Lawrence O'Donnell Touts Bernie Sanders, Calls Scott Walker's Stadium Subsidy 'Bad Socialism'

[kenn3d]

In his MSNBC show The Last Word Tuesday evening, Lawrence O’Donnell dedicated a segment to describing his opinion of what “good and bad socialism” looks like. Naturally his example of “good” socialism included the man and policies Bernie Sanders. It also included a 6 year old cover from Newsweek magazine that proclaimed “We Are All Socialists now,” which detailed how it's becoming normal (and good) for America to fund massive socialist policies like Social Security and Medicaid. Bad socialism is, of course, allowing the government to “socialize” the sports industry by subsidizing the construction of new stadiums for rich and greedy team owners and the millionaire athletes they employ. - See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/spencer-raley/2015/08/12/lawrence-odonnell-touts-bernie-sanders-calls-scott-walkers-stadium#sthash.rx8LMTsO.dpuf

This article contains a short video clip from the show... and a transcript.
Bernie will surely face a fair amount of negative ads and public press on the "Socialism" question... but it's interesting to see how many Americans (of all voting ages) have less negativity about the kinds of policies he advocates. Corporate Socialism however, is gradually becoming a more widely recognized evil.

[HereSince1628]

1. Meet WI Sen Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee), Stadium Funding Supporter:

Heroic member of the WI 14, aka, the senators who left the state to prevent a quorum that could pass draconian anti-labor bill.


I'm not a fan of taxpayer supported sports stadiums, although some, well at least one, Democratic primary candidate need large venues for public rallies. But lots of folks in the media, in their eagerness to taint Walker, aren't telling the entire story..

Milw stadium funding had/has democratic support. The project proposal now goes before the Milw Common Council where it must be approved before ground-breaking can take place.

Democratic Mayor, and former Dem Congressman Tom Barrett, also a supporter of the taxpayer funding, believes the council will approve the project.

It's great fun to blame Walker for this, but the stadium project including it's taxpayer funding had democratic support at all levels.

The evil Fitzgerald, senate majority leader and proponent of the 'stop sending money to Milwaukee' crowd in the legislature, had to be dragged into this.

[dsc]

2. I don't agree with her vote on this

but it isn't surprising for a member of the Milwaukee delegation to vote for this since it is probably the only way Walker would spend any money on Milwaukee whatsoever.

[HereSince1628]

4. I think this is usually how these things go.

politicians in job and revenue starved cities can't hold against arguments, even hollow arguments, that these projects are good for the economy.

Everyone is so accustomed to the notion that corporations need special incentives they cave into the graymail threats of teams being pulled out of 'noncompliant' cities.

[kenn3d]

3. Socialist Propaganda: Who’s a godless communist now?

**edited to acknowledge replies posted while preparing this**
Here's another commentary this morning from NPR about Bernie's potential problem with socialist stigma:

...most of what Sanders touts on the campaign trail was just boiler-plate Democratic party doctrine not long ago. Indeed, the Sanders phenomenon is a measure of how far the country has drifted to the right over the past few decades. Sure, Sanders has a portrait of Eugene Debs on his office wall, and when he was mayor of Burlington, Vt. he created a sister-city relationship with Managua, Nicaragua. But let’s take a look at his actual policy proposals:

Sanders supports a government-run national health insurance program, an idea first proposed by that notorious Bolshevik, Theodore Roosevelt, in 1912. Fellow traveler Harry Truman followed with his own universal healthcare proposal in 1945. And of course, Senator Ted Kennedy was pushing for a “Medicare for all”-type plan until his death in 2009.

Sanders wants to raise the top marginal tax rate to more than 50 percent, at least 10 points higher than Barack Obama proposed when he first ran for president in 2007. But the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, throughout the 1950s. John F. Kennedy slashed that to 65 percent, still 25 points higher than it is today.

Sanders wants universal daycare and family leave. In 1971, the U.S. Congress passed the bipartisan Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have created a national network of federally-funded subsidized child care centers. President Nixon vetoed the bill, but not before 24 Senate Republicans voted for “socialized childcare” — something inconceivable today.

Indeed, the Sanders phenomenon is a measure of how far the country has drifted to the right over the past few decades.

Meanwhile, paid family leave is standard policy at American corporations such as Google, Apple, and Netflix, which offer new mothers up to 22 months of paid time off. I guess we’re just a step away from nationalizing the internet.

Finally, Sanders has called for an end to homelessness, something president George W. Bush also endorsed when he appointed Philip Mangano as his homelessness czar in 2002. Mangano, meanwhile, got his inspiration from St. Francis of Assisi and the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, which wrote in 1988 that “Shelters cannot substitute for real housing for low-income families.” Who’s a godless communist now?

The point is that social policies that protect families, care for the needy and fairly share the nation’s wealth are not radical descents into Maoism. They are just rational, humane ideas that politicians of all ideological stripes should be able to embrace. And, once upon a time, they did.

http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2015/08/13/the-stain-of-socialism-renee-loth

What do you think DU? Are the policies of our Democratic Socialist contender really just more traditionally Democratic than the rest of the Party today?

[LWolf]

5. Yes.

I think Sander's policies are really just more traditionally Democratic than the rest of the Party today.

I don't find them radical at all.