Glad you looked that up, last time I checked she was proposing $100 billion which MIT Grad/Duke economist Sandy Darity said was inadequate.

>Thanks for including my comments in this important article. Just one proviso; while I do think that @marwilliamson's initial proposed amount for reparations, $100 billion, is paltry, I also think she is open to modifying her proposal toward a much larger sum.

@emarvelous:

>"Universal programs are not specific to the injustices that have been inflicted on African-Americans." Talked to some smart folks on the 2020 conversation on reparations including ⁦@SandyDarity⁩. All say start with HR40, first proposed 30+ yrs ago:

SD:

>Thank you for writing this excellent article. I am especially curious about one matter: Would Whit Ayres endorse black reparations if it was not financed "by taking money away from white people and giving it to black people"?

-

He's been interfacing with Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore and was on Ezra Klein's show a few months ago:

Sandy Darity has a plan to close the wealth gap | The Ezra Klein Show

>Published on Nov 6, 2018

> Here’s something to consider: For families in which the lead earner has a college degree, the average white family has $180,500 in wealth. The average black family? $23,400. That’s a difference of almost $160,000 — $160,000 that could be used to send a kid to college, get through an illness, start a small business, or make a down payment on a home that builds wealth for the next generation, too.
>
> Sandy Darity is an economist at Duke University, and much of his work has focused on the racial wealth gap, and how to close it. He’s a pioneer of “stratification economics” — a branch of study that takes groups seriously as economic units and thinks hard about how group incentives change our behavior and drive our decisions.
>
> In this podcast, we talk about stratification economics, as well as Darity’s idea of “baby bonds”: assets that would build to give poor children up to $50,000 in wealth by the time they become adults, which would, in turn, give them a chance to invest in themselves or their future the same way children from richer families do. Think of it as a plan for universal basic wealth — and people are listening: Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a past guest on this show, recently released a plan to closely tracked Darity’s proposal.
>
> I know, I know, the election is in a day. But right now, we don’t know who will win. So how about spending some time thinking about what someone who actually wanted to ease problems like wealth inequality could do if they did have power?

-

>Recommended books:

>Caste, Class, and Race by Oliver Cox

>https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Class-Race-Social-Dynamics/dp/0853451168

>Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams

>https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Slavery-Eric-Williams/dp/0807844888/

>Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. DuBois

>https://www.amazon.com/Black-Reconstruction-America-1860-1880-Burghardt/dp/0684856573/

Hitler's party was named the "National Socialists." Their policies had little to do with socialism. The main feature of the Nazis was an authoritarian dictatorship. Like the "socialists" in the "United Soviet Socialist Republic" (USSR), or the Kim family's "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" the name has virtually nothing to do with how the country is/was run or its economic system.

When they first came to power, the Nazis did some quasi-socialist policies of helping the working class. This solidified their political power and mandate. This was however not real socialism, because it was not built on helping all people, just "the right" people. It was a classic divide and conquer combined with demagoguery against Jews, Roma, Homosexuals, etc. Power was concentrated at the top, particularly in a single leader, (der Führer - literally "the leader"), which is diametrically opposed to what socialism is. The Nazis could only extract more and more wealth by continually doing more dividing internally, and eventually only by attacking and overthrowing other countries and extracting their wealth, both materially and by enslaving the captured civilian populations.

The few big German (not to mention internationally, including US) companies who sided with the Nazis early on made a lot of money, as well as the leaders of the party becoming enormously wealthy, by killing, enslaving and stealing. That is also not socialism. It is fascism.

It should also be noted that soon after coming to power, all higher Nazi party members who were interested in socialism were purged from the party (some arrested and imprisoned) and socialist groups in Germany were targeted and eliminated. I'm not an expert on the USSR, but I believe this is similar to what happened there once the Bolsheviks consolidated power.

In Germany, all of this was lead by a bitter, failed painter and WWI corporal from Austria named Adolf. He learned in the early 1900s in Vienna how well anti-semitism can be used to rile people up and turn their economic frustration on minorities, rather than the powerful who control things. Hitler took the lessons of Vienna Mayor Luegner and expanded on them. Trump uses the same playbook, but fortunately, the more modern world still has a few checks on his power.

I wouldn't say Hitler was an unprecedented evil only because the validity of our written history gets very sketchy before the 1900s (and it is pretty sketchy in parts since then as well!), but he was a very, very bad person. Socialism just means society controls the means and distribution of production. There are no pure socialist countries, but almost every country has socialist policies (like the fire department, schools, roads, etc.). The happiest (according to their populations) countries have social democracies, which just means that the public has the most say in how their taxes are spent - and they choose to spread the wealth around to the vast majority of the public. This is different than in the US, where the vast majority of tax money is spent on a few lucky winners.

