking person – focus in on what the Morton dude is saying there, because what he is saying greatly affects future American history, right up to this very second where I sit here typing these words in response to your post above.
As the New England Historical Society website tells us, Morton would battle the Puritans over the next two decades using his wit, his pen, his political connections and his legal expertise, even managing to get the royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony revoked.
And here is where history takes a turn, Mike, as it so foten does:
Unfortunately for Morton, he tied his fortunes to the Crown.
When the Puritan Roundheads gained the ascendancy over Royalists in 1643, Massachusetts officials arrested America’s first hippie.
They called him a Royalist agitator and threw him into prison.
Nathaniel Hawthorne best described Morton’s struggles with his neighbors in his short story, The Maypole of Merrymount:
Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire.
end quotes
I’m not sure the nuns ever taught you that part of the story, Mike.
Getting back to the story:
Thomas Morton was born in 1576 in Devonshire, England, a part of the country that still bore remnants of Merrie Old England’s pagan past.
The son of a soldier, probably a younger son, he studied law in London at the Inns of Court, the barristers’ professional association.
Morton’s lawyering brought him the connections that brought him to New England.
He quickly discovered he couldn’t get along with the Puritans at Plymouth Plantation, so he, Wollaston and the indentured servants established their own colony, Mount Wollaston which grew quickly and grew prosperous.
Morton parted ways with Wollaston in 1626 when he learned Wollaston was selling indentured servants into slavery on Virginia tobacco plantations.
Morton encouraged the remaining servants to rebel against Wollaston and set up their own colony.
They didn’t need much persuading.
The servants organized themselves into a free community called Merrymount with Morton in command.
He called himself the ‘host.’
Wollaston fled to Virginia.
Merrymount was a colonial utopia in which the settlers were considered ‘consociates.’
They lived in harmony with the Algonquin Indians.
end quotes
Here, Mike, as you can probably imagine, knowing me as you do, you can picture me sitting here laughing out loud at the reality presented here about “communal living” and “socialism.”
As to the other side of the coin, the Bradford side:
The Puritans were horrified that the liberal-minded Morton and his men consorted with native women.
They considered Morton an impious, drunken libertine.
And they weren’t happy his easygoing colony attracted escapees from Plymouth’s strictness.
end quotes
Focus on that last sentence, Mike, because it is that which led to the downfall of the Puritans more than anything – their religious way of life was unappealing to the point of driving people they needed to survive away from them.
Getting back to the reality the nuns neglected to teach you, Mike, in order to keep your soul pure:
For his part, Morton disdained the Puritans at Plymouth, who he called ‘those Moles.’
He complained they ‘keep ‘much ado about the tithe of mint and cumin, troubling their brains more than reason would require about things that are indifferent.’
Morton called the pompous John Endicott ‘that great swelling fellow, Captain Littleworth,’ and the short Myles Standish ‘Captain Shrimpe.’
On May 1, 1627, Merrymount decided to throw a party in the manner of Merrie Olde England, Maypole and all.
Morton hoped it would attract some Indian brides for his bachelor followers.
According to Morton:
“The inhabitants of Merrymount … did devise amongst themselves to have … Revels, and merriment after the old English custom … & therefore brewed a barrell of excellent beer, & provided a case of bottles to be spent, with other good cheer, for all comers of that day.”
“And upon Mayday they brought the Maypole to the place appointed, with drums, guns, pistols, and other fitting instruments, for that purpose; and there erected it with the help of Savages, that came thither of purpose to see the manner of our Revels.”
“A goodly pine tree of 80 foot long, was reared up, with a pair of buckshorns nailed on, somewhat near unto the top of it; where it stood as a fair sea mark for directions, how to find out the way to mine Host of Ma-re Mount.”
end quotes
Now, you tell me, Mike, which place would you rather have been?
And back again to real world history:
Gov. William Bradford was horrified by the ‘beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians.’
After a second Maypole party the next year, Myles Standish led a party of armed men to Merrymount, seized Morton and put him in chains.
Standish also took down the offending Maypole.
Not a shot was fired.
According to Morton, the Merrymount inhabitants didn’t want bloodshed.
According to Bradford, they’d had so much to drink they couldn’t resist.
Bradford feared executing Morton, who had too many friends in high places in London.
He did maroon him on the Isles of Shoals until September, when an English ship took him back to England.
During the next winter, an especially harsh one, John Endicott led a raid on Merrymount’s corn supply and chopped down what was left of the Maypole.
end quotes
Bradford’s crowd, Mike, were thugs and thieves, which brings us back to the story, as follows:
In England, Morton plotted his revenge.
Even as William Bradford was writing his History of Plimoth Plantation, Morton wrote New English Canaan, a witty composition that praised the wisdom and humanity of the Indians and mocked the Puritans.
It made him a celebrity in political circles.
end quotes
Isn’t history great, Mike, don’t you just love it?
To be clear, the reference above addresses not just Nordic countries, but most EU states. They are capitalist to the core, but have a solid safety net. You can call them Socialist (old Marxists would cringe if you did) or Social Democrats. Social Security in the U.S. is Socialist – just so you can better understand the concept. (With apologies to those schooled in this domain for oversimplification.) Forget old experiments with Socialism and forget passé free-market theories. Both have since advanced.
Note: This is the point of the article; if you call Norway socialist, then the US is also socialist. A list of our Federal safety net programs, from Medicaid, SS, Medicare, ACA, CHIP, Headstart, SNAP, etc. is pretty impressive.
Social Security is NOT ‘owning the means of production” it is owning the means of distribution. The PEOPLE still produce the product to be distributed. The sweat of our brows.
Social Security is NOT a socialist program.
Really glad our schools did such a bang up job teaching that ideology.
Mike, you’re stuck in the past. Social theory has advanced well beyond the Marxist Leninist Maoist theses on ownership of means of production, labor theories, etc. That experiment didn’t work – isn’t working in China, that is why they let capitalism loose and claim that they need another 100 years to advance from socialism to communism. Forget all that and read about the social market economy.
Marx was a European at a certain time in European history, and that is all he knew.
And the Chinese never pretended that he had it right, because for them, he didn’t.
Consider Anna Louise Strong, “Dawn Out of China,” People’s Publishing House, Bombay, 1948, p. 29:
In August 1946, Liu Shao-ch’i told an American correspondent: “Mao Tse-tung has created a Chinese or Asiatic form of Marxism.”
“His great accomplishment has been to change Marxism from its European to its Asiatic form.”
“He is the first who has succeeded in doing so.”
The very concept of “socialism” has been so whacked out of shape that by today, it means everything under the sun, so it means nothing at all.
And by the way, you will find that our United States military is held to be the embodiment of socialism, which point we will get back to soon enough.
As to social security, here is what the Social Security Administration website has to say about it:
Germany became the first nation in the world to adopt an old-age social insurance program in 1889, designed by Germany’s Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.
The idea was first put forward, at Bismarck’s behest, in 1881 by Germany’s Emperor, William the First, in a ground-breaking letter to the German Parliament.
William wrote: “. . .those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state.”
Bismarck was motivated to introduce social insurance in Germany both in order to promote the well-being of workers in order to keep the German economy operating at maximum efficiency, and to stave-off calls for more radical socialist alternatives.
Despite his impeccable right-wing credentials, Bismarck would be called a socialist for introducing these programs, as would President Roosevelt 70 years later.
end quotes
So, Mike, is social security “socialism?”
Or is it really something else?
Getting back to that history:
In his own speech to the Reichstag during the 1881 debates, Bismarck would reply: “Call it socialism or whatever you like.”
“It is the same to me.”
end quotes
You see what I am saying, Mike?
And back to the story:
The German system provided contributory retirement benefits and disability benefits as well.
Participation was mandatory and contributions were taken from the employee, the employer and the government.
Coupled with the workers’ compensation program established in 1884 and the “sickness” insurance enacted the year before, this gave the Germans a comprehensive system of income security based on social insurance principles.
(They would add unemployment insurance in 1927, making their system complete.)
end quotes
Sounds like they were way out ahead of us, Mike, in their thinking.
But hey, those Germans were a bunch of COMMKIES, weren’t they, so that socialism crap is what you would expect of them.
But wait, the Germans weren’t the COMMIES, that was the Russians!
Sorry about that, Mike, my mind got to drifting there.
So is social security in America today socialism?
Actually, if one were to study history in this country, socialism existed right from the beginning.
Consider this from the “HISTORY OF The Seventeen Towns OF Rensselaer County FROM THE Colonization of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck to the Present Time” BY A. J. Weise, A.M., AS PUBLISHED IN THE TROY DAILY TIMES, TROY; N. Y. in 1880:
The first annual town meeting, as ordered, was held at the place appointed, on April 3, 1855.
The following persons were selected officers of the town of Clinton:
Supervisor, Frederick R. Rockefeller; town clerk, William R. De Freest; assessors, Barney Hoes, David De Freest, Jr., Martin D. De Freest; commissioner of highways, David Phillips; overseers of the poor, Adam Dings, John W. Graver; justices of the peace, Andrew L. Wetherwax, Frederick Rockefeller, Thomas B. Simmons, William Holsapple; superintendent of common schools, Henry J. Genet; collector, Harris N. Elliot; constables, Henry Ostrander, Frederick B. Conkey, Jacob Earing, Harris N. Elliot; inspectors of electlon, A. B. Kirtland, Leonard L. Rysedorph.
end quotes
Notice the elected position of “overseers of the poor,” and that was in 1855.
Here is an entry for another town:
It was about a month after the incorporation of Poestenkill before the first town meeting was held.
It took place at the house of Jeremiah L. Becker April 4, 1848.
John Amid on was selected as moderator and David Luce as clerk, and these officers were chosen:
Supervisor, James Henderson, jr.; town clerk, David Luce; superintendent of schools, Eleazer Flint; assessors, John I. Vosburgh, Benjamin B. Randall and Harmon Vanderzee; commissioners of highways, Barney Weatherwax and Stephen Austin; justices of the peace, George Cottrell, George Barker and Benjamin Wilkinson; overseers of the poor, Christian C. Cooper, Samuel Comick; constables, John Barker, Alonzo Whyland, William Cooper, John F. Whyland; collector, John Barker; sealer of weights and measures, James D. Simmons.
end quotes
Again there are overseers of the poor, or as they were sometimes called, “poor masters.”
