My friends here, we have a patriot hero in our midst, and he supports Bernie.

[grasswire]

Many of you should be old enough and aware enough to remember Paul Thompson, the man who collected every bit of truth about 9/11 and put it together in something now called the Terror Timeline. We would not have this compilation of history were it not for Paul. He has been a DU member since 2001, but absent for a long time. He is back. And he supports Bernie. He gave me permission to re-introduce you to him in this group.

So everyone say.......Hi, Paul!

Here's a link to his extremely thoughtful and important essay from March 15.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511494371

Here's a link to the 9/11 timeline:

http://www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

And here's a link to wikipedia about Paul, who is a Stanford alumnus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_Timeline

[Raster]

1. Oh My God.... His postings were EPIC.

Welcome back to DU!

[grasswire]

2. yes, indeed nt

[RANGERMAN89]

3. I remember this when i first started lurking

GREAT NEWS

[Crabby Abbey]

4. Wow - you can actually talk about 9/11 here? Awesome!

I'm a transplant from Daily Kos - can't take the corporatocracy over there any more. The most important event in my lifetime that has shaped American politics into the ugly beast it is, and you can't talk about it because anything but the official Bush "9/11 Commission Report" is "Conspiracy Theory" for which you can be banned. Meh.

I am loving DU!

[grasswire]

6. well....it has been shoved into a group called "Creative Speculation" for a long time.

I honestly don't know how it would be received out in the open GD now. Go check out that Creative Speculation group and ask there.

And welcome to DU!!

[paulthompson]

33. Ugh!

"Creative Speculation?" Are you kidding me? I haven't been around DU since that name change happened. How insulting. They might as well call that the "Total Bullshit" forum. Both "creative" and "speculation" imply something that is completely fact-free. Whereas anybody who read my book or has checked out the 9/11 Timeline must know there are more revelant facts compiled there than anyone else on that subject.

Sigh!

[Autumn]

15. Don't get too carried away. The same can and has happened here.

[blm]

5. Paul is a DU Allstar.

I noticed he popped in earlier.

[redwitch]

7. Welcome back Paul!

[Fairgo]

8. A long time lurker, now part time quipper says hello

Looking forward to your informed opinion.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

9. Hi Paul!

Welcome back to DU!

[cantbeserious]

10. Welcome Paul

eom

[in_cog_ni_to]

11. Oh yeah...he's a blast from the past!

Welcome back, Paul!

PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE

[bbgrunt]

12. welcome Paul! Your work was EPIC. Glad to have you back!

[mopinko]

13. welcome back paul. people like you

are what makes du such a special and amazing place.

[Mbrow]

14. Thanks Grasswire, K&R

[Autumn]

16. Welcome back Paul.

[paulthompson]

17. Hi there!

Thanks everyone for commenting here, and for grasswire for starting this thread.

As i was saying to grasswire after he sent me a private message today, during the Bush Jr. era, I focused on terrorism because I thought there were a lot of disturbing things going on about that that people didn't know and needed to know.

These days, I think the biggest problem we have by far is income inequality, where the rich and powerful dominate the political process. The U.S. is teetering on the verge of being an oligarchy, if we're not there already. So I'm excited about Bernie Sanders and his campaign, because he's focusing on the very most important problems we face right now. His unexpected success gives me hope, and has forced me out of being in "lurk mode" at DU for a long time.

I've written a long essay about Sanders and automation that grasswire linked to in his above post. Here it is again:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511494371

I hope if you'll give it a read, because I think it addresses one of the most important reasons why we need Sanders as president, and it's something hardly anybody is talking about, not even Sanders or his supporters. Namely, automation, which means computers, artificial intelligence, and robots taking jobs from people. Automation has been happening for decades, but lots of evidence suggests that new technological advances will result in TENS OF MILLIONS of jobs being lost in the next twenty years, maybe half of all jobs in the US. If that happens, we'll face an economic crisis twice as bad as the worst of the Great Depression. Not only that, but this is liable to make income inequality much, much worse than it already is, unless we start to implement the exact sort of policies Sanders is proposing.

So I really hope you'll check out that essay and comment on it. I believe we're in the calm before the storm. Automation is going to be a huge issue, maybe the top issue, in the years to come. It's going to impact everybody's life, whether your job is lost or not, and the more you know now, the better you can prepare against economic trouble to come.

