Check the link in my comment.

For those who don't get the ire many of us have towards advertising and branding, I'd recommend Naomi Klein's book No Logo.

Good talk NR. I'm not convinced.... there are cabinet appointments, etc. he's made that make me not trust him, but I am listening. Ob's speech a couple days ago has me wondering you've got a direct line to him or something.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
>> ^Truckchase:

I know where you're coming from and I don't disagree with your logic, but I'm not gonna get out there and campaign for or vocally support Obama because I do think his administration is still heavily corrupted by (mainly) the financial industry. As you point out he's not nearly as bad as the repubs, so unless by some miracle Buddy Roemer gets any real traction I'll most likely be voting for Obama and running from the polling place in a ankle length trench coat and hat like a family man from 1974 escaping the newsstand with a smut rag.

Oy, Buddy Roemer? The problem with Buddy Roemer is that he seems to think his becoming President is the only/main way to fix the problem with money in politics. Never mind that the biggest problem with campaign finance law is that a) Republicans always oppose it and b) the Supreme Court has deemed real campaign finance law unconstitutional.

The answer to that is a Constitutional Amendment, not giving Buddy Roemer the potential ability to appoint SCOTUS judges, especially since he'd only get to replace liberals in a 2013-2017 term, not roadblocks like Thomas, Scalia, or Roberts.

I personally don't think silent support is good enough. I'm gonna be out campaigning for Obama nice and loud. I'm especially going to be pushing back against what I see as crazy misinformation, like the story Cenk is pushing here.

Once you strip away the misinformation, the only legitimate liberal complaints I've heard about Obama boil down to "he didn't do enough to make things better" as opposed to "he made something worse". People seem to have rather quickly forgotten the width and breadth of the damage done by Bush and a Republican congress.

Most people just remember the wars, the Patriot Act, and the tax cuts. Fewer people remember the US Attorneys scandal, fewer people remember the way he gutted the SEC, put the EPA on hold, sabotaged the FEC, tried to gut the FCC, turned the NLRB into a union-busting department, and so on. It was a nonstop deluge of sabotage, fraud, and abuse that just went on and on relentlessly for eight fucking years.

It grates me that it's only partially and often only temporarily being undone by Obama, but now those low-publicity nitty-gritty detail stories are almost universally good ones.

The choice isn't really one of a "lesser of two evils" it's a choice between empowering an enemy who's sworn to destroy everything you hold dear, or empowering a friend who's let you down. I see this as a choice between feckless and imperfect good, or pure, ruthless evil.

>> ^Truckchase:

I know where you're coming from and I don't disagree with your logic, but I'm not gonna get out there and campaign for or vocally support Obama because I do think his administration is still heavily corrupted by (mainly) the financial industry. As you point out he's not nearly as bad as the repubs, so unless by some miracle Buddy Roemer gets any real traction I'll most likely be voting for Obama and running from the polling place in a ankle length trench coat and hat like a family man from 1974 escaping the newsstand with a smut rag.

Oy, Buddy Roemer? The problem with Buddy Roemer is that he seems to think his becoming President is the only/main way to fix the problem with money in politics. Never mind that the biggest problem with campaign finance law is that a) Republicans always oppose it and b) the Supreme Court has deemed real campaign finance law unconstitutional.

The answer to that is a Constitutional Amendment, not giving Buddy Roemer the potential ability to appoint SCOTUS judges, especially since he'd only get to replace liberals in a 2013-2017 term, not roadblocks like Thomas, Scalia, or Roberts.

I personally don't think silent support is good enough. I'm gonna be out campaigning for Obama nice and loud. I'm especially going to be pushing back against what I see as crazy misinformation, like the story Cenk is pushing here.

Once you strip away the misinformation, the only legitimate liberal complaints I've heard about Obama boil down to "he didn't do enough to make things better" as opposed to "he made something worse". People seem to have rather quickly forgotten the width and breadth of the damage done by Bush and a Republican congress.

Most people just remember the wars, the Patriot Act, and the tax cuts. Fewer people remember the US Attorneys scandal, fewer people remember the way he gutted the SEC, put the EPA on hold, sabotaged the FEC, tried to gut the FCC, turned the NLRB into a union-busting department, and so on. It was a nonstop deluge of sabotage, fraud, and abuse that just went on and on relentlessly for eight fucking years.