As to some relevant history on that subject, we have:
WHAT WERE POORHOUSES?
Poorhouses were tax-supported residential institutions to which people were required to go if they could not support themselves.
They were started as a method of providing a less expensive (to the taxpayers) alternative to what we would now days call “welfare” – what was called “outdoor relief” in those days.
People requested help from the community Overseer of the Poor (sometimes also called a Poor Master) – an elected town official.
If the need was great or likely to be long-term, they were sent to the poorhouse instead of being given relief while they continued to live independently.
Sometimes they were sent there even if they had not requested help from the Overseer of the Poor.
That was usually done when they were found guilty of begging in public, etc.
BEFORE POORHOUSES
Prior to the establishment of poorhouses the problem of what to do with paupers in a community was dealt with in one of three ways:
1. Outdoor Relief provided through an Overseer of the Poor:
When people fell upon hard times and members of their family, friends or members of their church congregations could not provide enough assistance to tide them over, they made application to an elected local official called the Overseer of the Poor.
Within a budget of tax money, he might provide them with food, fuel, clothing, or even permission to get medical treatment to be paid out of tax funds.
end quotes
Sounds like socialism to me, anyway.
What was so bad or harmful about it?
Local government versus NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.
NEITHER owned the means of production. De Toqueville wrote of this, how amazing that the American people, when confronted with an issue rose up TOGETHER to solve it rather that wait for the BIG GOVERNMENT to do so. If that meant barring the State Government from getting involved, they did it. If it barred the Federal Government from overseeing the program, they preferred local control.
Come on Paul, you know that………..
And I’m still for it, but who listens to me, Mike?
According to p.150 of “The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice” by Christopher Tomlins, socialism in this country was looked askance at by the Supreme Court justices of the Gilded Age:
The judges all insisted that they were passing on the constitutionality of legislation, not its wisdom – they were judges, not legislators – but some of them clearly thought the more aggressive tendencies in economic regulation to be unwise.
Justice Harlan explained in a speech from 1908 of the need to counter “the pernicious doctrines of the present day that are called socialism and paternalism.”
What was merely a reasonable exercise of the state police power and what crossed the line into paternalism divided the judges.
Justice Brewer uttered one of his best-known lines in 1892 – “The paternal theory of government is to me odious” – in his dissent in Budd v. New York, in which Justices Field and Brown joined.
Wayne, yes, but we need more – what Europeans call a social market economy. We need a mindset of the population that it is unfair to saddle our young with student debt, that it is fair for everyone to have free quality healthcare and not be forced to declare bankruptcy after surgery, and the belief that top talent should be attracted to work for a government that judiciously administers our tax dollars for the benefit of all, and promotes a free market, but not a Wild West of competition (the price we pay for cellular service in the U.S. is insane, WiFi and TV service, ridiculous, etc.).
And yet people keep paying those “insane” prices, as if life itself were impossible to live without the cell phone constantly in front of their eyes.
That is what happens when people become addicted to something, as they definitely are to their cell phones – people feed off those addictions, and in our case, that is called the U.S. economy.
I’ll pay for any Engineering, IT, Medical, Legal or Literary program, and anyone who wants to can pay for “Gender/Race Studies” program they want.
Kids want to go play for four years and only learn to agitate for socialism? Nah, they are on their own.
Oh, and by the way? Elizabeth Warren LIED her butt off in her so called study. I know because when I was working for the US Bankruptcy court, the petitions requested(All 4 of them) that I supplied weren’t enough for her team, and I sat and watched them cherry pick out each and every case that had a single medical bill in it, and even if they had $200K in unsecured credit card debt, to her that ONE bill made it a ‘Medical bankruptcy’.
You can have free healthcare, or quality healthcare. The human nature of self interest isn’t gonna just disappear.
Say it like you see it, Mike!
Hopefully, the candid world isn’t sleeping and is listening, instead.
I was thinking; If Liberals don’t believe in biological gender then why did they march for women’s rights?
I was thinking; If women do the same job for less money, why do companies hire men to do the same job for more money?
I was thinking; Since only 11 million people have Obama-Care, how will 24 million people die if it is repealed? Will an additional 13 million people be randomly shot?
I was thinking; We should stop calling them all ‘Entitlements’. Welfare, Food Stamps, WIC, ad nausea are not Entitlements. They are taxpayer-funded handouts and shouldn’t be called Entitlements at all. But, Social Security and Veterans Benefits are Entitlements because the people receiving them are entitled to them. They were earned and paid for by the recipients.
I was thinking; If you rob a bank in a Sanctuary City, is it illegal or is it just an Undocumented Withdrawal?
I was thinking; After the London ‘Lone Wolf’ terrorist attack, government officials arrested at least eight other ‘Lone Wolves’ who had conspired with the original ‘Lone Wolf’ in planning the ‘Lone Wolf’ attack. Why do they tell us even though all involved are Muslims, you can be assured that the ‘Lone Wolf’ attack has nothing at all to do with Islam, just like the other 1,000-plus ‘Lone Wolf’ attacks by Muslims, are completely unassociated with Islam?
I was thinking; Why is each ISIS attack now a reaction to Trump policies, but all ISIS attacks during Obama’s term were due to Climate Change and a plea for jobs?
I was thinking; If Muslims want to run away from a Muslim country, does that mean they are Islamophobic?
I was thinking; If Democrats don’t want foreigners involved in our elections, why do they think it’s all right for illegals to vote?
I was thinking; Is the DNC is mad at Russia because it ‘thinks’ they are trying to manipulate our elections, or because Russia is exposing that the DNC is manipulating our elections?
I was thinking; How did the Russians get Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC to steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders? How did Russia get Donna Brazile to leak debate questions to Hillary Clinton in advance of the debates?
I was thinking; Why is it that Democrats think Super delegates are fine, but they have a problem with the Electoral College?
I was thinking; If Donald Trump deleted all of his emails, wiped his server with Bleachbit and destroyed all of his phones with a hammer, would the Mainstream Media suddenly lose all interest in the story and declare him innocent?
I was thinking; If Hillary’s speeches cost $250,000 an hour, how come no one shows up to her free speeches?
I was thinking; If you don’t want the FBI involved in elections, don’t nominate someone who’s being investigated by the FBI.
Kind of hard for ‘them’ to argue those points.
Perhaps socialism is a word that raises too many hackles. Lets call it ordinary peopleism. I’m tired of seeing gofundme being used for healthcare and I believe education and training should be affordable, not free. Does that mean a handout for everyone? No. It means people can see a way to a better life and that really was the American dream. Now the class you are born into is basically destiny. Anyone who is ok with that is what scares me.
What the Left touts sounds good to lazy thinkers:
– Income equality
– Living wage
– Healthcare coverage
– Affordable college education
– Quality housing
– A tax system where the rich pay their “fair share.”
Implicit in the discussion of this new world order is that everything about the American economy, way of life and culture that is to their liking remains in place, unaffected by the transition to democratic socialism.
That is preposterous.
It is as straightforward as Economics 101.
The daily American life that people take for granted, plentiful food, instant access to news, sports and music, the ability to make purchases online and have them delivered the next day, cheap and plentiful fuel, a variety of consumer goods and services are all made possible by the capitalist nature of our economic system.
If private business profit incentive is removed, as seen over and over again in socialist economies from the defunct Soviet Union to present day Venezuela, the underlying competitive drive for providing those goods and services disappears.
The more socialism that is introduced into the economy, the less efficient the economy becomes because less private competition results in fewer choices and a diminishing incentive to increase efficiency or reduce costs.
This is not theory, this is fact, unfortunately experienced by a good portion of humanity over the past century.
See, proponents of democratic socialism never explain where the money needed to pay for all the largess comes from. There is a limit to how much taxing the rich will produce. Taxes on services and sales transactions would need to be raised causing a negative effect on economic activity.
Europe’s nirvana of universal healthcare is all smoke and mirrors, where the average person has limited access to what we would consider routine medical care, at a level far lower than the average American could ever imagine.
Patients do have access to doctors and medical care via the national health system, but noncritical conditions and injuries receive lower priority and delayed attention. If a patient desires American-style “on-demand” care, they must simply pay for it out-of-pocket, an option not possible for all but the wealthiest citizens.
Then there’s claim of affordable college for anyone who wants it.
The government doesn’t make college affordable. When the government artificially corrupts the education marketplace by injecting billions of dollars into the mix in the form of aid, scholarships, stipends and the like, they don’t reduce the ultimate cost of college, they increase it.
Secure in the knowledge that a significant portion of their students get artificially low-rate loans and generous grants/financial aid, colleges simply raise their tuition, salaries and fees at a rate far in excess of inflation, confident that the government will be handing out money to the students so they can pay for a significant portion of their college expenses.
So, college pricing is higher, not lower, because of government money. Remove the artificial effect of the government’s 33% or more share of a ,say a $70,000 tuition and only the children of the wealthy would be able to attend.
If government-subsidized financial assistance was removed from the equation, colleges would be forced to compete with each other in the open market for their customers. College costs would go down and the services and value they offered would go up, as the free market imposed its ruthless, unapologetic competitive lessons on the college brands.
Capitalism is the best answer for raising the standard of living and delivering greater opportunities to more people. It is far from perfect and not everyone benefits to the same degree but it is fundamentally superior to everything else……………………..especially Socialism.
They will surely run Santa Claus again in 2020.
Not Santa Claus.
They will run Young Andy Cuomo from New York state who is presently using taxpayer dollars and “executive orders” to buy himself votes with.
Taking up Mr. Otton’s challenge above here to continue the discussion on the PERCEIVED evils of Capitalism vs DOCUMENTED evils of socialism, as any basic course in Economics 101 tells us, economists, political economists, sociologists and historians have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice.
Thus, in analyzing and evaluating the very subjective and totally unsupported statement that “Capitalism is the best answer for raising the standard of living and delivering greater opportunities to more people,” it is necessary to understand that fact.
As WIKIPEDIA tells us, these various forms of capitalism in practice include laissez-faire or free market capitalism, welfare capitalism and state capitalism.
State capitalism, for example, is an economic system in which the state undertakes commercial (i.e. for-profit) economic activity and where the means of production are organized and managed as state-owned business enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, wage labor and centralized management), or where there is otherwise a dominance of corporatized government agencies (agencies organized along business-management practices) or of publicly listed corporations in which the state has controlling shares.