If you want the really best understanding of Hitler, I recommend the two-volume biography from Ian Kershaw:

Volume I

Volume II

Very long, but super informative. I think that clarifies quite well.

[edit] typo

Having conducted field research in the park where Janzen is located (Santa Rosa National Park) I'm somewhat familiar with most of the characters in this story, as well as the great orange peel debacle. As is ever the case, the story is somewhat more complicated. Janzen himself is a larger than life character. An irascible, arrogant, driven and abrasive man who almost single handedly fostered the thriving eco-tourism industry in Costa Rica. His obsessive goal for decades has been to convert the NW quarter of Costa Rica into a huge national park and revive the degraded ecosystem there. In the course of this project he has done a lot of wheeling and dealing, and pushing and shoving to get his way. He isn't loved by all Costa Ricans, who generally resent obnoxious Gringos trying to tell them what to do with their land and conservation policies. The orange peel story is an example of his wheeling and dealing efforts, it was done mostly to get the land, not to find out what would happen to a big pile of orange peels in a dead field. His enemies built this up into a controversy to use against him, and it was somewhat of an albatross for a long time.

The ecology of the NW region bears some explaining. Much of Costa Rica is verdant jungle and rainforest, but the NW is more like Texas for much of the year: dry and hot. Another aspect that makes it like Texas is the extensive cattle ranching that has existed there since the 1950s. The ranchers have used repeated slash and burn methods to clear forests and keep them clear for grass growth. Decades of this practice has created dead areas that are nearly completely depleted of any nutrients and almost nothing can grow there, let alone native plants and animals. In that particular environment, just about any biomass left to rot for 15-20 years will eventually improve the soil. There are probably a lot of better things to use than orange peels, though, which are toxic and break down slowly. Nevertheless, it's good to see that the "experiment" has finally paid off.

Found one on amazon, not pink but close enough. I love the graphic.
https://www.amazon.com/Bernie-Bro-Shirt-funny-Sanders/dp/B07M5YHYB9?customId=B07HPWT5Z2&th=1&psc=1

Might I suggest also Constructive Thinking? It's graduate-level reading, advancing Martin Seligman's "learned optimism" concepts through empirical studies, with clear and coherent ways to learn constructive ways to think about the world and how one interacts with fellow beings.

FYI other good resources on the matter:

The Black Swan

Bailout Nation

>Why do you think he intimately understand the problems, in a way no one else does?

Well, it's mainly due to reading his book.


>It seems like a president without political experience is too much of a risk. It also seems like a president without experience would not be productive or effective

I think this would be balanced by a competent cabinet and VP.

Absolutely. And furthermore, let me say this: if they push me to the point where I feel the need to filibuster, I will take the opportunity to educate them. How? By reading books on the floor of the House like Guns, Germs, and Steel (so they understand better where we came from), The Black Hole War, Bully for Brontosaurus (so they understand a little bit about science), and Subliminal, so they know how the NRA and Fox News is killing their minds.

Read and learn

The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government by Former Congressional Staffer Mike Lofgren
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-State-Mike-Lofgren/dp/0143109936

I think you alerady made this point. Are you telling us that the same media that sold us "Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction" is any more credible than Russia Today?

Do you know that the US CIA had over 400 journalists on its payroll and they were working in every sector of the media?

Did you ever hear of William S. Paley and the role that the Pentagon and what Eisenhower came to call the "Military Industrial Complex" played in the establishment of the television media in the USA, circa 1950?

I don't imagine you do, or you might be a bit more skeptical about the Stenography corps.

Here is a short (very short since I don't have time to run a free education service) bibliography and reading list:

U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960 by Nancy E. Bernhard

Memorandum From the Executive Secretary (Souers) to the Members of the National Security Council

NSC 4

Washington, December 9, 1947.

//Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 273, Records of the National Security Council, NSC Minutes, 4th Meeting. Confidential. Copies sent to the President, the Secretaries of State, Defense, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board. For an early version of this document, see the memorandum from "REN" to Souers, November 25, and the two undated attachments (ibid.) in the Supplement.

COORDINATION OF FOREIGN INFORMATION MEASURES

NSC4-A
256. Department of State Briefing Memorandum0
Washington, December 17, 1947.

