Deconstructing "Progressive " thought

[Rifleman62]

The Left are always Right.

Time never well spent discussing anything with the left.

 

[a_majoor]

To true R62. Despite mountains of documentary evidence across decades of time, we are expected to close our eyes or only look where the "narrative" points. (No one has ever disputed what Piven ACTUALLY said, its just "move along, nothing to see here". Raising loud distractions and misdirection to take attention away from the content relives them from having to actually debate the content.)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/clarices_pieces_she_wouldnt_ev.html

Clarice's Pieces: She Wouldn't Harm a Fly
By Clarice Feldman

Frances Fox Piven is a sociology professor who for four decades has advocated violent social upheaval as a means of effecting the radical change she believes in.  Her notion of appropriate change is quite obviously the displacement of the productive class and elected public leaders in favor of people like -- ahem -- herself.

This week, Glenn Beck called Piven out on her advocacy of violence.  In response, the New York Times, a group that has amusingly chosen to call itself the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the American Sociological Association have attacked Beck for daring to take her at her word.  Now, with Piven  exposed to a broader audience than usual as a firebrand who holds views dangerous to democratic life, her friends have dolled her up in widow's weeds  (her equally radical husband, Richard Cloward, died in  2001) and noted her age (78) to distract us from her work.

They want us to think, as did Psycho's Norman Bates channeling his long-dead mother, that "[t]hey'll  see and they'll know and they'll say, 'Why she wouldn't even harm a fly.'"

Stanley Kurtz at NRO; Ann Althouse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who has her own blog site; and the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto have taken the lead in this fight to expose Piven and her defenders.

In my opinion, they clearly have the better of it.

In the course of this brouhaha, it becomes apparent that leftist academics don't want to be and should not be taken seriously, that the cultural elite can dish out violent rhetoric but cannot take being called on it, that the NYT has blundered into another loser of an argument, and that people who want to waste their tuition money should major in sociology, which has obviously become the redoubt of clueless, revolutionary manqués.

Piven's battlefield was not the barricades, but rather a book she co-authored in 1977 and (twice now) the pages of The Nation, the magazine edited by a very wealthy woman who, along with  cloistered academics like Piven, somehow believes she speaks for the  dispossessed.

Piven and her husband took the first shot in a 1966 Nation article, "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty."  In this work, the couple advocated using the poor to so completely swamp the welfare system with demands that it would shock the Democratic Party into enacting major reforms.  Some have argued that this tactic so overwhelmed New York City and the state of New York that it bankrupted them.

In the following years, the pair added to their notion of overwhelming local welfare services the notion of greatly increasing the number of poor voters by motor voter registration laws, which most certainly have facilitated fraud, including the voting by illegal aliens and others statutorily ineligible to vote.  In effect, Cloward and Piven moved the target of forcing overwhelming demands on the system from welfare offices to election bureaus, seriously disrupting the election process.

Here is a picture of Cloward and Piven with then-President Clinton at the signing of the Motor Voter law.
In 1977, she and her husband wrote a book, which Kurtz summarizes:

    At the heart of the book, Cloward and Piven luxuriously describe instances of "mob looting," "rent riots," and similar disruptions, egged on especially by Communist-party organizers in the 1930s.  Many of those violent protests resulted in injuries.  A few led to deaths.  The central argument of Poor People's Movements is that it was not formal democratic activity but violent disruptions inspired by leftist organizers that forced the first great expansion of the welfare state.  Toward the end of the book, when Cloward and Piven describe their own work with the National Welfare Rights Organization, they treat the violent urban rioting of the Sixties as a positive force behind that era's expansion of the welfare state.

And there the ravings of Piven might have remained -- lost in the mists of history, her advocacy of concerted violently disruptive actions deliberately designed to make orderly democratic action harder, if not impossible, almost unknown to most of us.  Her unmistakable will to substitute her radical beliefs for the voters' more temperate ones and her chosen leaders for those democratically elected have not atrophied with old age, however.

On January 10, Piven authored yet another piece in The Nation, "Mobilizing the Jobless," which brought fresh scrutiny to her unremitting advocacy of radical, violent action.

