In a weird way, it’s inspiring that 90% of presidential candidates have worse basic debating skills than high-schoolers. Like, it shows they aren’t just mindless shills picked for rhetorical abilities, since their rhetorical abilities essentially don’t exist.
Posted by Bill on behalf of the team.
Topics: How the Reagan Revolution influenced the American Left; the US airstrike on a hospital in Kunduz Afghanistan; Perkins Loans end. People: Bill, Kelley, Nate. Produced: October 11th, 2015.
Episode 146 (54 min):
AFD 146
– Generational Politics: How the Reagan Revolution influenced the American Left
– The US blew up a hospital in Afghanistan. What now?
– Why was the Perkins Loan program allowed to expire?
– AFD: “Getting trapped in Reagan’s ideological framing”
– France24: “Aid workers killed in US air strike on Afghan hospital”
– AFD by Kelley: “Perkins Loan program expires after 57 year run”
RSS Feed: Arsenal for Democracy Feedburner
iTunes Store Link: “Arsenal for Democracy by Bill Humphrey”
And don’t forget to check out The Digitized Ramblings of an 8-Bit Animal, the video game blog of our announcer, Justin.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
I trust Mike Huckabee with a Twitter account like I trust his son Dave with my labrador!
There was a period about a century ago (give or take a couple decades on either side) when democratic socialism was taking root in some of the rural, populist regions of the United States. Government by and for the people was the counterweight to corporate rule.
The fact that we now once again have op-eds in major newspapers in conservative states explaining to people why “socialism” isn’t necessarily an extreme word to be feared suggests a major sea change is afoot:
We often get too hung up over political labels and then reflexively dismiss the person. Sanders calls himself a “democratic socialist,” but what he stands for is actually more mainstream than people realize.
He wants to expand Social Security, invest massively to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure, provide Medicare for all, make public college tuition free, break up banks that are too big to fail, and combat climate change, among other things.
If you follow the figures, large percentages of Americans agree with many of these positions.
In his words: “To me, socialism doesn’t mean state ownership of everything, by any means, it means creating a nation, and a world, in which all human beings have a decent standard of living.
“I think (democratic socialism),” he has said “means the government has got to play a very important role in making sure that as a right of citizenship all of our people have health care; that as a right, all of our kids, regardless of income, have quality child care, are able to go to college without going deeply into debt; that it means we do not allow large corporations and moneyed interests to destroy our environment; that we create a government in which it is not dominated by big money interest. I mean, to me, it means democracy, frankly. That’s all it means.”
I’m not saying this means everyone in the American heartland is about to run out and vote socialist (or even for Sanders necessarily) but let’s hope it does signify that the Reagan Revolution cycle in American politics is coming to a close. We need to end the great lie that portrayed government as the enemy, while corporations were supposedly by and for the people against it.
Ben Carson, why would you complain about not getting enough time to speak at the debates? You were the only one who had cracked the code of the Republican nomination process! In a pool entirely filled with crazy, one can only avoid saying crazy things by never saying anything!
A new Citizens for Tax Justice / US PIRG study of IRS/SEC filings indicates that 358 of the 500 largest companies in the United States are stashing $2.1 trillion in legal tax havens.
The lost U.S. tax revenue from just 57 of them who admitted the difference in what they would have paid on those profits without havens versus what they actually paid (legally!) was $184.4 billion in total. The report then extrapolates that the lost U.S. tax revenue from the full Fortune 500 due to offshore tax avoidance may be around $620 billion total, or $90 billion yearly over the period in which the untaxed offshore stash was earned.
The tax haven countries themselves often have yearly GDPs smaller than the profits supposedly being “earned” in those countries by the “subsidiaries” of US megacorporations “based” in those countries.
Also:
Between 2008 and 2014, the study added, the amount of offshore cash holdings for American multinationals doubled.
Ah, I guess big U.S. firms can’t hire more people or pay better wages (duly earned through higher productivity!) because they “only” have over $2 Trillion in offshore savings. You see, it’s very tough as American megacorporations to pay living wages when you’re collectively only avoiding $90 billion a year in taxes.
Meanwhile, a major Democratic Party candidate for president wants to give tax breaks to big firms to pay workers more fairly, even though they already legally skip $90 billion annually in taxes now.
This is ludicrous. You don’t pay companies to do things they need to do anyway. You really don’t do it when they’re effectively stealing tax revenue now. As the head of the World Bank just said, legal tax avoidance schemes are a form of corruption. This needs to end. It just does.
Posted by Bill on behalf of the team.
Topics: The Future of Wages; Burkina Faso shakes off a coup; emerging movements in the Republican and Democratic presidential races. People: Bill, Kelley, Nate. Produced: September 13th and October 4th, 2015.
Episode 145 (56 min):
AFD 145
– What is the future of living wage laws?
– What can Burkina Faso’s resistance to a coup tell us about transitions to democracy in poor countries today?
– Can anyone save the Republican field from itself? Can Sanders prevail over Clinton after all?
– The Globalist (by Bill): Op-Ed: “The Future of Living Wages”
– AFD: “Short-lived Burkina Faso Coup had very little support”
– AFD: “Procedurally, GOP nomination is within Trump’s reach”
RSS Feed: Arsenal for Democracy Feedburner
iTunes Store Link: “Arsenal for Democracy by Bill Humphrey”
And don’t forget to check out The Digitized Ramblings of an 8-Bit Animal, the video game blog of our announcer, Justin.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
