February 18, 2016

Bernie Sanders' American Dream is in Denmark

Full CNN Report with lots of video can be found here:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/politics/bernie-sanders-2016-denmark-democratic-socialism/


EXCERPTS:

Sanders has proudly adopted the label of a "democratic socialist," and he has pointed to Denmark as a model for his vision of an ideal American future.

At a presidential debate hosted by CNN in October, Sanders brought up Denmark and the surrounding Scandinavian states when asked to describe what "democratic socialism" means to him.

"I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway," Sanders said, "and learn what they have accomplished for their working people."

SNIP

"In Denmark, there is a very different understanding of what 'freedom' means," Sanders wrote, arguing the U.S. could learn from the way the Danes have "gone a long way to ending the enormous anxieties that comes with economic insecurity."

"Instead of promoting a system which allows a few to have enormous wealth, they have developed a system which guarantees a strong minimal standard of living to all -- including the children, the elderly and the disabled," Sanders added.

SNIP

But it is a market with many differences from the United States. All Danish citizens have access to child care, state-guaranteed medical and parental leave from work, free college tuition in which students receive a paycheck from the government during enrollment, free health care and a generous pension, all of which Sanders supports.

"Free" is actually the wrong word to describe these services. Danes pay some of the highest taxes in the world, including a 25% tax on all goods and services, a top marginal tax rate hovering near 60%. The top tax rate in the U.S., by comparison, is less than 40%.

But there are aspects to the Danish model that you would never see on Sanders' policy platform. As a small country heavily reliant on trade, Denmark imposes minimal tariffs on foreign goods. Businesses here are only lightly regulated. The corporate tax rate is much lower than in the United States, which has one of the highest in the world. There's not even a minimum wage in Denmark, although most workers are paid high salaries in large part due to the strength of labor unions. And in the past few years, Danish voters elected a right-of-center government, which has been instituting reforms that have put tighter restrictions on access to the long-held safety net.

SNIP

In terms of pure semantics, few Danish politicians today would characterize themselves as "socialist"--even a "democratic socialist"--as Sanders does. The word has largely fallen out of fashion in recent decades.

"When I hear Bernie Sanders talk about himself as a democratic socialist, it's a little bit 1970s," said Lars Christensen, a Danish economist known here as an outspoken critic of his homeland's model. "The major political parties on the center-left and the center-right would oppose many of the proposals of Bernie Sanders on the regulatory side as being too leftist."

SNIP

As even Sanders has conceded, the differences between the United States and Denmark are striking. In many ways, Denmark's success depends on its small size. The country has a population of just 5.6 million -- about the same as Minnesota's -- and its territory makes up just 16,000 square miles, about half the size of South Carolina. By comparison, the United States has a population of more than 300 million and encompasses 3.8 million square miles.

Unlike the United States' diverse population of immigrants, Denmark is ethnically homogenous -- nearly 90% are of Danish ancestry, according to The Danish Ministry of Social Affairs and Integration -- making political consensus easier than in the United States.

"I think this system is only possible because we essentially are all the same," said Christensen. "Maybe if you wanted to introduce such a scheme in Utah, you could do that. But doing it across the U.S., I find it completely and utterly impossible just for the mere fact that Americans are all so different."


Houses stretch along a canal in Copenhagen

I think this report is a must read/watch for all of us.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/politics/bernie-sanders-2016-denmark-democratic-socialism/

February 18, 2016

CORY BOOKER: Here are some reasons to pick Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders

Text Excerpt:

Booker said:

When I look at pragmatic plans on how to reform Wall Street, if you separate the people and their personalities, and you were to put up the detailed plan that Hillary Clinton put forward, and the detailed plan that Bernie Sanders [put forward], ... clearly the plan that Hillary has, to me, is a better plan to reforming Wall Street and creating real incentives.

Tax incentives that don't incentivize jobs going overseas. Tax incentives that don't have people in hedge funds paying less tax rates than their secretaries, but also [that] incentivize the kind of investment we need to create hope and opportunity in cities like mine. So we can draw in investment, development, jobs, and more so that everybody gets to enjoy the abundance of this country."

Booker also warned that while he was troubled by financial excesses, particularly in the mortgage industry, demonizing the industry as a whole could discourage investment in key projects that help alleviate poverty. Much of Sanders' campaign-trail rhetoric is fiercely critical of Wall Street practices.

"I don't want to pick out a pitchfork or a brush and paint a broad brush over an entire industry," Booker said, citing the role financial institutions played in helping him develop a hotel and housing while serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

"I'm going to lead the charge, as I did during the recession, going after the mortgage industry, which was really ravaging my city," he said. "But I'm also going to say that we can't go so far that we can't draw capital into our inner cities which desperately need to grow."