Marxist literature defines state capitalism as a social system combining capitalism with ownership or control by a state—by this definition, a state capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts like a single huge corporation, extracting the surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production.
This designation applies regardless of the political aims of the state (even if the state is nominally socialist) and some people argue that the modern People’s Republic of China constitutes a form of state capitalism and/or that the Soviet Union failed in its goal to establish socialism, but rather established state capitalism.
The term “state capitalism” is also used by some in reference to a private capitalist economy controlled by a state, often meaning a privately owned economy that is subject to statist economic planning.
This term was often used to describe the controlled economies of the Great Powers in the First World War.
State capitalism has also come to refer to an economic system where the means of production are owned privately, but the state has considerable control over the allocation of credit and investment as in the case of France during the period of dirigisme after the Second World War.
State capitalism may be used (sometimes interchangeably with state monopoly capitalism) to describe a system where the state intervenes in the economy to protect and advance the interests of large-scale businesses.
Libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky applies the term “state capitalism” to economies such as that of the United States, where large enterprises that are deemed “too big to fail” receive publicly funded government bailouts that mitigate the firms’ assumption of risk and undermine market laws and where the state largely funds private production at public
expense, but private owners reap the profits.
end quotes
Having firmly established that the form of capitalism exists in the United States of America is the same kind of “state capitalism” that exists in both China and Russia, which is not at all surprising, we are now in a much better position to evaluate the unsupported and unsubstantiated statement of Mr. Otton that capitalism is fundamentally superior to everything else, especially Socialism, so stay tuned.
Its true some people want it all. I would be willing to have a conversation about tradeoffs. Some people want cheap goods high wages low taxes and nice infrastructure. Ill take decent wages for Americans, Wal-Mart can disappear, healthcare for all even it means more taxes and college loans based on future income potential. Id be willing to be poorer for the sake of more community.
Get poor enough, Laurie, and you will find yourself surrounded by a huge “community.”
Will you like them?
More to the point, will they like you?
Beware of what you ask for, Laurie, for your wishes might come true.
And what on earth is a “millennial?”
What meaning is that term intended to convey?
“Ill take decent wages for Americans, Wal-Mart can disappear, healthcare for all even it means more taxes and college loans based on future income potential. Id be willing to be poorer for the sake of more community.”
Well, I was scared by your earlier comment in favor of government tyranny but all due respect, this is just stupid.
You want decent wages for everyone BUT you want Wal-Mart to disappear. Wal-mart employs 1 1/2 million Americans. So you want to start by throwing 1 1/2 million Americans out of work??????? Great start to your socialist paradise.
Next you want healthcare for all. Do you know how much a single-payer healthcare scheme would cost?
According to a rigorous study by a left-leaning think tank, the ten-year price tag would be $32 trillion, or approximately $3.2 trillion per year.
As a point of comparison, the federal government spent roughly $4 trillion last year, IN TOTAL
How might we fill this ten year $28 trillion hole?
Maybe a carbon tax could squeeze taxpayers for some of it?
Of course taxes on energy are regressive, disproportionately hurting low income Americans, who would feel the pinch of higher energy costs most acutely. So you’d be hurting the very people you purport to help. Which is on par for socialists.
Unfortunately even a carbon tax would only extract a little over $1 trillion in a ten-year window, so we’ll have to find “other sources”
How else might the gaping shortfall be filled?
How about cutting defense spending?
National defense, which is an actual, core CONSTITUTIONAL imperative of the federal government costs far less than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid which, BTW, despite leftist insistence, aren’t core CONSTITUTIONAL imperatives.
Last year, we spent $590 billion on defense, compared to $2 trillion on those three entitlements behemoths.
The upshot of socialist ideology in that the math doesn’t even come close to adding up. As Margret Thatcher once pointed out, under socialism eventually you run out of other people’s money.
And Laurie, you can virtue signal all you want about your willingness to be poorer but I sure as hell don’t want to be poorer. Under socialism I wouldn’t have any option because “do-gooders” like you would use force to make me share my wealth.
BTW, did you know you can make a donation to the government general fund to reduce the national dept any time you want?
It’s true –
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm
See, you could start virtue signaling TODAY.
Nobody is throwing anybody out of work. We make choices in life. If people want cheap things, companies will hire cheap labor to make it. I’m merely stating that our finances are a reflection of our priorities and our choices have consequences. I wasn’t virtue signaling, as I sincerely doubt anyone on this thread shares my views. I have made choices in life deliberately to pursue other things than simply wealth. I think it is ultimately a happier way to live, and perhaps more virtuous, but I also believe it is intelligent. Our “rich” nation is drowning in prescription drugs and opioids, so it’s debatable how happy our money has made us. I haven’t confiscated anybody’s money, merely stated that perhaps our rich government could help ordinary people. I would be happy to support great conservative ideas for helping ordinary people as well, but most of what I’ve seen from Trump is the same old tired idea of boosting the wealthy in order for it to trickle down.
It’s only “tired” if you are not one of the looters, Laurie.
It is called “wealth transfer,” which is defined as redistribution of income and redistribution of wealth from some individuals to others by means of a social mechanism such as taxation, charity, welfare, public services, land reform, monetary policies, confiscation, divorce or tort law.
In this case, those in power, both the Republicans and Democrats, have been looting our government to enrich themselves to the tune of TRILLIONS.
They are like a giant Hoover vacuum cleaner, sucking wealth out of the pockets of the “common folks” and re-depositing it in the pockets of themselves and their cronies.
Then, that money is supposed to “trickle down” to the common folks who get hired as maids, and nannies and groundskeepers, etc.
And Laurie, if you studied economic history, you would know that this is nothing new in the world.
Laurie,
Well, did you… DID say you’d be happy if Walmart disappeared? So one can only assume that you advocate putting 1 1/2 million people out of their jobs.
To bring up old history, Hillary said the same thing about West Virginia’s coal miners. She lost WV by 40 points. Imagine that.
Now on to your claims of no Conservative ideas for fixing the country’s pressing issues.
First, stay the hell away from ALL of the cable “news” outlets. They are indeed infotainment. Unless of course you believe that’s only true of FOX but not CNNMSNBCABCCBS. In that case none of this is going to matter, the brainwashing is complete.
However, on the slim chance that you actually want some answers, check out this thing called the internet. The answers to everything you’ve asked are available there. Caution, the answers will not jive with your world view, but at least TRY to see the world through other’s eyes.
So, for instance, put this phrase in any search engine “Free market solutions to healthcare” and read a few articles:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2017/04/10/what-would-a-free-market-for-health-care-look-like/#653123d82e44
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/14/a-free-market-approach-to-health-care/
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article163351613.html
Next try “Free market solutions to college costs”:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=5329
https://fee.org/articles/how-the-market-can-redeem-the-university/
Sadly, you’re comments vis a vis Mr. Trump indicate you are inculcated by left wing histrionics so I doubt you will take the time to read what I’ve posted. As Galinda the witch of the North said in “Wicked”, “I hope you prove me wrong, but I doubt you will”.
In any case, if you’re up for more world view challenges, try this phrase “Trump’s economy”:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/27/politics/donald-trump-economy-trade-gdp-growth-credit/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/07/27/trumps-economic-scorecard-18-months-into-his-presidency/#6bb52f501283
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/strong-economic-growth-handed-trump-message-midterms-will-it-work-n895321
And finally, try “Trump’s foreign policies”:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/26/opinions/trumps-foreign-policy-successes-opinion-bergen/
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Pax-Trumpus-13101115.php
The upshot of all this it that though you’ve been told otherwise, the world is not coming to an end.
Your side lost an election, that’s all. So rather than resort to histrionics and OUTRAGE, try convincing your fellow Americans that you have a better way.
Cue Galinda.
Now that, Mr. Otton, is what real democracy looks like in action.
Make your points with “facts” that somebody can review and then dispute with logic, if they can be disputed.
Sadly, people today seem too lazy to do that kind of background research, which is so easy to do today with Google.
Thank you for posting those links.
Socialism is Great!
Just check out Venezuela!
Laurie wolpert says @ July 29, 2018 at 3:30 am: Perhaps socialism is a word that raises too many hackles.
My reply is that indeed it does, because as this thread has proven, the word “socialism” has no concrete common meaning.
Mike Kuzma, @ July 27, 2018 at 2:29 pm, with these words “NEITHER owned the means of production,” gives us the basis for the definition I am going to adhere to, that being: a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Thus, an exercise of the constitutional police power of the state to regulate business and industry to protect the public’s health, especially in a government of, by and for the people, is true socialism.
I thus defy my debating partner in here, Mr. Otton, to demonstrate to us with facts and logic how protecting the public’s health constitutes a “DOCUMENTED evil of socialism.”
As to Venezuela, who thinks it has any comparison to the United States of America except in the category of quality of leadership!
And with the definition of socialism now confirmed in here thanks to Mike Kuzma, I will define “capitalism” as “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.”
Where Donald Trump is clearly controlling this country’s trade with his tariffs, can we truly be said to have a capitalist system in place in this country?
I would say not.
Check out “advisory on widespread public corruption in Venezuela” on Google.
Another name for the economic system that exists in this country today is “crony capitalism,” which is an economic system characterized by close, mutually advantageous relationships between business leaders and government officials, which is a fact again we need to keep in mind in evaluating the unsupported and unsubstantiated statement of Mr. Otton that “the daily American life that people take for granted, plentiful food, instant access to news, sports and music, the ability to make purchases online and have them delivered the next day, cheap and plentiful fuel, a variety of consumer goods and services are all made possible by the capitalist nature of our economic system.”
In contrast to the “state capitalism,” or crony capitalism that we have in this country, which form of capitalism is a legacy of Alexander Hamilton with no constitutional underpinnings to support the premise that this is a “capitalist” nation, there is the “welfare capitalism” that countries like Norway have.
Welfare capitalism is capitalism that includes social welfare policies.
Welfare is a government support for the citizens and residents of society.
Welfare may be provided to people of any income level, as with social security, but usually it is intended to ensure that the poor can meet their basic human needs such as food and shelter.
Welfare attempts to provide poor people with a minimal level of well-being, usually either a free- or a subsidized-supply of certain goods and social services, such as healthcare, education, and vocational training.
A welfare state is a political system wherein the State assumes responsibility for the health, education, and welfare of society.
The system of social security in a welfare state provides social services, such as universal medical care, unemployment insurance for workers, financial aid, free post-secondary education for students, subsidized public housing, and pensions (sickness, incapacity, old-age), etc.
