Mark Shields at CNN says baldly that the US is not a morally just nation!

[harlinnchi]

And I agree, based upon that which he cites.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/26/shields.terror/index.html

"...The unity that had been the hallmark of the nation in the last months of 2001 was replaced by polarization and distrust. George W. Bush, who -- if he had chosen to do so -- could have become another Ike by governing as a center-right leader and bringing three or four Democrats into his Cabinet as part of a national coalition government, decided instead to follow an ardently conservative agenda in a time of war featuring historically aberrational tax cuts.

The social fabric of the nation has been worn and torn. The number and percentage of this country's citizens in poverty has gone up each and every year of this decade. Today, there are 5.4 million more Americans living in poverty, most of them children, than there were when George W. Bush was elected president. The number without health insurance grew by more than 6 million from 2000 to 2004, to more than 45 million Americans. During the same period, employer-sponsored health insurance dropped by 5 full percentage points, from covering 66 percent of the non-elderly to just 61 percent.

Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were in the fall of 2001, in spite of the fact that worker productivity has risen some 13.5 percent during that same time. For five years in a row, Americans' median household income has dropped. It was actually $1,740 lower in 2004 than it had been in 1999. Those in the nation forced to work for the minimum wage (which has not been increased in nearly nine years, during which time the Congress has voted itself seven salary increases) have paid a painful price. The real value of the minimum wage has fallen by 82 cents from $6.02 to $5.15 an hour since 2000 to today.


In a morally just nation, the rich do not get richer while the poor get poorer. But in the United States, that has been the continuing case. In the last quarter century, the household income of the highest quintile of the population has increased by 52 percent, while that same figure for the lowest quintile has grown by not quite 5 percent.

[Fovea]

1. K&R

And yelled at the top of my lungs.

[harlinnchi]

11. It seems to be overwhelming in that wherever one focuses his attention...

...regarding this administration, from their treatment of vets to their treatment of current members of the military to their treatment of regular workers to their treatment of the environment to their attempts to denigrate Mr. Chavez for trying to ease the energy price pain felt by our less affluent citizens, nothing rings true.

That astonished me. How can someone who helps folks you ostensibly care for be a bad guy, even if his help is intended to make you look bad?

The lies we're fed about the economy are beginning to fail; the numbers don't add up, won't add up and folks can't be persuaded differently.

[Just Me]

12. Welcome, harlinnchi!!!

:hi:

The lies being fed to our people, a people supposedly living in a "democratic" nation, is profound.

Obviously, democracy is not an ideal valued or embraced by those who hold the most influence over this country. To the contrary, deception and manipulation seems to be the trademark nowadays.

Seems we are in such a long tunnel or deep dungeon away from our ideals.

[harlinnchi]

22. I know these situations are not new; robber barons and yellow...

...journalism were things of the 19th and 20th centuries, too. It's just a matter of degree. The extent to which, for example, it has become acceptable for the vice president to pillage the public treasury would cause investigations, arrests, convictions and incarcerations in any sane country.

One of the understated dangers to our country has become the Carlisle Group, that nebulous group of ex-government officials who are managing to buy up much of what's left in America.

Thanks for the welcome, by the way. Y'all are a friendly group of folks!

[tblue37]

44. Just as the former Communist Party officials

used their power and influence to buy up Russia and subvert democracy before it ever really had a chance.

[malaise]

47. Under communism

the poor had free education, healthcare and housing.

[northernsoul]

61. The Irony of the Republicans

is that they are replacing the system that defeated Communism with the system that caused it.

[YourBrother]

63. if voting changed anything

they'd ban it

[GrumpyGreg]

21. Mr Shields said this has been a 25 year process--it didn't

just happen in the last five years.

[bigbrother05]

27. Yep, started when the TV cowboy was elected

Only BC slowed it down. Sure, Bill was good for business, but the average american was doing better. The internet bubble created lots of new billionaires, but most were from risks taken by innovators. A lot of the old money got in on good deals (sweetheart positions on IPOs that actually ripped off the companies going public), but the big stories were real rags-to-riches. Notice that there weren't many stories about the internet folks stealing pension funds (Enron) or siphoning off capital for extravagant lifestyles (Worldcom).

