Sorry Draug, Fox news is worse. Or at least it's editorial people are. The commentators on Fox news often spout complete falsehoods, whether intentionally or not, the fact is, they intentionally misinform people, something which NPR, biased though it may be, is not guilty of.

Errr, that makes no sense, the second instance of the word "intentionally" should not be there. My bad.

I agree. I was more referring to other liberal sources. Of the liberal sources, NPR and CNN are probably two of the best. The regular networks are the worst with their paid stories and rigged truck explosions and stuff.

"If Republicans want a one-party state, than why did the biggest conservative poster boy of the 20th Century spend nearly every waking hour trying to destroy one-party communist states?"

Mafia already nailed that. It had little to do with the one-party thing issue and everything to do with communism. Reagan loved one-party states so long as they helped the rich exploit the poor.

"Republicans (if you're thinking of the Wisconsin issue) are not concerned with private unions. Republicans are worried about tax-dollar-vacuums (aka "public unions"). Public unions are downright gluttonous. The unions are damned lucky that they managed to get to the point they are at now. Their wages and benefits rival those of doctors and lawyers. Our budget is in deep shit and we have to start making tough choices. "

1 - So-called "Right to Work" states are facing budget crises, so this has nothing to do with solving the budget issue. The reactionary governor of Wisconsin happily gives tax cuts to the rich in the face of his so-called budget crisis.

2 - Republicans have problems with all unions. But yeah public sector unions are the primary "enemy" because the public sector is actually unionized to a good degree (30%+), whereas only 7% of private sector workers are unionized. What a surprise, the public sector unions are the ones being targeted.

3 - This idea that firefighters, policemen, teachers, and other public employees are making "more than doctors and lawyers" is a whopper of a lie. Public sector workers have given concession after concession. Here in Ohio they gave over $200 million in concessions, there are fewer public sector workers in Ohio now than when Strickland first came to power. But Lehman Brothers, I mean Kasich, declared war on unions a long time ago. It has nothing to do with budgets. It's completely ideological. The law here in Ohio called for jailing striking public sector workers for a month. It gives politicians final say over contracts instead of using binding arbitration. It's a joke.

And I would add, you Republicans whined about reconciliation with healthcare reform, but use every dirty trick in the book to get your reactionary laws passed. You even removed dissenting Republicans in Ohio who wouldn't go along with this union busting bill.

@ Darwyn

Republicans are not warmongers. War is too expensive.

@ Mafialligator

Yeah, but the point is that NPR uses taxpayer money. Little expenditures like NPR add up. Sure, not nearly as much as wasteful stuff like Social Security and Medicare, but it's still money we don't have.

I will openly admit that FOX News is pretty bad. The daytime programming isn't too bad, but people like O'Reilly, Hannity, and Rivera might as well pledge allegiance to the GOP on air.

Dirty tricks? What about an entire Democrat electorat who refused to show up or even be in the state so a quorum couldn't be met? Talk about deriliciton of duty. They literally held the proceedings hostage. Had I been a federal judge, I'd have stepped in and declare them all ineligible to hold their seats and told the state to coninue with it's votes. Using quorum as a negotiation tactic is like refusing to unpause as one in Diplomacy.

The only reason they left the state is because the state can arrest them if they're in Wisconsin. Give me a break about holding proceedings hostage. How many bills have been filibustered by Senate Republicans since Obama has been in office? Really the hypocrisy is nauseating.

"Republicans are not warmongers. War is too expensive."

Yes obviously Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and co were so reluctant to wage their jihad on Iraq.

Yeah, but the point is that NPR uses taxpayer money. Little expenditures like NPR add up. - True but the difficulty here is that we can see that corporate funded news can't really be trusted. NPR really is a quality news source. For a democracy to work the people need to be informed. Having the government fund some of that information isn't that out of line in terms of making democracy work. Also, if you think Social Security and Medicare are wastes of money then what exactly should the government actually spend money on, aside from wars.

Well duh, obviously they should put all their money into corporate tax cuts, and paying down the debt. Durp, herp.

>.>

Have I mentioned I think most republican/right wing policies are stupid.

I mean trickle down economics has never worked, though I'll admit that the alternative in the form of Keynesian is equally bad.

Basically the government should keep funding NPR, and not just because the republicans are against doing so, but also because it is important to find ways to weaken the power of corporations over the lives of people whenever possible.