The first welfare state was Imperial Germany (1871–1918), where the Bismark government introduced social security in the late 19th century.
In the early 20th century, Great Britain introduced social security around 1913, and adopted the welfare state with the National Insurance Act 1946, during the Attlee government (1945–51).
In the countries of western Europe, Scandinavia, and Australasia (New Zealand), the national government provides social welfare that is paid from the national tax revenues, and by non-government organizations (NGOs), and charities (social and religious).
Welfare capitalism is also the practice of businesses providing welfare services to their employees.
Welfare capitalism in this second sense, or industrial paternalism, was centered on industries that employed skilled labor and peaked in the mid-20th century.
Today, welfare capitalism is most often associated with the models of capitalism found in Central Mainland and Northern Europe, such as the Nordic model, social market economy and Rhine capitalism.
In some cases welfare capitalism exists within a mixed economy, but welfare states can and do exist independently of policies common to mixed economies such as state interventionism and extensive regulation.
Thus, the argument is not a question of whether capitalism is better than socialism; but rather one of whether the crony capitalism we have in this country is better than the welfare capitalism of Norway.
“I thus defy my debating partner in here, Mr. Otton, to demonstrate to us with facts and logic how protecting the public’s health constitutes a “DOCUMENTED evil of socialism.” ”
To clarify.
The documented evils of socialism that I am referring to have nothing to do protecting the public’s health, I think that is obvious.
It is disingenuous to lump healthcare issues in with death camps and other atrocities we can lay at the feet of socialists, no matter what you label them.
In fact, the latest label “Democratic Socialism” is nothing more than is the latest resurrection of a 20th century political death cult. The “Democratic” part is just another rebranding effort meant to fool the masses. Apparently, from the comments of some folks here, it’s working.
Stick “Democratic” in front of something awful and off you go.
National socialism, democratic socialism, what’s the diff? It’s just a question of who runs the camps………….because regardless of the name branding of socialism, there are always camps. ( Documented over and over again if one choose to do a little research, BTW)
Boring old facts and history demonstrate, beyond any dispute, that socialism in one form or another is an abomination with over 100 million corpses to its credit.
Do I really need to DOCUMENT the horrors of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, The entire Soviet Union? Well, maybe for the Millenials in the discussion since apparently their education skipped over the 20th century but really, Mr. Plante knows full well what went on last century. I’m not even sure why that is in question. Unless being obtuse is his chosen art form.
You know, free stuff is a really big part of today’s “Democratic Socialism”.
However, what it really is at heart is a leftist government sending people with guns to take the stuff you’ve worked for and give it to the people who like socialism.
Guess who gets stuck with the check for the free stuff, because someone always gets stuck with the check since there is no such thing as free stuff. That “someone” is the people who reject socialism.
Of course, to make socialism palatable, democratic socialists will deny that the path to tyranny ends up with tyranny. That is blatantly obvious except for the obtuse among us.
They will also tell you that true socialism has never been achieved. Their argument is that we should throw out the ideology that brought the world the freest and most prosperous country in human history ( Do I need to document that too?) and instead give another chance to an ideology that has failed every single time it’s been attempted because it makes them feel good.
This is not a compelling argument.
Democratic socialists keep promising Denmark and Norway and but deliver Cuba and Venezuela. They start with the question “Why can’t we deliver free healthcare to everyone?” and end up with questions like “Can rabbit meat rescue a starving population?”.
Documented –
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-rabbits/venezuelas-new-plan-to-beat-hunger-breed-rabbits-idUSKCN1BP232
Thank you, Mr. Otton for establishing the shape of the ballpark you are playing in, as to establishing what you see as the evils of socialism.
You link socialism with individuals such as Stalin and Mao, as if the two are inextricably linked, and perhaps they are.
In your system, and I won’t argue it with you, the Holodomor, “to kill by starvation,” the man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians, also known as the Terror-Famine and Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, and sometimes referred to as the Great Famine or The Ukrainian Genocide of 1932–33, part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country was a part and parcel of socialism.
For the millennials, during the Holodomor, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine.
Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly.
According to higher estimates, up to 12 million ethnic Ukrainians were said to have perished as a result of the famine.
A U.N. joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7-10 million perished.
Research has since narrowed the estimates to between 3.3 and 7.5 million.
Contrary to Mr. Orton’s belief that socialism will always produce a holdomore, some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement, which makes it political.
But I’m not going to try to unravel the two.
The same with Mao and the Great Leap Forward and the Sino-Soviet Split.
Again for the millennials, as Wikipedia informs us, the Sino-Soviet split (1956–1966) was the breaking of political relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), caused by doctrinal divergences arising from each of the two powers’ different interpretation of Marxism–Leninism as influenced by the national interests of each country during the Cold War.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, debates of ideological orthodoxy between the communist parties of the USSR and of the PRC became disputes about Soviet policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West.
Despite such background politics, to the Chinese public Mao Zedong proposed a belligerent attitude towards capitalist countries, an initial rejection of the Soviets’ peaceful-coexistence policy, which he perceived as Marxist revisionism by the Russians.
Since 1956—after Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin and Stalinism—China and Russia had progressively disagreed and diverged about orthodox interpretation of Marxist ideology.
By 1961, intractable differences of philosophy provoked the Communist Party of China to formally denounce Soviet communism as the product of “Revisionist Traitors”.
The Sino-Soviet split was about who would lead the revolution of world communism—to whom, China or Russia, would the vanguard parties of the world turn for aid and assistance?
In that vein, the USSR and the PRC competed for ideological leadership through their respective networks of communist parties in the countries of their spheres of influence.
Geopolitically, the Sino-Soviet split was a pivotal event of the bi-polar Cold War (1945–1991) as important as the Berlin Wall (1961), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and the Vietnam War (1965–1975) because it facilitated the Sino-American rapprochement of the 1972 Nixon visit to China.
Internationally, the geopolitical rivalry between communists—Chinese Stalinism and Russian peaceful coexistence—eliminated the myth that monolithic Communism was an actor in the 1947–1950 period of the Vietnam War and in world politics—such Realpolitik established the tri-polar geopolitics of the latter part of the Cold War.
As head-of-state of the People’s Republic of China, Mao visited Moscow (December 1949–February 1950) and returned to China with the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship (1950), which included a $300 million loan, the transfer of former Russian colonial properties, and a 30-year military alliance.
Under Soviet guidance, the PRC applied the soviet model of centralised planned economy; the planning and development made heavy industry the priority and consumer-goods production the second priority.
Despite Soviet guidance, Mao developed the basic ideas of China’s Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
Ideologically, to justify realising the modernisation of China, Mao argued that orthodox Marxism, rooted in industrialized Europe, could not readily be adapted and applied to the agricultural societies of eastern Asia, and adapted Marxism to Chinese socio-economic conditions.
In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev used trade agreements to improve the USSR’s relations with the People’s Republic of China, acknowledged Stalin’s economic unfairness to China, and negotiated for the USSR to fund fifteen industrial projects, and mutual exchanges of technicians.
The trade agreements exchanged economic specialists (ca. 10,000 by 1960) and political advisors (ca. 1,500); and the PRC sent labourers to reduce the shortage of workers in Siberia.
In 1956, Sino-Soviet relations began to deteriorate when Khrushchev initiated the de–Stalinization of the USSR with the secret speech, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences (25 February 1956), to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, which criticized Stalin the man and Stalin’s policies — especially the purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, by which Stalin killed personal and political rivals.
From Khrushchev’s de–Stalinization of the Soviet Union arose a serious domestic problem for Mao who had emulated Stalin and Stalinism, in the development of Chinese communism.
Hence, Khrushchev’s political liberalization of the USSR compelled Mao to retain the Stalinist model of government for the PRC.
Moreover, the ideological break was assured when Khrushchev’s Stalinist enemies failed to depose him as leader of the CPSU and of the USSR, which then resulted in China and Russia practicing different forms of Marxism, which then degenerated to ideological quarrels and enmity.
In 1958, the ideological differences, especially the Soviet policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, worsened Sino-Soviet relations; notably, Mao’s implementation of the Great Leap Forward, realised with Stalinist policies from which emerged the cult of personality of Mao Zedong as the true leader of the socialist world.
As such, Mao widened the ideological divergence between the PRC and the USSR with criticism of Khrushchev’s economic policies, which included foreign aid for China.
To the USSR, the ideological radicalism of the PRC destabilized the politics of peaceful coexistence with the West, in response, Russia decreased military and economic aid to China.
By 1960, the Sino-Soviet split was manifested as open criticism, when Khrushchev and Peng Zhen openly argued at the congress of the Romanian Communist Party.
Khrushchev insulted Chairman Mao as “a nationalist, an adventurist, and a deviationist”; Peng Zhen called Khrushchev a Marxist revisionist whose régime of the USSR showed him to be a “patriarchal, arbitrary and tyrannical” ruler.
In the end, Premier Khrushchev denounced the People’s Republic of China in an eighty-page letter to the Romanian Communist Party congress.
Khrushchev further responded to Mao’s criticism by withdrawing some 1,400 technicians from the PRC, which led to cancellation of some 200 scientific joint projects intended to foster cooperation between Russia and China.
To Mao, the withdrawal of Soviet technicians from China justified his accusation that Khrushchev had caused not only the PRC’s great economic failures, but also had caused the famines occurred during the Great Leap Forward.
end quotes
So there is what is at the root of Mr. Otton’s aversion to socialism, and if one was alive back then, and has a memory of those times, it is entirely understandable.
Feel asleep at about line 6 of your post, woke up just in time to read that after all things have been considered you’ve given me your blessing.
You’ve had my blessing all along, Mr. Otton.
You have no idea how that makes me feel.
No, really…………….no idea.
Okay.
I’m cool with that.
Well what are the conservative ideas on healthcare and education? I don’t hear an intelligent argument from the right. I hear a lot of ridicule bashing snowflakes, safe spaces and gender studies. Fox news spends most of their time belittling liberals, which is not solving any problems. The Republicans are in power but have never replaced Obama care. Student loans continue to rise. Where are the great ideas?
Laurie, why do you think that conservatives or Republicans are going to have what you call “great ideas?”
And why are you all hung up on what the “right” thinks?
I can remember a time in America when we were not barraged with this “left/right” bull****, and I wonder what gives rise to it today.
