Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
There are clear historical reasons why we're here. Dems & media need to inform the public - NOW
Because I believe most are not aware of what they're up against - or why. We on DU may be, but most of the public is not. There is NO WAY America will ever get out from under this until and unless most of the voting population understands what we're up against and why. The media talking about healthcare or any other issue facing most Americans while NOT telling Americans THE HISTORY of why we're here now is BAD JOURNALISM. They are NOT doing their jobs!Does the voting public know about all this? I don't think so.
DEMOCRATS (the Democratic Party/DNC and candidates as well as sitting members of Congress & the Senate) should be telling this (his)story and using it for developing clear talking points (and TRUE talking points - not propaganda) against the GOP!
For instance:
DEMOCRAT Teddy Kennedy battling brain cancer, came back to Washington to vote for healthcare for all Americans.
REPUBLICAN John McCain battling brain cancer, came back to Washington to vote for taking healthcare AWAY from millions of Americans
There can be NO clearer example of the difference between Democrats and Republicans than that.
America deserves a better deal. Vote Democratic.
OR
The Republican Party has been working for decades to destroy the middle class, destroy our democratic system of government and the public good in order to exclusively serve the wealthy and big corporations. They don't want many Americans to even be able to vote, have decent healthcare, good public schools or even clean air and water to breathe. America deserves a better deal. Vote Democratic.
Cases in point:
The 'Culture of Cruelty' we currently find ourselves in:
A New American Revolution: Can We Break Out of Our Nation’s Culture of Cruelty?
Fighting back against the right's politics of exclusion can be a path toward rebuilding American democracy
The health care reform bills proposed by Republicans in the House and Senate have generated heated discussions across a vast ideological and political spectrum. On the right, senators such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have endorsed a new level of cruelty — one that has a long history among the radical right — by arguing that the current Senate bill does not cut enough social services and provisions for the poor, children, the elderly and other vulnerable groups and needs to be even more friendly to corporate interests by providing massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
Among right-wing pundits, the message is similar. For instance, Fox News commentator Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, in a discussion about the Senate bill, stated without apparent irony that rising public concerns over the suffering, misery and death that would result from this policy bordered on “hysteria” since “we are all going to die anyway.” Montgomery’s ignorance about the relationship between access to health care and lower mortality rates is about more than ignorance. It is about a culture of cruelty that is buttressed by a moral coma.
On the other side of the ideological and political divide, liberals such as Robert Reich have rightly stated that the bill is not only cruel and inhumane, it is essentially a tax reform bill for the 1 percent and a boondoggle that benefits the vampire-like insurance companies. Others, such as Laila Lalami of The Nation, have reasoned that what we are witnessing with such policies is another example of political contempt for the poorest and most vulnerable on the part of right-wing politicians and pundits. These arguments are only partly right and do not go far enough in their criticisms of the new political dynamics and mode of authoritarianism that have overtaken the United States. Put more bluntly, they suffer from limited political horizons.
What we do know about both the proposed Republican Party federal budget and health care policies, in whatever form, is that they will lay waste to crucial elements of the social contract while causing huge amounts of suffering and misery. For instance, the Senate bill will lead to massive reductions in Medicaid spending. Medicaid covers 20 percent of all Americans or 15 million people, along with 49 percent of all births, 60 percent of all children with disabilities and 64 percent of all nursing home residents, many of whom may be left homeless without this support.
Under this bill, 22 million people will lose their health insurance coverage, to accompany massive cuts proposed to food-stamp programs that benefit at least 43 million people. The Senate health care bill allows insurance companies to charge more money from the most vulnerable. It cuts maternity care and phases out coverage for emergency services. Moreover, as Lalami points out, “this bill includes nearly $1 trillion in tax cuts, about half of which will flow to those who make more than $1 million per year.” The latter figure is significant when measured against the fact that Medicaid would see a $772 billion cut in the next 10 years.
It gets worse. The Senate bill will drastically decrease social services and health care in rural America, and one clear consequence will be rising mortality rates. In addition, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-author of a recent article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, has estimated that if health insurance is taken away from 22 million people, “it raises … death rates by between 3 and 29 percent. And the math on that is that if you take health insurance away from 22 million people, about 29,000 of them will die every year, annually, as a result.
