Democrats support your freedom. Republicans want to take it away from you

The Democratic Party should take this to heart. The party should make economic freedom a central part of the platform for 2020 and beyond.

Robin Hood and Little John

Have you ever wanted to invest in the stock market? If you don't have a lot of money, and you don't like paying fees, then Robin Hood is the way to go. Use this link and you get a free share of stock just for signing up:

Robin Hood.

Tell 'em the zombies sent you!

You say you want a revolution

According to a new poll a majority of Americans want a political revolution to distribute wealth fairly. Yes, we want the rich to give up some so that the rest of us can survive.

Fifty-four percent of respondents to our online poll — which reached a sample of 1,884 registered voters nationally from Friday, January 29, through Sunday, January 31, 2016 — agreed that a "political revolution might be necessary to redistribute money from the wealthiest Americans to the middle class." Just 30 percent said they disagreed.

Robin Hood has always been my hero.

Trump v Cruz

Vox discusses why some of the GOP elite seem to prefer Trump to Cruz. They get it dead wrong. The reason the Bob Dole wing of the Republican party prefers Donald Trump over Ted Cruz is simple. Trump can't win, Cruz possibly could.

The calculation is this: Trump on the top of the ballot guarantees that Hillary Clinton (or Berni Sanders) becomes president and likely gives control of congress back to the Democrats. Dole et al think that the Republican party can survive that over the long term.

On the other hand, a Cruz candidacy is likely to create the same effect, but there is a small chance that Cruz could win. A Cruz presidency would wreck the economy for a generation. It would be a disaster of diplomacy. The nation would almost certainly enter into at least one new war. Our allies would possibly abandon us. We would come very close to becoming a failed state. And no other Republican could be elected president in generations.
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That is their fear. It is a rational fear.

I know that you are afraid

The economy has recovered. Put that in quotes, though. "Recovered" in that corporations and the very wealthy are doing great. The average worker, however, doesn't feel much recovery. Wages have stagnated. The advent of the 401k in place of a pension means that most people will die working. Retirement is gone. A few very wealthy families own everything and the rest of us fight over scraps from the table. The good jobs have left and they aren't coming back. The safety net has been shredded.

All of this is by design. This is not a bug, it is a feature.

This was the fever dream of Art Laffer and Ronald Reagan and their Plutocrat masters. But don't worry about that. Ignore it.

They know that they can keep doing this, keep redistributing the wealth upward, keep turning Americans into indenture servants as long as they keep you afraid.

FOX news and The Moonies and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh work for the Koch Bros. They do their bidding and do it well. They've made you afraid of Mexicans who will steal your job because they are too lazy to work and want welfare (?????). Afraid of Muslim terrorists who are stalking your every move and murdering millions of American every year (!!!!!). Afraid of Blacks who are commiting genocide against cops (seriously). Afraid of gays who are forcing you to have hot gay sex (at least, they are forcing Lindsey Graham to have hot gay sex). Afraid of hippes and vegans. Afraid of atheists who will steal XMAS (we atheists are all very much like the grinch).

Stay afraid. Be terrified. Vote Trump (or Cruz, or Rubio, or Jeb! or any of the other corporate tools). Soon you can work 18 hour shifts to get company script to spend in the company store. Just do as you're told and follow the part line.

Piketty and the inequality of wealth

This article at Crooked Timber is a must read.

On the ideological front, several theories served to rationalized policy shifts in favor of increasing capital shares and top labor incomes. The stagflation of the 1970s was successfully blamed on Keynesian economics, fiscal irresponsibility, a bloated welfare state, militant labor unions, state regulation of the economy, and supposedly incentive-destroying high marginal tax rates on capital incomes and the rich. At the same time, the ideology of maximizing shareholder value took hold. Corporate executives who formerly lived merely like an especially comfortable middle class, and who gained prestige from sharing rents widely among corporate stakeholders, narrowed their focus to serving capital interests exclusively, and obtained compensation packages that tied their fates to that goal alone.

Elizabeth Anderson does a great job discussing the economic work of Piketty and dissecting the policies that lead to income inequality.

Democratic Socialism

Bernie Sanders is giving a big speech today explaining what he means when he says "Democratic Socialism". Vox has the full text. It is a must read.