    Before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. . . .

    An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

As the strikes in Greece to which Piven referred were violent, she most certainly was advocating violence.  Here is a contemporary description of those riots:

    Greece's fiscal crisis took a new turn to violence Wednesday when three people died in a firebomb attack amid a paralyzing national strike, while governments from Spain to the U.S. took steps to prevent the widening financial damage from hitting their own economies.[snip]

    Greece's 24-hour nationwide general strike brought much of the country to a standstill, closing government offices and halting flights, trains and ferries.

    At the same time, tens of thousands of protesters marched through Athens in the largest and most violent protests since the country's budget crisis began last fall. Angry youths rampaged through the center of Athens, torching several businesses and vehicles and smashing shop windows. Protesters and police clashed in front of parliament and fought running street battles around the city.

    Witnesses said hooded protesters smashed the front window of Marfin Bank in central Athens and hurled a Molotov cocktail inside. The three victims died from asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, the Athens coroner's office said. Four others were seriously injured there, fire department officials said.

Nevertheless, since Piven is one of theirs -- a part of the leftist cultural elite -- both the NYT and the American Sociological Association tried to deny that she had advocated violence.  In addition, the group which labels itself Center for Constitutional Rights -- although clearly it is not for free speech -- announced that Fox should muzzle Glenn Beck because of his "Misinformation Campaign Against [the] Progressive Professor."

Piven denied to the NYT that she advocated violence in the article.  It's hard to see how that defense stands up, unless she is saying that she didn't know what happened in Greece when she urged the American unemployed to take action "like the strikes and riots" there.

And as Taranto reports, the NYT's effort to suggest that Piven herself became the target of threats as a result of anything Beck did is without evidentiary basis.  All Beck did was report the truth of what she said.

Professor Althouse reserved her strongest blows for the American Sociological Association, which was outraged that a prole like Beck dared to question Piven.  In analyzing the association's high-minded but foolish letter of "outrage" directed at Beck, Althouse wraps up the argument for never taking the calls for debate from that association seriously.  It's clear honest debate over their colleague's statements is the last thing they want:

    So vigorous debate about Piven's ideas is really important, but it better be the right kind of debate by the right kind of people and most certainly not that terrible, terrible man Glenn Beck. She's very lofty and serious, so, while she should be challenged, she must be challenged only by lofty and serious individuals, and of course, Glenn Beck is not one. . . .

    Does lofty, serious, intellectual sociology involve looking at evidence and analyzing it rationally? Linking the Tucson massacre to hot political rhetoric was a rash mistake made by demagogues - you want to talk about demagogues?! - demagogues who were slavering over the prospect of a right-wing massacre that would prove politically useful. . .

    So Piven should not have called for "something like" Greek-style riots, and it was good of Glenn Beck to point out that Piven crossed the line, right? I mean, we're dedicating ourselves to serious, undistorted analysis here. That's what you said you wanted, didn't you?

    Sociology does not enjoy an especially elevated reputation in the academy, and the American Sociological Association provides an object lesson in why that is. And these people can take anything except rational examination of their arguments.

In sum, this was another week in which the media and cultural elites acted stupidly and were called on it.  Twice in a row now they've tried to paint their opposition as violent thugs only to be revealed themselves as snobbish poseurs, projecting their own thuggish urges onto others.  It was another week in which those living off the productive labor of others deride those others, try to undermine them, and are in the process undermining the very society which  makes it possible for such foolish poseurs to live in comfort.

 

[Redeye]

And her detractors, such as yourself, are going to have to deal with the fact that people do like her. A lot of people.

Yep, people do.  About 20% of the American population in a poll I read not too long ago.  And what's even better is that the more she talks, the more she acts the way she does, the further she gets from any actual shot at power and influence.  That's why I'm really enjoying the "Democrats for Palin" movement I've seen start up (mainly as a social media joke), because the harder she tries, the better Obama's chances for a second term look.