Fighting back against the right's politics of exclusion can be a path toward rebuilding American democracy
The health care reform bills proposed by Republicans in the House and Senate have generated heated discussions across a vast ideological and political spectrum. On the right, senators such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have endorsed a new level of cruelty — one that has a long history among the radical right — by arguing that the current Senate bill does not cut enough social services and provisions for the poor, children, the elderly and other vulnerable groups and needs to be even more friendly to corporate interests by providing massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
Among right-wing pundits, the message is similar. For instance, Fox News commentator Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, in a discussion about the Senate bill, stated without apparent irony that rising public concerns over the suffering, misery and death that would result from this policy bordered on “hysteria” since “we are all going to die anyway.” Montgomery’s ignorance about the relationship between access to health care and lower mortality rates is about more than ignorance. It is about a culture of cruelty that is buttressed by a moral coma.
On the other side of the ideological and political divide, liberals such as Robert Reich have rightly stated that the bill is not only cruel and inhumane, it is essentially a tax reform bill for the 1 percent and a boondoggle that benefits the vampire-like insurance companies. Others, such as Laila Lalami of The Nation, have reasoned that what we are witnessing with such policies is another example of political contempt for the poorest and most vulnerable on the part of right-wing politicians and pundits. These arguments are only partly right and do not go far enough in their criticisms of the new political dynamics and mode of authoritarianism that have overtaken the United States. Put more bluntly, they suffer from limited political horizons.
What we do know about both the proposed Republican Party federal budget and health care policies, in whatever form, is that they will lay waste to crucial elements of the social contract while causing huge amounts of suffering and misery. For instance, the Senate bill will lead to massive reductions in Medicaid spending. Medicaid covers 20 percent of all Americans or 15 million people, along with 49 percent of all births, 60 percent of all children with disabilities and 64 percent of all nursing home residents, many of whom may be left homeless without this support.
Under this bill, 22 million people will lose their health insurance coverage, to accompany massive cuts proposed to food-stamp programs that benefit at least 43 million people. The Senate health care bill allows insurance companies to charge more money from the most vulnerable. It cuts maternity care and phases out coverage for emergency services. Moreover, as Lalami points out, “this bill includes nearly $1 trillion in tax cuts, about half of which will flow to those who make more than $1 million per year.” The latter figure is significant when measured against the fact that Medicaid would see a $772 billion cut in the next 10 years.
It gets worse. The Senate bill will drastically decrease social services and health care in rural America, and one clear consequence will be rising mortality rates. In addition, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-author of a recent article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, has estimated that if health insurance is taken away from 22 million people, “it raises … death rates by between 3 and 29 percent. And the math on that is that if you take health insurance away from 22 million people, about 29,000 of them will die every year, annually, as a result.
http://billmoyers.com/story/new-american-culture-cruelty/
_ _ _ _ _
The HISTORY of the Culture of Cruelty we now find ourselves in:
How a shadowy libertarian theorist convinced Charles Koch and others in the radical right that in order for their version of capitalism to survive, government must be destroyed.
Last week we presented you with historian Nancy MacLean’s fascinating story of James McGill Buchanan — the father of “public choice economics” whose writing was influential to a number of ideologues on the far right. Some of his ideas are popular among the very monied (including Charles Koch) of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party and are frightening in their sheer calculation and callousness. As MacLean said: “His theory of the motives of public actors was so cynical as to be utterly corrosive of the norms of a democratic society, as people pointed out along the way, but he would not listen.”
George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian, has more on the history of Buchanan and his twisted ideas:
He aimed, in short, to save capitalism from democracy.
In 1980, he was able to put the program into action. He was invited to Chile, where he helped the Pinochet dictatorship write a new constitution, which, partly through the clever devices Buchanan proposed, has proved impossible to reverse entirely. Amid the torture and killings, he advised the government to extend programs of privatization, austerity, monetary restraint, deregulation and the destruction of trade unions: a package that helped trigger economic collapse in 1982.
None of this troubled the Swedish Academy, which through his devotee at Stockholm University Assar Lindbeck in 1986 awarded James Buchanan the Nobel memorial prize for economics. It is one of several decisions that have turned this prize toxic.
But his power really began to be felt when Koch, currently the seventh richest man in the US, decided that Buchanan held the key to the transformation he sought. Koch saw even such ideologues as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan as ‘sellouts’, as they sought to improve the efficiency of government rather than destroy it altogether. But Buchanan took it all the way.
Last week we presented you with historian Nancy MacLean’s fascinating story of James McGill Buchanan — the father of “public choice economics” whose writing was influential to a number of ideologues on the far right. Some of his ideas are popular among the very monied (including Charles Koch) of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party and are frightening in their sheer calculation and callousness. As MacLean said: “His theory of the motives of public actors was so cynical as to be utterly corrosive of the norms of a democratic society, as people pointed out along the way, but he would not listen.”
George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian, has more on the history of Buchanan and his twisted ideas:
He aimed, in short, to save capitalism from democracy.