Old money was pissed that things like AOL buying Time-Warner came back on them. You know the fact that Gore was an early and strong supporter of the public internet had to chafe those folks. They felt if they couldn't control it they had to try and kill it (they still don't understand). They did everything in their power to get their guy in in 2000, because they could see the economy moving away from the bricks & mortar, smoke stack, resources intensive industries they owned. Had Gore made it to the inauguration, is there any question that Enron, et al would have been vigorously prosecuted? Would the environment have been gutted? Would world wide communications be illegally monitored? Even if 9-11 had occurred, would we have invaded Iraq?

Yes it took 25 years to get here, but the roots run back to the attitudes of Robber Barons and their progeny are trying to take us back there.

[TahitiNut]

39. Income Equity has declined in the U.S. since the mid-60s

The Gini Ratio of Income Inequality is the best (imho) overall measure of (in)equity in income distribution available, not relying on broad quintiles when, even within the top quintile (i.e. top 20%), income inequity is on the increase. From this graph, it can be clearly seen that the U.S. has become a banana republic ("plantation economics") where even "Red China" has greater equity in income distribution.

[newspeak]

57. maybe you need to show that chart

to some of the clueless. Maybe their reaction would be, "by God, even those damned Communists are doing better than us!"!!!

[TahitiNut]

65. It's somewhat disappointing to me that so few folks seem able or willing

... to comprehend the very serious conditions portrayed by the Gini Ratio and how terribly we've performed in this country over the last 25-35 years. We've gotten more statistically illiterate as a country ... to the point that folks even take a perverse kind of 'pride' in not understanding 'math' and the myth of the average.

[Armstead]

37. Kicked and recomnmend

Shields can usually be counted on to tell it like it is

[aquart]

2. Yup.

[bear425]

3. #5 n/t

[insane_cratic_gal]

4. 5.4 million Americans living in poverty

they ought to be ashamed, instead of finding answers they are throwing America's growing poor to the wolves at the expense of the rich's tax cuts

Disgusting

[Nimrod2005]

7. Actually more --- 12.7% according to last month's report

12.7% of about 300 million is close to 40 million.

[YourBrother]

29. hmmm

depends where you draw the line on "poverty"

a person who works more hours than they sleep, is poor

a person who earns only enough to keep going to work, is poor

a person who has no access to differing views, is poor

as any statistics broadcast by your media will be inflated on the side of making them look good, i think the real number may be far higher

[Just Me]

42. Yes. The rate of poverty is higher.

Adult children forced to live with their parents just to survive aren't included. Couples forced to work multiple jobs to survive aren't included. Self-employed aren't included.

I'd guesstimate at least 80+ million Americans are living at or below poverty,...at least.

Unemployment and underemployment is much, much worse than the bs 5.5% asserted by Bush's DOL.

[YourBrother]

49. non people or unpeople

the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups is intended to manipulate the figures to look rosy in every instance

when does someone become a nonperson? when they no longer make the stats look good:D

[regnaD kciN]

20. But, instead of being ashamed...

...we've embraced Social Darwinism, which posits that it's the poor's own fault that they are poor, and that the rich getting richer is merely "survival of the fittest."

And the Religious Right has gone merrily along with this, despite the fact that it's about the most un-Christian teaching imaginable...and, of course, it's based on Darwin's theory of evolution.

:grr:

[Greyhound]

60. I think it was john d., but definitely one of the robber barons that

said something to the effect that "for a man to take $10 and turn it into $100 is a feat, for one to take $1,000,000 and turn it into $10,000,000 is inevitable". It's as true today as it was then.
Welcome to the Un-unitedited Serfs of Amerika. :kick:

[NewJeffCT]

53. it's 5.4 million more Americans

There were still too many under Clinton, though it was reduced drastically during his 8 years as president. I think it was around 11%. However, under Bush, it's gone up by 5.4 million to closer to 13%.