 

[Redeye]

So politicians using words like "target" a district for voters to upend an incumbent is hateful and violent rhetoric, while calling for Governor Palin to be beheaded because "no one would miss her" should be treated as a joke?

Actually, I have no problem with "targeting" a district, not at all.  I've seen the Palin poster blamed initially for the shooting, and it was pretty innocuous in and of itself, and I think the counterswing is going a little ridiculous with political correctness.  However, when I listen to rhetoric spouted by so many on the right, whether it's Glenn "Shoot them in the head" Beck talking about some insidious conspiracy to bring violent revolution to America, or Sharron "Second Amendment Remedies" Angle saying - well - all sorts of stupid things, I start to worry about the aggregate effects.  This sort of thing is not productive discourse, it in no way moves the political process forward, and it distracts from any real discussion of how to fix the myriad of very real problems that are faced by the USA - by Canada even (though I think we do a much better job of a civil discussion here), etc.

Legal scholars can argue what the exact definition of calling for an identifiable living person to be murdered is.  If there were people publicly calling for Redeye to be beheaded because "no one would miss him", I doubt you would take or treat this as a "joke".

As far as a comment in a play in a tiny town in Montana, I don't think any legal scholar would try to advance the argument that it was anything other than humor.  Tasteless humour, perhaps, to some - but in no way an actual incitement.  What's presented in the context of a show on a "news network" is a little different, though.  Hence my bellylaugh at the depths people will sink to find moral equivalency.

I think you've just summed yourself up.

I haven't even warmed up yet.

(quickly edited to fix quotes, and flesh out my last para a bit better)

 

[Rifleman62]

------------ thought you were Trolling and noted "Once again you attack the left without attacking the arguement. The same could be said for the right, blah blah blah." about your post titled Re: Deconstructing \\\"Progressive \\\" thought.

Why, thanks for the -100 points again.

 

[a_majoor]

Sometimes, indoctrination can backfire:

http://spinassassin.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-first-encounter-with-progressive.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SpinAssassin+%28Spin+Assassin%29

My First Encounter With A Progressive

A couple of weeks ago I was scandalized but not surprised to read about a Quebec child that was punished because his parents put his lunch in a plastic ziplock bag.  It’s the expected result of the eco-religion’s ascension but no less frightening and appalling for being so easily predicted.  Hysteria coupled with righteous zeal is not new after all.  We’ve seen it again and again, from dogmatic institutionalization and oppression all the way to rejection and rebellion.

It reminded me of my own experiences with progressives growing up in a Catholic school in Ontario.  None of it was earth shattering or newsworthy, but it stands out to me like a first kiss.  It was my first encounter with progressive social engineering. 

I was your average kid.  I loved taking books out of the school library.  There was a book about volcanoes that I must have taken out six times.  It had some amazing pictures of billowing smoke and fire.  Most of them were picture books with at most a paragraph of explanation on each page.  It was a kids library after all and I was in the first grade. 

It was the time of the “save the whales” craze.  I used to wake up at dawn on Saturday mornings to watch Oceans Alive.  I can still hum the theme song and I knew all about whales.  Killer Whales especially.  They were on par with sharks being fearsome, deadly and impressive.

One day we were talking about saving the whales in class.  We listed off all the whales and I was jumping out of my seat to say my favourite one.  Finally it was my turn.  “Killer Whales,” I shouted, being very pleased that I had also found a way to shout killer in class. 

That was not going to fly in Mrs. Progressive’s Grade 1 class.  There was no such thing as a Killer Whale.
I was dumbfounded.  Teachers know everything.  How could my teacher not know about Killer Whales?  I had been to MarineLand.  I watch Oceans Alive.  I’ve read the books in the library of this very school!  Now the ‘smart’ (obedient) girls are shaking their heads at me while I describe a Killer Whale.

“That’s an Orca,” Mrs. Progressive corrected, feigning ignorance. 

No it isn’t and I said so.  I refused to accept it.  I told her she was wrong and I would prove it.
I went to the library at recess and found the appropriate book all about Killer Whales.  That might have been the title of the book in fact: Killer Whales.  I brought it back to show her and she wouldn’t look at it.  She would not accept the animal’s name.  She told me the book was wrong.