And Fox News is what is called infotainment.
They entertain people by bashing snowflakes, safe spaces and gender studies and belittling liberals, and they make good money through advertising doing it.
Do you honestly think that you are going to get any good ideas from watching television?
And Laurie, what is a millennial?
Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (54-72 years old) Generation X: Born 1965-1980 (38-53 years old) Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (22-37 years old)
I think this term is less controversial than socialism.
I would be interested in hearing more ideas and less insults from the political parties. Our politics is so immature.
Stop throwing tantrums ( and bags full of urine ) then we’ll talk.
“Our politics ARE so immature”
OR
“Our political culture IS so immature.”
Subject must agree and all that hooey…..
One way we conservatives want to fix schools is to stop teaching self esteem, diversity, liberal politics and activism and get back to teaching things like math, history and English……
Just sayin’………..
History itself is politicized, like many things in our society, so it would be contestable as well. Most teachers are too tired teaching standards to teach liberal politics, although most public schools have to be sensitive to diversity because they serve the general public, which is increasingly less white these days as well as home to people of all political and religious beliefs.
Here is a quote from “Democracy in America” which you suggested I read. I actually have the book right now and on pg. 320, lies the following quote.
“The tyranny of the government is ordinarily added to the greed of the colonists. Though the Cherokees and the Creeks be settled on the soil that they inhabited before the arrival of the Europeans, although the Americans have often dealt with them as with foreign nations, the states in whose midst they are have not wanted to recognize them as independent peoples, and they have taken to subject these men, taken out of the forest, to their magistrates, their customs, and their laws. Misery had driven these unfortunate Indians toward civilization, today oppression pushes them back toward barbarism. Many among them, leaving their half cleared fields resume the habits of savage life.
If one pays attention to the tyrannical measures adopted by the legislators of the southern states, to the conduct of their governors and to the acts of the their courts, one will easily be convinced that the complete expulsion of the Indians is the final goal to to which all of their efforts simultaneously tend.”
Slavery is also mentioned as an evil reintroduced into the world in the colonies in “Democracy in America”, but I’ll spare you the quotes. Needless to say, teaching these sorts of passages can generate controversy and are no way exempt from disagreement and dispute. The same can be said for English literature.
Evil, or what is considered evil, and evil people, or people who can be considered evil, have existed forever.
History books are full of deeds that can be looked on and considered evil.
I was taught when young that as an American citizen, I had an obligation to know the history of my town, my county, my state and my nation, and the world they were and are a part of.
I was further taught when young that I had an affirmative duty to humanity to know who the A-HOLES in history were, and why they were A-HOLES, so I would not go through life emulating them.
Why don’t they teach that anymore?
Are they afraid of making people who act like A-HOLES feel bad about themselves?
I’m with you, Mike, throw this STEM and STEAM crap in the trashbin and get back to basics.
You can call them Boomers, Gen X or Millennial, if the vote Democratic, they a danger to our country…period. I have been told you can not use a ‘Broad Brush’ for democrats. The far left extremist and the regular old democrat both vote for the same candidate….so yes, a broad brush is needed.
So, Paul, hence my comment – “Good comments come here to die.” A perfect example from a one Mr. Ray Otton replying to Ms. Laurie Wolpert. Her comment reasonably presented as “I would be interested in hearing more ideas and less insults from the political parties.” So, would I Ms. Wolpert, so would I. But, instead, Mr. Otton opines, and you gotta love this mature statement, ”Stop throwing tantrums (and bags full of urine) then we’ll talk.” Wow, just wow. What a great idea, Mr. Wolpert if you were replying to a two-year-old and/or a geriatric ninety-year-old veteran in an old folks’ home who wasn’t turned in their bed soon enough! SMH. How mature that response was not. See my point now Paul Plante, dude?
Okay, got that off my chest. Ms. Wolpert, I’ll take your challenge. Number one, I am a boomer. (’46-’64) Number two, I remember the Nixon years clearly, they were not good days for America. I remember the Vietnam war and the protests, they were just as bad. I remember Kent State and the killing of college students, so things can go south pretty quickly if you are not careful with the insanity in D.C. And so, I remember everything from that point on as well. I remember the promises of the Reagan administration and how trickle-down economics was going to put everyone back to work and prosperity was just around the corner. It put people to work alright, at a wage earning that pretty much stagnated for nearly fifteen years until the late nineties and those with computer skills could reap the benefits of the economy. In the meantime, production increased, the rich got richer and the gap between the poor and the rich, widened. Reagan unleashed upon society, the mental health patients his administration decided no longer could be sustained by the government. He crippled unions with threat of arrests or permanent loss of jobs (air trafficking strike of 1981). He did more than any other president to bust up unions and cripple worker’s rights. So, that is the beginning of the legacy of modern day conservatives. But, considering where they are now, Reagan would be considered a moderate. A RHINO (Republican In Name Only).
Let’s fast forward in time. You clearly and sincerely asked the question “What are the conservative ideas on healthcare and education?” An honest question…deserves an honest answer. I am not a conservative (in their viewpoint), so I will just honestly answer “I, personally don’t know what conservatives ideas are.” But, I can report on what I have seen in the past and relay that to you. This is my take…Let’s look at Education first. They will dismantle the teacher’s unions or at best take power away from the average teacher. They’ve pretty much done that already. Through vouchers, the money will shift from poorer neighborhood schools to affluent upper class private schools. Unless the public funds (STEM Schools and the like – check out what Lebron James did in Ohio just this past week) these poorer schools, leaking roofs and outdated books are the order of the day. Look at Betsy DeVos’ record in Michigan. That is the direction of this present administration. As far as healthcare is concerned, most present-day Republicans (Rightist/Neo-Cons) feel that health care is not a right. What that means to me is, your illness (by whichever means you contracted it – cancer through pesticides, obesity due to bio-engineered meats and processed foods – over-abundance of sugars and fats in our food, pollution, air quality, etc.) is your responsibility and fall into the Health Care industry’s and Insurance industry’s profit margins. ACA, they want to dismantle it. That’s their mantra. If it ain’t making a profit for Wall Street and all those lovely Billionaires and Millionaires out there, it ain’t worth having.
Now, Social Democracy (which ironically all Neo-Cons have visions of Venezuela and not Sweden or Norway) is intent on giving power back to the working class (that’s you and I by the way – I assume you are working) by enabling an affordable health care system, protection in the work place and an equitable tax system. That’s just the basics. Interestingly enough, the U.S. raised havoc on the Venezuela economy for the past twenty years. Because the election of Hugo Chavez was a referendum on the Free Market Economy (Google and remember that phrase, please). Almost immediately after his election, Saudi Arabia lowered and then flooded the market with cheap oil to help Washington destabilize the oil-based economy in Venezuela. There has been an on-going struggle to keep Venezuela on the fringes of the world market, allowing for inflation to grow and the economy there to weaken. Ms. Wolpert, it is a known fact (you can find it in many reputable rags on-line) that without this meddling, Venezuela’s economy and people would have thrived. We, by proxy, pushed Chavez into the camp of Iran and Putin. Pretty much the same way we pushed Castro aside in 1959 and into the arms of the Soviet Union. We don’t play ball with socialism. Ever. Why is that? That is the question you should research. That is the question Conservatives have so much trouble wrestling with. Why is it so difficult to convince people that we have certain unalienable rights? The right to happiness. Are you happy when you are sick? The right to life…again, if you are dying is that living, should dying bankrupt you? America is the richest (or it once was – today, I am not so sure) country on the planet. We consume nearly twenty percent of the world’s resources, while representing about 4.28 percent of the population. We spend more money, than seven of the richest countries combined, on our military every year. We have more billionaire citizens than any other country in the world. In fact, more than China, India and Germany combined. Their combined wealth is (you might want to sit down) is 3.2 trillion spread out among six hundred and eighty billionaires. This present administration just voted to give them, and their lesser monied peers, a 1.5 trillion-dollar tax cut. Something to do with trickling down or something, something, something. I forget.
Thanks for reading Ms. Wolpert. I hope I gave you a bit of insight. The Social Democratic movement is real and growing. Bernie was just the beginning. Washington and Wall Street (Billionaires – let’s not kid ourselves, huh?) will hit back hard, believe me. The comments just this letter will foment will beguile you, I am sure. But, you asked for a few great ideas. I am pretty sure you are a smart person, you’ll come up with some of your own. So, brace yourself. The war has begun. And believe me, this is war. And call it what you will (some will berate me for saying class warfare – they would be wrong – it goes deeper than coin, and they know it) America’s soul is not up for grabs and people like me will not be quiet, while the corrupt run the streets and Democracy weeps. Thank you for your interest. God bless and be safe.
Note: As clarification, this article attempted to show that Nordic countries, and Europe by extension, are not socialist at all, but are thriving free markets. If you call Norway socialist, then you may have to label the United States the same. Less we forget, our great country offers free health care for the low income families, fee healthcare for the elderly, free K-12 education, including charter schools, the SNAP program, Social Security, unemployment benefits, GI bill for vets, free healthcare for vets, Federal government retirement plans, veteran retirement plans, subsidies for farmers, not to mention what various states have to offer. If you read the article on the looming fiscal crisis, you will also see that none of this is really free.
Chas Response to the Editor: To the editor: And nowhere in this comment did I mention “Free Stuff”. The seven hundred-billion-dollar budget to the military is not free either. So, we have a choice, keep making weapons and creating enemies or recycle that money into infrastructure and the ‘Welfare’ (as in care of the people of America) not as “welfare” as you or others may see it. Yes, all of the above- mentioned programs are social programs. They work, for the most part, until political hacks (lawyers, not accountants) start to unravel the fabric instead of shoring it up. The key phrase is “Free Market”. Wall Street is exactly the opposite of that, if you look at it closely. Between world banks and fraudulent marketing practices, we’ve (society) have created a class of Robber Barons and shysters who now run the company. This is exactly what Social Democrats have an issue with. Thank you.
Thank you for your considered response. I have not now, nor have I ever , contemplated throwing a bag full of anything at anyone, so I can sleep easy at night with the assurance that that criticism is unfounded.
I believe all Americans have a vested interest in preserving the environment, creating an adequate health care system, and helping ordinary people live decent and virtuous lives. If anyone has bold ideas about how to do that, I think we should at least listen to them, rather than reacting to buzz words such as “socialism”.