[Cha]

5. Mark Shields could have been

reading my mind. It's a nation run by sewer rats at the moment.

[baby_bear]

8. excellent, zidzi

sewer rats indeed.

b_b

[KittyWampus]

13. Black Hearted Sewer Rats

[0007]

14. ....and the these sewer rats are the Mafia, organized crime.

Enron was no better and good friends with junior was KennyBoy.

Now Jack Abramoff and close ties with Tom DeLay. Man this is more powerful than what Meyers Lansky had going for him in the forties and fifties with Batista and Cuba.

[newspeak]

59. my father-in-law who lived near Vegas

during the mob days he told me stories about how some of the "mob" casino owners would come up and ask regular working class people, "how are you doing?" They'd just take time to talk to working people and if you lost a load at the tables, some would give you a bed for the night and a ticket back home. He says now, the corporate owned casinos could care less. He was talking about the fifties and early sixties. That's just his experience of what he saw in Vegas.

[YourBrother]

64. organised crime

want a better picture?

i suggest you look into "operation northwoods" and "michael meiring" through google in your own time

peace

[senseandsensibility]

6. kick

Good for Mark. I wish he'd be a little tougher sometimes, but he got it right this time.

[melissinha]

51. agreed especially to that David Brooks

what a snarky jerk....

I love watching Brooks get defensive and Shields just coasts by with real logic.... just wish he could put that Brooks down a couple pegs once in a while, but I guess its not his style.

[Just Me]

9. "The people" deserve the truth: we are a rogue nation that serves,....

,...global robber barons. That is what we have become. That is why we are hated. We MAKE everyone hate us by our actions. Our words are completely worthless. We have no integrity and sold our morality to the highest bidder.

Our nation is so lost.

I'm sad. Sometimes, I just want to leave. But, the people's greatness keeps me bound to my commitment to them. I wish the truth-flu spread as fast as a cold. :( I wish.

[Olney Blue]

10. The compassionate conservative uniter not a divider chimpanzee

gets a kick in the teeth.


:kick:

[lyonn]

15. I believe bush has more tax cuts on the table

For the Rich this coming year. Warms your heart, right? Social programs are disappearing just like Norquist dreamed of and planned on for years. We are becoming a socially sick country and will pay for these sins eventually. It appears that we are becoming more like the old soviet regime. What is ironic is that is what the "right" accuse the "left" of. It is called bush's black is white theory.

[Ksec]

16. polarization and distrust.

And Bush brought that promising to heal the divide, bring us together. He has never reached out even once . He does his best to enrage our side and any President who does that is lousy. Clinton tried to reach out to the other side but they didnt want it, they wanted dirt on him.

[porphyrian]

17. A morally just nation doesn't abandon 3 states of disaster victims...

...during the winter. A morally just nation doesn't have incarceration statistics that prove unfair bias against the poor and minorities, especially with regard to the death sentence (which a morally just nation wouldn't have in the first place). A morally just nation wouldn't abandon its elderly and its mentally ill to fend for themselves when the ever-decreasing pittance we pay them to survive on isn't enough, and health care and prescription drug prices continue to rise. A morally just nation wouldn't torture prisoners. A morally just nation wouldn't have starving citizens while it pays millionaires not to grow food. A morally just nation wouldn't murder the indigenous population for its land and resources. We have never been a morally just nation. We have just lied to ourselves enough to believe the myth.

[harlinnchi]

23. You're right, it's a long list of stuff showing how morally unjust we...

...can be. I remember a picture of starving Depression-era, migrant children who, having traveled many miles just to reach the promised land of California, had their hopes dashed by watching men pouring gasoline onto piles of fresh, ripe and nourishing oranges, in preparation for burning them. The oranges would help and heal the children; the men knew they starved. The men burned the oranges all the same. The longing need in the faces of the children as they watched the pouring of gas onto what might have fed them is a sight I'll never forget. The men knew there was more profit in destroying the oranges and maintaining their price than there would be in distributing them and allowing the price to plummet. That takes a special kind of evil,

[porphyrian]

25. Putting profit before humanity is sociopathic.

While I haven't seen it yet, apparently the documentary, "The Corporation," makes a strong case that corporations act sociopathically, even if no single member of it does so intentionally. It's what makes them so dangerous, and why we absolutely must remove their influence from our government if we're ever to be a country "for the people."

