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The Accomplishments of Progressives and Conservatives

by | Oct 18, 2021 | | 0 Comments

The other day in a discussion elsewhere on FB someone wrote:”Great job the progressives are doing.” and I gave my list of all the things Progressives have done but then realized I also needed a list for all the things Conservatives have achieved and here is the list I have developed so far. Suggestions for additions are welcome.

I thought I would put the two lists ide by side here from comparisons.

Progressives:

  • The end of acid rain in the northeast
  • The restoration of the ozone layer in the arctic
  • The GI Bill
  • The Clean Air Act
  • The Clean Water Act
  • Worker safety protections
  • Social security
  • Ended school segregation
  • Earned Income Tax Credit
  • Food and drug safety regulation
  • The Pure Food and Drug Act
  • The Meat Inspection Act
  • The space program
  • The Peace Corps
  • A women’s right to vote
  • Americans With Disabilities Act
  • The Voting Rights Act*
  • The Civil Rights Act
  • Medicare/Medicaid
  • Our leadership in the world of technology
  • Fair housing regulations
  • The employee healthcare benefits we have
  • Organized labor
  • The Wagner Act and the National Labor Relations Board
  • 40 hour work week
  • Child labor laws
  • Food Stamps SNAP
  • The Federal Trade Commission Act
  • The Clayton Antitrust Act
  • The United States Forest Service
  • The National Weather Service
  • The Interstate Highway System
  • National Air Traffic Control
  • The Child Tax Credit program (every single Republican voted against it)
  • The Tennessee Valley Authority Project
  • The Securities and Exchange Commission
  • The Center for Disease Control and Prevention
  • The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
  • The Glass-Steagall Act (which was tragically and recently repealed by Republicans)
  • Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act
  • The Federal Railroad Safety Program

Conservatives

  • Conservatism has succeeded in denying climate change stalling or killing off any legislative action on the issue.
  • Conservatism has propped up (provided corporate welfare to) the oil and coal industry instead of investing in new energy technologies.
  • Conservatism has prevented widespread access to sex education and birth control
  • Conservatism has severally restricted or eliminated a woman’s right to chose.
  • Conservatism has effectively killed progress towards making the minimum wage a real living wage.
  • Conservatism has taken us from a lender economy to a debtor economy by throwing ridiculous amounts of money at the military.
  • Conservatism has effectively built a fear of immigrants and immigration.
  • Conservatism has made us the nation with the highest incarceration rate.
  • Conservatism has given us white supremacy.
  • Conservatism has given us the right wing militias that are threatening us constantly.
  • Conservatism has given us an unusually high rate of gun violence for a developed and wealthy nation.
  • Conservatism has given us the 2021 US Capital Insurrection. It was 100% conservatives.
  • Conservatism have fought for a proportional tax (also referred to as a flat tax) or regressive tax system
  • Conservatism has heightened vaccine hesitancy and made it a political statement.

Seven Ways to Transform 21st-Century Economics — and Economists – Evonomics

by | Oct 18, 2021 | , | 0 Comments

Seven Ways to Transform 21st-Century Economics – and Economists – Evonomics

Complexity Economics matters enormously for the future, but its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date. No one can deny it: economics matters. Its theories are the mother tongue of public policy, the rationale for multi-billion-dollar investments, and the tools used to tackle global poverty and manage our planetary home.

Libertarians and Republicans sell the inflation myth to widen the Gap between the rich and the rest. – #Monetary Sovereignty – Mitchell

by | Oct 14, 2021 | | 0 Comments

There is no relationship between inflation (red line) and changes in federal deficit spending (blue line).

Libertarians and Republicans sell the inflation myth to widen the Gap between the rich and the rest.

Let me begin at the end, with a summary: “Inflation,” or “price inflation” as some prefer to call it, never is the traditional “too much money chasing too few goods.” It always is “too few goods (and services).” Never, “too much money.” Inflation always is caused by shortages of key goods and services, most often,…

 

Did the Big Bang begin from a singularity? Not anymore. – Big Think

by | Oct 13, 2021 | , | 0 Comments

“Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we can no longer speak, with any sort of knowledge or confidence, of how — or even whether — the universe itself began. By the very nature of inflation, it wipes out any information that came before the final few moments: where it ended and gave rise to our hot Big Bang. Inflation could have gone on for an eternity, it could have been preceded by some other non-singular phase, or it could have been preceded by a phase that did emerge from a singularity. Until the day comes where we discover how to extract more information from the universe than presently seems possible, we have no choice but to face our ignorance. The Big Bang still happened a very long time ago, but it wasn’t the beginning we once supposed it to be.”

Surprise: the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe anymore

Where did all this come from? In every direction we care to observe, we find stars, galaxies, clouds of gas and dust, tenuous plasmas, and radiation spanning the gamut of wavelengths: from radio to infrared to visible light to gamma rays.

Jon Gruden’s emails not just NFL issue but symbolic of white grievance

by | Oct 13, 2021 | , | 0 Comments

Opinion: Jon Gruden’s emails not just an NFL problem. They’re symbolic of societal white grievance.

If you want to fully understand why Jon Gruden resigned Monday after a trove of racist and misogynistic emails was unearthed like a giant vat of radioactive material, you must go back in time, from this week, this year, even this decade. You must go back to Nov.

The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results – The New York Times

by | Oct 5, 2021 | , , | 0 Comments

The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results

Republican lawmakers raised objections to the official certification of electoral votes in a joint session of Congress that went into the wee hours of Thursday morning, in a futile effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. See who supported the objections.

Hungarian-Style Soft Fascism is the GOP’s Ruthless New Brand – by Thom Hartmann – The Hartmann Report

by | Oct 4, 2021 | , | 0 Comments

Hungarian-Style Soft Fascism is the GOP’s Ruthless New Brand

While it’s fashionable in some circles to compare Donald Trump and the modern-day GOP to Hitler or Mussolini and their fascist movements from the 1930s, what’s happening on the international stage right now is actually somewhat different and, once in power, far harder to stop or overthrow. Call it “soft fascism” or neofascism.

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