Laurie, if you bother to do some fact-checking before making suppositions, you will find that at least ten years before you were born, in 1969, the people of New York state, including myself, voted to amend our state constitution to do exactly that – protect the environment.
According to the state’s website, the State of New York passed the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR or SEQRA) in 1975.
According to the DEC’s SEQRA Handbook, the law was passed to “declare a state policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and enhance human and community resources; and to enrich the understanding of the ecological systems, natural, human and community resources important to the people of the state.”
Under the law and its implementing regulations, all state and local government agencies must consider environmental impacts equally with social and economic factors when engaging in decision-making.
Any actions that would have a potentially adverse impact to the environment require the preparation of an environmental impact statement.
The law is modeled after the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.
end quotes
And you know what, Laurie?
The law is a ******* joke because the politicians, Republican and Democrat both made it into a joke, and the people sat back and let them do it.
“But, instead, Mr. Otton opines, and you gotta love this mature statement, ”Stop throwing tantrums (and bags full of urine) then we’ll talk.” Wow, just wow.”
Nothing shocking or childish there Chas. Unlike a bunch of posters here I try hard to keep things short and sweet.
So, since you were offended by my first attempt, here’s the long version –
The Left needs to stop the daily outrages, threats of violence, harassment of public officials and endless calls for presidential impeachment.
Stop shouting in our ears about how horrible we are for supporting this president and present a cogent argument about how we solve our many problems.
You have to admit the you haven’t done a very good job of that. Instead Liberals go on incessantly about Trump and his supporters’ lack of decorum.
We’ve tried dignity.
There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.
We tried collegiality.
Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?
We tried propriety.
Has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?
The results were always the same because while Conservatives were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, Liberals engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.
There was nothing “dignified” about Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.
There was nothing “proper” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover their tracks.
There was nothing “statesman-like” weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy political opponents.
Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”
Liberals have been engaged in a war against America since the hippies of the ’60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with threats of violence, outright violence, demagoguery, harassment of public officials, throwing of condoms full of urine and numerous other anti-social behaviors.
The problem is that, up until now, Liberals have been the only side fighting this war, taking a knife ( figuratively speaking, for the most part) to anyone who stands in their way.
With Trump, this came to an end. He is a wartime President in the Culture War and during wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” aren’t the essential qualities one looks for a warrior.
Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army but had Lincoln applied peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. You do know it was the Democrats who supported slavery, don’t you?
Fortunately, Lincoln recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights”
Conservatives cannot spare Mr. Trump, he fights………..oh, and he wins.
That better?
Mr. Otton, I guess I must have hit a “nerve” there with my fling statement. Seriously, if you want to play “Politics Gotcha” we can do this all day. But, I’d prefer to do it with someone with a little more background on their “History”. For example…”You do know it was the Democrats who supported slavery, don’t you?” Well, you do know that in politics the tide of progression and the tide of conservatism changes within parties, generally. Right? Republicans were known for their progressive ideals at the beginning of the turn of the last century. (1900’s) William Jennings Bryan was a progressive Republican as was Theodore Roosevelt. I could get into the history of the Republican party of a hundred years ago, but, you can do the research. My point is, the Democratic party of 1870 is not the party of
today. Nixon saw to that in the late sixties and early seventies. Many people hopped parties then. I know, I was there. Political parties shift and morph…just like your boy Trump, who is not a conservative, by the way. Not by any stretch. Try and catch up.
If you check the cases reported by the U.S. Supreme Court, Chas Cornweller, on voting rights, you will see that the Democrat Party of 1870 remained that same way right on up in to the 1950s, at least.
Surely, Chas Cornweller, you cannot have forgotten Orval Eugene Faubus, the American politician who served as 36th Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967.
A Democrat, he is infamous for his 1957 stand on segregation of the Little Rock School District during the Little Rock Crisis, in which, by ordering the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from attending Little Rock Central High School, he defied a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court made in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education.
Just saying.
Note: Wasn’t George Wallace a Democrat?
George Corley Wallace Jr. was an American politician and the 45th Governor of Alabama, having served two nonconsecutive terms and two consecutive terms as a Democrat: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987.
I am horribly afraid they are going to awaken a ‘Sleeping Giant’.
Boy, I love the Cape Charles Mirror for the robust discussion in here.
Where else in America can you find this?
Not at the Washington Post or the New York Times or Fox, anyway.
Hit a nerve? You bet you hit a nerve.
SHOOTING a Republican congressman at a baseball game?
Harassing Trump officials out for an evening’s entertainment?
The constant accusations of Nazism? (Speaking of not knowing your history, oh boy are you guys off on this one. Kinda insulting to the Jews too I might add, equating political differences with the attempted slaughter of their entire people.)
In fact –
https://www.attacksontrumpsupporters.com/
So yeah, you hit a nerve. I dare say if the roles were reversed you wouldn’t be so flippant.
Look, you want a chance to get some policies enacted?
You want to convince us that Liberal ideology is the way to go?
That socialism is the be all and end all?
Calm down and stop shouting at us.
You lost an election, the world is NOT coming to an end.
Hey, BTW, if you’re don’t want us to judge today’s Dems by the morals of their fathers, then you don’t get to judge slave owning Founding Fathers by today’s morals either.
See? It’s a win-win.
Don’t even need to go back that far to prove that Chas knows not what he speaks of regarding the D’s perfidy and long lived-and enduring- love of slavery…..
Grand Kleagle of the KKK, Robert Byrd started his political career in the 19402 AS A D and ended his career AS A D.
No less than the New York Times has debunked the so called ‘southern strategy.’
Oh Chas, it’s not that you liberals don’t know, it’s that you have no idea how much you don’t know.
Those are all empty, meaningless terms, Laurie.
Baby boomer conveys no concrete meaning.
Baby boomer defines nothing at all.
Nor does millenial.
I have never referred to myself as a “baby boomer,” as if that could in any way describe anything about me.
People who use the term “I am a millennial” make it sound like they are a ball bearing in a box of identical ball bearings.
And yes, our politics are very immature because the American people are themselves very immature, and in a representative government, the politics are representative of the body politic.
Consider the CNBC article “The market is dealing with something it’s never seen before and that has Jamie Dimon worried” by Hugh Son on 31 July 2018, to wit:
Apart from the trade dispute and QE unwind, Dimon has been consistently optimistic about the strength of the U.S. economy and the prospects for banks.
“The consumer balance sheet is in good shape.”
end quote
The “consumer,” Laurie, never the “citizen.”
That is because we have ceased being a republic with citizens with personal responsibility for their actions, and have instead become a nation of cud-chewers, like feedlot cattle, who think they have it just grand because they are getting fed so well everyday, without having to make an effort to find food.
Can a nation full of consumers stand?
We are finding out in real time as I write these words.
You should do like so many other Americans are doing, and turn your back on both parties, which are two faces one coin.
Neither has anything of substance to offer the American people.
Both parties represent only a minority of the American people.
It is time for both to join the Whigs in the dustbin of history.
Conversely, the longer people in America continue to cleave to the standard of either party, it is going to be nothing but the same empty soundbites, and the spews of drivel, and the insults.
When the American people grow up, so will our politics.
Until then, it will be nothing but the same tired show, over and over and over and over.
“Most teachers are too tired teaching standards to teach liberal politics”
Unless they ARE liberals then “Liberal Politics” becomes part and parcel of the education of young minds. They aren’t even aware they’re doing it –
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28051/
“although most public schools have to be sensitive to diversity because they serve the general public”
Less sensitivity to the Liberal mantra of diversity would be a good thing because the Liberal idea of diversity leaves out huge swatch of the population. You know, Hillary’s “Deplorables”, “clinging to their guns and their bibles” as President Obama said during his campaign.
It’s sad, isn’t Mr. Otten that the “Melting Pot” that made America great, and Americans out of anyone has been tossed aside for culture destroying ‘diversity’?
Teddy Roosevelt gave a good speech on the divisiveness of the hyphen at Cooper Union. Ms. Wolpert should read it, but after seeing how badly she warped De Toqueville, I’d rather she not.
I assume you don’t like the quote I choose since it portrays the colonists in a negative light, but I believe it is accurate. I’m not trying to be a smart aleck, but have you read the whole book? It is difficult reading and I’ve struggled to make it the whole way through. I was very interested in his opinions on slavery and I made a point to read them specifically.
De Tocqueville has many positive things to say about American life, but he is no rah rah cheerleader. He acknowledges the evils which were present at the very beginning of our society. As Flannery O’Conner said, “the truth does not change because of our ability to stomach it.”
“the truth does not change because of our ability to stomach it.”
Got that right, Laurie.
The truth is, Trump won fair and square.
The best thing the minority Democrat party could do is stress this to their constituents.
Haven’t seen that yet. It seems the Dems are presently running on OUTRAGE with no coherent message other than “We’re Not Trump”. That will not win over a single swing voter who backed Trump.
I consider myself an independent and cannot dictate the general direction of the Democratic party. I am not sure politics can cure what ails society. I believe we would do better if we encouraged more community and developed local economies that were more proper to a human scale. More George Bailey and less Mr. Potter.
Laurie, I hope you realize I wasn’t suggesting that you take on the ENTIRE Democrat political machine. ( YIKES!).
But it sure couldn’t hurt to recount to some of your friends that you engaged a few Conservatives right here on the Mirror and not one of us invoked Adolf’s manifest.
And some Americans, as well!
Politics cannot cure what ails society, Laurie, precisely because politics are the cause of what ails society.
As Wikipedia and history and Walt Whitman Rostow, the American economist and political theorist who served as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to US President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969 all make clear, history is far from static.
In fact, Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth model is one of the major historical models of economic growth.
It was published by American economist Walt Whitman Rostow in 1960.
The model postulates that economic growth occurs in five basic stages, of varying length:
1.Traditional society
2.Transitional society
3.Take-off
4.Drive to technological maturity
5.High mass consumption
Rostow’s model is one of the more structuralist models of economic growth, particularly in comparison with the “backwardness” model developed by Alexander Gerschenkron, although the two models are not mutually exclusive.
Rostow argued that economic take-off must initially be led by a few individual economic sectors.
This belief echoes David Ricardo’s comparative advantage thesis and criticizes Marxist revolutionaries’ push for economic self-reliance in that it pushes for the “initial” development of only one or two sectors over the development of all sectors equally.
This became one of the important concepts in the theory of modernization in social evolutionism.