It grates me that it's only partially and often only temporarily being undone by Obama, but now those low-publicity nitty-gritty detail stories are almost universally good ones.

The choice isn't really one of a "lesser of two evils" it's a choice between empowering an enemy who's sworn to destroy everything you hold dear, or empowering a friend who's let you down. I see this as a choice between feckless and imperfect good, or pure, ruthless evil.

I read the wiki article you posted, it says the opposite of what you suggest. That pre-1980, they had no ability to generate policy...they just gathered information. Do you have a link to something that talks about the freemarkety nature in the 80s?, because that link doesn't have it. Unless you are just talking about Regan doing free market stuff on the whole affecting education somehow indirectly, but the link clearly says he made it a federal government responsibility to create educational policy in the 80s. In that, I don't know that your argument fully answers @Grimm's claim that educational stardards have gone down since federal policy making has been done. We aren't talking about free markets here, even at the state level. We are talking about who makes better policies affecting children's education; federal or state. It has also been of my opinion that for important things, eggs in one basket methodologies are dangerous. Best to have a billion little educational experiments boiling around the country, cooking up information that the rest of them can turn around and use. Waiting for a federal mandate to adopt a policy can be rather tedious.

I have some friends that are educators, I will have to ask them how they feel about this. It is easy for us to have an opinion based on raw idealism of our core beliefs, but I would be interested to see what certain teachers have to say. I met a real interesting person at my friends bachelor party. He came from a union state, and moved down here to Texas, we have teachers unions and things, but they aren't as powerful as the north. He experienced a complete change in himself. He found that his own involvement in his union happened in such a way where he basically held the kids education hostage over wages. He said that is was basically the accepted role of teachers to risk children's education over pay. I am not talking about just normal pay, but he was making 50k as a grade school teacher in the early 90s. Not suggesting this is normal, but it is something we don't copy here in Texas. As for his own mind, he knows he would never teach in that area of the country again, and would never suggest anyone move their that values their children's education.

What would be interesting to me is if the absence of the DOE would break down some of the red tape and allow schools to "get creative" with programs a federal political body might not want to take a risk on. Education is to important to fail on, and applying "to big to fail" kind of logic to a failing system of education is to much politics to play for me. Empower teachers and schools, and try to avoid paying as many non-educators as possible would be one way to improve things I would wager. What aspect of the DOE do you think is successful that we need to keep exactly? I mean, I can tell you I don't like that the DOD is so huge and powerful, but I know nuclear subs and aircraft carriers can't operate themselves. What necessarily component of the DOE do you see as necessarily, beyond just talking point of either party line stance of it? I mean, the Department of Energy's main goal was to get us off foreign oil, like a long time ago, that is pretty failed as much as the DOE. Different approach needed, or a massive rethinking of the current one. You don't usually get massive rethinking nationally of any coherent nature, which is why I think a local strategy might be a good way to go here. Perhaps then, you could have that initial part of the DOE before it became the DOE of providing information to schools about what works from other schools kick in again.

This kind of talk of "Ron Paul addresses none of this" about something that isn't related exactly isn't really fair. It is like trying to talk about income tax issues and saying changing them doesn't address the issue of the military war machine...well of course not, it is a different issue. Did you see that recent Greewald video where he talks about the founders did think that massive inequality was not only permissible, but the idea...just as long as the rules were the same for everyone? What I mean to say is that there does need to be a measure of fairness, but that fairness needs to be the same for everyone, rich and poor. I still say the real problem lay in the government creating the monster first and the monster is now eating us. If legislators simply refused to accept the legitimacy of corporate entities and instead say that only individuals can deal on the behalf of themselves with the govenrment(the elimination of the corporate charter as it refers to its relationship to the government) things could get better in a day. But since the good ol USA thinks that non-people entities are people, well, I don't see much hope for restoration. Money is the new government, rule of law is dead. I liked the recent Greenwald input on this. Rant over Sorry, this is just kind of stream of consciousness here, didn't plan out an actual goal or endpoint of my ideas....just a huge, burdensome wall of text

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education
1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.
We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealthy to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)
Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education
1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.
We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealthy to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)
Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).


