Taxes are the entry free for civilization.

he wasn't a politician. The ones I have been hearing this from are indeed the uneducated.

Sort of like, you work until you drop dead, in return, you get enough to barely subsist. The contract between feudal lord and serf.

"Nobody tells ME what to do!" "You are NOT the boss of ME!" And don't forget some huffing and puffing, tantrum-throwing and foot stamping.

and majored in history/polisci in college. That generation had been through the depression, WWII, and 4 terms of FDR/Truman and knew better!

anecdotal stories of how FDR and the Democrats pulled the US out of the sinkhole economically and other ways. I had a babysitter who would talk about the great things FDR did, along with my grandparents. They absolutely adored FDR and JFK.

What do we have now? Grandparents from the 1970s & 1980s who think Raygun is a demi-god. Amazing how things can change so much from one generation to the next.

that leads to propaganda. Her generation never grew up with TV, they basically had radio and print media (newspapers/magazines) until they were young adults. But thanks to technology, subsequent generations have not only bridged a global gap by having instant access to people and places from around the world, but they have also been saturated with an inordinate amount of insane propaganda that has only gotten worse in the past 30 years.

The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)

The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971
Introduction

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”
Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.

(more)

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

to devise strategies for reversing this mass RW-hijacking of our society for the short-term, medium range, and long term.

I've posted this link many times before. KNOW THEIR GAME PLAN!

If you know and understand what they're up to, and why, and how, you're better able to devise a counter strategy.

Knowledge is power - that old cliche sure holds true.

We aren't born into the right families, where this stuff is parsed for generations. Nor did we graduate from the right schools or play with the right people's children.

We need to reach those who still have a conscious and bring them over to our side.

We know and hear about the celebratants but the real money is quiet and modest and doesn't get their names into the paper, by design.

they turned into hard core right wing fox viewers in their old age. I believe fox has more to do with what's going on than anything else because they've scared the bejeezus out of all the conservatives.

when you could get a good paying job with just a high school diploma. Today, no can do.

McGruder!

well ... close enough.

nobody really explains how important government is to many of these things.

and I graduated HS in 1985.

We had US history in 4th grade, 7th grade and 11th grade. I always remember running out of time somewhere before history got to Vietnam

It was the last of the required Social Science core for graduation - History (State, U.S. and World), Geography, Social Sciences elective and Civics - according to the State of Washington.
We were required to either participate in an election or participate in a local or state legislative action as part of our class, depending on what was going on that semester and write a 10-page final paper analyzing "all sides" and how the outcome of the election/bill/proposal we were involved with came about.

I suspect we had more civics lessons in HS than Paul Ryan paid attention to when he was getting his BA in Ayn Rand and the Art of Bullshitting to the Status of "Maker".

Haele

My best friend & I were debate partners. That's where I really caught the political bug. Senior year we volunteered on the Gary Hart for Senate campaign. The rest of our classmates thought we were nuts.

Just another anti-American, anti-democratic evil action of that vacuous old bastard. Well, actually, his puppetmasters.

They don't want the citizenry understanding how government works. They also don't want us remembering our history or what FDR did or how government can help people if it's not run by a bunch of greedy sociopaths.

perpetuated by the current crew

they barely teach History anymore. At least not the truth. Texas was using "edited" books that had much removed actual history. We can't let those kids really know anything, how will we continue to be elected with an educated citizenry!

Genuinely depressing. This is what happens when a hostile foreign power interferes with an election, when efforts are put in place to suppress votes, when a party is splintered by internal rancor, and when a deliberately dumbed-down segment of society shows up at polling places in sufficient numbers---all at the same time.

My entire adult life, over a quarter century, has seen a relentless effort to collapse this social compact.

That is what made 45 possible.

it's been ablaze at least since the Reagan era, with roots going back even further. Orange Menace just managed to take advantage of this sentiment, and "turn it up to 11!"