In 1980, he was able to put the program into action. He was invited to Chile, where he helped the Pinochet dictatorship write a new constitution, which, partly through the clever devices Buchanan proposed, has proved impossible to reverse entirely. Amid the torture and killings, he advised the government to extend programs of privatization, austerity, monetary restraint, deregulation and the destruction of trade unions: a package that helped trigger economic collapse in 1982.
None of this troubled the Swedish Academy, which through his devotee at Stockholm University Assar Lindbeck in 1986 awarded James Buchanan the Nobel memorial prize for economics. It is one of several decisions that have turned this prize toxic.
But his power really began to be felt when Koch, currently the seventh richest man in the US, decided that Buchanan held the key to the transformation he sought. Koch saw even such ideologues as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan as ‘sellouts’, as they sought to improve the efficiency of government rather than destroy it altogether. But Buchanan took it all the way.
http://billmoyers.com/story/more-deep-history-radical-right/#.WXQ9f9AZXfo.twitter
_ _ _ _ _
Claire Conner: My parents were right-wing extremists (her book "Wrapped in the Flag" is a MUST-READ)
Stop Calling Them Conservatives; They Are Radicals
Claire Conner
We have to stop playing nice with the radical right starting with calling them who they are. They are NOT conservatives. These people are radicals; and they are bent on changing America.
Let's be clear about who these people are: the radical right is a coalition of Koch Brothers and their corporate pals, the old religious right with even more tendency toward repressive religious rule, libertarians who never met a central government they didn't want to get rid of and the John Birch Society.
These people envision an America that looks like this:
1. The New Deal dismantled.
2. All safety net programs eliminated.
3. The federal government shrunk by 75%.
4. Federal programs gutted and whole departments erased
5. Labor unions, labor protections and even child labor laws severely limited.
6. Taxes on the wealthy reduced to nothing.
7. Minimum wage laws repealed.
8. Voting so restricted that the radical right always wins.
In the new America -- a right wing dystopia -- business and the uber rich will be free to do anything unrestrained by rules or taxes.
This is where we are headed if we don't rise up -- in the activist political sense . . .now.
Claire Conner
We have to stop playing nice with the radical right starting with calling them who they are. They are NOT conservatives. These people are radicals; and they are bent on changing America.
Let's be clear about who these people are: the radical right is a coalition of Koch Brothers and their corporate pals, the old religious right with even more tendency toward repressive religious rule, libertarians who never met a central government they didn't want to get rid of and the John Birch Society.
These people envision an America that looks like this:
1. The New Deal dismantled.
2. All safety net programs eliminated.
3. The federal government shrunk by 75%.
4. Federal programs gutted and whole departments erased
5. Labor unions, labor protections and even child labor laws severely limited.
6. Taxes on the wealthy reduced to nothing.
7. Minimum wage laws repealed.
8. Voting so restricted that the radical right always wins.
In the new America -- a right wing dystopia -- business and the uber rich will be free to do anything unrestrained by rules or taxes.
This is where we are headed if we don't rise up -- in the activist political sense . . .now.
https://clairecooner.quora.com/
>>>NOTE: NOTICE THAT EVERY ITEM ON THE LIST ABOVE IS BEING DONE NOW UNDER TRUMP<<<
_ _ _ _ _
MORE on the history of Republican modus operandi to DESTROY OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC to serve ONLY billionaires and corporations
What Is the Far Right’s Endgame? A Society That Suppresses the Majority.
I think too many people on the left have really underestimated Koch’s intelligence and his drive, and also misunderstood his motives. There’s been brilliant work by journalists, really good digging on the money trail and the Koch operations, but much of that writing seems to assume that he is doing this just because it’s going to lower his tax bill or because he wants to evade regulations, personally. I think that really misgauges the man. He is deeply ideological and has been reading almost fanatically for a very long time. I see him as someone who’s quite messianic. He’s compared himself to Martin Luther and his effort being like the Protestant Reformation. When he invested in Buchanan’s center at George Mason University, he said he wanted to “unleash the kind of force that propelled Columbus.”
This is not someone who’s just trying to lower his tax bill. He wants to bring in a totally new vision of society and government, that’s different from anything that exists anywhere in the world or has existed because he is so certain that he is right. I think it’s more chilling because it doesn’t correspond to the ideas we have about politics.
Right, like he’s not trying to get a particular person elected. You mention several times Buchanan was very against that idea, that the point was to get a particular person elected. The point, for him, was to change the whole system.
