The was a time that neoliberals were proud

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:12am

Hell now what Europeans call liberals and Americans call Neo-liberals refuse even to accept that Neoliberal is even an accepted terminology or that it even exists.

Once upon a time that the Atari Democrats were proud of their calling.

A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto

By Charles Peters; Charles Peters is the editor of The Washington Monthly. September 5, 1982

NEO-LIBERALISM is a terrible name for an interesting, if embryonic, movement. As the sole culprit at the christening, I hereby attest to the innocence of the rest of the faithful. They deserve something better, because they are a remarkable group of people.

The best known are three promising senators: Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gary Hart of Colorado and Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts. The ones I know best are my fellow journalists, including James Fallows and Gregg Easterbrook of The Atlantic, Michael Kinsley and Robert M. Kaus of Harper's, Nicholas Lemann and Joseph Nocera of Texas Monthly, and Randall Rothenberg of New Jersey Monthly. But there are many others, ranging from an academic economist like MIT's Lester Thurow to a mayor like Houston's Kathy Whitmire to a governor like Arizona's Bruce Babbitt. There's even a cell over at that citadel of traditional liberalism, The New Republic.

The First Neoliberals

Now, neoliberalism, of course, can mean a great many things, many of them associated with the Right. But one of its meanings — arguably, in the United States, the most historically accurate — is the name that a small group of journalists, intellectuals, and politicians on the Left gave to themselves in the late 1970s in order to register their distance from the traditional liberalism of the New Deal and the Great Society.

The original neoliberals included, among others, Michael Kinsley, Charles Peters, James Fallows, Nicholas Lemann, Bill Bradley, Bruce Babbitt, Gary Hart, and Paul Tsongas. Sometimes called “Atari Democrats,” these were the men — and they were almost all men — who helped to remake American liberalism into neoliberalism, culminating in the election of Bill Clinton in 1992.

Now I would argue that these politicians were not on the left at all but centrists spanning both sides of the aisle, more happy with the for profit sector than the state. The ACA was a typical proposal from this group, for profit, private sector and mandatory enrolment.

Some get upset at being called neo-liberals or even centrists, I can only assume that they are upset at having the same views as the original neo-liberals. Seriously if you are not a neo-liberal you should really stop voting for them.

It's the economy stupid- [from the first link].

Our primary concerns are community, democracy, and prosperity. Of them, economic growth is most important now, because it is essential to almost everything else we want to achieve. Our hero is the risk-taking entrepreneur who creates new jobs and better products. "Americans," says Bradley, "have to begin to treat risk more as an opportunity and not as a threat."

Risk taking-Yep and the dot.com bubble proved that one.

Progressive is something else entirely usually associated with the period 1890-1920.

The FDR Democrats were best represented by Bernie Sanders. We, the left, are given the pejorative right wing label of "alt -left" also becoming the popular pejorative terminology of some Democrats now.

There is nothing alt about it: It is just the left.

There is no need to make shit up.

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Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:57am

The first modern neo-liberals date back to the 1930s.

Since its inception, the Democratic Party has had an ugly conservative wing. However, modern neo-liberalism, right down to the term "third way," began in the 1930s. And it was re-introduced in the 1980s in the Democratic Party, not by Paul Tsongas, et al., but by the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Bill Clinton. Clinton did Republicans/big business the favor of passing NAFTA, even though Poppy could not push it through before leaving office.

Clinton and his White House (Summers, et al.) worked hand in hand with Greenspan, notably on repeal of Glass Steagall and enactment of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 2000, the combination of which brought financial collapse to this nation and others. (Greenspan wrote a self-serving book admitting he was wrong. Bubba has never admitted he was wrong.) And the Democratic Party nominated another Clinton in 2016 anyway, one, who in 2008 had approved all her husband's policies, social and economic. Follow the money.