Rostow claimed that these stages of growth were designed to tackle a number of issues, some of which he identified himself, writing:
“Under what impulses did traditional, agricultural societies begin the process of their modernization?”
“When and how did regular growth become a built-in feature of each society?”
“What forces drove the process of sustained growth along and determined its contours?”
“What common social and political features of the growth process may be discerned at each stage?”
“What forces have determined relations between the more developed and less developed areas; and what relation if any did the relative sequence of growth bear to outbreak of war?”
“And finally where is compound interest taking us?”
“Is it taking us to communism; or to the affluent suburbs, nicely rounded out with social overhead capital; to destruction; to the moon; or where?”
Rostow asserts that countries go through each of these stages fairly linearly, and set out a number of conditions that were likely to occur in investment, consumption, and social trends at each state.
Not all of the conditions were certain to occur at each stage, however, and the stages and transition periods may occur at varying lengths from country to country, and even from region to region.
Check out this Rasmussen Poll for proof of that:
Rasmussen Reports Tuesday July 17 2018
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 73% of Likely Democratic Voters believe their party should look for a fresh face to run for president in 2020.
Among all likely voters, 65% say Democrats should find a new face for 2020, while only 19% think it should go with someone who has run for the White House before.
As for Clinton, 58% now believe she has been bad for the Democratic Party.
Democrats are closely divided over Clinton’s impact: 33% think she’s been good for their party, but 39% believe she’s been bad for it instead.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of Republicans and, more worrisome for Democrats, 63% of voters not affiliated with either major party feel Clinton has been bad for the party.
Women believe even more strongly than men that Democrats need to find a fresh face for 2020.
Only 40% of all voters believe America would be better off today if Clinton had been elected president instead of Trump.
While many Democrats and their allies in Hollywood and the media continue to attack the president in an unprecedented fashion, few voters think Trump-bashing will pay off for his opponents in the next election.
I hear people talkin’ bad,
About the way they have to live here in this country
Harpin’ on the wars we fight
And gripin’ ’bout the way things oughta be
And I don’t mind ’em switchin’ sides
And standin’ up for things they believe in
But when they’re runnin’ down our country, man
They’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
They’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
Runnin’ down a way of life
Our fightin’ men have fought and died to keep
If you don’t love it, leave it
Let this song that I’m singin’ be a warnin’
When you’re runnin’ down our country, hoss
You’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
I read about some squirrelly guy
Who claims that he just don’t believe in fightin’
And I wonder just how long
The rest of us can count on bein’ free
They love our milk and honey
But they preach about some other way of livin’
But when they’re runnin’ down our country, man
They’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
They’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
Runnin’ down the way of life
Our fightin’ men have fought and died to keep
If you don’t love it, leave it
Let this song that I’m singin’ be a warnin’
When you’re runnin’ down our country, man
You’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
You’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
Runnin’ down the way of life
Our fightin’ men have fought and died to keep
If you don’t love it, leave it
Let this song that I’m singin’ be a warnin’
When you’re runnin’ down our country, hoss
You’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me
Yes, Ms. Wolpert I have read the entire book, several times. Other works as well, which is why the context and understanding of the culture at the time of it’s writing is imperative.
What I would say is to try to understand that he was not talking of the COLONISTS per se, but humanity.
Saying that slavery was REintroduced in America is proof positive that your historical understanding is limited. Slavery was, and is a global issue, not one solely attributable to America, or the West. Frankly, we are the only culture that fought to end it.
And Ma’am? Everything would be so much better if the world acted like a MOVIE.
But it is not.
And I love “It’s a wonderful life”.
Laurie, all of those so-called “founding fathers” at the beginning of this nation’s history were Brits, they were not “Americans” or millennials like you.
Britain is a nation with a long history.
America is a nation with a relatively short history, and that short history is one of continual change.
Slavery is an institution that goes back several thousand years.
Have you ever read Julius Cesar recital of his travels through Gaul?
Do you know what he was doing up there?
If your answer is collecting slaves by the thousands to sell to Rome, you win any cupie doll of your choice from the top shelf, where the big cupie dolls are.
Slaves for the latifundia of Rome, which were large landed estates in ancient Rome worked by slaves.
And slaves for the arenas.
And for the rich folk, lest they break a fingernail dusting something.
Spartacus (c. 111–71 BC) was a Thracian gladiator who, along with the Gauls Crixus, Gannicus, Castus, and Oenomaus, was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic.
The Brits who were the “founding fathers” of your America were the end of that history, not its beginnings.
All the subsequent history you dwell on had not happened yet.
The Brits who were the founding fathers of America inherited those traditions.
So what rational basis do you have some 230 years later to substitute your more perfect judgment for their judgment, or to judge them by your values of today?
More George Bailey and less Mr. Potter! God, I love that line. And of course, Mike K. everyone knows (unless they are delusional) that life is NOT a movie. Unlike movies, life can go south really quick with no Hollywood ending, at all. Take Anne Frank for instance. Her reality could have possibly been straight out of a Hollywood script. But, sadly, it was not. And in the end, did the heroes come rushing in at the last minute to save her life? Sadly, again, no; they did not. Her live ended because of betrayal by someone either cowed by fear of the Nazis or blind allegiance to them. We’ll never truly know.
To the Hag: I love me some Merle Haggard as well. But, truthfully, standing blindly behind nationalism when your country is doing some pretty bad stuff around the world is known in criminal codes as being complicit with those crimes. If you are not sure what the powers that be have been doing with our hard fighting men and women for the past sixteen, eighteen years, then Google civilian deaths in Iraq 2003-2007 for starters. Now, before you righteously indignant self-described patriots start to lambast me, I want to say this. I have the upmost and highest respect for our armed services and their families. They are the hardest working, hardest fighting war machine created since the days of ancient Rome. Even the war machines created in Germany or Japan could not defeat these warriors when matched on the battlefield. Being in the military is no joke and I do not take it as such. That said, I believe that our politicians have indifferently and callously pushed them into areas that one: We had no business being in the first place. And two: were ill-prepared for the hell-storm that was brought down upon them when they arrived. This was NOT the fighting man’s fault, but the fault of Senators, Congressmen, the State Department, Pentagon and the Executive offices, for not suppling proper equipment and preparation for a long drawn-out urban/guerrilla war scenario. Consequently, IED’s took more American lives than bullets. Can anyone tell me, why did we ever go into Iraq (2003) in the first place? So, in other words, to my thinking; our politicians have wasted time, energy, money and lives for a conflict we didn’t deserve and should not have been in. Prove me wrong. Please.
As far as leaving, no way Hag. I’m pretty sure my family legacy goes further back here on this soil than yours. Besides, I love this country. I love the ideals for which it was built. I love that hard-working people help each other in time of trouble and disaster. I love that our country began as rant against a tyrant and a bully. I love that this rant contained the line: “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.” But, to criticize those that question authority, question the very nature of our government in these times, question the essence of information foisted upon us, seems a bit disingenuous. I’m not trying to say I am right all of the time, hell, I don’t even know which direction this country will take in the next five years. Do you? But, as long as I breathe and can remember my lessons and can write these words, I will continue to pursue the truth. No matter how deeply it is buried under the BS. And Mike, life as a movie? I hope not, life is so much more interesting…don’cha think?
You are, walking on the fighting side of me…
Why is that, Hag? You don’t like being disagreed with or something I said? Give me an answer and prove me wrong. I’ll listen to what you have to say. But, don’t think for a minute, the reason I’m listening is because of fear. I’m listening because I’m reasonable.
I wish a buck was still silver
It was back when the country was strong
Back before Elvis, before Vietnam war came along
Before the Beatles and yesterday
When a man could still work and still would
Is the best of the free life behind us now
And are the good times really over for good?
And are we rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell
With no kinda chance for the flag or the liberty bell?
Wish a Ford and a Chevy
Would still last ten years like they should
Is the best of the free life behind us now
And are the good times really over for good?
I wish coke was still cola
And a joint was a bad place to be
It was back before Nixon lied to us all on T.V
Before microwave ovens when a girl could still cook, and still would
Is the best of the free life behind us now
Are the good times really over for good?
Are we rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell
With no kinda chance for the flag or the liberty bell
Wish a Ford and a Chevy
Would still last ten years like they should
Is the best of the free life behind us now
And are the good times really over for good?
Stop rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell
Stand up for the flag and let’s all ring the liberty bell
Let’s make a Ford and a Chevy
That would still last ten years like they should
‘Cause the best of the free life is still yet to come
And the good times ain’t over for good
Ford used to mean “Fix Or Repair Daily.”
Don’t you remember that?
It was back when McNamara, who lied to us about VEET NAM, was at Ford after WWII.
As you must surely recall, back then, Ford wasn’t doing well, at all.
So they got McNamara as a part of the “Whiz Kids” group that Charles “Tex” Thornton brought to Ford with him.
As David Halberstam tells the story in “The Best and The Brightest,” the Ford Company practices at the end of WWII, both in production and personnel, had an almost medieval quality to them.
Under Henry senior and Harry Bennett the policies of the company were singularly primitive.
To increase profits, because in America, that is really the end-all and be-all of life over here, McNamara “skinned down” the value of the car on the inside, where the gullible suckers buying the car could not see, and hence, would not notice.
As an engineer, I call that “crapifying.”
Just saying.
The ENTIRE US auto industry was “crapified”.
As the director of quality for an electronics company I spent a lot of time studying the auto industry and in particulars how the Japanese were beating the pants off the US manufacturers.
We implemented some of the quality process the Japanese had instituted in the late ’70’s. I say some because there were cultural differences, less individuality for one, that were not transferable but in general, we were able to improve our quality while holding on to a creative advantage.
That was in the electronics industry, we were a fairly forward thinking bunch. OTOH, our auto industry, run by dinosaurs of about the same age as the ones being pumped into the gas tank, did catch on eventually.
They were losing great swaths of consumers to foreign manufacturers so they really had to do so, though there was never a lot of enthusiasm. It tool retirement and DEATH to finally get things humming.
BTW, without getting all Lefty/ Righty. from personal experience I can tell you the unions were a real PITA on this culture change. It was perceived as a lessening of their power…………………………………which it was. 🙂
Check out the Malcolm Baldridge Awards for more info – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Baldrige_National_Quality_Award
Oh yeah, and Ford was also known as First On Race Day……………….so there.