"I mean trickle down economics has never worked, though I'll admit that the alternative in the form of Keynesian is equally bad."

What's your solution?

@Draug

But, discounting any bias (I think we can agree at the very least that it's no *more* biased than Fox or CNN) do you not agree that the overall quality is better? When you listen to NPR, you are actually hearing news, not car commercials. And, you actually get the stories, not just "Next up in the news.." And, you don't get any BS "hologram" coverage.

"The only reason they left the state is because the state can arrest them if they're in Wisconsin. Give me a break about holding proceedings hostage. How many bills have been filibustered by Senate Republicans since Obama has been in office? Really the hypocrisy is nauseating."

Putin +1

As for the Republicans trying to kill NPR, it's a shame that they're trying to destroy an actual good news source here in America. God forbid that Fox News and its GOP masters don't get to misinform people without some honest news getting through.

Oh, come on. CNN can't be that biased that it is actually being compared next to Fox News. I agree that they're not as high quality as NPR but they don't regularly misinform people like Fox News does either.

I wasn't comparing CNN to FOX. I was comparing them both to NPR.

Screw this private economy and adopt a nationalist, public economy.

I've got a very distinct plan for it. Which is very anti-global. It's not that I'm against trade I just think that, countries need to be more balanced between, import and export. Which means a short term, national pride regulation system. That could be made a bit more lax after the system was established, but still a strict outsourcing on jobs.

Essentially, you either kick out all the corporations, and start fresh by forming brand new companies, that after the initial injection of cash run almost entirely on their own, and are in the public ownership. These companies are mandated to, a) Not outsource any jobs, b) Carry and sell mostly Canadian products, C) Trying to maintain jobs during a tough economic time, something which can be assisted by the government.

These new public companies would be part of a national sales initiative where every Canadian product you purchase will give you a small tax rebate, because these companies give a certain percentage of profits to the government, this encourages buying within the local economy, rebuilds the now lacking goods/manufacturing base within Canada and helps build up self-reliance.

Private businesses are also allowed to run, However if they don't encourage local buying, though similar means have to pay higher taxes.

There is a whole bunch more to this, that is just the basic idea.

The second main idea is that these companies must also maintain a 15 times salary gap. Which is to say the bottom person in the company gets paid 1/15th of the salary of the highest paid person in the company, this ensures that the consumer base remains strong, in that unequal distribution of wealth is decreased.

Couple this with a program to encourage a decrease in the out of control life style of North America and I think its a fairly solid policy.

Ack, strict regulations against outsourcing of jobs. Not saying that they can't outsource any but the vast majority of jobs should be in the home country of the company.

CNN, while not at the level of Fox News, is still a fair biased network that, while not as much when regarding american politics, still preaches lies. Their international coverage is worse than Fox's. the spins that they put on some nuanced stories come off as terrible atrocities by one party or another, and a so called victim emerges.

That's an interesting proposal damian, but there are a number of problems. Presumably the richest will find a way to have tax cuts so that they still make more money than they should. Secondly the kinds of labour needed for that make it difficult. Frankly there just aren't enough people in Canada trained for manufacturing and agricultural jobs. Canada's economy is based almost completely on tertiary economy, with some secondary and virtually no primary. It just wouldn't be able to sustain itself.

Damian, I fully support your plan, although I'm not Canadian.

I like the manner in which some people rage against Keynes. He advocated budget deficits in times of economic downturn to stimulate aggregate demand. However, in times of boom, the government debt ought to be repaid. In last decade, Western countries had deficits even in times of economic expansion. How can anyone fail to see that such behaviour based on mainstream neokeynesianism/neoclassical synthesis (castration of Keynes as some post-Keynesians would say) is more leftist than what JMK actually taught is beyond my comprehension.

And regarding supply-side/trickle-down economics, that's not even a serious economic stream of thought, just an instrument to create an aura of relevance around Republic ideas of tax reform.

That being said the policies of the kind damian proposes are simply utopist pub talk. And the ones that could be implemented like a fixed salary gap don't work. Nivelization of remuneration in a company is impossible to enforce from the outside and if you don't even see why, your macroeconomic recommendations cannot be taken seriously.

"CNN, while not at the level of Fox News, is still a fair biased network that, while not as much when regarding american politics, still preaches lies. Their international coverage is worse than Fox's. the spins that they put on some nuanced stories come off as terrible atrocities by one party or another, and a so called victim emerges."