The definition and usage of the term have changed over time.[5] It was originally an economic philosophy that emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s in an attempt to trace a so-called "third" or "middle" way between the conflicting philosophies of classical liberalism and socialist planning.[22]:14–5 The impetus for this development arose from a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, which were mostly blamed by neoliberals on the economic policy of classical liberalism. In the decades that followed, the use of the term neoliberal tended to refer to theories at variance with the more laissez-faire doctrine of classical liberalism, and promoted instead a market economy under the guidance and rules of a strong state, a model which came to be known as the social market economy.

In the 1960s, usage of the term "neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It had not only become a term with negative connotations employed principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.[5][23] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[5] By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation.[4] Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing.[16] The impact of the global 2008–2009 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives.[24]

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

The above is from the summary of the article.

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 5:55am

Indeed it does, I was concentrating on the current

@HenryAWallace exponents.

Since its inception, the Democratic Party has had an ugly conservative wing. However, modern neo-liberalism, right down to the term "third way," began in the 1930s. And it was re-introduced in the 1980s in the Democratic Party, not by Paul Tsongas, et al., but by the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Bill Clinton. Clinton did Republicans/big business the favor of passing NAFTA, even though Poppy could not push it through before leaving office.

Clinton and his White House (Summers, et al.) worked hand in hand with Greenspan, notably on repeal of Glass Steagall and enactment of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 2000, the combination of which brought financial collapse to this nation and others. (Greenspan wrote a self-serving book admitting he was wrong. Bubba has never admitted he was wrong.) And the Democratic Party nominated another Clinton in 2016 anyway, one, who in 2008 had approved all her husband's policies, social and economic. Follow the money.

The definition and usage of the term have changed over time.[5] It was originally an economic philosophy that emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s in an attempt to trace a so-called "third" or "middle" way between the conflicting philosophies of classical liberalism and socialist planning.[22]:14–5 The impetus for this development arose from a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, which were mostly blamed by neoliberals on the economic policy of classical liberalism. In the decades that followed, the use of the term neoliberal tended to refer to theories at variance with the more laissez-faire doctrine of classical liberalism, and promoted instead a market economy under the guidance and rules of a strong state, a model which came to be known as the social market economy.

In the 1960s, usage of the term "neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It had not only become a term with negative connotations employed principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.[5][23] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[5] By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation.[4] Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing.[16] The impact of the global 2008–2009 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives.[24]

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

The above is from the summary of the article.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:03am

The current exponents are almost every Democratic

@LaFeminista

officeholder in the country, an ever-dwindling group.

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 7:38am

You can tell just how bad a political policy it is by the

@HenryAWallace calibre of those wiping the floor with them.

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:00am

PS that is what in Europe are referred to a liberals

@HenryAWallace The laissez faire economics group. Whereas the use of Neo-Liberal by some Americans is a progression from that original position.

Since its inception, the Democratic Party has had an ugly conservative wing. However, modern neo-liberalism, right down to the term "third way," began in the 1930s. And it was re-introduced in the 1980s in the Democratic Party, not by Paul Tsongas, et al., but by the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Bill Clinton. Clinton did Republicans/big business the favor of passing NAFTA, even though Poppy could not push it through before leaving office.

Clinton and his White House (Summers, et al.) worked hand in hand with Greenspan, notably on repeal of Glass Steagall and enactment of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 2000, the combination of which brought financial collapse to this nation and others. (Greenspan wrote a self-serving book admitting he was wrong. Bubba has never admitted he was wrong.) And the Democratic Party nominated another Clinton in 2016 anyway, one, who in 2008 had approved all her husband's policies, social and economic. Follow the money.

The definition and usage of the term have changed over time.[5] It was originally an economic philosophy that emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s in an attempt to trace a so-called "third" or "middle" way between the conflicting philosophies of classical liberalism and socialist planning.[22]:14–5 The impetus for this development arose from a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, which were mostly blamed by neoliberals on the economic policy of classical liberalism. In the decades that followed, the use of the term neoliberal tended to refer to theories at variance with the more laissez-faire doctrine of classical liberalism, and promoted instead a market economy under the guidance and rules of a strong state, a model which came to be known as the social market economy.