The full video of his reasoning can be found at the link below.

http://www.businessinsider.com/cory-booker-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-2016-2

February 12, 2016

Sanders incarceration campaign promise: Delusional

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/11/bernie_sanders_can_t_fulfill_the_debate_promise_he_just_made_on_mass_incarceration.html

Report excerpt:

On this last point, Sanders trotted out an absurd promise he has used several times before: that by the end of his first term, the United States will no longer be the world leader in incarceration.

What Sanders means by this is that under just four years of his magical leadership, the U.S. will bring down its jail and prison population by about 600,000 people. Where does that figure come from? Consider that the No. 2 spot on the list of countries with the most prisoners in the world right now is China, and it has about 1.66 million people behind bars. The U.S., by comparison, has about 2.3 million.

Sanders did not mention during his remarks how he plans to make the leap from 2.3 million to fewer than 1.66 million. But regardless of what he has in mind, it’s pure fantasy for several reasons. Chief among them is that the president of the United States has no direct control over most of the nation’s correctional facilities. This is because jails, which currently hold fewer than 745,000 people, are under local control, and state prisons, which hold about 1.35 million, are under state control. That leaves the federal prison system—the only one that the federal government is actually in charge of—with 210,000 people, or about 10 percent of the pie.

It’s true that the president has a “bully pulpit” from which he can say inspiring things that set the tone for officials working at all levels of government. It’s also true that in theory, the federal government could try to bribe state governments to rely less on incarceration. But the bottom line is that the feds can only set policy for their own prison system and that means there’s a very low ceiling on the amount of progress that a president, no matter how ambitious he or she is, can do to reduce the prison population. The truth of the matter is that even if Sanders were to free every single person currently sitting in a federal prison, the U.S. would still be ahead of China in the incarceration Olympics by more than 400,000 people.


End of excerpt.

Sometimes I feel bad for Hillary. It's hard to run against Santa Claus, and very gullible voters.

June 26, 2015

Is President Obama the first acting President to publicly oppose the Confederate Flag?

This Nazi flag went up in the early 1960s to oppose the civil rights movement.


Kennedy
LBJ
Nixon
Ford
Carter
Reagan
Bush
Clinton
Bush

None of these Presidents or any before them have ever opposed the Confederate Flag. I believe Obama is the first.

Obama is the first acting President to support gay marriage.

Obama is the first acting President to speak the truth about the Nazi, Confederate Flag.

Obama is an historic all time great President.

October 8, 2014

"Just because he's black doesn't mean he's here to rob a house."

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-29544145



Excerpt:

Two Washington Metro Police officers - both black - were responding to a household burglary alarm in a posh District of Columbia neighbourhood and encountered a 64-year-old black man carrying two bags. When they questioned him, they say he became "loud and boisterous". They ordered him to the ground.

At that point, a local resident - a middle-aged white woman named Jody Westby - came out from her house and confronted the police.

She instructed her housekeeper to record the events. She said she knew the man - a local worker - and that the police had no right to detain him. She told the officers that she was a lawyer and, upon learning the address of the burglary report, that they weren't even on the right street.

She grabbed the detained man's hand and said she was leaving, telling the police to "please leave our neighbourhood".

The officer reluctantly let Ms Westby and the man go.

As she walked away, Ms Westby said: "Just because he's black doesn't mean he's here to rob a house. He works for us. He's been in this neighbourhood for 30 years."

Full video:http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/local/dc-police-investigating-burglary-stop-man/2014/10/07/f3704e36-4e4c-11e4-877c-335b53ffe736_video.html

August 2, 2014

Baby deer does not want to leave construction workers

Construction/road crew workers attempt to move a baby deer out of harms way. Baby deer does not want to leave them.

July 26, 2014

Walmart ice cream sandwiches don't melt in the sun

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/why-dont-ice-cream-sandwiches-melt-anymore


Full Story:

A mom of two young children is wondering: What's in ice cream sandwiches these days?

Christie Watson's kids love eating ice cream. But one recent morning, she saw an uneaten ice cream sandwich sitting on her patio table. When she looked closer, she couldn't believe what she was seeing.

"I noticed that my son had left his ice cream sandwich outside," she said, "and I was wondering why is there still ice cream in there?"

The Wal-Mart Great Value sandwich had barely melted 12 hours later....even though it was an 80-degree morning.

"I thought that's quite weird," she said. "So I looked at the box, and it doesn't say artificial ice cream. It says ice cream."

Was it a Fluke?

Watson says she grabbed a second sandwich and left that out overnight, and ended up with the same result.

"Monday I came out and looked at it," she said, "and there was still ice cream there. So I thought to myself: what am I feeding to my children?"

We wondered, too, so we did a test.

We set out a Wal-Mart Great Value sandwich, a Klondike Bar sandwich, and a cup of Haagen Dazs in the hot sun for 30 minutes.

The Haagen Dazs melted quickly into a puddle.
The Klondike sandwich melted to a fair extent.
The Wal-Mart sandwich, though it melted a bit, remained the most solid in appearance, and still looked like a sandwich.
We contacted Wal-Mart, which released the following statement:

"Ice cream melts based on the ingredients including cream.

