Steve's Politics Blog

Elizabeth Warren has posted Let the NLRB do its job on her Facebook page. You can join the conversation there.

Instead of implementing policies that strengthen the middle class, Republicans are pressing a bill to stop the National Labor Relations Board from modernizing its procedures because it might help – yes, help – America’s workers. Share this video to help tell Congress: Let the NLRB do its job.

I imagine it is Facebook rules that make it difficult to find the video to embed in my blog, but I managed to find it on YouTube anyway. There is is called Sen. Warren to GOP: Stop Ambushing Workers’ Rights.

In a speech on the floor of the United States Senate on March 4, 2015, Senator Elizabeth Warren urged Congress to reject a Republican resolution aimed at stopping implementation of the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) new rule to make workplace union elections more efficient and effective.

I wonder what potential candidates for the Democratic nomination to run for President in 2016 have to say about this. Can you hear their voices as loudly? For some reason, I am hearing only silence.

If You Only News has the article Watch Elizabeth Warren Destroy Every Stupid Anti-Vaxxer Argument In 2 Minutes (VIDEO).

I am not a believer that you should ever hide the facts in order to prove a valid point, so I offer the article Former Mooresville child compensated by federal ‘vaccine court’ from The Charlotte Observer.

As they started their family, Mooresville residents Theresa and Lucas Black dutifully got their children immunized, never doubting their doctor’s word that vaccines are safe and necessary.

But their faith in those promises was shaken in 2001, when their 3-month-old daughter, Angelica, developed life-threatening seizures and brain damage just three days after getting several vaccinations.

For some balance to the balance, you might want to Google “vaccine court”. The WikiPedia article Vaccine court provides some perspective on the “vaccine court”.

Vaccine court is the popular term which refers to the Office of Special Masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which administers a no-fault system for litigating vaccine injury claims.

To add even more balance until you topple right over, you might want to refer to my previous post Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks.

I can imagine how the author of the aforementioned book might respond to some of what is in The Charlotte Observer article mentioned above.

Today, two of the Blacks’ oldest children have children of their own, and they’re struggling with vaccine decisions.

Stephen, now 22, has a daughter who’s had some vaccinations, but when she was 12 months old, after getting the MMR for measles, mumps and rubella, she “lost all the verbal skills she had attained,” Theresa Black said. The child is now getting fewer vaccines at a time. At 20 months, she’s seeing a speech therapist to help regain what she lost.

The fact that two generations of this family have had problems might indicate to some that there is an inheritance of the sensitivity to vaccines. Another possible interpretation of the correlation which does not mean causation (see Diversion–Highway Fatalities and Lemons) is that the medical problems of both children had nothing to do with the vaccine and everything to do with a genetic disorder that runs in the family.

Your News Wire has the article Why Netanyahu Is ‘The Right Man’ To Address US Congress On Iran.

Jewish Professor Yakov M. Rabkin reckons that the Israeli Prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu- Bibisitter in his latest election videos -is talking nonsense about The Iranian Nuclear Threat.

He is the right man to address Congress, because after all, it was Israel and its allies in Washington who fabricated ‘Iran Nuclear Threat’ issue to begin with. It is thus incumbent upon Mr. Netanyahu to try to give credence to that allegation by attending.

The article raises some very good questions about whether or not the existence of Israel is promoting or harming the welfare of Jews around the world.

Why fool around with an opening statement or two when you can watch the entire forum?

There is a YouTube video of this entire first session of the forum.

Streamed live on Feb 24, 2015

The Middle Class Prosperity Project, launched by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Cummings, will examine economic policies that threaten the middle class and identify new proposals that will ensure the middle class remains the engine of America’s economic growth.

Today’s event is the the first in a series of congressional forums to hear directly from leading economists about how the nation’s economic system has been rigged against the middle class over the past several decades. More details about the Middle Class Prosperity Project are available at http://1.usa.gov/1acRUgT.

Panelists include:

– Dr. Jared Bernstein, Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
– Dr. Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. Chief Economist at Standard & Poor’s Rating Services
– Dr. Gerald Jaynes, Professor of Economics and African American Studies at Yale University
– Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University

There is 2 hours and 13 minutes in this video, but nothing happens until about 11 minutes and 49 seconds, so you can skip through the frames until you see Elizabeth Warren. Rep. Elijah Cummings makes his opening statement at about 18 minutes into the video. The rest of the video is equally fascinating. If you consider yourself a progressive political junkie, you need to watch this video.

