Don't know why but I have the feeling that the "shoe" incident was a set up by the right . . .

[Liberal In Red State]

Last edited Fri Apr 11, 2014, 12:13 AM - Edit history (1)

Can't put my finger on it but have read too many articles today on "Why FOX is following Hillary so closely . . . " I just sense something is up - the right shows disrespect for a former First Lady, Secretay of State, State Senator . . . I am disgusted by the person . . . People who planned this attack.

[BootinUp]

1. The only shoe incident I can think of is this one

[Beacool]

2. Not much more disrespect that they show her here.

It's truly disgusting and goes way beyond disagreement on policies.

[JDPriestly]

3. Hillary has two years to listen to our criticisms and show that she can and will

represent ordinary Americans and that she will work toward ending the terrible economic injustice that is causing such a huge disparity in wealth and the relative impoverishment of most Americans. Also needs to show that she is not a war monger, not too ready to kill and maim.

So far her message on women is good, but if past action is any indication, she is weak on major economic policy and she us too cozy with too many in the 1%.

[joshcryer]

4. Does economics trump social issues?

I think more social issues affect economics than vice versa. You can be a violently racist and religious populist, you can't be such socially progressive.

[JDPriestly]

6. In California, economic issues trump social issues, but the two are so intertwined, it is

hard to tell.

We read a lot about institutional racism on DU. It certainly does exist. But it isn't a matter of discriminatory laws so much as it is economically oppressive laws. Racism now is reflected in our economic relationships.

I live in a part of LA that is mostly minorities. We don't have the great shopping opportunities that you have in other areas of the city. For example, I have to drive quite a ways to get organic foods. My local grocery stores don't carry them. The clothes, etc. are cheap. Lots of second-hand shops.

Go across town or up the freeway quite a number of stops, and you find fabulous shopping malls located in the areas in which people with money, close to or majority white people with money live.

It's just a fact. LA is the reflection of what is really going on in the nation. It does not surprise me that people in middle America are oblivious to the extreme wealth that is flaunted in the LA area or vice versa that extremely wealthy people like the Romneys are oblivious to the poverty of the people in my neighborhood many of whom pay for their food with stamps, not dollar bills. That's because the very wealthy live in areas in which they segregate themselves from the rest of the country.

So yes social issues are important, but you can't deal with them in our country today unless you deal with the economic fact of life -- disparity in incomes and property ownership.

So that's why I place economic injustice ahead of social injustice. You can't improve in one area unless you change some things in the other one.

Of course, I am not talking about economic flat-lining. We don't need to all have the same income. That would kill our economy and hurt economic opportunity for people. But we have gone so far to the extreme of economic segregation that we must change or become a failed society.

I'm wondering what issues you would view as social and what issues you would view as economic. I would like to see employees have the right to challenge employment-at-will. I think that if an employee does his or her job and is fired, the employee should have the right to challenge that firing and set the record straight on his job performance. I also think that employee pension funds (not the funds for the owners) should have the first rights to claims when companies go bankrupt or are sold. Pension promises should be fulfilled first. There are many, many similar issues of economic justice that need attention.

Obamacare is a first step toward establishing a right to health care which is a major component of economic justice.

Also, we face problems with regard to the relationship between our work, job-oriented system for determining the economic reward to the individual and the fact that technology is making work and jobs less important to our society and harder to get.

Then we move to trade agreements which result in job losses. I would like to see progressive solutions for that problem.

Many years ago, I worked in the management of a homeless project -- as a fundraiser. I remember sitting by an African-American leader in the community in my bosses office. He was talking about the fact that recent immigrants were filling the jobs that many African-Americans had traditionally filled. It was hurting his community. We need to find solutions to our immigration issues that are win/win for both immigrants and Americans by birth. Immigration has created a cheap labor pool that has contributed to the decline in American wages. At the same time, immigrants contribute hard work and renew our cultural and creative life as a nation. So we need to find a way to deal with the negative aspects of immigration on our economy in a way that is fair and helps us grow and become more tolerant.

So those are some of the reasons I view our underlying problem as economic. Change the economics, and the social reality will change.

I could talk about education at length. No where would this be more evident than in the school performance of American children. Lift up the parents' economic outlook and children will do better in school.

[OKNancy]

5. as I asked in the other post in this thread

"weak on major economic policy" - what policy?
what's wrong with having good relations with the 1%. She is a good politician. People like her can get things done.
Liberals also reside in the 1%.

[JDPriestly]

7. Please see my answer in #6.

Bill Clinton made serious mistakes in handling our economy. First he reappointed Greenspan -- virtually worshiped him. Greenspan was a foolish libertarian. Need I say more.

Then there are the Robert Rubin, Larry Summers crew. They really messed up our economy. I blame their influence for Clinton's signing the repeal of Glass-Steagall which brought on the Bush housing boom and the 2008 bust.

Note that when Hillary joined the Obama administration, the Larry Summers contingent trailed along. Only when Hillary left, was Obama able to start cleaning house of that crew. We don't need them. Their economic policies were too weak for our ailing economy. We are still struggling to recover. But the millions of homeowners who lost their homes (many of whom ended up in bankruptcy court) will not recover for a very long time if ever.