To remind people who have been brainwashed and conned by the republicans to vote against their own interests. Some people you will never reach because they revel in chaos and misery, but others are starting to awaken to the lies they have been fed. I absolutely believe in reaching people with something tangible. We need to stress the fact that Republicans have stated they want to take down the government, so maybe modify it with a quote from someone like Bannon. When people would tell me Fox was the only truthful news source, I would look them in the eye and say "So the news channels your parents watched are meant for fools." That would dumbfound and confuse them for a minute. They cannot come up with a valid argument unless it is a RNC talking point of the day passed to the right wing press. They never question anything from THEIR sources and we need to feed them new information. How can they question the textbooks they read? Even if it is a small percentage reached, everyone who reads this has a potential to think.

Last edited Thu Mar 9, 2017, 10:23 AM - Edit history (1)

My dad was 25 then and back from WWII. They didn't need or want people kissing their feet or parades for their military service,just a fair shake from the Government they served,many with their lives for several years during the War. Them AND their fathers who came out of the Great Depression demanded fair and living wages and unions flourished.

Workers had SLAVED for their masters in the 20's and got thrown under the bus after the Market crash in 1929. Those memories would always stick in the minds of those who got ROYALLY screwed. My grandfather lost every penny he had in a Depression bank failure when they were living in Oklahoma and wouldn't have another bank account until 1960. That's how deep the fear ran even with the FDIC by then.

My father got married,had a good job and by 1957 with two children bought a new home that was easily TWICE the size that his dad lived in. He had a new car most of the time and then received a company car for years. He had full health care insurance in 1965 when he worked for PPG and would have it until he died in 2008. He had life insurance policy's from both his workplace and the Government for his military service.

We lived in an area where all the homes were new. My mom worked off and on but never worked when we were small. It was that Ward and June Cleaver period of time. My brother and I live a great middle class life. Republican Presidents would come and go but look who held the reins of the House and Senate,most all the time it was Democrats and the middle class flourished.

Then came the 80's,Reagan and the planned destruction of the middle class,the destruction of unions,workers wages and rights. It still continues with this buffoon and with them having all the power it will be mind blowing what they do to the middle class in the next four years. It makes me SICK on a daily basis to see what those THUGS are doing to the poor AND the middle class and how I worry about existing when I know that decades ago people like my father had little to worry about concerning their government and what they would do to them in a horrible way with just a quick vote in Congress.

Off my soapbox............

history not just parts.

Due to the depression, Communism had made great inroads in political spheres. Thousands joined the Communist Party (and would be raked over the coals for it during McCarthyism); they grew up with the Robber Barons and were sick and tired of being patsy's to Capitalism.

To quell this uprising, TPTB gave us FDR and Socialism. It was a great compromise even as the GOP of that day fought tooth and nail to keep programs from being enacted, i.e., Social Security.

Also, during that time was the Dust Bowl. If the EPA laws go under, I wonder if we will be living through times like that again. Look at Texas, Okla, and Kansas now, the plains burning.

History repeats...

Your family was lucky. Being AA, ours could NOT buy a "June Cleaver house" in the '50s suburbs because blacks were not allowed to live in those types of developments like the various Levittowns.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/28/nyregion/at-50-levittown-contends-with-its-legacy-of-bias.html

And as is well known about Drumpf and his family's real estate history, that type of thing persisted through the '70s.

And unfortunately, the "fabulous '50s" (oft-used term) were only "fabulous" if you were not a POC. Having worked for the federal government, as my dad did, was the saving grace for being "middle class" for us and many blacks.

Raygun put the final nail in the coffin however and Drumpf is planning to dig the grave deeper.

Meaning, my grandfathers and father came of age after WWII and the Korean War. I was raised Catholic, so all the families in my parochial school in the early 60's had a bunch of kids. I was the youngest of 3 in my family, because my mother almost died during delivery and the doctor graciously defied Church doctrine and tied her tubes. Or maybe he just hated Catholics. You know, "those people" who "breed too much".

My father served one term in the Navy, and told story after story of just how racist, sexist, classist and cruel were his superiors. He became adamantly against his sons joining the military after that. And, of course, we grew up in the "Dead-end Sixties" during the Vietnam era. My parents were solidly 50's in their mentality, and us kids were really too young to become hippies.