COORDINATION OF FOREIGN INFORMATION MEASURES (NSC 4) PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS (NSC 4–A)

I. Discussion

I'd have to email you a more thorough response or contact you later through DM for research. A few resources that have influenced me:

When Work Disappears
which was published about 20 years ago really explored this topic on the economic shifts of the country and how they impacted country.

Also the New Jim Crow touches on drug issues and workforce development a little bit too.

Is your question trying to ask if we train more people for work they're less likely to use drugs or something?

I really do need to read that. I recently read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow which is largely based on Epstein's work on dual processing.

I just checked out Tom Stafford's For Argument's Sake: Evidence That Reason Can Change Minds

>Are we irrational creatures, swayed by emotion and entrenched biases? Modern psychology and neuroscience are often reported as showing that we can't overcome our prejudices and selfish motivations. Challenging this view, cognitive scientist Tom Stafford looks at the actual evidence. Re-analysing classic experiments on persuasion, as well as summarising more recent research into how arguments change minds, he shows why persuasion by reason alone can be a powerful force.This is a collection of previously published essays, revised and expanded by the author, and accompanied by a previously unpublished introduction and annotated bibliography to guide further reading on the topic.Tom Stafford is Lecturer in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield.

I have my doubts, but we shall see.

Are you open to the concept of psychogenic pain? I was in constant pain for 10 years until I read this book (Actually listened to the audio book). It cured me in about 6 months. (For me it was bodywide fibromyalgia & tendonitis, not back pain, but it was psychosomatic in origin)

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503681372&sr=8-1&keywords=healing+back+pain+by+dr.+john+sarno

The hardest part is getting yourself truly open to the idea


Someone made a Documentary about the doctor, he helped cure Larry David and Howard Stern of their chronic pain problems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ3OL7dIbmg

I'm struggling to accept I just read that.

Do you think that because "political science" has the word "political" in it, you're free to ignore the "science" part, and substitute in "opinion"?

Serious question.

Because you just did the equivalent of telling a Mathematician that 5 + 5 = 10 is in fact a matter of opinion.

You just told a Geologist that alternating layers of rock containing organic material being sedimentary rock is actually subjective.

You just told an English professor that two independent clauses needing to be separated by a comma and a conjunction is open to interpretation.

The term "spoiler" is a fixed concept. It's not open to what you "think" it means. The arrogance in thinking so is astounding. A propaganda tool of donors? Are you fucking kidding me? The parties say it because it's a repeated pattern proven time and time again by political scientists like Gabriel Almond and Justin Buchler. I challenge you to read Gabriel's book Comparative Politics Today because it's a good introduction to comparative politics and its theories (to clarify, theories here being scientific theories, not your opinion.)

Political science is not a secret club where we all just spout our opinions on gun control. It's a literal science that dedicates time to studying how voters behave, understanding party actions, concrete cause and effect, international relations, and a host of other topics I doubt you never considered.

Bruce Bueno De Mesquita is a political science who turned international politics and nation reactions into a mathematical problem able to predict actions based on Game Theory as just one example.

And you're going to trounce all of that because, what, you don't want to accept it? You think Political Science is actually just a big conspiracy set up by Big Pharma?

You'll go and trash a Republican for refusing to listen to science on climate change but refuse to listen to science in politics because it disagrees with your view of the world all the same?

Go away.

By definition, Cornyn is an anti-semite if he backs the BDS New Nazis. Supporting BDS is anti-Semitic since Israel is now the Jewish homeland for this tiny religious minority, and oftentimes you will find the anti-Israel and BDS sentiment expressed with anti-Jew racism and calls for implied genocide against the Jews. Polite criticism of Israel and its handling of Palestinian terrorism is not inherently anti-Semitic, but the BDS New Nazis and its sympathizers have taken it to such an extreme that it is clearly hatred of Jews.

Much of that anti-Israel sentiment is completely devoid of any context of how the Palestinians and Arabs have acted against the Jews in the past. It's also just assumed that the Jews invaded the land and took over as opposed to moving into and often purchasing unoccupied wasteland and terraforming it into productive land through blood, sweat, and tears, nor that the British were governing the area and designated the area for the Jews; that concept never even occurs to the anti-Israel people. You would think that many of the anti-Israel people never heard of The Mufti, the PLO, Palestinian terrorist attacks, or how the Arabs tried to or at least intended to genocidally exterminate the Jews in the 1940s and 1960s. That sort of willful ignorance by BDS supporters is anti-Jew.

They all need to read Exodus and The Haj, excellent historical fiction novels to expose themselves to a different perspective.