[Peace-discuss] [CentralILJwJ] Fwd: USA Midterm Elections-Past and Present' by Jack Rasmus, teleSUR English, October 27, 2014
David Johnson via Peace-discuss
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Tue Oct 28 23:46:42 EDT 2014
You just don't get it do you Bob ?
The corporate controlled democratic politicians have been selling out
the American people for two decades now and they are not getting any
better they are only getting worse !
So don't attempt to kill the messenger, facts are facts that you seem to
be in total denial of.
And by the way, you are still incorrectly using the term " ultra Left "
despite the fact that myself and others have corrected you in the past.
David Johnson
On 10/28/2014 9:54 PM, Robert Naiman wrote:
> Ugh. I hate it when the ultra-left gloats about the prospect of a
> Republican victory.
>
> It's not at all "almost certain" that Republicans will capture the
> Senate. Nate Silver's poll aggregation site puts the current chance of
> a Republican takeover at 62.3%, with Democrats having a 37.7% chance
> of keeping the Senate.
>
> http://fivethirtyeight.com/
>
> If that's an "almost certain" Republican victory, then it is "almost
> certain" that the best hitter in Major League Baseball will not get a
> hit the next time he goes to bat.
>
> I suppose this ultra-left writer probably wouldn't be interested in
> such data; the ultra-left is usually too enamored of its own rhetoric
> to pay external evidence any mind.
>
>
>
>
>
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org <http://www.justforeignpolicy.org>
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org <mailto:naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
> (202) 448-2898 x1
>
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 6:12 PM, David Johnson
> davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net <mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net>
> [CentralILJwJ] <CentralILJwJ-noreply at yahoogroups.com
> <mailto:CentralILJwJ-noreply at yahoogroups.com>> wrote:
>
> This time voter response could be even worse, given the overlay of
> other, additional legitimate grievances by large voter
> constituencies that previously voted for Democrats.
>
> A close look at the 2012 elections shows that Obama won
> re-election largely because of Hispanic, student youth, and union
> labor votes delivered him the key states that made the difference
> in his U.S. electoral college vote results. In addition to the
> continuing economic legacies of 2010, these key constituencies now
> have additional grievances with the Democrats.
>
> Millions of Latino immigrants and Hispanics who had high hopes
> that Democrats and Obama would address their needs and grievances
> no longer believe Democrats and Obama can deliver a solution.
> Millions of students with a combined more than $1 trillion in loan
> debt, who are now paying tens of billions a year in excess
> above-market interest to the U.S. government no longer believe
> meaningful debt relief is possible, even though it could with a
> mere stroke of Obama’s pen.
>
> And union workers who delivered key Midwest states to Democrats
> and Obama in 2012, and have received virtually nothing from Obama
> since 2008 in return (except perhaps the very real prospect of
> losing their negotiated health benefits in the next few years due
> to the Obamacare health act) have seen the Obama administration
> reject their unions’ every appeal for assistance and
> reconsideration since 2012.
>
> It’s not that these key constituencies will vote Republican. It’s
> that they will likely not vote Democrat. They will vote with ‘the
> seat of their pants’, as they say, and stay home. And that means
> the loss of the Senate for Democrats next week.
>
>
> teleSUR*teleSUR English***
>
> *USA Midterm Elections: Past and Present*
>
> *By Jack Rasmus*
>
> Published 27 October 2014
>
> U.S. President Barack Obama takes part in early voting at a
> polling station in Chicago, Illinois October 20, 2014 (Photo: Reuters)
>
> *U.S. President Barack Obama takes part in early voting at a
> polling station in Chicago, Illinois October 20, 2014 (Photo:
> Reuters)*
>
> With the USA midterm Congressional elections barely a week away on
> November 4, it appears now almost certain that Republicans will
> win the minimum six key Senate races they need in order take
> control of the U.S. Senate from the Democrats and the Obama
> administration.
>
> In a previous essay written in September, when the Democrats and
> the U.S. mainstream press were still maintaining the Democrats
> would hold on to the U.S. Senate, this writer predicted that
> “Obama and the Democrats face the very real possibility of losing
> control of the U.S. Senate in November” (see ‘Barack Obama as
> Jimmy Clinton’, teleSUR English, September 28, 2014).