In the 1960s, usage of the term "neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It had not only become a term with negative connotations employed principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.[5][23] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[5] By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation.[4] Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing.[16] The impact of the global 2008–2009 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives.[24]

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

The above is from the summary of the article.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:10am

I know. An Eastern European attacked me when I posted I was

@LaFeminista @LaFeminista

a liberal and others on the board calmed her down. This was around 2008. One problem is some sources, like wiki, use the term laissez-faire to define both liberal and neo-liberal. Not useful.

I don't think the two articles linked in the essay are skewed the facts correctly. They say the neo-liberalism of people like Tsongas culiminated in the election of Bill Clinton. It was Bill Clinton, Al From, et al. who turned the Democratic Party into a neo-liberal sewer, not the other way around.

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:10am

In my mind debateable. Bill Clinton wasn't the first

@HenryAWallace but the best showman of the lot.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:18am

Clinton was neo-liberal before Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, etc.

@LaFeminista

ETA Clinton was not only a showboater neo-liberal, but a prosthelytizer neo-liberal. Hillary, too. He took care of the US, she went to Europe with Al From.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:07am

@HenryAWallace People tend to regard

@HenryAWallace People tend to regard Tsongas as a good man, so perhaps this was just an early example of virtue-mining.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:47am

A response to lesser-evilism

@HenryAWallace DSA response

"Our project is less about being a short-term electoral spoiler or anything like that. It is to build an alternative pole, alternative opposition, because you can't beat the right by just allying with the center if the center is alienating people and fueling that right itself," Sunkara says. "In order to break the cycle, at some point we need to articulate our own vision and promise of politics."

Since its inception, the Democratic Party has had an ugly conservative wing. However, modern neo-liberalism, right down to the term "third way," began in the 1930s. And it was re-introduced in the 1980s in the Democratic Party, not by Paul Tsongas, et al., but by the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Bill Clinton. Clinton did Republicans/big business the favor of passing NAFTA, even though Poppy could not push it through before leaving office.

Clinton and his White House (Summers, et al.) worked hand in hand with Greenspan, notably on repeal of Glass Steagall and enactment of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 2000, the combination of which brought financial collapse to this nation and others. (Greenspan wrote a self-serving book admitting he was wrong. Bubba has never admitted he was wrong.) And the Democratic Party nominated another Clinton in 2016 anyway, one, who in 2008 had approved all her husband's policies, social and economic. Follow the money.

The definition and usage of the term have changed over time.[5] It was originally an economic philosophy that emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s in an attempt to trace a so-called "third" or "middle" way between the conflicting philosophies of classical liberalism and socialist planning.[22]:14–5 The impetus for this development arose from a desire to avoid repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, which were mostly blamed by neoliberals on the economic policy of classical liberalism. In the decades that followed, the use of the term neoliberal tended to refer to theories at variance with the more laissez-faire doctrine of classical liberalism, and promoted instead a market economy under the guidance and rules of a strong state, a model which came to be known as the social market economy.

In the 1960s, usage of the term "neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It had not only become a term with negative connotations employed principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.[5][23] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[5] By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation.[4] Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing.[16] The impact of the global 2008–2009 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives.[24]

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

The above is from the summary of the article.

Submitted by Dr. John Carpenter on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 2:08pm

Worth repeating

@gjohnsit

You can't beat the right by just allying with the center if the center is alienating people and fueling that right itself.

This was a point I lost with so many people. Unfortunately, the constant TRUMPTRUMPTRUMP isn't making it any easier.

—

Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 2:49am

But, they endorse Democrats. "At some point" they might do

@gjohnsit

something else?

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 6:28am

PS I like the rebuttal. I see far more similarity between

neoliberals and conservatives than I do between neoliberals and liberals. I think they've been misnamed. And modern neoliberals also adopt the neocon foreign policies, so it all conflates to one big right wing.