That may sound like a lot of "gloom and doom," but I think we actually could enter a great age of prosperity if we elect a government that enacts the right kind of policies. So much hinges on this election, and it all comes to do if we have the courage to tackle out of control income inequality or not.

Anyway, go Sanders!

[paulthompson]

18. Oh, and by the way...

I want to add some pictures and graphs to my essay. Does anyone know how to do that?

[JonLeibowitz]

26. You can upload the images to a hosting site like imgur.com and then paste the image link into the

body of your post.

[BernieforPres2016]

19. Paul, hello and thanks for your post

The potential impact of robotics on the workforce is something that I have probably underrated as a threat to the number of decent jobs the economy can produce. I believe the internet has already had a negative impact on employment: it has all but destroyed industries like music, retail record stores, retail book stores and the print media.

One critical issue that I didn't see any mention of at all in your piece is campaign finance reform. I agree with you that we are at a critical juncture in which income redistribution must occur, but I don't see any hope of that without major campaign finance reform to get the big money out of politics and get to a system of one person one vote. Money drives everything, both in Congress and in State legislatures. Politicians have their campaigns funded by big money in exchange for political favors to make the rich even richer, and when incumbents are somehow defeated or decide they want to get richer, they go through the revolving door into lobbying or a job in an industry they used to oversee. Until the 99% demand that this is addressed, I don't have much hope that significant income redistribution can be achieved. To me, campaign finance reform is the core issue of the Sanders campaign; without it, virtually nothing else on his agenda is likely to be accomplished.

One other thought I have with regard to the minimum income idea you propose is the creation of government jobs. Instead of collecting a check to pursue a life of leisure, people could work on improving our infrastructure, tutoring kids, doing the kind of projects that the CCC did in national and state parks in the 1930's under FDR, and many other things.

[paulthompson]

20. Good points

Thanks for reading that and commenting on it.

In that essay, I tried to focus on two things: getting people to realize that job loss due to automation is huge problem that needs to be addressed, and that the policies Sanders is proposing are exactly what's needed to start addressing them. I could have added a lot more about all kinds of related issues. For instance, I considered making a section about how bad TPP and other looming trade deals are, and how they will exaserbate the automation and income inequality problems. But the essay was really long and I didn't want to make it even longer, so I only wrote a few sentences about that.

I didn't directly go into campaign finance reform because I figure that's an essential part of Sanders' proposed policies, and if he gets elected he's going work hard to fix that. I did mention that as the top part of the top 1% get richer and more powerful, they could so totally dominate the political process that we would no longer be able to redirect the country onto the right path. So that's an indirect reference to the campaign finance reform issue.

Re: the creation of more government jobs, that's a great idea. I believe FDR basically saved the U.S. from ruin with his New Deal programs. Sanders has already proposed spending a trillion dollars to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure (and he gets quoted mentioning that in my essay). That's a two-for-one deal, because we badly need those fixes and it also would be a big job creation program. I'm sure that if he were elected president, we'd see more along those lines. The main thing is getting him elected president!

[BernieforPres2016]

21. On the competing infrastructure investment proposals

As you mention, Bernie is proposing a $1 trillion investment over 5 years to address our crumbling infrastructure.

Hillary is talking about a "public private national infrastructure bank", launched with $25 billion in government funds and then leveraged 10:1 with private investment of another $250 billion. I have not seen anybody question her on what this means. What it means to me, pretty obviously, is that private investors (probably backed by taxpayer guaranteed loans at low interest rates) would make investments in infrastructure investments. So how would they get a return on those investments? User fees: toll roads, higher prices for water and sewage, etc., all into perpetuity. More rent collection by Goldman Sachs and hedge funds, more wealth transfer from the 99.9% to the 0.1%. It brings to mind something I read many years ago in a biography of Warren Buffett. When Buffett was a little boy, he liked to count the cars driving on the street in front of his house and think about how great it would be if he could collect a toll for each one who passed.

Clearly the media is not interested in asking Hillary about how her national infrastructure bank would work. I was hoping that Bernie would contrast their infrastructure proposals in the debates and perhaps force Hillary to say more about what she has in mind.