And, now thanks to the lack of commitment to the American dream of home ownership on the parts of the very people that Obama and Hillary appointed as Obama's economic advisers, we read that Wall Street wants to replace the American dream of home ownership with the serf's dream of rental for life. The bail-out that Obama signed on to should have had far more vigorous provisions for helping the homeowners who relied on false assessments and economic projections by the 1%ers on Wall Street and in the banks.

Hillary is not strong on Social Security. She suggested in a debate in 2008 that an income of $250,000 per year should not have to be subject to full payroll or Social Security taxes. She opposed raising the cap on the payroll taxes or was very weak on that issue. Her stance on that makes no sense because if you have two people whose combined incomes are $250,000, that is $125,000 each and each of them should be paying full Social Security taxes if you want a strong Social Security system. And if you don't want a strong social Security system, maybe you should run as a Republican because Social Security is the bedrock of liberal politics along with a pro-union stance. Hillary's stance on Social Security is unclear because she is vague about how she would continue to fund it for future generations.

Liberals reside in the 1%, but the liberal movement is for working, wage-earning people. If 1%ers are on the side of labor and want policies that improve the economic opportunities of working people, great. They are Democrats. If they don't, then they should support Republicans. Working people in the US today do not have enough good representation in government.

The Democratic Party is the only hope for the working people of America. If 1%ers support the agenda that serves working people, then they and their money and ideas are welcome in the Democratic Party. But if they don't then I don't want to see the leadership of the Democratic Party hanging out with them.

Once we don't have homeless people begging for money in our grocery store parking lots maybe 1%ers should be asked for advice on policy issues. But until then, we will have a stronger party without them. If the 1%ers were serious about economic and social justice, we would not have the huge numbers of homeless, hungry people that you see all over the country.

I would like to see Hillary's economic policies, what she plans to run on, set forth in great detail.
She has the experience and connections to provide us with concrete policy plans. I do not want another candidate who runs on vaguely liberal trigger-words but appoints conservatives to his/her cabinet. I do not trust Hillary on this point. She, like Obama, is likely to appoint her friends in the 1% rather than qualified people including liberal academics, social organizers and labor union leaders. We need the liberals or progressives if you will to have greater influence in our government. We've been hearing the libertarian mantra of the Koch Brothers far too long, and some of our so-called Democrats have drunk that Kool-aid in large quantities. I don't want a candidate who thinks that social justice can be achieved without economic justice.

[JDPriestly]

8. Bill Clinton did a huge favor for the 1% when he signed the repeal of he Glass-Steagall bill.

I find something wrong with that because the repeal of that bill led to the excessive gambling by the banks during the Bush administration and was one of the causes of the crash in 2008. We are not yet recovered from that crash.

The Obama administration has, as Elizabeth Warren pointed out in Congress, settled every criminal claim against the Wall Streeters and bankers with mere monetary penalties -- fines that the banks pay not out of their bonuses but from other revenue. I find something questionable about that not because I want to see people put in jail, but because some of the things they did were fraudulent or alternatively some of the things they conspired to close their eyes to were fraudulent. If someone commits fraud to buy a house, fraudulently signs an application for a federal loan to buy a house for example, that person can go to jail and often does. Remember Cisneros from Texas -- read about the Medlar Affair here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cisneros#Medlar_affair

Ordinary people get arrested for far less than the fraudulent conspiracy the banks and hedge funds, etc. participated in. We don't even seem to hear about admissions of guilt or responsibility by the banks and Wall Streeters. Instead, today the news is that we are going to become a society of renters. Horrors! Have we fallen so far as a nation that the fundamental dream of a country of people who owned property which became the dream of home ownership has been abandoned? And why have we fallen so far? Because no politician from either party stands up for those who are middle class or those who have no property. It is an abandonment of the principles and values on which our country was built. We should all be ashamed of the dominance of the 1% over our political and social structures.

We need to place a transaction tax on every Wall Street trade and control and tax trading that is off the Street so that we can slow down speculation and hopefully push some of the parasitic profit-makers who are trading at high speeds but not really investing out of the market.

We need to require 1%ers to pay higher taxes.

A politician who is too dependent and too close to 1%ers will never be able to sign or propose legislation that might inconvenience the multi-billionaires in this country and the world.

We need Democratic candidates who can speak freely about economic and social justice because our current Democrats are too often bound to the 1% who claim to be Democrats.

Nothing wrong with having money. But much, much wrong when a person has money and that fact increases how much accessibility and influence the person with money has on our political system.

I like to speak of the Koch Rewards program.. Charles Koch ran as a Libertarian in 1980. Bernie Sanders found the platform the Bush's ran on at that time.

Compare it to the secret agenda of the Republicans that becomes clearer with each day. It's as if the Kochs reward those who push items on that agenda with their Koch Rewards program.

We have a few billionaires supporting our party who have Rewards Programs of their own. Some are on Wall Street. If you think about the TPP which Obama's administration has been pushing (on the back burner for the moment, but just wait until after November), you can see the Obama Rewards program at work when that is passed.

[OKNancy]

9. Obama/ Bill Clinton are not Hillary