I knew better, but I stopped thinking about Killer Whales.  I tried to figure out Mrs. Progressive instead and I think I got it.  She really liked whales.  She wanted to save them and didn’t want to think they were mean killers.  She was trying to change the truth so that I would act differently.

This blew my mind.  My dad thought it was funny.  She told the whole class a lie to save whales.  She tried to trick us into saving the whales when we would have all been happy to save them, even the killing ones (they all kill). 

That was my first encounter with a progressive.  I didn’t know what they were back then and she probably didn’t either.  She probably would have been offended.  I also remember the day Brian Mulroney was elected.  She sat us in a circle and announced it as if the Pope had passed on.  That was also the first time I’d ever heard of elections and I asked if that was a good or bad thing that Mulroney had won.  She wouldn’t say, which meant she thought it was bad.  She would have said it was good if she thought so.

How many years have we lived with people like this?  -People who lie for their interpretation of the greater good.  –People who work their way into the bureaucracy and into public office so that they can shepherd us poor dummies around and look after us.  We can’t be trusted with our own money or we’ll spend it on beer and popcorn and end up homeless.  The facts?  Oh no.  We can’t have those because we’ll make the wrong conclusions. 

They constantly think they are smarter than the free market, that billions of minds processing their micro-economic decisions in parallel are less efficient than just a few powerful elites.  What arrogance.  What ignorance.    What great folly is the progressive worldview.  Progressivism is an enabling fallacy, a delusion, that allows people to pretend they are smarter than the masses and necessarily rule over them and overrule their dreams and hopes.

The good news is that the truth eventually gets out, especially the truth about nature and culture.  The Killer Whale incident kindled the flame of skepticism in me.  I knew from then on that some people will lie to themselves and everyone else to try and make a delusion real.  The poor kid whose parents committed an eco-sin, will remember that forever.  So will countless kids who don’t make the newspapers.  Nowhere is the green brainwashing stronger than in the schools.  They will all grow up ashamed of killing the world and they will rebel.  One fine sunny day they will cast aside the false guilt and fear.  They will laugh at the hysteria of their elders because it really is hysterical.  They will be free.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>I start to worry about the aggregate effects.

Why?  If the eight-year collective temper tantrum over the election and re-election of GW Bush didn't trigger mass firefights in the streets, nothing is likely to.  And to judge by events of the past couple of weeks, the centre-left/left's timeout for civility is over.

 

[Redeye]

>I start to worry about the aggregate effects.

Why?  If the eight-year collective temper tantrum over the election and re-election of GW Bush didn't trigger mass firefights in the streets, nothing is likely to.  And to judge by events of the past couple of weeks, the centre-left/left's timeout for civility is over.

What events are those?

Right now I'm trying to understand that "Tea Party" outrage at unions standing up to "Big Government" in Wisconsin trying to take away their rights to bargain collectively, when those unions have a) already negotiated concessions to help WI balance its budget and b) seem to have been willing to sit down to talk more.  What I don't get is that teabaggers (I used that term because they applied it as a label to themselves oblivious to its other meaning, which is shining example of the ignorance many I've seen/engaged with display) are standing up for government trying to crack down on people exercising their rights.  It makes little sense until you realize that few of them really think for themselves, and weakening organized labour is a fairly clear objective of the Astroturf organizations that fund their "grassroots" movement.

I generally have little time or patience for unions.  Having lived for a while in Oshawa and watched the CAW basically bargain their members out of jobs while making rather ridiculous claims about what the real problems were (like blaming South Korean laws for not being able to export Oshawa-built cars to the ROK, where there is no market for them laws or not), defending those who should be sacked and so on, I have little patience most of the time for their concerns.  However, I find the idea of government scapegoating unions for all their woes to be contemptible as well, and thus I'm glad they are standing up.  In the new America post "Citizens United" where corporations now basically can pour unlimited amounts of money into the political process with relative anonymity, only unions have the clout to counterbalance that.  What a tragic state of affairs indeed.