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 7:39am

Conservatives of a different era, say Nixon and Co.

@HenryAWallace @HenryAWallace Modern conservatives or at least those that name themselves such are radical wingnuts.

As for liberal I'll stick with the European definition of the word.

The whole main stream political landscape in the US has tilted way to the right since Reagan, it started to tilt under Carter.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 10:46am

Again, I see it differently. I see the New Deal and the Great

@LaFeminista

Society as aberrations. Take them out of the equation and the Democratic Party is a pretty sorry outfit.

That, I have already written essays about.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/real-democrats-versus-new-democrats-...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/real-democrats-versus-new-democrats-...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/random-thoughts-real-and-fake-democrats

Submitted by FuturePassed on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 4:48pm

The question is . . .

@HenryAWallace
how you account for southern Democrats over the period. Southern Democrats were part of a conservative majority for much of the period. They were even able to constrain FDR after 1938.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:25pm

I am not getting your question, or its point.

@FuturePassed

Obviously, I know about both Southern Democrats, some of whom were populists, and about conservative Democrats, often overlapping Southern Democrats. (All conservatives in the Congresses during FDR's terms were not from the South.) However, I don't know what you are getting at in general or in the context of what I posted about the my view of the history of the Democratic Party.

Is it a general question or does it relate in some way to the post of mine to which you replied? Whatever it is is fine. I'm just lost as to your meaning.

However, if you meant, "How do you account for Southern Democrats in the entire history of the Democratic Party," an intelligent response might need a book, not a reply on a message board Short answer: Most were a bad lot, from Andrew Jackson forward, through and including Clinton (raised to adulthood under Jim Crow and mentored from high school forward by Fulbright, a mixed bag who was part of the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964); and, now they're mostly a bad lot of Republicans, Strom Thurmond being the iconic transitional figure. (Some, like Byrd, went from Klanman to admirer of Ted Kennedy, though.) Much as the most extreme forms of racism was the original sin of the colonies/United States, it was also the original sin of the Democratic Party, from its slaveowners on.)

To counteract conservatives in their party, whether from the South or elsewhere, both FDR and LBJ formed coalitions that included populists, less conservative Democrats and left leaning Republicans--of whom there were far more than there are now. Especially in FDR's day, the Northeast, and especially New England, abounded in descendants of Lincoln Republicans who had perceived Democrats as racist. In other words, today, they would be liberals, and, if not, at least lesser of two evils Democrats.

They had voted for only Republican Presidents, right up until Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican electoral vote. And, just as much of the South ultimately went Republican, much of the Northeast that was not already blue (Tammany Hall type blue) went blue. However, over time, DLC Democrats managed to mess that up, much as they messed up almost everything else in the Party.

Submitted by DonMidwest on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 7:05am

excellent article George Monbiot April 15, 2016

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems: Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?

Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

Inequality is recast as virtuous. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Recommend the article for origin and evolution of the term and its spread.

Looking at the sentence above -- utopian, millenariam faith ... biological law ...

Thomas Frank described this in "Listen Liberal" as the position of the Clintons where most people put their God. He then quoted Hillary in 1992 saying something like, on the path to utopia we will have to attack our friends.

Submitted by dkmich on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 7:39am

My perception of history and reality.

The New Deal and The War on Poverty are miles apart IMO. The benefits from the New Deal were inclusive of the majority, perhaps because the majority was in poverty at the time. The benefits of the War on Poverty were exclusive to the poor. Between the GOP shipping benefits up to the rich and the Dems shipping them down to the poor, the middle class was stuck either way with the burden of paying for benefits they weren't getting.

