Here is a YouTube video Bernie Sanders Predicts Crash of 2008 in 1998.

Who was President back then? Did either the President or his wife, whoever, she might have been, pay any attention to Bernie Sanders back then? Who has been warning us about this issue for 15 years, and who has come upon this knowledge only recently? Who has friends, advisers, and contributors, who were responsible for letting this loose on the world, and who does not? Who has denounced the people who recommended these policies to every President since then, and who has not? Who is still using those same advisers, and who isn’t and never has used such advisers? Who has discovered the benefits of Modern Money Theory and chosen a proponent of that theory as a chief economist for the Senate Banking Committee for the minority of which he is the ranking member, and who has not? You can infer the answers from the way I asked the questions, you can Google the answers for yourself, or you can just ask me for the answers.

Oh, and who just extolled the presidential record of her husband without even giving a nod to this havoc that he unleashed? Havoc against which she wants us to believe she will fight tooth and nail if elected President.

I found the video Hillary Clinton’s Official Campaign Launch.

Hillary’s official campaign launch at Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, New York City. She lays out her vision for the country, inspired by the stories she’s heard from everyday Americans

I present this to you sight unseen by me. I say to both of us “Now analyze this!” To heck with how the lame stream media analyzes it.

Either while you are watching this speech or after you watch it you might want to consider what I have written in the previous posts Why has President Obama been willing to spend so much political capital on the Trans Pacific Partnership? and Hillary Clinton, in Roosevelt Island Speech, Pledges to Close Income Gap.

Robert Reich has posted Why has President Obama been willing to spend so much political capital on the Trans Pacific Partnership? on his Facebook page.

Here is some of what Reich had to say about Michael Froman, the United States Trade Representative.

Froman went to Harvard Law School with Obama, but that’s not the only important connection. In the Clinton Administration, Froman was chief of staff to Bob Rubin when Rubin was Secretary of the Treasury. Rubin, you may recall, had convinced Clinton to pass NAFTA, kill the Glass-Steagall Act, and not regulate financial derivatives.

When I bring up this behavior of the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton fans go into a state of denial. Robert Reich is a good friend of Hillary Clinton, and he was Labor Secretary in the Bill Clinton administration. If he can say this, perhaps you can give him a little credit that he might know a thing or two about what went on at that time.

Will Hillary Clinton denounce these actions that occurred during her husband’s administration? I am not claiming that she has responsibility for what he did. I am claiming that she has a responsibility to tell us what she thinks about those policies now. It is essential that we understand what she thinks about this if we are to vote for her for President.

The New York Times has the article Hillary Clinton, in Roosevelt Island Speech, Pledges to Close Income Gap.

I am dying to get my hands on a video of her full speech. I’ll keep looking. As “the newspaper of record”, you’d think that the NYT could give you a link to the full speech rather than to 50 seconds of it.

I had an epiphany when I read one quote.

Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, called the speech “chock-full of hypocritical attacks, partisan rhetoric and ideas from the past that led to a sluggish economy.”

To a Republican, a sluggish economy means that the top 1% didn’t get all the income growth. Sadly, the top 1% had to share the income growth with others in the economy in previous “sluggish growth” periods. If you look at the current meteoric rise of the economy, the upper 1% got almost all of it, and the bottom 99% got almost none of it. Now that’s economic growth as Republicans like to see it. If you are in the bottom 99%, why aren’t you happy for the good fortune of the top 1%? Are you envious of their success? Snap out of it, and hew to the Republican propaganda machine.

As for the hypocrisy, I will provide the “evidence” in a subsequent post, Why has President Obama been willing to spend so much political capital on the Trans Pacific Partnership?

The hypocrisy would be if Hillary Clinton still believes that what her husband’s administration did on killing regulation was a good thing. Those actions were strongly desired by Republicans and detested by many Democrats at that time. No wonder a Republican spokesperson would call it hypocrisy if Hillary Clinton now denounces the very policies that made the economy soar for the 1%, and dive for the 99%.

Why won’t any lame stream media interviewer pose the following question to Hillary Clinton? “Here is an issue that you are going to have to confront. You now say that you want policies that are diametrically opposite of some of what your husband did in his administration. Can you explain to us what you think of those past policies in light of what you propose now?” To the degree that she ducks and weaves as opposed to making a straightforward response has a lot to do with whether I could ever vote for her were she to become the Democratic nominee.

The answer as to why the lame stream media reporters won’t ask this question is that their bosses wouldn’t like the premise and probably would not like the answer no matter how it was couched.

If the question were posed to Bernie Sanders as to what Hillary thinks about this, I can imagine him saying, “Now that is an excellent question for you to pose directly to Hillary Clinton. Why don’t you ask it? Are you too chicken?” I bet the reporters would find a way to duck that challenge. They want Bernie Sanders to do their job for them, and yes, they are too chicken to do it themselves.

A Facebook discussion motivated me to do some research. I found the paper The Electron and the Bit by Paul Penfield, Jr. I had Penfield as a professor in one of the courses I took in college. For a few summers, he also worked as a consultant for our group at Digital Equipment Corporation.

What brought me to this paper was an interest in nationally sponsored education initiatives. Section “IV. Engineering Science” is relevant here.

Gordon Brown, among others, realized what was wrong. The problem was that the necessary science was not known, or at least was not in a form accessible to engineers. He agreed with Dugald Jackson that engineers must be able to apply known techniques and develop new techniques using known science. But he went further, saying that at least some of them should also be able to extend the relevant sciences in ways required by engineering. Brown called such activities “engineering science.” He concluded that changes in the educational programs were needed.