> Now it is almost certain they will.
>
> *Why Democrats May Lose the US Senate*
>
> Republicans need to take back only 6 seats from the Democrats in
> the Senate to gain control of that institution. A week before the
> elections, they now hold comfortable leads in at least six and are
> favored to win in two more. The final outcome could be as high as
> ten Senate seat losses for the Democrats, as Democrats hold only
> slight leads in traditionally Republican states like North
> Carolina and Louisiana.
>
> As the election comes down to the wire, Democrats are becoming
> increasingly desperate, pinning their hopes on long shot wins in
> historically Republican bastion states like Kansas and Georgia.
> Even lead editorials in the New York Times now raise the specter,
> in bold headlines, of a ‘The Democratic Panic’ now in progress.
> Elsewhere high ranking party insiders, like Jim Manley, former
> spokesperson for the Senate Democratic Party leader, Harry Reid,
> are quoted publicly saying that “There is a decent shot that we
> are going to lose the Senate”.
>
> With the U.S. House of Representatives already firmly in control
> of the Republicans, and dominated by their ultra-conservative
> Teaparty faction, should Republicans in 2014 now also take the
> Senate the U.S. Congress will quickly become even more
> aggressively pro-corporate, pro-military adventurist, and even
> more anti-US worker than it has been to date.
>
> It is estimated that spending on the 2014 midterm elections will
> exceed $4 billion, about $2 billion raised each by Republican and
> Democrat candidates.
>
> For that $4 billion, the American public can expect a new policy
> aggressiveness to emerge immediately after the election, driven by
> a newly confident, even more conservative, pro-corporate right
> wing with firm control of both houses of the U.S. Congress.
>
> With the U.S. House of Representatives already firmly in control
> of the Republicans, and dominated by their ultra-conservative
> Teaparty faction, should Republicans in 2014 now also take the
> Senate the U.S. Congress will quickly become even more
> aggressively pro-corporate, pro-military adventurist, and even
> more anti-US worker than it has been to date.
>
> High on the agenda of new policies that will quickly emerge from
> the midterm elections, should the Republicans take the Senate,
> will be the following policy initiatives: new tax cuts for U.S.
> multinational businesses, harsher treatment of immigrant workers
> in the USA, more anti-environmental actions favoring shale
> fracking, offshore drilling, pipelines, and CO2 industrial
> emissions rollbacks, renewed attacks on the Medicaid health system
> for the poor and Medicare health services for the retired,
> proposals for more funding for wars in the middle east, demands
> for more aggressive military support for the USA engineered coup
> d’etat government in the Ukraine, and perhaps even a renewed
> attack on social security retirement benefits in the USA.
>
> Strategists for both Republicans and Democrats agree that the 2014
> midterm election is about jobs and the economy. While the stock
> and bond markets in the USA continue their five year surge to new
> record heights, providing even more capital gains income to the
> wealthy and their corporations, the bottom 90% of USA households
> continue to languish after more than five years of so-called
> economic recovery.
>
> While the rich get ever richer and corporations ever more
> profitable, the Obama administration and the mainstream press
> daily trumpet that more than six million new jobs have been
> created since 2009. However, that same mainstream press remains
> conspicuously silent about the real facts about jobs and incomes
> in the USA. For example, in a Bloomberg News interview this past
> week, it was reported that 76% of the U.S. jobs created since 2009
> have been what is called ‘contingent’ jobs—i.e. 60% part time and
> another 16% temporary jobs. Jobs that are paid 50%-65% less than
> full time jobs. Jobs with no benefits, substandard working
> conditions, and no job security.
>
> Furthermore, while 6 million jobs have been created, according to
> the mainstream press, little or no mention by that same press is
> made about the 8 million USA workers who have dropped out and left
> the labor force altogether, disillusioned they could ever find
> work sufficient to support themselves. If the latter 8 million
> were considered in the unemployment rate in the USA—which they are
> not given the way the USA underestimates its jobless—the true
> unemployment rate in the USA would be in excess of 12% today
> instead of the current official rate of about half that.