So when Bill Clinton came along with his pitch to abandon the War on Poverty and extend the concept of the middle class to up to 250K, I was on board. Two married professionals each earning a six figure income did not equate to Gates or Zuckerberg with multiple mansions and millions to burn. Add in a couple of kids, perhaps elderly parents, and 250K took care of the needs of the extended family, gave the couple a few bucks to save for retirement, and maybe even a family vacation every now and then. In other words, enough money to continue the life style and values I grew up expecting the middle class to have, having grown up in Detroit, the heart of the UAW, auto industry, and 30 years and out pensions.

NAFTA was a bad deal, and Detroit knew it. The war on drugs was a mistake, but who could have predicted what a huge misapplication of justice it would become. Welfare reform was needed, and TANF was morally bankrupt. Defense was cut and should have been invested back into a new New Deal for the benefit of everybody that paid for the 80 million-year-old cold war. Instead, the self-serving asshole in the WH added insult to injury and continued to fleece the country by repealing Glass-Steagall and consolidating the media to sell it.

I worked my entire 39 year career planning and operating job training legislation. I know the labor market in Michigan better than most, and I don't imagine it is much different in the rest of country. Industries vary, but the trends and cycles are the same. Employees went from permanent with full benefits to contract employees with lower salaries and fewer benefits. The next step was to part-time with no benefits. The bottom rung and last step was self-employed Risk-taking entrepreneur is code for get the fuck off my payroll. I'm sick of paying you for anything. Every underfunded Uber driver and gig worker is a risk-taking entrepreneur.

—

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Submitted by Steven D on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 12:24pm

but

@dkmich freedom!!!!!!

The New Deal and The War on Poverty are miles apart IMO. The benefits from the New Deal were inclusive of the majority, perhaps because the majority was in poverty at the time. The benefits of the War on Poverty were exclusive to the poor. Between the GOP shipping benefits up to the rich and the Dems shipping them down to the poor, the middle class was stuck either way with the burden of paying for benefits they weren't getting. So when Bill Clinton came along with his pitch to abandon the War on Poverty and extend the concept of the middle class to up to 250K, I was on board. Two married professionals each earning a six figure income did not equate to Gates or Zuckerberg with multiple mansions and millions to burn. Add in a couple of kids, perhaps elderly parents, and 250K took care of the needs of the extended family, gave the couple a few bucks to save for retirement, and maybe even a family vacation every now and then. In other words, enough money to continue the life style and values I grew up expecting the middle class to have, having grown up in Detroit, the heart of the UAW, auto industry, and 30 years and out pensions. NAFTA was a bad deal, and Detroit knew it. The war on drugs was a mistake, but who could have predicted what a huge misapplication of justice it would become. Welfare reform was needed, and TANF was morally bankrupt. Defense was cut and should have been invested back into a new New Deal for the benefit of everybody that paid for the 80 million-year-old cold war. Instead, the self-serving asshole in the WH added insult to injury and continued to fleece the country by repealing Glass-Steagall and consolidating the media to sell it. I worked my entire 39 year career planning and operating job training legislation. I know the labor market in Michigan better than most, and I don't imagine it is much different in the rest of country. Industries vary, but the trends and cycles are the same. Employees went from permanent with full benefits to contract employees with lower salaries and fewer benefits. The next step was to part-time with no benefits. The bottom rung and last step was self-employed Risk-taking entrepreneur is code for get the fuck off my payroll. I'm sick of paying you for anything. Every underfunded Uber driver and gig worker is a risk-taking entrepreneur.

—

"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Submitted by native on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 12:26pm

It's worth noting that virtually all of America's

@dkmich
political parties and philosophies have supported an aggressively expansionist foreign policy. Right from the nation's founding, and onward through innumerable wars of conquest, American capitalists have provided both the motivation and the means to either acquire or to dominate various foreign territories. By a combination of superior armed force and the application of superior economic leverage, America has managed to transform much of the world so as to conform with its own capitalistic economic system.

If the USA has had any single, overriding or universal political philosophy, surely it has been capitalism -- not democracy. We have even gone so far as to to equate the two concepts -- to be "free" and "democratic" means to enable a relatively unrestricted flow of capital, from the bottom of society toward the top. So that whatever system of domestic wealth-distribution we might devise, it can only be effectuated within the political parameters of a capital-friendly (and therefore essentially competitive) world view.