The first presidential election in which I was able to vote was 1980. I thought for sure no one in their right mind would choose someone to run the government who proudly proclaimed that "government WAS the problem." What were THEY smoking? Well, actually, they were snorting it up their noses.. The cocaine/meth-fueled "Roaring Eighties" seemed a redux of the Roaring Twenties.

If you look at income inequality, it all really started in 1978, the year I graduated high school. My parents were pretty poor, so affording college was difficult even then, and I eventually dropped out. Particularly since the fields I was interested in were not "marketable". Somewhere along the way, Personnel Departments transmogrified into Human Resource Departments. A subtle but startling change, indicating people had been quietly moved from the Assets to the Liabilities column on business balance sheets.

I grew up with the Civics Lesson, which is the subject of this post. But apparently, that was meant for us "rubes" at the bottom of the social pyramid, with the top echelons continuing to be reserved for the Bannon/Trump types. The White Christian Nationalists, basically. They've always believed that this is THEIR country, and all the rest of us don't really belong here. Manifest Destiny, white-washing slavery out of history books, mercilessly crushing the "Dawning of the Age of Aquarius"...

I have often felt that our current predicament is like our older brothers and sisters, having always envied and hated us, are now using their power to punish us out of existence. Being born between, roughly, 1955 and 1965 makes you part of the "write-off" generation. You worked and slaved and hustled away your whole life, always falling behind monetarily, always paying for the Great Generation (my Grandmother was on Social Security for 40 years!), and the baby-boom bubble in their old ages. And now that it is our time to retire, it's "sorry, but there's not enough for you."

That ladder keeps being pulled up just before I reach it. Now I am getting too old to even see it in the distance. Elvis has left the building. The Love Boat has departed. And Charlie Brown lays on his back.

Checkout the top rates of the federal income tax during that time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Income_tax_rates_in_history

In 1952:
Top Bracket: 92%
Income that rate applies to: $3.61 million (today's $)

In 2013:
Top Bracket: 39.6%
Income that rate applies to: $411 thousand (today's $)

Does it seem like some folks are getting a bit of a break?

But before that HUGE cut for the rich, Drumph needs to get a tax cut going for himself and the other rich by trash canning the ACA.

I think he means about 1721 (when the Russian Empire emerged)

Can you get tuberculosis from MILK?

1948 was long before the EPA and NOAA, so I don't know how much protection from polluted water there actually was.

But technology has changed quite a bit over the years. Cows are not milked by hand so the milk is not exposed to air contaminants or human contaminants. BTW I grew up in the 1950s and city drinking water was just as clean as it is today believe it or not. The testing and disinfecting of the water supply started long before the EPA. And even today it is not a job the EPA does.

And that our air does not give us lung cancer.

It has nothing to do with hand milking.

Government regulations and inspections have greatly reduced the danger.

Pasteurization was implemented as a second tier of protection.

Whether the bulk of tuberculosis traceable to raw milk in earlier times was the result of external contamination (unsanitary conditions; infected, tubercular workers) or lesions in the udders of cows racked with bovine tuberculosis, it's difficult to say.

Remember that before the advent of mechanical milking systems in the 1920's, milk exiting the udder was exposed to the air and any contaminants it contained.

The milk buckets, too, were easily contaminated. A tubercular worker hacking into even one bucket could contaminate thousands of gallons when his milk was poured into a larger batch.

Today, vacuum hoses gently remove the milk from sanitized teats, completely shielding it from exposure to the environment and any possible pathogenic organisms that might be blowing about. Cows, raised on pasture, rather than confined to manure laden enclosures, have much less exposure to disease-causing, feces-dwelling organisms (plus sunlight destroys M. bovis) and thus enjoy the added benefit of being healthier overall.

http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/tuberculosis.html

But you don't wan't to talk to me about milk.

The entire liquid milk industry could go away and I wouldn't be sad. They've been peddling their nutritional bullshit for years. "Raw" milk is just a variation on that theme.

The fewer old dairy cows ground up for cheap hamburger and dog food the better.

So I guess I am with you on that.