I was working on both American cars and foreign cars in the 60s and 70s, and so got to see what was under the hood, and underneath the car, where the average person never goes.
I was a Chevrolet person, because let us face it, Mr. Otton, they were a far better car than the Ford, Chevrolet having won 779 NASCAR races and 39 manufacturers championships with Ford second with 658 victories and 15 manufacturers championships, but hey, I digress.
In the early 70s, I started working on Toyotas, and what impressed me was ATTENTION TO DETAIL.
They were putting things in that the beancounters (MBAs) here in America were having the engineers pull out to increase the bonuses the beancounters were awarding to themselves for increasing profits by crapifying American cars.
That is back in the days when Oldsmobile door panels were falling off on new cars and things like that.
I’ve never owned an American car since then, but I did have a ’58 Chevy truck in the early 80s that was still going strong.
And like you, I too studied Japanese methods, which interestingly were nothing more than our methods that were introduced to them in 1950, when Japanese businessmen turned to an obscure American from Wyoming to help them rebuild an economy shattered in World War II.
As I learned in a creative design course at an engineering school, and as we are told in the article “W. Edwards Deming of Powell, Wyo.: The Man Who Helped Shape the World” by Doug McInnis published November 8, 2014, that industrial expert, W. Edwards Deming, taught Japan’s manufacturers how to produce top quality products economically.
The Japanese used that knowledge to turn the global economy on its head and beat U.S. industry at its own game.
Companies such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp. adopted Deming’s concepts and became world-class producers in their fields, helping Japan become one of the planet’s dominant economic powers.
Japan’s rise was the start of a regional metamorphosis.
Asia eventually became a manufacturing giant.
Although American companies could have learned from Deming, most ignored him for decades even as Asian competitors gobbled away at Americans’ customer base and profits.
Deming worked his way through the electrical engineering program at the University of Wyoming by doing odd jobs including janitorial work.
After earning his doctorate in mathematics and mathematical physics from Yale University in 1928, he held a series of government and private industry jobs.
His first was at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Nitrogen Research Laboratory, where his work on the physical properties of materials introduced him to statistics.
In time, Deming hit on the idea of using statistics to quantify the manufacturing process: how efficient companies were, how good their products were, and how well companies were managed.
He concluded that many manufacturing operations were deeply flawed and could only be improved if upper level corporate managers took an active role in fixing them.
Deming’s ideas were simple yet revolutionary.
He believed that management was usually to blame for a company’s failings.
If a company’s products were badly made, it was because the bosses designed an inferior manufacturing system.
end quotes
Not surprisingly, Mr, Otton, I happen to agree with him on that score.
Since Deming’s first converts were Japanese, the implementation of his concepts helped to shift the balance of economic power from the U.S. and Western Europe toward the Far East.
Japan had every reason to give Deming a chance.
Much of the country was flattened in World War II by Allied bombing raids, and two of its cities were obliterated by the first military use of the atomic bomb.
To rebuild their shattered country, the Japanese believed they must become global exporters of high-quality manufactured products.
For them, Deming’s ideas were a perfect fit.
In the decades that followed, Japan’s electronics and automobile companies carved out ever larger slices of the U.S. and global marketplace for themselves.
By the 1980s, the U.S. auto industry had lost a sizeable part of the American car market to Asian auto companies.
The U.S. electronics industry shriveled.
The cost was felt throughout the American economy.
Cities and towns in America’s industrial belts suffered as U.S. manufacturers shrank or closed their operations.
Meanwhile, the U.S. trade deficit grew enormously because Americans bought imported products that used to be made here.
Today almost any consumer product from light bulbs to running shoes is likely to bear the stamp of an Asian country of origin.
end quotes
And that is what Trump is calling “UNFAIR” at the top of his lungs as he screeches and moans about the trade deficit with China.
WE DID IT TO OURSELVES!
We crapified ourselves into second-class status in the world.
“Made in America” means cheap **** at a high price.
But hey, Wall Street doesn’t care, because the profits just keep rolling in, and it appears that the sky is the limit as to how high the stock market can go, since this time is truly different from all the other times.
And now Toyota currently ranks 7th in the NASCAR standings with 115 victories.
I wonder when Trump will start screeching about how unfair that is, that a Japanese company is coming over here to steal NASCAR victories from Americans.
Maybe he’ll issue an executive order that says only real American car companies can run cars in NASCAR races.
No Japanese allowed.
In the face of all of that reality, and speaking of screeching about how unfair it all is, BOO HOO HOO, in the Marketwatch article “China threatens new tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. products” by Robert Schroeder published Aug. 3, 2018, we have the very, very formidable presence of White House mouthpiece Sarah Huckabee Sanders getting into the upper registers as follow:
In a statement in reaction to China’s latest move, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said, “Instead of retaliating, China should address the longstanding concerns about its unfair trading practices, many of which are laid out in USTR’s 301 report.”
end quotes
Memo to Sarah: those so-called “unfair trading practices” are a direct result of bidness decisions right here in America.
If you did not want an unfair system, then why did America create one?
Why should the Chinese take the blame, Sarah, for a bunch of bad bidness decisions by Americans?
Can you riddle us that, pray tell?
And somebody was foolish enough to think that the Cape Charles Mirror is the place where “Good comments come here to die.”
Go figure!
Um, Chas? I wasn’t the one looking for “More Bailey, less Potter.” Ergo, life is NOT like a movie, Laurie.
Capisce? I was explaining to her……
And as for why we went in Chas, as of 1998, it has been American LAW to effect regime change in Iraq……….now who signed that law……….why none other than Bill Clinton!!!
https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house-bill/4655
And as for the civilian deaths, getting your stats from the Lancet, eh? I and others will dispute those numbers, vociferously.
“This was NOT the fighting man’s fault, but the fault of Senators, Congressmen, the State Department, Pentagon and the Executive offices, for not suppling proper equipment and preparation for a long drawn-out urban/guerrilla war scenario. ”
Also, are you talking about Viet Nam in this quote? Because as Rummy said, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had(before the Left destroyed our Military, or at least did the best they could to)
And why did the Democrats get us involved in Viet Nam? Cuz as with most wars, it sure wasn’t the Republicans.
Rummy was an A-HOLE with that comment, Mike, plain and simple.
You go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had, if you are stupid, ignorant, arrogant or have your back to the wall because you were sleeping at the switch when you should have been vigilant.
And what on earth did Rumsfeld know about going to war with an army?
Rumsfeld served in the United States Navy from 1954 to 1957, as a naval aviator and flight instructor.
His initial training was in the North American SNJ Texan basic trainer after which he transitioned to the T-28 advanced trainer.
In 1957, he transferred to the Naval Reserve and continued his naval service in flying and administrative assignments as a drilling reservist.
On July 1, 1958, he was assigned to Anti-submarine Squadron 662 at Naval Air Station Anacostia, District of Columbia, as a selective reservist.
He didn’t know ****-all about war, Mike.
He just thought he did, like LBJ before him.
Hey, Chas Cornwaller, have you ever read this poem? You might like it.
On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam
Well I have and in fact
more than one and I’ll
tell you this too
I wrote one against
Algeria that nightmare
and another against
Korea and another
against the one
I was in
and I don’t remember
how many against
the three
when I was a boy
Abyssinia Spain and
Harlan County
and not one
breath was restored
to one
shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not
one
but death went on and on
never looking aside
except now and then
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.
Is there a point in there somewhere, Laurie?
If so, it is hard to discern.
How about Senator J. William Fulbright on the Arrogance of Power in 1966, instead:
The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission.
The dilemmas involved are preeminently American dilemmas, not because America has weaknesses that others do not have but because America is powerful as no nation has ever been before and the discrepancy between its power and the power of others appears to be increasing.
We are now engaged in a war to “defend freedom” in South Vietnam.
Unlike the Republic of Korea, South Vietnam has an army which [is] without notable success and a weak, dictatorial government which does not command the loyalty of the South Vietnamese people.
The official war aims of the United States Government, as I understand them, are to defeat what is regarded as North Vietnamese aggression, to demonstrate the futility of what the communists call “wars of national liberation,” and to create conditions under which the South Vietnamese people will be able freely to determine their own future.
I have not the slightest doubt of the sincerity of the President and the Vice President and the Secretaries of State and Defense in propounding these aims.
What I do doubt and doubt very much is the ability of the United States to achieve these aims by the means being used.
I do not question the power of our weapons and the efficiency of our logistics; I cannot say these things delight me as they seem to delight some of our officials, but they are certainly impressive.
What I do question is the ability of the United States, or France or any other Western nation, to go into a small, alien, undeveloped Asian nation and create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy where there is no tradition of it and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life.
Our handicap is well expressed in the pungent Chinese proverb: “In shallow waters dragons become the sport of shrimps.”
Early last month demonstrators in Saigon burned American jeeps, tried to assault American soldiers, and marched through the streets shouting “Down with the American imperialists,” while one of the Buddhist leaders made a speech equating the United States with the communists as a threat to South Vietnamese independence.
Most Americans are understandably shocked and angered to encounter such hostility from people who by now would be under the rule of the Viet Cong but for the sacrifice of American lives and money.
Why, we may ask, are they so shockingly ungrateful?
Surely they must know that their very right to parade and protest and demonstrate depends on the Americans who are defending them.
The answer, I think, is that “fatal impact” of the rich and strong on the poor and weak.
Dependent on it though the Vietnamese are, our very strength is a reproach to their weakness, our wealth a mockery of their poverty, our success a reminder of their failures.
What they resent is the disruptive effect of our strong culture upon their fragile one, an effect which we can no more avoid than a man can help being bigger than a child.
What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact.
The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.
We are still acting like boy scouts dragging reluctant old ladies across the streets they do not want to cross.
We are trying to remake Vietnamese society, a task which certainly cannot be accomplished by force and which probably cannot be accomplished by any means available to outsiders.
The objective may be desirable, but it is not feasible.
If America has a service to perform in the world and I believe it has it is in large part the service of its own example.
In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest.
This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said: “Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.”
There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world.
We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the all-around advantages of minding one’s own business in our relations with everybody.
Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example o f democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all” but “the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
If we can bring ourselves so to act, we will have overcome the dangers of the arrogance of power.
It will involve, no doubt, the loss of certain glories, but that seems a price worth paying for the probable rewards, which are the happiness of America and the peace of the world.
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All due respect, please brush up on your grammar.