 

[cybercheck]

Those who oppose the Tea Party and conservatives in America are aware that the liberal government cannot uplift them from dire poverty because they know they remain salaried employees after a left revolution. But that is what they have been inculcating to their kids that their lot will improve for the better. It is good if they are not only wrong and they made a mistake in assessing the rewards of a leftist revolution. But they deliberately 'do not want to consider the truth' because they are just ultimate evil. Look how incorrigible Obaama is. The whole world knows all his misdeeds (against American national security), he still has the gall to discredit the political Right...I do not like to offend people but that is the truth..Less taxes means more investments..More investments means more employment and revenues..More revenues means more welfare..It is axiomatic..

 

[Redeye]

Well, when they realize it was conservative ideas that put them into poverty in the first place and makes it hard for them to actually lift themselves out, you'll find few people actually accept that logic.

:facepalm:

The "less taxes = more revenue" claim, which is backed by a model called the "Laffer Curve" doesn't actually stack up with history.  And given that America is presently beyond broke, it's not an option.  To the extent that the Laffer Curve model holds any water, it's all about the location on the curve what impact tax changes have to national revenue.  Arguable conservatives believe they're on one side of the parabola, liberals the other.  I tend to take the liberal view given empirical evidence.  The Bush tax cuts, for example, neither increased national revenue, nor did they have any really identifiable impact on economic growth.  They did, however, dramatically worsen the US Budget position, particularly once the Dems took Congress in 2006 and forced Iraq War spending (which had, as I understand it, been kept "off the books" to be accounted for.

The rhetorical idea of a "left revolution" is utter nonsense.  What is described as "the left" in the US are barely left of centre in any conventional assessment when put in a global context.  The idea of wanting to put the brakes on healthcare cost inflation by reforming insurance is hardly a far left idea.  Nor is it revolutionary to believe that the rich getting richer while the poor make no progress is probably bad for a nation in the long run.

The fact is neither "side" (and claiming there are just two "sides" is stupid to begin with) has all the answers to fix the problems the USA - or by extension the rest of the world face - but it seems like there's almost nowhere to start when people like me - who sit pretty much in the middle and wouldn't mind hearing a constructive discussion - can't get anywhere because the debate is dominated by nonsense (like your post, cybercheck, which contains a lot of words but really says not much of anything of substance), or worse, is skewed by propaganda which shifts discussions from real issues to complete BS.

To actually face their problems, it's going to take a mixture of a few things - reforming the tax system to increase revenues in some way as to not impede growth, and formidable spending cuts which will include the sacred cow that is the military.  You'll also need to look at major reforms to entitlement programs, but it doesn't seem like either side of the spectrum has any interest in a realistic discussion on that... hence they don't really get anywhere but deeper in debt.

Those who oppose the Tea Party and conservatives in America are aware that the liberal government cannot uplift them from dire poverty because they know they remain salaried employees after a left revolution. But that is what they have been inculcating to their kids that their lot will improve for the better. It is good if they are not only wrong and they made a mistake in assessing the rewards of a leftist revolution. But they deliberately 'do not want to consider the truth' because they are just ultimate evil. Look how incorrigible Obaama is. The whole world knows all his misdeeds (against American national security), he still has the gall to discredit the political Right...I do not like to offend people but that is the truth..Less taxes means more investments..More investments means more employment and revenues..More revenues means more welfare..It is axiomatic..

 

[cybercheck]

I admit I am not an authority because I only finished university with biology as major. Lee Kwan Yew is the most important economic adviser US now has. He turned a country named Singapore which was threatened with Leftist and communist subversion into a paradise. He opened the economy to foreign investments. Cut taxes and banned trade unions. Now they are the envy of European nations which are burdened with debt. Singapore has a 40 billion dollar surplus. Taiwan is another example with a 20 billion surplus. Welfare checks are now overflowing in the two countries plus they enjoy budget surpluses. They follow the dictum: less taxes lead to more investments; more investments lead to more employment and revenues; more revenues tend toward more welfare.

