Listen, Liberal

Thomas Frank was on PBS Newshour tonight promoting his new book Listen, Liberal. embedding PBS video doesn't work...

He really just points out that the Democratic Party is all about the Professional Class and really doesn't care about inequality any more than the Republicans...

The description from iTunes.

From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics -- a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats?

It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course.

But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming.

With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.

Not going to spend $12.99 to be told what I already know...but I might reserve it from the socialist library Wink

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Bollox Ref's picture

I didn't know that the Newshour was still going. Haven't watched that particular program for some 20 years. Not quite sure when I watched anything on PBS to be honest.

Actually, thinking about it, the saving of the miners in Chile was probably the last time I watched teevee.

Oh, and Frank talks sense, but I'm sure the PBS placeholders just looked at him as if he was spouting gibberish.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

The only reason I have the PBS channel is Roy Underhill reruns.

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There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.

WindDancer13's picture

the comment box.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

RejectingThe3rdWay's picture

Better solution is to gradually replace the working class with better behaved robots. Seems easier than trying to understand them. Or tolerate their fetishes. Or giving them power of any kind.

This is from a former FPer and still regular poster on Orange State. Of course he supports Hillary.

The absolute disdain from this Wall Street Democrat (That's literal as he states he works on Wall St.) is just sickening.

This is the type of people the Democratic Party is courting and wanting.

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1538830/62144027

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When I was a kid, Republicans used to red scare people, now it's the Democrats. I am getting too damn old for this crap!

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Solidarity forever

RejectingThe3rdWay's picture

I seriously mean that too

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When I was a kid, Republicans used to red scare people, now it's the Democrats. I am getting too damn old for this crap!

But he isn't. Funny thing is, his job will be one of the first white collar ones to be automated. It's doesn't take a lot of skill to sell bonds to suckers customers.

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BBB is one of the more contemptuous and aggressively neo-liberal asses on Orange State.

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kharma's picture

he carries a rolex umbrella, and makes sure you know it -- what a joke

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There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.. This...is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.--John Adams

WTF is that? Is that like a Rolls Royce cuff link? That dope is one reversal of fortune away from becoming BinghamtonBadBoy.

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kharma's picture

through the rain on Wall Street and he had to somehow throw in the fact that his umbrella is a 'Rolex'. Pretty juvenile but hey, that's triple-b and his boy lil nap.

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There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.. This...is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.--John Adams

Damnit Janet's picture

compensation umbrellas?? Biggrin

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison

he can't afford a Rolex watch. But hey, he'll get the umbrella for now and get the watch when he makes it! Yippee!

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has never worked a day in their life. There's a reason auto and aircraft industry have human workers. Robots can do a few tasks but it stops there.

Robots are expensive, require special skills to program an maintain, and not nearly as cheap to replace as humans. Until a robot is as quick, dextrous, and intelligent as a person in one package for under 10k, we're stuck with people.

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There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.

Kurichan's picture

Upward and the curve is getting steeper. I think your points are valid, but it's the kind of thinking that lets things "catch up to you" and then it's too late. Mandatory coding classes in public schools for middle schoolers, driverless cars roboticist stories on NPR, I Think this is coming faster than you think. In something like 29 states, truck driver is the largest vocation pool. Where do you think the driverless tech is going to go first?

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as a mean of eradicating the power of the working class, couching it in terms of "efficiency" and ignoring the human cost of such changes. What a lot of folks in the professional class don't realize is that the process is increasingly shifting upward and they'll become expendable, too, in a few decades or less if trends persist.

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terriertribe's picture

Doesn't realize a lot of things about how the world really works, especially with regards to their real status.. The powers-that-be know this and have used that knowledge to great advantage.

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Now interviewing signature candidates. Apply within.

snoopydawg's picture

Wrote another anti Bernie diary again today and used his usual f bombs in the diary and towards anyone who disagreed with him.
When he was asked about what should be done about the people in the party that were unhappy with the direction of the Democratic Party, this was his snotty reply.

kos Fishtroller01 Jun 15 · 02:07:05 PM
You ask what I’m going to do? Well, I’m not going to worry about dead-enders or quitters, that’s what I’ll do.
This is a site for fighters, not quitters.

What an asshole he has become.

I wanted to write that many people didn't quit, they were banned because they didn't follow his asinine rules of not telling the truth about the corruption of both Hillary and the Democratic Party.

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RejectingThe3rdWay's picture

That jackoffs got what he wanted (money and a voice in the establishment) so we must all now bow down to the establishment versus fighting it

EFF him and the horse he rode in on!

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When I was a kid, Republicans used to red scare people, now it's the Democrats. I am getting too damn old for this crap!

B. Joe King's picture

stopped by to see napoleon's tantrum that you speak of. what a fucking baby he is.
Best comments were something along the lines of "why should taxpayers be funding party activities if they aren't open to everyone"
Got to see a few people give him both barrels. Hopefully he's happy with what he's got. dick

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Gold is the wealth of kings; silver is the wealth of commoners; barter is the wealth of peasants; and debt is the wealth of slaves.

elmo's picture

But now many of us see him and people like him as part of the people we have to fight.

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Even the smallest person can change the course of the future

kharma's picture

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There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.. This...is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.--John Adams

totally lost on him and them, sadly. THEY are the quitters.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

yellopig's picture

He spends 3 chapters enumerating the things the Clintons did the last time they were president which made life just that much worse for millions of Americans: "reforming" welfare, "reforming" food stamps, NAFTA, DADT, DOMA, deregulating the banks, three strikes rules, the crack vs powder cocaine sentencing discrepancy, and on and on and on. I remember all that happening, and thinking each time that whatever it was, it wasn't a good idea, but when listed all together like that, it was horrifying what they did to us.

No way I want those people running the place again!

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“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett

boriscleto's picture

Foxconn cuts 60,000 factory jobs and replaces them with robots

What McDonald's CEO Ed Rensi thinks of the working class...

"It’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging french fries."

However, economists fear the short-term fallout from automation may be a devastating loss of jobs and economic instability. A report, conducted by Deloitte and Oxford University, predict as many as 35 percent of jobs will be automated over the next two decades. An even more telling forecast was made by researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne in their 2013 paper "The Future of Employment," in which they predicted about 50 percent of jobs will disappear over the next four to five decades.

CEO's are the first ones to get eaten after the collapse...

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

B. Joe King's picture

Comes from having no human workforce. This gives the most value to shareholders. The idea of corporate responsibility has gone down the shitter. Pensions, fair pay, loyalty to the employee are all but gone from american corporations.
If you reach maximum efficiency and have no employees, and every other company does the same thing, there IS no more economy. Economic inefficiency DOES have upsides. Putting shareholders before employees was the first domino to fall in the race to the bottom economics. Fuck the shareholders. They have no shares to hold if they don't have a workforce, or anyone to buy their shit in the case of complete automation.

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Gold is the wealth of kings; silver is the wealth of commoners; barter is the wealth of peasants; and debt is the wealth of slaves.