by Philip A Farruggio

Cutting to the chase, if you consider yourself to be ‘On the Left’ then you have to be a Socialist. Period!

Now, there are many different levels under the banner of Socialism. Some may be Marxist, Trotskyite, Syndicalism etc. Yet, the unifying denominator is that all believe in the common ownership of the means of production and services.

Many socialists do honor the existence of Mom and Pop private ownership of small business. Under a truly socialist system banking, energy, health & dental care, housing and all necessary services would be owned and operated by the community, whether it be local, state or federal.

Imagine if you would if we had real community owned and run mortgage banks, where the only interest charges would be for overhead. Translated: Even in these so-called ‘low rates’ times, where a mortgage rate is around 4 or 5%, with non-profit community banks the rate would be perhaps 1%. Plus, the mortgage paper would remain with that bank. Today’s renters would be tomorrow’s owners of their own abode.

A truly socialist system would similarly own and operate the energy that goes into your home or apartment. For perhaps a fraction of what we pay now, everyone would have complete medical and dental coverage. (This writer has already spent $ 5000 this past year, CASH, with no insurance, for root canals, crowns and one extraction).

The real crime of it all is when we have less than 1/2 of 1% of our populace earning over a million dollars a year, and being treated in the same tax basket as those earning a couple of hundred thousand a year. In 1961, when JFK took office, the top rate was at 91% for a joint return of a couple earning $ 400,000 or more a year. By the time their accountant sharpened his or her pencil, the couple perhaps paid 40-50% of that. Nowadays, couples filing jointly and earning between $ 400,000 – $ 600,000 pay at the rate of 35%. After their accountant does the deed, maybe they pay at 20%. See the loss for Uncle Sam? I could go on and on but you should be getting my drift.

A truly socialist society would not need to have our military all over the world, pointing our majestic force and power at everyone. There is no way, if we curtailed the Corporate War Economy being run by private individuals and investors, that all those phony wars we conducted (or plan to conduct) would ever occur! Cutting the obscene military spending, which is over 50% of our federal tax revenues at present, to maybe 25% or much less than that, would ensure money for safety net programs (like National Health and Dental for All). In addition, we would still be as safe as we are now… NO, actually safer. Why? Well, with no phony wars and excursions into all those Middle Eastern countries (and soon to be Venezuela) the question of ‘Why do they hate us’ would not even be brought up.

Now let’s look at the group I name the ‘Phony Left’. The Democratic Party, continued to be subsidized by the super rich, have a large segment (especially recently) considering themselves as ‘Left wing’. Really? Bottom line: They all still serve the Military Industrial Empire. When do you see them advocating a real pullback of this empire by closing a majority of our nearly 1000 foreign bases, and cutting with muster this fiscally bankrupting military spending?

Matter of fact, Bernie Sanders, who is in reality a decent and caring guy, calls himself a ‘Democratic Socialist’. Yet, his group supported both John Kerry’s run in ’04 and Obama’s run in 2008.

Sanders supported the NATO (US led) carpet bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011 and our incursions into Syria… and now our banging the drums for a new Cold War with Russia. Sadly, he referred to the late Hugo Chavez, democratically elected leader of Venezuela, as a ‘Dead Dictator’!

This ‘Phony Left’ still won’t come out in favor of nationalizing Big Business, especially the real culprits, the Wall Street banks! Do you ever hear these folks ditto that in regard to Big Pharma or Corporate Absentee Landlords? As far as taking on the Super Rich, new ‘Phony Left ‘ presidential candidate Sen. Warren wants to assess a whopping 2% surtax on any assets over 50 million dollars. Wow! You got to be kidding me! The real tragedy is that this ‘Peanut plan’ of hers is already being slammed by the embedded mainstream media. When will this comedic material, right out of a Marx Brothers film, cease?

Ok, now as to the title of this column, what’s left on the Amerikan plate?

Well, and again sadly, we have over a hundred million of our fellow citizens who still buy into this ‘Free Enterprise’ garbage that the right-wing and centrist Phony Left have been selling for seems forever. So many decent working stiffs still will defend to their (fiscal?) death the right for anyone to earn as much as possible.

Why? Well, any mention of true socialism as been tangled together with what we have been propagandized to believe as the hated and feared Communism. Orwell’s Big Brother hangs over them like a vulture, ready to devour. Little do they realize that the Nazi gang sold this same Kool-Aid to the masses of Germans in the 1920s and 30s. Thus, Fascism became the antidote, and you should know the rest folks.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/02/08/the-real-left-phony-left-and-whats-l...

Democrats Are Boosting Trump’s Reelection Prospects

Their top 2020 presidential hopefuls are embracing socialist-minded economic policy, from a Green New Deal to single-payer health insurance. It’s playing right into the president’s hands.

Anyone tracking the positions of the leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would think there weren’t any moderates left in the party. Sen. Kamala Harris of California reiteratedat a nationally televised town hall last month that her cosponsorship of Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all legislation would mean the abolition of private insurance. Five leading candidates endorsed a Green New Deal that imposes a top-down revolution of American society to mitigate the impact of climate change. 

But when you look at the polls breaking down the actual Democratic electorate, you’ll find limited support for such socialist-minded schemes. Broaden out to the overall electorate, and it’s easy to see how Democrats could be giving President Trump a lifeline to a second term despite his widespread unpopularity.