Ice cream with more cream will generally melt at a slower rate, which is the case with our Great Value ice cream sandwiches.

In the frozen aisles, Great Value ice cream sandwiches are one of the top sellers, and we are glad to be able to offer a great treat that families love."

Other sources in the dairy business tell us that despite the slow melt rate of store brand ice cream sandwiches, they are just as healthy as other ice cream and meet all FDA guidelines. In addition, they contain less fat, so may be better on your waistline.

What's in That Sandwich?

A check of ingredients confirms why Haagen Dazs melts quickly, like ice cream from days of yore.

Wal-Mart's ingredient list includes corn syrup, guar gum, and cellulose gum.
Unilever's Klondike Bars's ingredient list is very similar to Walmart's, with similar gums added.
Haagen Dazs contains just cream, milk, sugar, and eggs, and vanilla, but no corn syrup or gums of any type.
However, we should also point out a cup of Haagen Dazs or another premium ice cream costs about $3. For the same price you get a dozen ice cream sandwiches from Wal-Mart, or other stores.

For store brand sandwiches to be as natural as Haagen Dazs, the price would have to be significantly higher.

But even though there's nothing wrong with Walmart sandwiches, Watson misses old fashioned ice cream that melts quickly out in the sun.

Whatever ice cream you prefer, don't waste your money.

Video here:
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/why-dont-ice-cream-sandwiches-melt-anymore



What are we really eating today?

July 8, 2014

5 Years of Obama

May 5, 2014

Clippers controversy continues: " He didnt want to pay me because I was white..."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/playoffs/2014/05/04/donald-sterling-jj-redick-los-angeles-clippers-owner-racism-ban/8698265/



J.J. Redick is a white player for the LA Clippers


But the story about J.J. Redick and his surreal first season with the Clippers captures the Donald Sterling experience as well as anyone's. At 29 years old and having made the calculated choice as a free agent last summer to come play for coach Doc Rivers and this talented team, Redick was exposed to the Sterling dysfunction from the start when his sign-and-trade deal to come to Los Angeles nearly fell apart after his four-year, $27-million deal had been agreed upon.

One of the alleged reasons? Sterling, the man whose racist comments sparked this whole furor, was believed to have had concerns about paying a white player that kind of money. He had once given white center Chris Kaman a five-year, $52 million deal, and how that contract panned out (or didn't, as Kaman played 195 games in the next four years of that deal and was traded to New Orleans with a year and a half left) appeared to be coloring Sterling's judgment on this deal. In a way, it was a mirror-image of the issue that would be front and center 10 months later.

"I've been told both ways: one, that he didn't want to pay me because I was white, and that he didn't want to pay me because I was a bench player," Redick said. "I didn't know (the deal almost fell apart) until after the fact. I just got a weird phone call from Doc on July 4, and I got off the phone and said to my wife, 'Something's going on.' He's like, 'You better play for me (expletive).' And I was like, 'Yeah, that's the plan. We figured this out two days ago, right?'

Full story at USA today link at the top of the page.

April 28, 2014

Obamacare's Poll Numbers Improve In Republican Districts

WASHINGTON -- Attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act continue to shift in the law’s favor, even in Republican-held congressional districts, a new poll set to be released Monday by a Democratic firm will show.


The poll, which was conducted by Democracy Corps in battleground congressional districts and shared in advance with The Huffington Post, shows 52 percent of respondents want to “implement and fix” the 2010 health care reform law versus 42 percent who want to “repeal and replace” it. Those numbers were 49 percent to 45 percent, respectively, in the firm's December poll.


According to the findings, 43 percent of respondents in districts held by a Republican member of Congress now say they oppose the health care law because it “goes too far.” That number was 48 percent in December. Opponents still outnumber the 41 percent who say they favor the law. However, Democracy Corps also registers 9 percent of respondents in Republican districts who say they oppose the law because it does not go far enough, a group that ostensibly includes a chunk of voters who wanted a more liberal piece of legislation. (How big that chunk is, is unclear.)

In Republican districts that are the most likely to flip to Democratic control in the 2014 elections, the shift of opinion toward the Affordable Care Act is equally pronounced. Fifty-four percent of respondents from those districts now support implementing and fixing the law versus 40 percent who support repealing and replacing it. In December, those numbers were 48 percent and 44 percent, respectively.


Meanwhile, in Democratic districts, Obamacare seems headed to majority-support status. Democracy Corps records 44 percent of respondents in those districts as favoring the law with 44 percent opposing the law because it goes too far. Eight percent oppose the law because it does not go far enough -- a portion of those likely Democratic voters who wanted either single payer or a public option. In December, those numbers were 42 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed and 6 percent who wanted the law to go further.





Full story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/28/obamacare-poll-numbers_n_5223315.html