Right. You asked how the two men connected. I only have the documentary trail that I found. But from what I found, I believe that they first came in contact or first began to work together about 1969 or 1970, and that was in the context of the campus upheaval against the war in Vietnam, and for black studies, and so forth. Buchanan wrote a book about the campus unrest that applied his particular school of thought to it. Koch had an operation called the Center for Independent Education, and that center took Buchanan’s book and turned it into a kind of pamphlet that could be circulated more broadly.
In 1970, Koch joined the Mont Pelerin Society. Once he got in, he began to advertise his many different organizations and efforts and try to recruit and get people to events and so forth, through Mont Pelerin. Buchanan helped with the founding of the Cato Institute and with various other intellectual enterprises that were close to Charles Koch’s heart, like this thing called the Institute for Humane Studies.
And then Koch funded Buchanan’s center, as well as other projects, at George Mason University. One of Buchanan’s ideas that Koch liked was the concept of making a flurry of changes all at once so that people have a hard time opposing them.
This is not someone who’s just trying to lower his tax bill. He wants to bring in a totally new vision of society and government, that’s different from anything that exists anywhere in the world or has existed because he is so certain that he is right. I think it’s more chilling because it doesn’t correspond to the ideas we have about politics.
Right, like he’s not trying to get a particular person elected. You mention several times Buchanan was very against that idea, that the point was to get a particular person elected. The point, for him, was to change the whole system.
Right. You asked how the two men connected. I only have the documentary trail that I found. But from what I found, I believe that they first came in contact or first began to work together about 1969 or 1970, and that was in the context of the campus upheaval against the war in Vietnam, and for black studies, and so forth. Buchanan wrote a book about the campus unrest that applied his particular school of thought to it. Koch had an operation called the Center for Independent Education, and that center took Buchanan’s book and turned it into a kind of pamphlet that could be circulated more broadly.
In 1970, Koch joined the Mont Pelerin Society. Once he got in, he began to advertise his many different organizations and efforts and try to recruit and get people to events and so forth, through Mont Pelerin. Buchanan helped with the founding of the Cato Institute and with various other intellectual enterprises that were close to Charles Koch’s heart, like this thing called the Institute for Humane Studies.
And then Koch funded Buchanan’s center, as well as other projects, at George Mason University. One of Buchanan’s ideas that Koch liked was the concept of making a flurry of changes all at once so that people have a hard time opposing them.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2017/06/james_mcgill_buchanan_s_terrifying_vision_of_society_is_the_intellectual.html
_ _ _ _ _
AND THUS HERE WE ARE:
Koch network 'piggy banks' closed until GOP deny millions healthcare and raise middle class taxes
This is who Republicans REALLY work for, exclusively - this is why their Death Bill (BRCA/AHCA), which only 12-16% or so of Americans support, is still being RAMMED and RAMMED and RAMMED over and over - Koch Bros want it:
At a weekend donor retreat attended by at least 18 elected officials, the Koch brothers warned that time is running out to push their agenda, most notably healthcare and tax reform, through Congress.
One Texas-based donor warned Republican lawmakers that his “Dallas piggy bank” was now closed, until he saw legislative progress.
“Get Obamacare repealed and replaced, get tax reform passed,” said Doug Deason. “Get it done and we’ll open it back up.”
. . .
The Senate will this week seek to pass its version of healthcare reform – at present it does not have enough Republican support to overcome blanket Democratic opposition.
“There is urgency,” said Tim Phillips, who leads Koch network’s political arm, Americans for Prosperity, at the industrialist brothers’ retreat in Colorado Springs. “We believe we have a window of about 12 months to get as much of it accomplished as possible before the 2018 elections grind policy to a halt.”
The window for action may be even smaller, some Koch allies warned at the weekend retreat that drew roughly 400 participants to the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The price for admission for most was a pledge to give at least $100,000 this year to the Kochs’ broad policy and political network.
One Texas-based donor warned Republican lawmakers that his “Dallas piggy bank” was now closed, until he saw legislative progress.
“Get Obamacare repealed and replaced, get tax reform passed,” said Doug Deason. “Get it done and we’ll open it back up.”
. . .
The Senate will this week seek to pass its version of healthcare reform – at present it does not have enough Republican support to overcome blanket Democratic opposition.
“There is urgency,” said Tim Phillips, who leads Koch network’s political arm, Americans for Prosperity, at the industrialist brothers’ retreat in Colorado Springs. “We believe we have a window of about 12 months to get as much of it accomplished as possible before the 2018 elections grind policy to a halt.”
The window for action may be even smaller, some Koch allies warned at the weekend retreat that drew roughly 400 participants to the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The price for admission for most was a pledge to give at least $100,000 this year to the Kochs’ broad policy and political network.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/26/koch-network-piggy-banks-closed-republicans-healthcare-tax-reform?CMP=share_btn_tw
2 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