"Democracy" as practiced in the USA, has provided a way for some fraction of the capitalist wealth so acquired, to be siphoned off, or filtered down to benefit the general public. And this has benefited the general public, more often than not -- albeit at an horrific environmental cost. Even so, by far the greater part of America's vast wealth has always accrued to to a small percentage of owners and proprietors -- those who have become powerful enough to set the national agenda on a path that is favorable to themselves, and to keep it there.

We seem to have evolved a system and a national ethos of "competitive cooperation" in which status is determined solely by wealth, and political power is shared among a loose confederation of the richest and most ambitious among us. Mass media has effectively reduced most of the populace to a sort of spectator class, being alternately entertained, horrified, or enthralled by America's continual wars of conquest, and by the various antics of its most widely publicized role models.

The New Deal and The War on Poverty are miles apart IMO. The benefits from the New Deal were inclusive of the majority, perhaps because the majority was in poverty at the time. The benefits of the War on Poverty were exclusive to the poor. Between the GOP shipping benefits up to the rich and the Dems shipping them down to the poor, the middle class was stuck either way with the burden of paying for benefits they weren't getting. So when Bill Clinton came along with his pitch to abandon the War on Poverty and extend the concept of the middle class to up to 250K, I was on board. Two married professionals each earning a six figure income did not equate to Gates or Zuckerberg with multiple mansions and millions to burn. Add in a couple of kids, perhaps elderly parents, and 250K took care of the needs of the extended family, gave the couple a few bucks to save for retirement, and maybe even a family vacation every now and then. In other words, enough money to continue the life style and values I grew up expecting the middle class to have, having grown up in Detroit, the heart of the UAW, auto industry, and 30 years and out pensions. NAFTA was a bad deal, and Detroit knew it. The war on drugs was a mistake, but who could have predicted what a huge misapplication of justice it would become. Welfare reform was needed, and TANF was morally bankrupt. Defense was cut and should have been invested back into a new New Deal for the benefit of everybody that paid for the 80 million-year-old cold war. Instead, the self-serving asshole in the WH added insult to injury and continued to fleece the country by repealing Glass-Steagall and consolidating the media to sell it. I worked my entire 39 year career planning and operating job training legislation. I know the labor market in Michigan better than most, and I don't imagine it is much different in the rest of country. Industries vary, but the trends and cycles are the same. Employees went from permanent with full benefits to contract employees with lower salaries and fewer benefits. The next step was to part-time with no benefits. The bottom rung and last step was self-employed Risk-taking entrepreneur is code for get the fuck off my payroll. I'm sick of paying you for anything. Every underfunded Uber driver and gig worker is a risk-taking entrepreneur.

—

native

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:06am

Paul Tsongas had a reputation as a moral man.

It's disconcerting to find him in this company, though I always knew he was farther to the right economically than me. It's also disconcerting to find Bill Bradley there, since he was running to the left of Gore in 2000.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:42am

Why did Tsongas run for President, knowing he was dying?

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

He did know, but I can't post how I know that.

As it was, his wife got his job and kept it.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 12:02pm

@HenryAWallace Yes, that's just it. I

@HenryAWallace Yes, that's just it. I don't know why.

It's very strange.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 12:10pm

Either he was a stalking horse or selfish. I don't see

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

another possibility.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:52am

Did Bradley run for a minute and a half?

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

If so, he may have been a stalking horse.

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 12:19pm

I just read Bradley's wiki. Amazing man. I wager not

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

many Rhodes scholars have their numbers retired by a pro ball team. And, yes, he did run to the left of Gore. VP is hard to overcome, though. Unless POTUS freezes you out, as FDR did to Truman, there's probably no better preparation for the job of POTUS.