Obama does intend to radically overhaul the whole American economy to socialism (not communism). Universal health care or Obama care is a feature of socialist. Good that the Conservatives and Tea partiers were able to repeal his Obama care.

Why not consult Lee Kwan Yew..or rather why not Dalton McGuinty seek advise from Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore..?

Bill Clinton earned 700 billion dollars as surplus after the Cold war..because Congress was dominated by Conservatives..He was not able to table heavy progressive taxation in Congress.

 

[Redeye]

I admit I am not an authority because I only finished university with biology as major. Lee Kwan Yew is the most important economic adviser US now has. He turned a country named Singapore which was threatened with Leftist and communist subversion into a paradise. He opened the economy to foreign investments. Cut taxes and banned trade unions. Now they are the envy of European nations which are burdened with debt. Singapore has a 40 billion dollar surplus. Taiwan is another example with a 20 billion surplus. Welfare checks are now overflowing in the two countries plus they enjoy budget surpluses. They follow the dictum: less taxes lead to more investments; more investments lead to more employment and revenues; more revenues tend toward more welfare.

Singapore isn't particularly good economy to compare with America's, I wouldn't think.  Infrastructure costs in what amounts to a city-state are remarkably different for a start.  Further, things like "banning trade unions" would run afoul of something called "The Bill of Rights" in the States, so that's pretty much a non-starter.  As for Taiwan, I'm not an expert on their economy, but I suspect an export-based economy focused on comparatively cheap labour helped quite a bit, and that's not something that the USA can emulate either.

Obama does intend to radically overhaul the whole American economy to socialism (not communism). Universal health care or Obama care is a feature of socialist. Good that the Conservatives and Tea partiers were able to repeal his Obama care.

Two points here.  First of all, a system of healthcare reform which essentially delivers more clients to a private, for profit insurance market isn't exactly something I'd call "socialist".  Universal healthcare is a feature of all other industrialized countries in the world, and several non-industrialized ones as well, delivered through a variety of means using a mix of public and private sector providers.  No two countries use the same system.  Second, I don't know how much you know about how US politics works, but the Tea Party accomplished absolutely nothing with their repeal bill.  Why?  Well, it won't pass in the Senate, which won't even waste their time on it, and even if some how it did, the President of the United States enjoys something called a veto, and to expect that he would sign a bill repealing what he hopes will be his greatest accomplishment is laughable.  In fact, as Teabagger nutcase Michele Bachmann was recently schooled on, they can't even carry out their fallback plan of defunding it effectively.  So since the Republicans triumphantly retook the House, they have done nothing to create jobs, nothing to help the US economy recover, they really have done nothing at all notable toward what Americans want them to do, and I suspect voters will remember that in 2012.

Sidenote: yesterday the House of Representatives defunded Planned Parenthood, an organization that delivers a wide array of healthcare services to people - including many young Americans - which will have a number of highly expensive effects for the US down the road in all probability.  They do, however, continue to fund NASCAR.  Figure that one out and get back to me.

Bill Clinton earned 700 billion dollars as surplus after the Cold war..because Congress was dominated by Conservatives..He was not able to table heavy progressive taxation in Congress.

Nor did he have any plans to - he didn't need to because tax rates were reasonable and the economy was growing.  Know what else he also didn't do?  Start a foreign war based entirely on lies that cost the US Treasury into the billions while simultaneously slashing taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans, in a move that proved the Laffer Curve model doesn't work.  That, of course, was Bush.

 

[Kirkhill]

.... the debate is dominated by nonsense (like your post, cybercheck, which contains a lot of words but really says not much of anything of substance....

 

[Edward Campbell]

I admit I am not an authority because I only finished university with biology as major. Lee Kwan Yew is the most important economic adviser US now has. He turned a country named Singapore which was threatened with Leftist and communist subversion into a paradise. He opened the economy to foreign investments. Cut taxes and banned trade unions. Now they are the envy of European nations which are burdened with debt. Singapore has a 40 billion dollar surplus. Taiwan is another example with a 20 billion surplus. Welfare checks are now overflowing in the two countries plus they enjoy budget surpluses. They follow the dictum: less taxes lead to more investments; more investments lead to more employment and revenues; more revenues tend toward more welfare.