“We are on an out-of-control roller-coaster going 100 miles per hour, and we have no functioning brake,” said one liberal Democratic strategist who is alarmed by the rising tide of socialism within the party. “No one is leading, and that void could not be more clear.”

What’s so remarkable about this rapid leftward shift is that it’s working against the party’s best interests—both for the individual candidates and their chances of defeating Trump next year. So many candidates are trying to fill the most progressive lane of the party that they’re splitting that share of the vote evenly. At the same time, there’s plenty of evidence that many rank-and-file Democrats are looking for a pragmatist who can actually win the presidency.

One of the most valuable deep dives into the American electorate is the Pew political typology survey, which in 2017 broke down the various constituencies within both the Republican and Democratic parties. Among the Democrats, it identified four groups: Solid Liberals (19 percent of the overall electorate), Opportunity Democrats (13 percent), Disaffected Democrats (14 percent), and the Devout and Diverse (9 percent). Only the Solid Liberals were down-the-line progressives. The remaining two-thirds of Democrats held ideologically diverse views, with some unapologetic free-marketers alongside others holding more traditional cultural viewpoints.

The most telling questions came in the economic portion of the survey. It found most Democrats agreed on a generous social-safety net but were split on the meritocratic view that Americans can get ahead through hard work. The party was also divided on whether to raise taxes on wealthier Americans making $250,000 a year. (Only 23 percent of Solid Liberals said taxes on the wealthy should be kept the same or lowered; at least 45 percent of every other Democratic constituency agreed.)

The strain of economic pessimism is coursing through mainstream Democratic dogma, from Stacey Abrams’s State of the Union response to the various soak-the-rich economic plans seeking to redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom. This, despite economic data showing historically low unemployment and rising American wages. If there isn’t an economic downturn within the next 18 months, the doom-and-gloom rhetoric will sound downright retro—out of the Walter Mondale 1984 playbook against Ronald Reagan.

At a broader level, there is still a significant share of moderate and conservative Democrats in national and state surveys. Gallup found 47 percent of Democrats identify with the centrist wing of the party. FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr., in a compelling breakdown of Democratic moderates, found at least a quarter of Democrats identified as moderate or conservative in every single primary where exit or entrance polls were conducted.

Read more:

https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/676542?unlock=THRFT8CZS12CF03C

Just last week, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma made the allegation that China’s military was preparing for World War III.

“It’s like you’re preparing for World War III,” he said during a Senate hearing focused on the so-called challenges presented by Russia and China. “You’re talking to our allies over there and you wonder whose side they’re going to be on.”

According to Inhofe, the US has sat back and watched as China has built its military presence in the South China Sea, turning artificial islands into potential launch pads for its military.

The idea that the US has sat back and watched anything, ever, in the history of the world, is somewhat laughable. Even under the Obama administration, the president had an explicit containment strategy which was supposed to enclose and encircle China from all angles. The so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) was alsodesigned for this purpose (yet for some reason Donald Trump, who is overtly anti-Chinese, thought the agreement was a bad idea).

Inhofe also said he was “concerned” that “our message” was “not getting across.”

I don’t mean to be base, but perhaps the problem in the China-US relationship is that the message is getting across – loud and clear. The US has pushed the expansion of NATO up to and around Russia’s borders. It has invaded and bombed Iraq, Syria (miraculously occupying one-third of Syrian territory, including its most oil-rich region), Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and even the Philippines.

On top of it, this superpower has also threatened war with Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, all of whom share a cosy relationship with China. Washington supplies lethal arms to and backs known neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine; and a leaked phone call even saw then-secretary of state Victoria Nuland discuss who she proposed putting inside Ukraine’s government after Viktor Yanukovych was successfully ousted from power.

Under Trump, the US has started a potentially disastrous trade war with China and has openly flirted with the idea of dropping its support for the One-China policy (not to mention weighing up substantive support for Taiwan).

READ MORE: Chinese & Taiwanese militaries exchange saber-rattling VIDEOS on Lunar New Year

Come on, the message is getting across. If you are a lesser nation without a nuclear supply or the backing of a major nuclear power, you will find the US military right on your doorstep. If you are more of a handful and require a less upfront approach, you will find the US military right next door, peering in the window, all the while American sanctions wreak havoc on your economy.

In that context, if China was indeed preparing for World War III, we really shouldn’t be all that surprised. There has to be a reason that, at the beginning of the year, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first order to his country’s military was to prepare for battle (aka a “comprehensive military struggle from a new starting point”), stating further that “all military units must correctly understand major national security and development trends, and strengthen their sense of unexpected hardship, crisis and battle.”

Furthermore, joining Inhofe at the Senate hearing was the director of studies at the think-tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Ely Ratner. Approximately a year ago, our good friend Victoria Nuland (mentioned above regarding regime change and support for neo-nazism archives) was named as the new CEO of the CNAS. It also has the support of the drone-king himself, General David Petraeus, and its experts have helped contribute their opinions to foreign policy, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), and NPR. It openly warns against the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, for example, because such a move would embolden Iran.

I think it’s fair to say then, that when it comes to a discussion on China, CNAS must be a top-notch source. The company that Inhofe keeps is evidently therefore a reliable one.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/450970-china-preparing-ww3-us/

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