[NVMojo]

18. is the Bush and Christian Right agenda a form of "genocide" on the poor?

just wondering ...

[Protagoras]

19. Why does he hate our Freedom?

Maybe he just needs to move to China and live with the communists :sarcasm:







K&R

[tlsmith1963]

24. And It's Amazing...

...that people still support Bush, even though all of these things have happened. I used to think that conservatives weren't necessarily stupid, they just had different views than mine. Now I just think they are stupid.

Tammy

[Broken_Hero]

26. damn...great read...n/t...

[ComerPerro]

28. He's right, but that soundbyte is gonna bite him in the ass

Conservatives will spread this to the masses as "Liberals say that the US is immoral". And that's all.

They will never hear the context, they will never know what was actually said.

They will just "know" that liberals hate America and Americans.

[YourBrother]

30. careful

don't confuse ordinary american citizens with the nazi's you have holding the big stick at present

they are committing attrocities in your name, against you aswell, and wanting you to carry the can for it

but essentially this has been going on for a very long time

only now are americans able to discuss and see first hand the direct human consequences of their foreign policy and marines acting under the interests of oil/banking corporations

god bless the internet and god bless everyone who considers themselves a reporter, because that should be all of us.

i truly cherish the comments i read that differ from my own, if only because they make me question in different ways that which i believe in

and questioning things is a good thing, it ultimately leads to the root of problems, or gets us closer to the truth, which no matter how ugly, cannot help but be a beautiful thing

if you wan't the real message out there ... you gotta spread it yourself ;)

all the best :)

[ProfessorGAC]

31. Let Them Say It

I think it's a strong message for the progressives to speak. You know, "We vote based upon moral issues, but we're not showing we are a moral country. Just look at how many poor and destitute citizens we have in a country this great!" In one phrase, we show that they don't have a monopoly on morality, that we think the country is a good place (just not as good as it should be), and create a sympathetic view.

Let them spread it around. It can be used as a political weapon!
The Professor

[ComerPerro]

32. It doesnt' work that way. You know that

Their talking points are oversimplified because it works. Most people just don't want to think.

The conservatives will "catapault" this propaganda by saying, "The Democrats, who support gay marriage, abortion on demand, and letting convicted killers go free, are now saying that you don't know anything about morality and values!"


It will work on a lot of people.


But, then again, it may just end up only rallying those who are already lockstep Bush loyalists.

[ProfessorGAC]

33. I Think It Does Work That Way

You just said it did. The message needs to be distilled into sound bites and make it just as easy to absorb, make it just as easy to remember, and be hammered and hammered and hammered.

The very reason you're saying it won't work that way is the same reason you're giving for why it already works for the radical right.

The Professor

[ComerPerro]

34. Well, what I am saying is that it doesn't work for us

It could work. But we don't do it. And when we do, they find ways to dumb things down even more.

Part of it comes from their damned black or white worldview. There is no middle ground. You are either for us or against us, you either support Bush or you support Saddam, and you either think the country is moral or you think it is immoral.

There is no grey area with them.

Our biggest problem, I have come to realize, is that we tend to explain ourselves too much. We give the masses too much credit.

Meanwhile, Republicans talk to people like they were idiots, and reap the benifits.

[ProfessorGAC]

35. Now, We're On The Same Page

You're saying it doesn't work because we don't do it. I'm saying, we SHOULD do it. And i agree that we miss a lot of opportunities because we don't.

However, one is never treating the "masses" like idiots when they actually tell them the truth. Vero?
The Profesor

[ComerPerro]

36. But can they process the truth?

Somewhere along the way we lost ground. Instead of stating the simple truth and then leaving the Republicans to tear it down with lies, we now find ourselves in a position where the Republicans tear us down with lies, and we are so busy clarifying that we can never really get our points out in a plain-spoken manner.