>
> That’s 8 million potentially unhappy voters. Add to their ranks
> the 4.5 million who were able only to get part time and temp jobs;
> add the millions whose homes have been foreclosed since 2009; add
> the millions of union workers who now increasingly realize they
> will get no benefit from Obama’s health care act and instead will
> have their own costs of health insurance doubled; add the millions
> of students now in debt to the tune of more than $1 trillion in
> the USA; add those millions fed up with the continued militarist
> policies of the administration; and, not least, add to all the
> above the key constituency that more than any other enabled Obama
> to win a second term in 2012—i.e. the tens of millions of Hispanic
> workers in the USA that Obama has recently turned his back on once
> again.
>
> *The Strategic Latino-Hispanic Vote*
>
> The Obama administration since 2009 has deported more undocumented
> Latin American immigrant workers, and broken up more of their
> families as a result, than all preceding presidents combined. More
> than 2 million have been deported on Obama’s watch. 438,000 in
> just 2013, which was 50,000 more than 2012, which in turn was
> 30,000 more than in 2011. That’s millions of potential family
> members and friends who will not forget the hurt come November 4.
>
> And after promising to end deportations and take executive action
> himself on immigration earlier this year, Obama has since
> retreated this past June and put all promises about immigration
> reform on hold.
>
> Not surprising, a September 2014 NBC/Telemundo poll showed only
> 13% of Latino voters in the USA felt “very positive” about the
> Democratic Party.
>
> The Hispanic vote was key in 2012 to winning those states that put
> Obama back into the White House. Today it is those same
> states—Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, etc.—that are
> the key swing states up for grabs in the race for the Senate.
>
> It is those same states in which Democrats running for the Senate
> are trailing well behind in voter polls. And if most Latino and
> Hispanic voters stay home and don’t turn out to vote, which
> appears the likely case next week, then Democrat Senate candidates
> are doomed in those same key states and Democrats will lose the
> U.S. Senate ‘hands down’, as they say.
> Indicative of this likelihood was the headline in a Wall St.
> Journal this past week that declared ‘Hispanic Voter Frustration
> Threatens Democrats Most’. The story included a report by
> organizers of the National Council of La Raza, who talked to
> prospective Latino voters house to house in Florida. The story
> noted that “many seemed to not be paying attention to this
> election. ‘We’ve been let down so many times, I don’t know who to
> support’, said Maria Molina, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to vote’.”
>
> *A Tale of Two Midterm Debacles: 2010 and 2014*
>
> The two midterm elections—2010 and 2014— are linked. They are part
> of the same dynamic and process, begun in 2010 and continuing to
> this day. And both the loss of the U.S. House in 2010, and likely
> the U.S. Senate in 2014, have their roots in the policies adopted
> by the Obama administration in the summer of 2010.
>
> Obama’s token fiscal stimulus in 2009, which was barely 5% of USA
> GDP at a time the U.S. economy was declining 15% in 2008-09, was
> insufficient to ensure a sustained economic recovery. (Compare his
> to China’s 15% of GDP fiscal stimulus package at the time).
>
> By the summer of 2010 more fiscal stimulus for the U.S. economy
> was clearly called for, as the 2009 stimulus began to dissipate
> and the U.S. economy to stall out. Unemployment began to rise once
> again by the tens of thousands every month throughout the summer
> of 2010. 25 million were still unemployed. Homeowners’
> foreclosures were accelerating at an average rate of 300,000 a
> month. Economic output was slowing everywhere, with business,
> consumer, and local government spending in retreat.
>
> But despite this 2010 summer scenario, the Obama administration
> ignored the rising housing foreclosures, turning it over to the
> States’ attorneys general deal with the problem. Concerning jobs,
> he appointed the CEO of the General Electric Corp, Jeff Immelt, to
> head up his ‘jobs program’. Immelt’s jobs program turned out to be
> more free trade, more tax benefits for multinational corporations,
> and patent reform. Job losses and home foreclosures not
> surprisingly continued to rise.
