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[kats]

Todd Loomis wrote on Tue, 14 December 2010 20:19

.  Ask society to chip in and provide a health care system like most of the rest of the world...  Na...  he just wants everything for free.  He ought to work for it.

Yet corporate welfare trumps them all.

Anyhow, I'm sorry to say this but you/we get what you deserve. We live in democracies and we chose our leaders. Unfortunately nobody wants to do the right thing, it's too hard and there's no spine. The sad thing is that the future of generations to come has been stolen. This is some serious bad karma, and the legacy is going to be one of the worst imaginable.

[mgod]

http://www.faireconomy.org/

[rjd2]

lots of young people are being birthed into an economy that doesn't really work on paradigms, in many fields. whoever said "every man for himself" is IMO pretty close to right. the young kids are going to fare much better than us because of this; they wont have to adapt, they just learn the game by the rules as its played currently.

as for the political stuff...

income disparity right now looks like it did in 1929. however, what would have happened if the new deal didnt kick in? (and WW2 to follow up?). we might find out this time. as i understand it, the post-war era was marked by the country coming off of a TRUE sense of collective purpose around WW2. people now dont feel a sense of collective purpose about iraq war, afghani war, or any other fucking war we're gonna start in the next 5 years. very different climate.

kats-all democracies arent the same. from my view, OUR representative democracy has been fractured(read-doesnt work) since at least i've been a voter. you mean we should have voted in the one of two parties that didnt push thru a bailout for the finance sector? or the party that actually pushed for a public option for health care?(76% of ppl wanted this) or the one that isnt trying to funnel 500B into a defense budget a year? that party doesnt exist as a viable option.

i for one am actually excited to see how americans react to their situation over the next few years.

[el duderino]

littlehat wrote on Tue, 14 December 2010 16:24

B- The new paradigm is this: Give your music away to consumers and live off of live performance, licensing, and merch money.

finally someone here says it. It's basically no different than the way it was before (assuming the artist knew enough about licensing and merch being lucrative, and got paid for live performances), except there is no money from record sales. sure, there could be, but odds are against it. and yes, they always have been against it, but not like now.

I think the best example of this is to look at what the top 40 was actually selling over periods of time. If you look, it is absurd what can be in the top 10 or 20 now compared to 15 years ago. comparing the sales is just ridiculous.

[Tidewater]

I went to show a guitar to Metallica. They were rolling on 17 semis. They had 11 motorcoaches. They were selling shirts for more than a custom tailored suit 10 years ago.

I can't recall the sound, or name, or hook of a single Metallica song in.. 20 years? That one sucked! oh no I can't stop it now..

thanks max

[Silvertone]

mgod wrote on Tue, 14 December 2010 18:42

Silvertone wrote on Tue, 14 December 2010 04:49 In real terms... pay down your debt and stock up on your firearms. Its pretty disturbing how many people I hear talking this way lately, people you'd never expect to be looking out for an upcoming revolution. I think the downtrodden were so used to it before the last Depression that they took it in stride - more of the same - but we had the benefit of the post-FDR nation. Now we are suffering the benefits of the post-Reagan nation. Its historically interesting to me that a lot of the American kids who created the world of contemporary music were largely educated under a 91% top tax rate.

I agree Larry.  I'm not a violent man by nature but I do come from an Italian heritage... so a "don't f*ck with mine and nobody gets hurt" mentality. I do believe "there's a war out there right now" of the people vs. the government, it just hasn't come to a head yet.  When it does we're really going to see how "commy" the US has become.  

People are just blinded by their everyday lives... when they are not able to make a living in the future, they'll have nothing to distract them and their eyes will open... then the shit will hit the fan.

Personally, I can't believe what I see everyday now. This was once a great proud country... between the media and our government we pretty much threw ourselves into the toilet... well or a certain regime that ran the country post 9/11 did.  Think how much better the US would have been if we spent all that "war money" in our own country.  Our leaders failed us prior to 9/11 and then used it as an excuse to ram-rod the American public into their own personal agenda...  who btw, bought it hook line and sinker. "We give up our freedom all in the name of a squeeky clean America".  

We are so screwed!

[MagnetoSound]

We did it here too, Larry. Perhaps not as fully, but it's still going that way.



Global

Corporatism

Sucks.

[kats]

rjd2 wrote on Tue, 14 December 2010 21:47

. kats-all democracies arent the same. from my view, OUR representative democracy has been fractured(read-doesnt work) since at least i've been a voter. you mean we should have voted in the one of two parties that didnt push thru a bailout for the finance sector? or the party that actually pushed for a public option for health care?(76% of ppl wanted this) or the one that isnt trying to funnel 500B into a defense budget a year? that party doesnt exist as a viable option. i for one am actually excited to see how americans react to their situation over the next few years.