[paulthompson]

22. Wow

Wow, I didn't realize her proposal was that bad. Only $25 billion of actual goverment money for rebuilding the infrastructure? Are you kidding me?! Compared to the federal budget as a whole, that's pocket change. And yeah, that whole private partnership thing sounds terrible.

[BernieforPres2016]

23. I just looked at her website. She is proposing $275 billion in federal money for infrastructure.

$250 billion in infrastructure spending, plus $25 billion to fund the public private infrastructure bank with the intent of attracting $225 billion in private investment (not $250 billion which I posted previously). I have only heard her mention the infrastructure bank idea, not the additional $250 billion. And I looked at articles on the infrastructure bank which didn't mention the other $250 billion.

$275 billion in government money is still a drop in the bucket versus what the American Society of Civil Engineers says is a $1.6 trillion funding gap between what is currently budgeted and what is needed to repair and modernize our infrastructure.

This is what is on Hillary's campaign website:

<That’s why Hillary Clinton is announcing a five-year $275 billion dollar infrastructure plan.

Clinton would increase federal infrastructure funding by $275 billion over a five-year period, fully paying for these investments through business tax reform. Of these funds, she would allocate $250 billion to direct public investment. She would allocate the other $25 billion to a national infrastructure bank, dedicated to advancing our competitive advantage for the 21st century economy. The bank would leverage its $25 billion in funds to support up to an additional $225 billion in direct loans, loan guarantees, and other forms of credit enhancement—meaning that Clinton’s infrastructure plan would in total result in up to $500 billion in federally supported investment. The bank would also administer part of a renewed and expanded Build American Bonds program, and would look for opportunities to work with partners in the private sector to get the best possible outcomes for the American people.>

None of the articles I've read on this infrastructure bank proposal even try to explain what that means. Infrastructure projects are typically considered long run, low risk, low return (for investors) projects. States and municipalities often fund them via tax exempt revenue bonds, that might pay a 3-4% tax free (from federal tax, not free of state tax) return to investors who buy the bonds. Wall Street and hedge funds, the entities I'm sure Hillary would plan on funding her venture, don't invest for 3-4% annual returns. They expect to collect at least 15% annual returns, so they can keep 3-4% for themselves and still pass a nice return to their investors.

So the question is, why let the ultra rich profit from these infrastructure investments in perpetuity instead of just taxing them to pay for it?

[paulthompson]

24. Okay

That's somewhat better. I thought I'd heard she wanted $250 billion for infrastructure. But it's still nowhere near as good as Sanders' plan.

And that's indicative of the differences between them. Clinton is naturally moderate by temprament, so she only has moderate proposals, even when something more drastic is clearly called for. Anybody who has looked into the issue knows that we're going to have to spend trillions rebuilding the infrastructure. Even Sanders' proposal is modest in comparison to the actual need.

Clinton starts small, then the Republicans will probably knock that down even more, meaning that nothing will really change on this.

[BernieforPres2016]

25. The other big difference besides scale

Is that Hillary immediately thinks about how she can cut her rich benefactors in on it at the expense of the 99%, while Bernie says infrastructure is a legitimate government investment and the infrastructure should be owned by the people, not owned by the top 0.1% and rented back to the people with a healthy profit margin built in.

[stillwaiting]

27. There's such a huge difference between neo-liberalism and what Bernie is offering us.

HUGE difference.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

29. wow. this needs its own post!!

Ugh i wanna scream! Selling our country off, bit by bit

[BernieforPres2016]

30. What it really deserves is some questions by the press to Hillary

She has dropped the public-private infrastructure bank in a debate or two. It is on her website as a major campaign platform. But I am not aware of anybody ever asking her to explain how it would work. There was an article on it in The Atlantic and it didn't even try to speculate on how it would work. The article mainly talks about whether it is big enough.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/hillary-clintons-modest-infrastructure-proposal/418068/

[MuseRider]

28. Hi Paul!

I am going to have to bookmark this to read it all later but before I go I wanted to say hello! I remember reading everything you wrote and have missed you being around for a long time.

I hope you will stay for a while and feel the bern with us as we begin to climb up into first place! Bernie Bounce

[FourScore]

31. Welcome back, Paul!!! I thought that was your peice on March 15th!

[mhatrw]

32. Paul's timeline is the greatest single resource for understanding the truth about 9/11.