[ProfessorGAC]

40. Like You Said Earlier. . .

. . . the delivery of the message is the key! We are not finding those sound bite, mantra-esque statements that, while they can be 100% true, are memorable and absorbable. Our problem is not that people can't understand the truth, it's that we're not properly fashioning the message. That's what i think, anyway.
The Professor

[Armstead]

43. The only reason is because we don't follow through

"America is no longer a moral nation" is exactly the same message that the right wing spoons out. The only difference is how they define morality and how we define morality.

They say America is morally bankrupt because of gays and abortion and things like that.

Shields is saying America is morally bankrupt because we condone and support increasing poverty, economic inequality and concentrations of wealth and power.

The problem with that message is not the mesage itself. It's because too many Democrats and liberals have not followed through on that message over the years. While the Right Wing has continued to pound at distracting social issues, we have not pounded with equal fervor at the real immorality that has been distorting our nation.

Intead we waffle and backtrack and apologize and "take back" what we say whenever the right wing challenges it. We also engage in the kind of defeatist thinking that you expresed. "We can't tell the truth. Voters will never accept that."

I say we have to amplify the things that Shields is saying and never apologize or soft pedal it. Never apologize for telling the truth, and never worry what the GOP propagandists will say.

[ProfessorGAC]

45. Thanks

That's what i meant! You said it more clearly. And, ComerPerro i think, now understands what i meant. It just took me three posts to clarify it.
The Professor

38. the Bush cabal has a scorched earth policy

devastate everything, and then come back and buy it back for your own uses. Why does it seem we helped Pakistan during the earthquake more than we helped Louisiana? Priorities are way out of whack, with the American people being pushed to the bottom and money interests, foreign alliances to the top.

[DemonFighterLives]

41. Welcome to DU!

Shields rocks!
:yourock:

The fearless leader doesn't act Christian and his compassion is seriously lacking. Death- no problem, poverty- no problem, cronies ripping off the taxpayers- no problem.
I've got to stop, I'm working myself into a froth. :argh:

[harlinchi]

46. As Gandhi is supposed to have said:

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mohandas Gandhi


By the way, I know that 'frothy' feeling!

[DemonFighterLives]

55. No lie

Wow, I was wondering how you got from 31 posts to 401 that quick.
:think:
Did I lose some time somewhere? I see now that it is in the n's.
:)

[harlinchi]

56. I tried to consolidate but I keep forgetting to get the password...

...for the original harlinchi, me posting from work. harlinnchi is just me at home. I'll try to use just the one in the future; my password manager automatically submits the second password at each location!

That's mighty observant of you!

[DemonFighterLives]

58. Observant is my middle name

:rofl:
One minute I was welcoming you and voting up this thread and the next you had 400 posts and the thread had 40 votes. I thought I passed through a time warp.
:silly:

[Armstead]

48. nuther kick

[greiner3]

50. This is all well and good;

But the bulk of American families will continue looking at this as 'what's in it for me?' They won't gey involved until it is their turn to become one of the statistics. But by then it will be too late, as they themselves will begin to howl loudly but in a voice those in power will not hear!

[Cleita]

52. Mark Shields seems to be one of the last liberal

journalists and pundits who still seems to be able to speak the truth on the MSM.

[NewJeffCT]

54. there are a few, but Shields may be one of the few on CNN

Olbermann on MSNBC is good, and there are a few quality talking heads out there on the liberal side of things (Katrina Van Den Heuval (sp?) comes to mind) Paul Begala on CNN often does pretty well.

However, too often our side is represented by DLC types or similar.

[FreedomAngel82]

62. Very nice

Laid all out. So depressing. Especially this part: Today, there are 5.4 million more Americans living in poverty, most of them children, than there were when George W. Bush was elected president. And here they claim to be pro-family? :mad:

[applegrove]

66. Thanks for posting. n/t