Majority of US citizens can not even name the three branches of government , let alone know what they do or the checks and balances between them

"So called" judges....

https://charlierose.com/videos/30154?autoplay=true

It captures the perfect essence of how our liberties are subverted, not always even in illegal ways, by the forces in society that wish to control us and milk us for our labor without giving anything back.

Upper grades through high school. At least, in Chicago, Illinois.

Oppression in most of the other categories would be outsourced to private companies.

Sanitation & Health? Well those are privileges, not rights...

Education? Charter schools! "Choice!" Besides, kids can learn a lot by working from an early age.

Roads? Toll roads everywhere, run by private, for-profit companies.

(forget about "conservation," ironically enough...seriously, what the fuck are "conservatives" supposedly conserving at this point?)

Protection for Business - well, yes indeed...through systematic oppression of labor

"Relief??" Well, people will feel a sense of relief when death comes for them.

"liberty"...instead, "religious freedom," meaning that non-whites, non-Christians, and other undesirables will have their civil rights systematically curtailed by law.

"civilization" only exists as a mechanism for the rich to continue profiting from the misery of the masses.

Basic decency is at stake and that ought to mobilze every thinking person.

Thanks for finding this and posting. I've shared on FB.

One more:

Without Gov. one religion may rule With Gov. Freedom of Religion or lack thereof

the 1890s; golden age of the Robber Baron.

It's really sad that something so basic isn't even taught anymore.

Hell, we're already there.

The passage --and enforcement-- of the Civil Rights Act was the turning point for how a big chunk of white America felt about government. Government was all well and good when it was providing services to white America, bit when it started using white people's tax dollars to provide those same services to African Americans and Latinos, that was seen as malevolent meddling and waste. Hence the "Reagan Revolution" (racist reaction) that continues to this day, stoked by the rich who benefit from the tax cuts made possible by white animosity to government.

Let's see how many of my friends share it!

born after WWII ended and Civics was required by everyone in 7th grade. I can still remember the look of the book we had - red cover, maybe 5" x 7" in size with very tiny print. So much to remember for tests, etc. and for a 7th grader could be very dry, but we had to learn it. Most of it just sticks with you for the rest of your life.

I don't remember my 40-something children having to take civics.

We had civics class in high school and talked about various non-political things. Teachers weren't allowed to talk about politics because they weren't allowed to influence their students either way, liberal or conservative.

HOWEVER, the History classes I took in high school never got past World War I. Teachers spent a lot of time teaching the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and things that happened before WWI. They could not even discuss things like Nazis, Hitler, Stalin, Communists, Bolsheviks, the Holocaust, Socialists, and there could be no discussion of the Iron Curtain or the Cold War. This was in the time of the Vietnam War and we couldn't discuss Vietnam in the classrooms.

Why was that? Any time a teacher mentioned a recent controversial/political topic, they'd be called on the carpet and fired, that's why. Parents were up in arms about anybody teaching their kids about current events, political movements of any kind, whether pro- or anti-communist, etc. I went to a good public school in suburban Pittsburgh where people paid their taxes. It wasn't a problem of budgets, or not enough teachers. It was people burying their heads in the sand, and saying don't teach that stuff to my kids.

Why are we Baby Boomers kinda stupid about world cultures and events? That's why! We weren't allowed to learn it. The lucky ones went to college and learned on our own, but the opportunity to learn something in high school was already gone.

Sorry, President Reagan.

Republicans just do it wrong.

==============

Saying that without government, the life of man, in a natural state, is nasty, brutish, and short.

Oh, wait.

They've wiped their ass with our social contract. Now everyone will suffer.

The hard way.

available on Amazon. So it is still used in American government courses in high schools. It would be interesting to know how much the textbook has changed.

White and well-off, of course (how did you guess?)

Must share, for govt destroying repukes and for libertarians.

...gets done with education in this country.

They'll erase slavery (even more than they do now), Jim Crow, the holocaust against Native Peoples, the words of the Constitution, the notion of checks and balances, science and evolution. And along the way will erase funding for the arts, and music.

Arkansas wants to ban Howard Zinn now.