Found On Internet: some news & opinion early April 2014

It's been a busy week with the news.

On April 3, Alec MacGillis had a strong going over of the effects that our current shift to plutocracy means to our country, with a quick daily drip of news for The New Republic over the previous week.

On Tuesday, April 1, the Republican budget plan was presented by US House of Representatives Budget Committee chair and former vice-president candidate Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. It is a simple rework of the same budget the Republican party has presented for the last twenty years. The two main mechanisms this proposal underscores in order to implement their vision of responsible conservative economic policy  - cutting taxes and cutting spending, especially in Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security funds - have been Republican claims since Reagan. But there is little evidence to support the idea that these policies actually benefit the economy, let alone society. Instead it is driven by the belief that smaller government is better and that any way to get there is preferrable to even, 'knowledgable improvements', however described, by people of the opposing party. In light of this, those against the consistent but so far, ineffective republican policies came out to say what they think. An example, plucked,

in response to: 

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2014/04/01/how-paul-ryans-budget-proves-the-federal-debt-isnt-a-priority-for-republicans/ by Jon Walker, 

So  you and I know that the Republicans aren’t actually ‘fiscally conservative’. “Deficits don’t matter.” vice-president Dick Cheney said as recently as 2006.
We know that they, the Republicans are not actually strong on defense and don’t in reality support our troops. Sequestration cuts and failure to rnew benefits for military veterans should prove that.
We know that despite all the patriotic fervor and bunting and grandstanding that all of that is a show for the rubes who pine for a past that never existed. That the real show and real decisions are made with lobbyists and think-tanks and special interest donors.

Bringing light to all that is an important first step. The busybees out here can tweet it and post it on fb, or rail about it on their blogs, can yell at their congresscritters, go to city council meetings and hold fundraisers.

But how do we reach the low-info FOX watchers? The Rush, beck and TedCruz, George Zimmerman fans who would rather kill somebody than listen to a cognitively dissonant word? They’ll just start shooting cuz they ‘felt threatened’.

Using a well-worded, reasonable treatment like you offer here (it is!), just doesn’t get through to these people. Saying the truth, that Ryan has no math skills or economic sense, pointing out his racist dogwhistles or classist ideations make us instead the ‘race-hustlers’ that O’Reilly’s current harangue inflates out of all proportion or sense.

Depending on law enforcement or the courts to do their job is no longer an option out here. Not for justice or economics. Saving netflix and coffee money for more bullets is what makes sense to them. And if the R’s don’t get control of Senate in November, the low-info voters out in flyover country – where there is no press – will take matters farther into their own hands.

Also on April 1, there was an internet discussion with social policy wonks over the hopeful benefits and proven detractions of an imperial-acting but nominal neo-liberal regime for the US into the future. The ridiculous hilaity that ensued was well captured by DSWright, also at fdl, from a leftist point of view. But again, a commenter piped up and gave a different view of what a 'culture of poverty' might look like to different cultures, in time.

found in response to:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2014/04/01/ta-nehisi-coates-jonathan-chait-and-the-logic-of-liberal-imperialism/ by DSWright 1737 Tuesday 01April14:

 I agree that to get people out of poverty, literally means raising their standard of living: Putting more $ in their hands to spend.
You and I also probably agree that as Lincoln said, ‘labor is prior to capital’. The worker is more important than the goods manufactured or even the credit it takes to get the venture up and going.
These are logical ideas which have also been proven in reality again and again.
But for all that, they still sound like Marxism and worse to the low-info voter out in flyover country. Unfortunately, for Modern Monetary theorists and neo-liberals alike, the ‘culture of poverty’ is centuries older than Marxism, fans of new-deal type credit schemes, or tax-and-spend liberals of any other modern econ theories I have heard.
Centuries older – people feel it in their bones. People out here simply don’t believe more money in the pocket of ‘the other’ – however defined – will help anything. We can call it racism or zero-sum economics or even the supply-siders can say their trickle-down theories are working. People don’t care. They’re still gonna think some other – now the GOV – is taking their goodies.
An example. I learned a lot watching The Wire. Living most of life in white suburbia it opened my eyes to the impossible life of inner cities. So amazed I was at the clear depictions, revealing story lines, entrenched interests, my heart opened up to the dispossessed, impossibly living with the despair of the dog-eat-dog. And I had always prior to that saw myself as seeing things from the pov of the homeless, the disenfranchised, the left behinds of corporate greed.
But one of the themes of that series, understood by professionals and academics in the abstract is that with hard work, we may be able to move on this or that piece of progress. Get those people voting, give intuitive, thoughtful classes to those who never knew a one-on-one teacher-student rapport, fund this investigation into that crime problem, try a new tactic in the drug war, etc.
But with every step forward there always seems to be two or three steps backward. The right numbers may be up, but the people in power see it as not politically expedient. It may be the right thing to do but this powerful city councilman, cop chief, preacher or lobbyist is all against it. The union boss may not like it but will turn a blind eye, so long as no one gets caught. The result is that fixing things becomes reason and basis for corruption, bending the rules, crime, loss of justice.

The culture of poverty is real and has morphed since St Francis of Assissi’s day. No longer based on humility and social justice, St Reagan popularized a false welfare queen mentality. Gave the poor white south a demon to attack: ‘They’re taking yer goodies!’
No longer about justice for social weal or community well-being. It’s been morphed into keeping the blood in your turnip before ‘the other’, ‘those poor’ who might get yer cookies.
The right wing has learned this well, and ***holes like brietbart, Beck, Malkin, FOX et al took it and ran, for example, toppling ACORN based on obviously fraudulent, farcical means. Congress still handily voted to repeal all their funding.

I agree it may be folly to export imperialism as based on our western ‘successes’. But this ain’t about what intellectuals say, warring on the direction of liberalism anymore.
People I’m talking abt, that I touted The Wire to didn’t see that and say, ‘OMG how awful that people have to live like that! What can we do?’
They said, ‘Can you believe how awful those people are? We’re gonna shut those liberals & all their ‘good works’ down, once and for all. You’ll see.’
For people like me, and probably you, a cold dose of reality is enough to get me going in the right direction. But for many, “soaring ideals” optically placed, repeatedly rung with a strong injection of ‘other-disdain’ wins the very real ‘culture of poverty’ wars. From St Francis, and friar Savonarola to Reagan and Sarah Palin. Their grandaddy hated Communism and they’ll shoot you before they listen to anything resembling that.

 There were several other stories of prominent imporatnce last week as well.