>
> Instead of directly addressing the continuing dual jobs and
> housing crises at the time, Obama turned to providing even more
> free money to bankers and investors. Following the ‘quantitative
> easing’ (QE) U.S. central bank program of 2009 that bought $1.7
> trillion in bad assets from bankers and wealthy investors, Obama
> had the U.S. central bank provide an additional $600 billion in
> late 2010. He then proposed another $800 billion more in tax cuts
> for business as well.
>
> In just two years, 2009-2010, bankers and big capital would
> receive at minimum a total of nearly $4 trillion in direct
> subsidies, tax cuts, and free ‘no interest’ money. (Since 2010
> they have received at least $500 billion dollars more in further
> business tax cuts, $2.2 trillion more in QE free money, and
> hundreds of billions more in direct subsidies).
>
> This focus on recovery for bankers and big business, while doing
> virtually nothing to address working and middle classes crises in
> jobs, housing, and declining wages and income, was not lost on
> American voters in the fall of 2010. With business and investors
> being bailed out without limit, working and middle class America
> were receiving little, if anything, in terms of jobs, housing
> rescue, or any other substantive assistance. The November 2010
> elections consequently resulted in a debacle for Democrats, who
> lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives by historic margins.
>
> Democrats also lost the majority of State governorships up for
> election in 2010. 2010 was a census year. That meant the states,
> now mostly under Republican rule after the 2010 elections, could
> and did proceed to ‘gerrymander’ safe jurisdictions for
> Republicans in future U.S. House elections. Gerrymandering would
> ensure Republicans would hereafter have to worry little about ever
> losing the U.S. House again.
>
> The jobs crisis in the USA has therefore still not been solved.
> There is only a massive ‘jobs churn’—from full time to contingent
> jobs, from high pay to low pay, and from new entrants to the labor
> force to millions leaving the labor force.
>
> The same Obama policies in 2010 that led to the Democrats loss of
> the U.S. House of Representatives in that year’s midterm
> Congressional elections still continue to haunt Democrat Senate
> candidates this year, 2014: Jobs, housing, stagnant and declining
> working class wages and incomes, rising working class debt, and
> slowing consumption by the vast majority of U.S. households.
>
> While Obama and the Democrats repeatedly refer to 6 million jobs
> having been created since 2010, they are silent on the fact that 4
> million of those are part time, temporary, and thus low paid. Nor
> do they mention that 8 million have left the labor force
> altogether. The jobs crisis in the USA has therefore still not be
> solved. There is only a massive ‘jobs churn’—from full time to
> contingent jobs, from high pay to low pay, and from new entrants
> to the labor force to millions leaving the labor force.
>
> Nor has the Housing crisis been solved—at least for working and
> middle class Americans. A brief period of housing recovery in
> 2011-12 has resulted in a new slowdown. In the interim, housing
> sales were mostly to the wealthiest households or to institutional
> investors and foreign buyers—not the normal middle class buyer.
> Meanwhile, median working class families’ wages and incomes have
> continued to decline 1%-2% every year for the past four years, and
> household debt levels for median families have continued to rise.
>
> This basically stagnant state of economic affairs affecting the
> vast majority of U.S. workers and households has not been lost on
> the average voter today, in 2014, any more than it was lost on the
> same voter in 2010.
>
> This time, in 2014, the large number of Senate seats that were won
> by Democrats in 2008 are up for re-election. Those Democrats won
> Senate seats in 2008 from what had been historically traditional
> Republican seats in pro-Republican states. Now, in 2014, most of
> those seats will likely revert back to Republicans again.
>
> *The Legacies of 2010 + New Grievances*
>
> The Obama and Democrat policies and programs of 2010 that led to
> their midterm 2010 election debacle have never really changed.
> Those policies in 2010 did little to create jobs, ignored the
> foreclosure crisis and failed to generate a sustained housing
> recovery, and did nothing about working families’ steady decline
> in wages and incomes. That cost the Democrats the U.S. House of
> Representatives in 2010.