And, there is always the possibility that a plan was in place for him to lose. I don't put anything past any of them, but reading Bradley's wiki, I can't see his losing intentionally.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 3:14pm

@HenryAWallace Well, I liked him.

@HenryAWallace Well, I liked him.
But then, although I didn't like Bill Clinton much, I did vote for him twice, so I do make mistakes!

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 10:22pm

Ah, but you were so much older then.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

You're younger than that now.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 3:56pm

@HenryAWallace There must be some

@HenryAWallace There must be some kinda way out of here.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Fri, 08/18/2017 - 12:56am

Don't know, CStMS.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Especially if we can't figure out a way to fund anything we might want.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Fri, 08/18/2017 - 9:31am

@HenryAWallace Well,

@HenryAWallace Well, businessman he drink my wine/Plowman dig my earth!

You cut right to the chase, however. Kudos.

It makes me both delighted and sick that Bernie Sanders could raise 40 to 50 million dollars a month. To think that we have that kind of money power among the lot of us, even now! (though I'd argue that level of giving isn't sustainable long-term.) But even 10 million/month would be remarkably helpful in building any number of worthy projects.

But nobody pushing such projects is a Senator running for President. Why should people trust such organizers enough to give them money? One might respond with the question, why should we trust a politician enough to give him hundreds of millions of dollars, but, well, that's our tradition. I don't even entirely regret it, because money is one of the ways Americans try to express their opinions, and a large percentage of the people were taking the opportunity to express their opinions by donating to Sanders and giving that tacit support to his, well, his one speech.

But we could never get that kind of money, or even a quarter as much, for a Rolling Jubilee or a network of community gardens in food deserts and poor neighborhoods generally, or for creating a real, networked, well-funded indie news service, or any of the twenty other things I could probably think of--because we're not Senators who ran for President.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Fri, 08/18/2017 - 12:07pm

We trusted Sanders with our money

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

because he had a long track record and was not accepting corporate donations.

Now ask me why I donated to Obama.

But, that's yesterday. As to the future, I'll shut up.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Fri, 08/18/2017 - 1:10pm

@HenryAWallace I agree

@HenryAWallace I agree with the banging of the head. I, too, donated to Obama.

However, my larger point is the problem of those massive sums of money only appearing from the 99% when it's a campaign with a likely-looking politician at its head. A famous person. Usually a person with a fair amount of money. We don't seem to trust ordinary people as much.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Fri, 08/18/2017 - 8:27pm

I think it's wise not to trust people you don't know with

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

your money, your kids, your heart or anything else. Do I always live by that? No. Have I been burned more than once? Yes.

Submitted by Strife Delivery on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 1:14pm

Neoliberal

Neoliberals desperately try to have everyone believe that they are anything but neoliberal now.

"It's just a slur."
"You're not using it right."
"Buzzword."
"That doesn't describe me."

While they do everything in their power to deregulate and privatize, they desperately want you to believe that they don't want to deregulate and privatize.

"Americans," says Bradley, "have to begin to treat risk more as an opportunity and not as a threat."

Fuck that. Risk is called risk for a reason. Opportunity...what garbage. Take out $300,000 to start up a business and then it goes kaput. Great opportunity there huh?

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Wed, 08/16/2017 - 10:32pm

On a board where I used to post, they're owning it.

@Strife Delivery

Early in Obama's first term, they denied anyone was a DLC type. I remember when Obama told the New Democrat caucus he was a New Democrat. They posted a quote from him saying he was a progressive. Knowing about Al From, I laughed to myself. Anyway, New Dem after New Dem, they claimed was not a New Dem. Then, they went silent about that. When Hillary ran, a few began defending centrists, New Democrats and neoliberals. Now, they're in full "Neoliberals are great" mode.

From Obama's first campaign forward, though, they punched left. Brilliant, no? And they're still attacking Sanders like rabid dogs even though he campaigned for their Sainted Queen and his alleged revolution consists of working within the Demcoratic Party.