Obama does intend to radically overhaul the whole American economy to socialism (not communism). Universal health care or Obama care is a feature of socialist. Good that the Conservatives and Tea partiers were able to repeal his Obama care.

Why not consult Lee Kwan Yew..or rather why not Dalton McGuinty seek advise from Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore..?

Bill Clinton earned 700 billion dollars as surplus after the Cold war..because Congress was dominated by Conservatives..He was not able to table heavy progressive taxation in Congress.

The person Lee Kuan Yew advises most often (they have, at least, annual private sessions) is Hu Jintao. Lee did several smart things: foremost amongst them was preserving and strengthening the established institutions like courts so that the very conservative democracy that exists there can function in a way that ensures that Singapore is always listed amongst the top few "most honest" countries. Lee believed in protecting all the fundamental rights: life, liberty, conscience and property.

Lee's ideas cannot, as Redeye suggested, be taken up, hollus bollus, by America because it is a liberal democracy and 'rights' (like association and assembly), which do not exist in conservative Singapore, are important to Americans (and Canadians).

Singapore works; no question abut that; but it works in that place for those people. Drop kick Christianity, for example, out through the goal posts of North America and replace it with Confucian values (and then do hundreds of other equally outrageous things) and the Singapore model might work here.

 

[a_majoor]

Ann Althouse receives a death threat for posting a video of Wisconson unionized government workers at a protest rally (when they were supposed to be on the job); more civility at work:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-receive-at-threat-whoever-video-taped.html

I receive a threat: "whoever video taped this has no life and needs to be shot in the head."

That's a comment on my YouTube video about the salt trucks that circled the Wisconsin Capitol yesterday, blowing horns, apparently in support of the protesters. (I blogged the video here.)

Coincidentally, last night, one of my readers sent this email to the Madison Street Superintendent:

    I work in Madison, so I was delighted to read on madison.com this morning that the snow plows were out "the moment" precipitation began today.

    You might want to double check whether those plows were pouring salt, however, or whether the drivers were more interested in showing their support for anti-Walker ralliers:

    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/madison-city-salt-trucks-circle-capitol.html

The Street Superintendent responded:

    I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention. While it was necessary with the storm system we had yesterday to have crews working the overtime to be salting and plowing our main streets, we never should have had the trucks involved in the rally around the Capitol.

    We are checking our GPS and determining the what operators were involved and will be dealing with this.

    While people are free to rally and support whatever cause they believe in, it should not be done at the expense of the taxpayers such as you and I.

    I thank you again,

    Al Schumacher
    Street Superintendent
    1501 W. Badger Rd.
    Madison, WI 53713
    (608) 266-4681

    aschumacher@cityofmadison.com

Props to the Supervisor for his response; we will see how effective his action will be and if it can stick.

 

[Redeye]

Oooh an anonymous YouTube comment.  I forgot, right wing nuts in the US never ever do things like that.

:facepalm:

That said, the supervisor's reponse seems to be the right one - though it's hardly surprising to me that other public workers would join in to show some support.

Governor Walker's position, for those who haven't been following the story, is rather ridiculous.  The "budget crisis" he is on about is hardly the mess he'd like everyone to think it is.  And he obviously didn't think it was serious enough to stop him from signing into law $3.8 billion in tax cuts which are almost entirely aimed at the wealthiest people in Wisconsin, not the middle class. (Source: http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/blog/2010/10/walker-pledges-nearly-4-billion-in-tax-cuts-to-wealthiest-as-gap-between-rich-poor-widens-to-the-lar.html).  It is true that these cuts aren't the cause of Wisconsin's budget woes, but when you couple them with the fact that the public sector unions have signalled - repeatedly - that they are willing to make some pretty dramatic concessions in terms of pay & benefits, it becomes clear that none of this has anything to do with money.

It has everything to do with an effort by the Right in the USA to very strategically target the sources of funding and organization for the Democratic Party.  The implications of that for democracy are rather disturbing indeed, regardless of where you sit on any spectrum.

