Tag: socialism

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   If you witness a state, county or town fireworks display this Independence Day, you have enjoyed the fruits of American socialism.

Social welfare, public programs and any service that is not performed to make a profit have often been sold to the uninformed, feeble minded and people who do not read books with big words as Socialism.  Why, everywhere you look there is socialism. From the public water fountain that does not require quarters to operate, to the fireworks going off over your head this evening, everywhere this Independence day you can find a small bit of what some people call “Socialism” free for your benefit and enjoyment.

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   That’s right.

   What an amazing country we live in!

   Help celebrate America’s rich social history with me below the fold.

This diary is prompted by Muskegon Critic’s “Yes, I Defend Obama” diary of Tuesday, and to a certain extent Budhydharma’s diary of that day and today’s diary about “the honeymoon.”  Here I am interested in how “moderate” memes work, as many of them seem unrelated to the concrete situations in which they are deployed.  My diary will quote a number of “moderate” memes as they have been used in commentary on DailyKos.com, and comment upon these quotes with the hopes of arriving at some productive criticism of our political discourse.

(Folks, I’m reposting this from Big Orange because I thought Edger needed to know about this….)

This brief diary is meant to summarize and to call attention to Barbara Ehrenreich’s piece of yesterday in Alternet (well OK with Bill Fletcher Jr.): “If We Are in the Death Spiral of Capitalism, Can We Start Using the “S” Word?”.  And, yeah, there’s going to be some analysis here too.  As Han Solo said in Episode VI: “Hey… it’s me!”

(crossposted at Big Orange)

The disparity in wealth in this country is obscene, and the failure to restrain the mindless and monumental greed that led to it has been our downfall.

The income of the 400 wealthiest Americans swelled in 2006, soaring nearly 23 percent from the previous year, to an average of $263 million, according to data released Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service. Since 1996, this group has nearly doubled its share of all income earned in the United States.

The top 400 paid just more than $18 billion in federal income taxes in 2006, or an average of $45 million, on a record $105 billion in total income – the lowest effective tax rate in the 15 years since the agency began releasing such data.

The New York Times

Original article, subtitled Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion fraud had a lot in common with the everyday workings of capitalism, says Alan Maass, via socialistworker.org:

THEY LINED up to give him their money because he always delivered. Big European banks, assorted hedge funds, super-rich philanthropists, sports moguls–they all flocked to Bernie Madoff’s investment firm because he produced stellar returns, year in and year out.

The world has become so inured to mass death, perhaps the following will merit little comment or outrage among our political punditry, even if the story did make the back pages of the New York Times.

A new Lancet study, “Mass privatisation and the post-communist mortality crisis,” confirms what has been known but little discussed in the past eight to ten years: millions of people, mostly men of employment age, died as a result of the effects of the “shock therapy” transition from a collectivized to a privatized economy in Russia and other formerly “communist” states in East Europe. According to the Times article, by 2007 “the life expectancy of Russian men was less than 60 years, compared with 67 years in 1985.”  

Original article, an editorial, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

In 1848 The Communist Manifesto opened with the line, “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. ” The spectre of Marx haunts world capitalism still.

Original article, by Neil Faulkner, via Socialistworker.org (UK):

The economic crisis that swept the globe in 2008 provoked debate about whether individual states or trade blocs could insulate themselves from the international turmoil through “protectionist” economic measures.