>
> Today in 2014 little is fundamentally different after four years,
> except that the key voter constituencies Democrats are courting in
> 2014 Senate races—i.e. Hispanic, student youth, and union
> workers—have been even more abused in the interim. This time voter
> response could be even worse, given the overlay of other,
> additional legitimate grievances by large voter constituencies
> that previously voted for Democrats.
>
> A close look at the 2012 elections shows that Obama won
> re-election largely because of Hispanic, student youth, and union
> labor votes delivered him the key states that made the difference
> in his U.S. electoral college vote results. In addition to the
> continuing economic legacies of 2010, these key constituencies now
> have additional grievances with the Democrats.
>
> Millions of Latino immigrants and Hispanics who had high hopes
> that Democrats and Obama would address their needs and grievances
> no longer believe Democrats and Obama can deliver a solution.
> Millions of students with a combined more than $1 trillion in loan
> debt, who are now paying tens of billions a year in excess
> above-market interest to the U.S. government no longer believe
> meaningful debt relief is possible, even though it could with a
> mere stroke of Obama’s pen.
>
> And union workers who delivered key Midwest states to Democrats
> and Obama in 2012, and have received virtually nothing from Obama
> since 2008 in return (except perhaps the very real prospect of
> losing their negotiated health benefits in the next few years due
> to the Obamacare health act) have seen the Obama administration
> reject their unions’ every appeal for assistance and
> reconsideration since 2012.
>
> It’s not that these key constituencies will vote Republican. It’s
> that they will likely not vote Democrat. They will vote with ‘the
> seat of their pants’, as they say, and stay home. And that means
> the loss of the Senate for Democrats next week.
>
>
>
> __._,_.___
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Posted by: David Johnson <davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net
> <mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reply via web post
> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CentralILJwJ/conversations/messages/3036;_ylc=X3oDMTJxZTUycWU4BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIzNjI3MTE0BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTQ0NDYxOQRtc2dJZAMzMDM2BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3JwbHkEc3RpbWUDMTQxNDUzNzk0Mw--?act=reply&messageNum=3036>
> • Reply to sender
> <mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net?subject=Re%3A%20Fwd%3A%20USA%20Midterm%20Elections-Past%20and%20Present%27%20by%20Jack%20Rasmus%2C%20teleSUR%20English%2C%20October%2027%2C%202014>
> • Reply to group
> <mailto:CentralILJwJ at yahoogroups.com?subject=Re%3A%20Fwd%3A%20USA%20Midterm%20Elections-Past%20and%20Present%27%20by%20Jack%20Rasmus%2C%20teleSUR%20English%2C%20October%2027%2C%202014>
> • Start a New Topic
> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CentralILJwJ/conversations/newtopic;_ylc=X3oDMTJmcm1qNWVxBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIzNjI3MTE0BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTQ0NDYxOQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNudHBjBHN0aW1lAzE0MTQ1Mzc5NDM->
> • Messages in this topic
> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CentralILJwJ/conversations/topics/3036;_ylc=X3oDMTM1bWZmMHEyBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIzNjI3MTE0BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTQ0NDYxOQRtc2dJZAMzMDM2BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3Z0cGMEc3RpbWUDMTQxNDUzNzk0MwR0cGNJZAMzMDM2>
> (1)
>
> Visit Your Group
> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CentralILJwJ/info;_ylc=X3oDMTJmczJrazJsBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIzNjI3MTE0BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTQ0NDYxOQRzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2Z2hwBHN0aW1lAzE0MTQ1Mzc5NDM->
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups
> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo;_ylc=X3oDMTJla3VwM2MyBF9TAzk3NDc2NTkwBGdycElkAzIzNjI3MTE0BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTQ0NDYxOQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNnZnAEc3RpbWUDMTQxNDUzNzk0Mw-->
>
> • Privacy
> <https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/groups/details.html> •
> Unsubscribe
> <mailto:CentralILJwJ-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe>
> • Terms of Use <https://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/>
>
> .
>
> __,_._,___
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141028/8f1a233a/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/png
Size: 9979 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141028/8f1a233a/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 44706 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20141028/8f1a233a/attachment-0001.jpe>
More information about the Peace-discuss
mailing list