In Brown’s view, the science should be taught in the first years, followed by contemporary technology based on the science. Specialization and theses would come in the senior year. The best students would be encouraged to enter an expanded doctoral program, which would produce engineers able to extend engineering science. He served on a department curriculum committee and rallied support for these views. When he became department head in 1952, he immediately instituted a curriculum review to identify the underlying sciences in all areas, and relate them to engineering techniques. Six undergraduate textbooks, called the “Green Books” after the color of their covers, were written during the late 1950s.

I was the beneficiary of this change in curriculum. More directly I benefited from the effort Penfield describes next.

The first major test of this engineering-science approach was provided by semiconductor circuits. The transistor was invented in 1947; circuit applications began in the 1950s; the integrated circuit came along in 1960. Universities had to include transistors and integrated circuits in their undergraduate programs. But how? Should devices be taught in terms of terminal characteristics or the internal physics? What if fields of science not previously thought relevant were needed? Could nonlinear circuits be covered? How much solid-state physics would be required?

MIT led the way in answering these questions. In the fall of 1960 Richard B. Adler and Campbell L. Searle organized the Semiconductor Electronics Education Committee (SEEC). By 1966, 31 people from nine universities and six companies produced seven coordinated textbooks and related curricular material, aimed at third-year and fourth-year electrical engineering students. The books featured more solid-state physics than had ever before been used in teaching electronics. In the books, semiconductor-device models were derived from the solid-state physics, and they in turn were used in transistor circuits.

SEEC was a triumph of engineering science, with a substantial, lasting impact. The basic ideas influenced many textbooks written in subsequent years. The approaches are still used in EE education throughout the world, even though the SEEC books themselves can no longer claim contemporary relevance because they were never updated to cover integrated circuits, MOS devices, or much on digital circuits.

The books listed in The MIT Semiconductor Electronics Education Committee Series were influential on my career. I still have some of the books in the series.

At least half of my professional career was directly related to software that simulated integrated circuits and used models of transistors that were the descendants of those described in these books. The other half of my career still involved software related to simulating integrated circuits, just not quite as intimately connected to the models of transistors.

I had a freshman adviser who tried to assure me that I didn’t have to obsess over picking a major. He said that after a few years out of college I wouldn’t be using the stuff I learned at M.I.T. anyway. How wrong he was about the use of what I learned. He was right about not obsessing over choosing a major.

It is about time to remind people of my previous post The S Word: A Short History Of An American Tradition … Socialism.

In a discussion on Nancy Weinberg’s Facebook post, Mary Ellen Palermo and I went round and round on rationalizations for having settled on Hillary Clinton as a preferred candidate. I think we finally got to the issue.

Democratic Socialist is what he calls himself. There is no party of this name that I am aware of in the United States. Even if there were some obscure party of that name, I don’t think you can connect Bernie Sanders to it. But we are making progress, since you now have identified what ticks you off about Sanders. Rather than cower from a label and try to pretend he goes by a label that fits your preconceived notions of what labels are acceptable, he is going to educate you on what his label means.

You can do some of that work yourself by reading “The S Word ” book. I am pretty sure you will be surprised to read some of the historical facts that have been purposely hidden from you.

This may be the first time you will be confronted by the power of the forces against which progressives have been fighting, even when they didn’t realize the exact nature of these forces.

The irony of the use of the word socialist, and the irony of so many Americans having been propagandized into thinking this is a dirty word is the large majorities of people who agree with the political positions that Bernie takes as a result of his being a socialist.

June 13, 2015

I got unlazy and did the research I should have. Here is the Democratic Socialists of America web site.

We are a political and activist organization, not a party;

The Daily Kos has the Cartoon: Attack of the 14 year old black girl.

Coming soon from McKinney Texas Police Productions, it’s the next summer horror science fiction cop flick, Attack of the 14 Year Old Black Girl! A frightening teen girl in a bikini terrorizes the police force of a small Texas suburb, making them respond with excessive force and brutality reserved only for the worst of America’s swimming thugs! Who will protect our nation’s pool parties from this monster? Rated R for Racist! Featuring Emma Stone as the Asian Neighbor.

The Wall Street Journal blog has the post De Blasio to Skip Clinton Rally, Praises Rival Sanders.

In April, Mr. de Blasio said in an interview on NBC that he wouldn’t endorse her “until I see an actual vision of where they want to go.”

“She’s a tremendous public servant,” he told NBC. “I think she is one of the most qualified people to ever run for this office. And by the way, thoroughly vetted, we can say that. But we need to see the substance.”

Much if not most of what Hillary Clinton says is laudable. The issue is all about what she refuses to say or to talk about.

Thanks for Nacy Weinberg for posting this on her Facebook timeline.

John Oliver did a fantastic routine in the video Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Infrastructure (HBO).

America’s crumbling infrastructure: It’s not a sexy problem, but it is a scary one.

The one mistake that John Oliver makes along with other politicians is to think that the rebuilding of infrastructure needs tax funding. The building, rebuilding, and maintenance of our infrastructure requires physical and human assets to accomplish. The creation of the money to fund this requires a few keystrokes on a computer by someone at The Federal Reserve bank.

As long as the real assets are freely available to be bought with U.S. currency, then there is nothing stopping us but politicians and a misinformed public.