Well said sir, in my view no department is inherently bad or good, the value of the department depends on who is running it, how it is used and how policies governing the department are made. If the Department of Education is causing harm to the education of students then this could be fixed by resolving the underlying issue which is one of corrupt policy making. Look at Bill Gates for example, he's playing his part to destroy and privatize the education system so he can have Windows on every school computer and influence the public education budget. He's allowed to do this because of policy changes and enormous amounts of lobbying money (which go hand in hand).

Here's an interesting read about some of the sweeping changes he's been able to introduce via lobbying:
http://techrights.org/2011/09/09/new-york-times-and-washpo-on-edu/

Plus of course all the other issues dystopianfuturetoday mentions - these won't go away just by removing a couple of departments - the core issues of corruption and lobbying have to be fixed first.

Is Ron Paul going to fix these? Hell no. Even if he was strongly in favor of these sorts of real changes, he wouldn't get support for them under the current system, the GOP would block everything, the Dems would keep talking about how bad the GOP is for blocking everything, and everything would continue to get fucked just as badly, or worse, than it currently is.

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.

We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealth to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)

Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).

>> ^deathcow:

hate her sweater


Meeooowww.

Mainly in case Naomi reads it and wants some nook.

>> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^budzos:
Naomi totally reminds me of an older woman I used to bang.

Why are you telling us.
Oh, of course, you're telling Everyone.

>> ^budzos:

Naomi totally reminds me of an older woman I used to bang.


Why are you telling us?

Oh, of course, you're telling Everyone.

Naomi totally reminds me of an older woman I used to bang.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^alien_concept:
Olberman should have given her a much better send off than that! She deserved a fucking standing ovation for how she put all that across.
@Yogi I think it's less that they're confused and threatened and more that they just do not give a fuck about true justice anymore. Because all of these permits and laws have been put in place cloak and dagger style right under our noses and there is very little any of us are going to be able to do about it. This was a long con and it's paying off nicely for them

I was reading about this dude Adrian Schoolcraft today. I had heard about his story but it's WAY worse than I thought it was. We should really be looking at our Police much more closely.


I heard Adrian Schoolcraft on NPR today.
http://videosift.com/video/NYPD-cop-records-evidence-of-quotas-Retaliation

>> ^alien_concept:

Olberman should have given her a much better send off than that! She deserved a fucking standing ovation for how she put all that across.
@Yogi I think it's less that they're confused and threatened and more that they just do not give a fuck about true justice anymore. Because all of these permits and laws have been put in place cloak and dagger style right under our noses and there is very little any of us are going to be able to do about it. This was a long con and it's paying off nicely for them


I was reading about this dude Adrian Schoolcraft today. I had heard about his story but it's WAY worse than I thought it was. We should really be looking at our Police much more closely.

Your video, Naomi Wolf on her Arrest at OWS - Countdown 10-21-2011, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 6 Badge!

Writer Naomi Wolf attended a HuffPo event in NYC where Governor Andrew Cuomo was expected to attend, and which had attracted a group of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who wanted to address the governor. Seeing the demonstrators penned up far away from the area where it would be lawful to protest, Wolf asked the police to clarify what the demonstrators should be allowed to do. Once the police had clarified that it would be legal for demonstrators to picket out front of the event, providing they didn't impede pedestrian traffic, she led a group of protesters back to the sidewalk. A "white shirt" (senior NYPD officer) told her she was breaking the law in doing so, and when she asked him to clarify how this was so, he had her arrested. The NYPD continue to insist that the public sidewalk out front of the event was off-limits, but have not, to date, produced the alleged permit that established this.

source:http://boingboing.net/2011/10/20/naomi-wolf-arrested-at-ows-event-for-violating-terms-of-an-imaginary-law.html

this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/19/naomi-wolf-arrest-occupy-wall-street

shit like this will continue to happen, people will revolt.

naomi wolf, naomi klein and chris hedges are people who have covered revolutions all over the world. they all pretty much agree there is something here. when the police get sick of arresting middle aged women in evening gowns, a revolution will begin.