A few days ago, I wish I had the link, someone posted an article about the hallmarks of fascist regimes.  The similiarities in policies and points of view to some of the more extreme positions of the GOP - including those that are attracting funding from the likes of the Kochs - are chilling.

Ann Althouse receives a death threat for posting a video of Wisconson unionized government workers at a protest rally (when they were supposed to be on the job); more civility at work:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-receive-at-threat-whoever-video-taped.html

Props to the Supervisor for his response; we will see how effective his action will be and if it can stick.

 

[Rifleman62]

A Blog: http://www.norcalblogs.com/gate/2011/02/obama-administration-creating-fake-supporters-online-via-social-networks-to-fool-americans.php

Obama Administration Creating Fake Supporters Online Via Social Networks To Fool Americans

Another Blog: http://f2bbs.com/bbs/show_topic/366870

Obama Adminstration Creates 'Fake People' on Social Networks to Promote Propaganda'

And there are others. Don't know if there is a project to create fake people or not, but I thought I would post it anyway. Obama with a billion bucks could finance it, or the administration could use "black" funds for the project.

I do have a suspicion that the name is Project Scarletstare

 

[Redeye]

Oh, oops:

http://www.marktalk.com/blog/2011/02/20/fight-the-seiu-with-tactic-they-use-against-us-this-week/

(Except Mark doesn't seem to have any example of this actually being used "against him".)

Do the morons who write those blogs expect that people won't dig into their claims?  The "Persona Management System" RFP was from the US Air Force.  Where, exactly, does the claim that this is going to be some great big propaganda tool come from?  Maybe a recruiting tool for the Air Force?

If there was some such plot (which, any fool should be able to see, is laughable), why would it be done through a public tender through the USAF?  Surely there are better ways to go about doing something like that.

There's a reason I tend to dismiss the opinions of bloggers (regardless of what they might be), and it's shown well here - because their claims are usually absolute shyte.

A Blog: http://www.norcalblogs.com/gate/2011/02/obama-administration-creating-fake-supporters-online-via-social-networks-to-fool-americans.php

Obama Administration Creating Fake Supporters Online Via Social Networks To Fool Americans

Another Blog: http://f2bbs.com/bbs/show_topic/366870

Obama Adminstration Creates 'Fake People' on Social Networks to Promote Propaganda'

And there are others. Don't know if there is a project to create fake people or not, but I thought I would post it anyway. Obama with a billion bucks could finance it, or the administration could use "black" funds for the project.

I do have a suspicion that the name is Project Scarletstare

 

[Haletown]

Governor Walker's position, for those who haven't been following the story, is rather ridiculous.  The "budget crisis" he is on about is hardly the mess he'd like everyone to think it is.  And he obviously didn't think it was serious enough to stop him from signing into law $3.8 billion in tax cuts which are almost entirely aimed at the wealthiest people in Wisconsin, not the middle class. (Source: http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/blog/2010/10/walker-pledges-nearly-4-billion-in-tax-cuts-to-wealthiest-as-gap-between-rich-poor-widens-to-the-lar.html). 

Now there's an unbiased organization who we can trust to unbiased, to never torque a story, twist a tale and yell into the union's echo chamber.

We can only hope Canada will eventually grow some politicians like Walker & Christie in NJ who will take on the bloat and waste in our multiple layers of coddled public services.

Wisconsin is going to a watershed moment in President Community Organizer's time in office. His true colors as a radical unionista are being exposed and his political flanks are already being hacked at in Congress.

He can give all the hopey-changey speeches he likes.  But he no longer controls the American wallet, or more specifically, the American VISA card.

His time has passed, all he can do now is continue to obfuscate and tap dance on the  head of his radical political agenda he hid from the American people in the election campaign.

Americans are on to him now.  And to the fat cat public sector unions who, like famous Canadian Liberals, believe deep in their greedy, cold hearts they are entitled to their entitlements.

 

[Rifleman62]

Not Canadian politics, though tied in, and to add to previous post: