November 27th, 2012

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=cf62b3c8-54a6-4ace-ab5a-8996e7d16441

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014319000

Ezra Klein: Why rich guys want to raise the retirement age

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/24/1164336/-Ezra-Klein-Why-rich-guys-want-to-raise-the-retirement-age

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/21/why-rich-guys-want-to-raise-the-retirement-age/

From FourScore's post which is long enough to explain this to anyone who wants to know why it will stay off the table for the good of all:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021876309

Those who are suppressing the vote are not on the side of those that opposed slavery. The Voting Rights Act should be kept in place with as much force as possible. The ststes opposing have learned nothing from the 14th Amendment, and don't support what it did. I won't quibble about your screen name who is my favorite person of the era, and the view of the others. The link to the VP of the Confederacy about their philosophy, explained going back to the Founders that the South opposed racial equality which many consider the intent behind the Constitution, as a living document, regardless of the events of the time. The people who are against voters and equality should be treated as going against the government and values of the USA. No excuses. EOM.

and only if the parent is so inclined to stress science, reasoning and history as opposed to religion, is lack of public infrastructure still. Public schools have provided for science laboratories and other ways to test one's ability and desire for critical thinking skills and scientific experimentation. This was the gift of the New Deal, using shared resources to fund the Commons where all could learn.

I was fortunate to grow up in the era of government sponsored R & D, where the knowledge gained was applied universally. The schools I attended were built by the WPA, gorgeous, large building with all kinds of vocational, arts, physical education facilities as well as well-equipped lab classrooms that were designed into the buildings.

Some of the most whacked out wing nuts are the result of home schooling with religious and anti-government overtones, due to isolation and too many times, physical and sexual and even what I'd term religious abuse. These are not producing well rounded individuals who are willing or able to function in an increasingly diverse society. In fact, many are groomed to live their entire lives separate from and in opposition to the larger society. This is where the secessionist and fortress mentality has emerged, with their belief system justifying crimes on the people they do not consider part of their world.

The world that Carl Sagan is describing in the OP is feudal in economic, social and scientific constructions. I want no part of it and it wants no part of me. I am its enemy, the fossil Rush disdains, the evil one Beck warns his benightedly followers about, and among the ones they want to die off, or be killed. No time to rest.

that the Founders sought to set the groundwork for.

But then, we should know that Rust Never Sleeps.

religious based schools would punish your child for speaking against the way they are seeking to structure society.

Examples of this are:

Louisiana's bold bid to privatize schools

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014134247

Louisiana to give $700K to schools run by a "prophet" who also runs a school for "prophets"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021094886

BACKFIRED: Louisiana GOP Angry That Muslims Can Use School Vouchers

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002904834

That's just what I found at first search here at DU on one state only, but this is nation wide. And the reputation that some religious schools have had for turning out well-rounded scholars, is no longer the case.

Ann Romney called for all public schools to be closed, that all children should be in religious schools. This has been a constant chorus for twenty years or more, with aversion to emigrants and minorities of all kinds. It was abetted by well-funded campaigns by those who sought to break the power of secular and progressive ideas. In doing so, they gained the power of media and promulgated many lies about what goes on in public schools.

They are getting bolder, now taking public infrastructure and not paying for it, and building their own little fiefdoms where none can say nay. I applaud your work with your daughter, but the state of education in part of this country is just as bad if not worse, than Carl Sagan predicted, and they are pushing into all the arenas of public infrastructure with libertarian ideology and religious dogma.

We had a moment in time, and have been and are being, pulled back to the darkness of superstition and stupidity. With Obama in office stressing education and trying to fund more teachers and public works, being resisted by those who already profit from privatization, we're in danger here. I do not imply that we will fail in our work to save what so many have worked for so hard and for so many years.



Enjoyed chatting with you.

The failure of people to support learning of objective scientific method was facilitated by media appealing to human emotional indulgence and sentimentality. Science fiction at one time inspired technical achievement then went into pushing scenes from medieval life and magic as romantic.

The dumbing down of the USA was achieved by slashing public institutions and giving R&D to international corporations. They possess the means of space exploration and other high achievements, which no longer exist in the public sphere due to demonizing the government.

Now that such knowledge is the sole property of the private sector, the interest of humanity and the planet have been disregarded in their quest. They have put up the No Trespassing sign to the public and its government, which accepted it as part of the None Of Your Business mentality.

We've been indoctrinated to accept the rule of corporations free of regulations or forced to operate in the public good. This was done by appealing to human venality.

Time is not on our side in this. The Carl Sagan quote I found here somewhere may have come from this book:

This world as we know it is only just one brief moment that appears to us to be an endless horizon of time ... this time grants comfort ... and this comfort breeds complacency ... and from complacency stems ultimate stupidity and eventual destruction.

Voting Rights Act: Why many Southern states are glad of Supreme Court case

After minorities played a big role in reelecting President Obama, the US Supreme Court says it will take up the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the issue of federal oversight over voting in mostly Southern jurisdictions...

Many legal experts believe that’s the essential point before the high court in a case out of Shelby County, Alabama, in which local officials, backed by a bevy of Southern states, will argue that Congress went too far when it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 2006, and that federal oversight of polling stations and election rules primarily in the former Confederacy is too broad and thus, in some cases, itself discriminatory...

Those who want to put voting affairs back into the exclusive hands of state and local election officials cite President Obama's reelection on Tuesday as a reason to rethink the need for federal oversight of jurisdictions that, 40 or 50 years ago, had engaged in voting discrimination...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/1110/Voting-Rights-Act-Why-many-Southern-states-are-glad-of-Supreme-Court-case

These characters are still trying to govern by the Confederate philosophy which opposed the Founding Fathers' ideals for full equality being granted as part of Natural Law and favored by Providence. The Civil War was never about states' rights, but racial discrimination:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=263631

The misery inflicted on the world gave us the New Deal. We need the Second New Deal. Or better.

The Second New Deal is the term used by commentators at the time[1] and historians ever since to characterize the second stage of the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his address to Congress in January 1935, Roosevelt called for three major goals: improved use of national resources, security against old age, unemployment and illness, and slum clearance, as well as a national welfare program (the WPA) to replace state relief efforts.

It is usually dated 1935-36, and includes programs to redistribute wealth, income and power in favor of the poor, the old, farmers and labor unions. The most important programs included Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act ("Wagner Act", the Banking Act, rural electrification, and breaking up utility holding companies.

Programs that were later ended by the Supreme Court or the Conservative Coalition included WPA, NYA, the Resettlement Administration, and programs for retail price control, farm rescues, coal stabilization, and taxes on the rich and the Undistributed profits tax.

Liberals in Congress passed the Bonus Bill of $1.5 billion to 3 million World War veterans over FDR's veto. Liberals strongly supported the new direction, and formed the New Deal Coalition of union members, big city machines, the white South, and ethnic minorities to support it;

and conservatives—typified by the American Liberty League were strongly opposed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_New_Deal

We need this or something like it to rise up out of the OFA organization, which has not dissolved yet:

The New Deal Coalition was the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs that supported the New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates from 1932 until the late 1960s. It made the Democratic Party the majority party during that period, losing only to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. Franklin D. Roosevelt forged a coalition that included the Democratic state party organizations, city machines, labor unions and blue collar workers, minorities (racial, ethnic and religious), farmers, white Southerners, people on relief, and intellectuals.[1]

The coalition fell apart around the bitter factionalism during the 1968 election, but it remains the model that party activists seek to replicate.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal_Coalition

We're dealing with the same opposing philosophies and interests now as then, except the media is in conservative hands. It makes organizing for our ideas through media very difficult. So we must go back to the grass roots to give the liberal majority in Congress. Our work is cut out for us.