I'm not going to say that CNN doesn't preach some form of misinformation in some way or another from time to time but I disagree that CNN's international coverage is worse than Fox News's. The international coverage that Fox News puts out is almost virtually non existent.

"Secondly the kinds of labour needed for that make it difficult. Frankly there just aren't enough people in Canada trained for manufacturing and agricultural jobs."

Immigration, my friend.

"Canada's economy is based almost completely on tertiary economy, with some secondary and virtually no primary. It just wouldn't be able to sustain itself."

Isn't mining huge in Canada? I thought also Canada had a big agricultural sector centered on the middle of the country or the Saskatchewan (Sp?) area.

According to statistics Canada, the agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas industries employ a grand total of 630 100 people, in a country of more than 30 million. So yes, moreso dependent on primary industry than most developed countries, but still much much more reliant on tertiary industry.

fair enough, but even in coverage of January's revolution in egypt, fox news presented more information than the CNN roll of the rebels are always right. except when they beat up our reporter cooper.

I once saw a graph showing Canada's GDP by industry (Primary, secondary, tertiary) It was something like 5% 20% and 75% respectively but I can't find it, so don't take my word for that.

All of these proposed cuts to non-military discretionary spending are just drops in the bucket. We're just distracting ourselves from the real budget issues like social security, military, medicare, and medicaid.

I'm well aware that there are issues within that. However we do have a large base on unemployed individuals and immigrants. Providing jobs outside of the service and extraction industry would be good for the long term stability of the country. And just a correction, Canada, is actually mostly a primary and tertiary base. We have a lot of natural resources that we extract and export, and a lot of jobs in service. What I'd like to establish is a strong Secondary sector so we didn't have to rely so heavily on the export of raw goods, and the important of manufactured ones., because we could just use the raw goods here and turn them into finished products.

Your point about Canada being unable to be entirely self sustainable is true, that is the reason I'm not against trade, no nation can flourish entirely on it's own, however I think it is important to establish a solid national base first so that the country is less dependant on a given sector.

Thank you Putin that would be the first time I've actually every proposed it to anyone outside of a few scattered ideas I've debated. While I speak of the plan as it applies to Canada it has some valuable ideas to present to the states too.

You need to lower wage gap,
Restablish yourself as a good producer
Kick out the greedy corporations who aren't benefiting your country
And Stop giving the rich tax breaks.

But at the core of all this is the idea that we should do away with these corporations and create publicly accountable businesses, which is exactly why NPR is important, and why publicly funded news is important. Should the people find that the programming is unfairly biased they can demand support be dropped for it. Which is way better then corporate sponsored channels which answer only to the corporations, who in turn answer only to money.

And crap, lots more responses to address, As Putin says, mining, oil and gas, agriculture and lumber all big industries in Canada. But yes we are unbalanced and balancing it out towards a more even primary, secondary and tertiary industry would be better.

Ulytau, sounds like you have had a lot of people raging on Keynes in your lifetime. Truth is, Yes the bastardized Keynesian system doesn't work. Thing is I still hate what he proposed, because I consider social programs important, and feel that the government should have a bigger role in the economy, Keynes is too free market for me.

There are three prime ideas of economic thought, The boom bust cycle, (Free Market), Keynesian (Controlled free market), and Government controlled economy. I'm an advocate for the third.

Utopist pub talk my ass, there is nothing fundamentally flawed with what I have proposed such that it could never be implemented. It could however not be implemented while power and wealth hungry corporations still have the measure of control over peoples lives that they have at present. The wage gap laws do work, I suggest you take a look into the Economic boom in Japan, the wage gap between the rich and the poor was lower then at 12:1 across the board and it was their most profitable time in years. The economy was much more stable. Yes they are hard to force but not as impossible as you seem to presume, the problem is that it require a large number of bureaucrats to enforce.


And Mc, yes they are drops in the bucket, however social programs are incredibly important, because they help take care of a nations people, which are a nations true wealth/

"All of these proposed cuts to non-military discretionary spending are just drops in the bucket. We're just distracting ourselves from the real budget issues like social security, military, medicare, and medicaid."

Winner.

Mandatory spending is a majority of the budget, another small percentage is interest paid on debt. The remaining 40 or so percent is discretionary. More than half of that money is military spending. So when the talking heads talk about making big budget cuts, they're talking about gutting things like the departments of education, transportation, and HHS completely, else the "savings" is absolutely trivial.