And [Franklin D Roosevelt] acted. Against the ferocious opposition of the ruling class of his day, people he called economic royalists, Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty and restored their faith in government. He redefined the relationship of the federal government to the people of our country. He combatted cynicism, fear and despair. He reinvigorated democracy. He transformed the country.

And that is what we have to do today.

The Hot Links

Here they are, careful though, they are hot!

Race Baiting Asshole

Gay Doritos and the Best Troll Ever!

Trump's Sense of Decency

MSNBC has a sad

Media and the Economy

Birtherism isn't going away

Bernie Sanders on Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Thems the links, son.

The economy Sucks

They keep saying that the economy is great, but most of us don't feel it.

If your entire understanding of the economy comes from headlines about the latest economic data, you would be forgiven for thinking these are the best of times. The unemployment rate is down to 5.1 percent, after all!
If your entire understanding of the economy comes from what is going on in financial markets, you would be forgiven for thinking the same. The stock market, its recent dip notwithstanding, is still not far from all-time highs!
That’s what makes the latest annual data on incomes, released by the Census Bureau on Wednesday morning, an important corrective.
The median American household in 2014 had a lower income, in inflation-adjusted terms, than it did in 2013. The $53,657 the household in the middle of the income distribution earned last year was down 1.5 percent from the year before, though the census said that shift was not statistically significant.
But even if that drop is a statistical blip and you assume that middle-class incomes were really flat, flat isn’t anything to celebrate in the current environment. The 2014 real median income number is 6.5 percent below its 2007, pre-crisis level. It is 7.2 percent below the number in 1999.
A middle-income American family, in other words, makes substantially less money in inflation-adjusted terms than it did 15 years ago. And there is no evidence that is reversing. Those families lost ground in 2014. And as we’ve reported previously, the data on wages in 2015 so far does not suggest there is a meaningful acceleration on the way.

Why Americans think the economy sucks

Real dollar incomes have shrunk. Inflation is much higher than the official number. Saving money is actually just throwing it away (near zero interest in a world with effective inflation). The economy is a disaster.

Bernie Sanders Talks to the Xtians

Bernie Spoke at Liberty University.

"In my view there is no justice, and morality suffers, when in our country millions of children go to bed hungry," Sanders added. "That is not morality, and that, in my view, is not what America should be about." [...]"In my view there is no justice when thousand of Americans die every single year because they don't have any health insurance, and don't go to a doctor when they should," he said. "That is not justice. That is not morality. People should not be dying in the United States of America when they are sick."

His words should resonate with people who claim  to follow the fellow who was thought to say:

 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons^[a] of God.
 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Source

But, then they rarely seem to remember those parts of their book.

I am glad to see Senator Sanders appearing at places like this. We must carry the message to those who will not seek it out. If he moved one person in that room, then it was time well spent. Not to mention the fact that Bernie Sanders will be talked about in the media for this for days.

Go Bernie!

Sam Harris and Capitalism

I stumbled across Sam Harris' interesting article about the wealth gap in which he suggests a one time tax on truly massive fortunes to fund infrastructure and energy independence. Reading it I kept thinking "weak sauce, Sam". His heart is in the right place, but truly this suggestion is a bit like using chewing gum to repair a massive hole in a large dam. It's just too little by far to make any serious difference.  That being said, I was shocked to see the sort of response his suggestion brought.

This nation is fully brainwashed. We as a people are so heavily invested in supporting the the wealthy and powerful against our own self interest that we will rise up in anger at the mere suggestion that the plutocrats be asked to give lend even a hand to the betterment of society.

I should not be surprised. Capital has used its tools (Religion, the media, public policy) and it has warped our national ideals to the point that we as a people cannot see clear to act in our own self interest anymore.

We need a new media dedicated to telling the truth and to actually educating the people about economic principles. We need something to fight back against the Koch Cabal, and FOX News and the rest. We need it before it is too late.

and also

Superman is on our side, Batman is next

Thanks to VOX for this:

The key thing here is that Superman rebuts a skeptical argument about a public works project by saying it is a welfare program. He argues that these programs "help to protect the welfare of the community — and that means your welfare, too!"

 That's right, kids! Supes is a big old socialist lefty just like Berni Sanders and Me! Bite that, Republicans!

Couch Thing