No. Democracy doesn't work by voting once every four years and going to sleep. A citizen has to be constantly  politically active and up to speed on the issues. If you hold your representatives accountable it DOES work. But it is easier to say it is broken.

[trunkline]

Silvertone wrote on Wed, 15 December 2010 13:13

I do believe "there's a war out there right now" of the people vs. the government, it just hasn't come to a head yet.

There might be two or three wars going on unfortunately--I think we the people are currently divided and conquered.  If the teabaggers & the left-wing rabble ever decide (realize?) they have more in common with each other than with  their respective elected "representatives," then there will be trouble.  

Tom

[rjd2]

trunkline/tom-totally agree. well said. when lower-to-middle class americans feel they have more to lose by complacency than action, then we might see a groundswell of something.

re:whoever referenced the bush 2 admin/military budget-this didnt change a whole hell of a lot in his tenure. its actually peaked in 2010(on a dems' watch), but rep or dem, 1962-2010 doesnt show that huge of a relative spike anywhere:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S tates

chart on right midway down shows actual defense spending in inflation adjusted dollars. certainly doesnt look party-related.

kats wrote on Wed, 15 December 2010 13:56

No. Democracy doesn't work by voting once every four years and going to sleep. A citizen has to be constantly  politically active and up to speed on the issues. If you hold your representatives accountable it DOES work. But it is easier to say it is broken.

kats-i dont mean this facetiously, i want a "real answer" so to speak:

-for a citizen who votes in the primary election, mid-term election, all local elections, and calls their state rep to leave a message about their dissatisfaction with a bill/non-bill issue, what does "hold your representatives accountable" look like, in real terms?

does it look like someone taking an elected official hostage? "voting harder"? donating MORE to a campaign?  throwing a brick through a state reps window? calling more often? in real world terms-actions-i'd like to know what you think people arent going to do tomorrow when they wake up that they should be doing.

[kats]

The US congress has a 95% incumbency rate! What else need be said? But just for laughs I offer the following:

Throw the bums out. Then maybe read a book or two so you don't get suckered into the same BS soundbites the second time around. No point replacing bums with more bums.

The core issue is really the education system. Without a good one, democracy cannot work. Especially now that the electoral college ceases to function as originally intended.

[DarinK]

The one thing that might maybe possibly work is to leave the major parties & join the third parties, even though they will not actually win.  This could force the major parties to change their stances on some things in order to bring back the lost party members.  But it doesn't work if anyone who voted for Nader is called a traitor & blamed for Bush's election.  It's got to be a long-term effort, with the acceptance that some "spoiling" could happen in the meantime.  In other words, no "lesser of two evils" compromising can occur.
This is actually how the New Deal came about.  There was a real fear that the communists & socialists could gain true political power, so the Democrats moved to the left to stop this from happening.

[Les Ismore]

I live on Vancouver Island in BC Canada. We have a very interesting situation going on right now where the provincial government (right wing) lied about certain things (most things actually) including a new type of tax called the HST (the H stands for Harmonized, be afraid whenever you hear that word in politics). This tax is a combination of provincial sales tax and federal sales tax. But it makes a whole lot of things cost a whole lot more. Like a new house for instance. The sales tax on a new house is now 12% instead of 5%. Same on eating out, or any services.
Anyway we are now going through a "Recall" campaign where a certain percentage of registered voters sign a form and if there are enough signatures, the elected representative is recalled for not fulfilling his duties properly.
I would suggest that this is something that should be implemented everywhere. If they don't do what they said they were going to do or are dishonest, you recall them.

[Jay Kadis]

We had a recall in California a while back.  Got any other ideas?

[littlehat]

DarinK wrote on Wed, 15 December 2010 13:35

But it doesn't work if anyone who voted for Nader is called a traitor & blamed for Bush's election.  It's got to be a long-term effort, with the acceptance that some "spoiling" could happen in the meantime.  In other words, no "lesser of two evils" compromising can occur.

I don't think third party voters are traitors. I do think they are fools though. I also blame them for W's mistakes along with the 2000 supreme court.

I remember all the Naderites saying the other two candidates were the same.

Do you really think that now?

Do you really think we'd be in two wars and a recession right now if Gore had been elected?

"...some "spoiling""?
How about "some catastrophic global governmental failures"?

I agree that more political parties, a more fair electoral system transparency of elected official business, etc would be great.

BUT...

"Some spoiling" has already proven more than our planet can handle.