The one thing missing from this excellent forum is an expert in Modern Money Theory. Even the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz falls for the fallacy that increases in government spending in a country with a fiat currency must be “paid for” by cuts elsewhere or increases in taxes. Many of the spending cuts and tax increases they mention have merit for other reasons, but “paying for” increases in government spending is not one of the major reasons. If they had the Senate Budget Committee’s Ranking Member’s economic adviser, Stephanie Kelton, on the panel of one of these forums, they would find that the solutions they are seeking are a lot easier than they realize.

That Ranking Member, Sen. Bernie Sanders, needs to have a talk with Elizabeth Warren to set her straight.

It is time we also hear from Rep. Elijah E. Cummings about the Middle Class Prosperity Project Forum that he is co-hosting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

He gets short shrift in this interview, Warren and Cummings on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, but at least he does get to field a few questions. He is much more eloquent than one would imagine from seeing video clips where he silently stands beside Elizabeth Warren.

This is all about getting some political focus on these issues instead of the ones that the wealthy want us to concentrate on.

Elizabeth Warren has posted this video on her Facebook page.

I have a message for my Republican colleagues: you control Congress. Don’t just start talking about helping the middle class – start doing it.

Watch and share my opening statement from yesterday’s first Middle Class Prosperity Project forum.

The video Middle Class Prosperity Project Forum Opening Statement is also posted on YouTube with the following introduction:

The Middle Class Prosperity Project, launched by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Cummings, will examine economic policies that threaten the middle class and identify new proposals that will ensure the middle class remains the engine of America’s economic growth.

This February 24, 2015 event is the the first in a series of congressional forums to hear directly from leading economists about how the nation’s economic system has been rigged against the middle class over the past several decades. More details about the Middle Class Prosperity Project are available at http://1.usa.gov/1acRUgT.

Panelists included:

– Dr. Jared Bernstein, Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
– Dr. Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. Chief Economist at Standard & Poor’s Rating Services
– Dr. Gerald Jaynes, Professor of Economics and African American Studies at Yale University
– Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University

Warren is right, talk is cheap. This is what she is doing to keep this topic in the forefront of the political conversation. What can you say about certain other potential Democratic Presidential contestants for 2016? What are those candidates focusing on, and what are they doing now to get action?

The Daily Kos has the article Barbara Boxer knocks it out of the park on GOP hatred, hypocrisy and irresponsibility which features the video below.

Makes you wonder if the Republican leaders in Congress have any shame left at all.

Discovery has the article Photo First: Light Captured as Both Particle and Wave. The scientists at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have made this cartoon video to drive other scientists batty.

Reminds me of my first job at Sylvania. I managed to create a lab setup to measure two things at the same time to prove to myself that both unexplained conditions were simultaneous. I still had no explanation, though.

As for this situation, I have invented this “explanation”. Under some circumstances the wave model or reality explains how light behaves. Under other circumstances the particle model of reality explains how light behaves. Models are simplifications of reality that are good for explaining behavior. The simplification is necessary because we don’t have words to explain or we can’t handle the complex math of reality. In this situation, we still haven’t come up with the words to explain what light really is without making simplified models of some behavior of light. (Of course, it may be possible that scientists have come up with the explanation of what light really is, but I just have not heard of it, yet.)

Terry Steiner can correct me because I know that I must be wrong. Or maybe Llanda Richardson wants to tackle this.

The Washington Post has the article The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose by Elizabeth Warren.

Giving foreign corporations special rights to challenge our laws outside of our legal system would be a bad deal. If a final TPP agreement includes Investor-State Dispute Settlement, the only winners will be multinational corporations.

This article and the Obama administration’s disingenuous (being charitable here) response was the subject of my previous post The Administration’s Dishonest Response to Elizabeth Warren’s Attack on Secret Investor Arbitration Panels in Trade Deals.

I want to re-emphasize the point I made in the previous post that these “trade” agreements are making our court system irrelevant.  In particular, the argument that electing any Democrat as President in 2016 over a Republican is important because of the President’s power to nominate Supreme Court justices is a specious argument when we are talking about Hillary Clinton as the potential Democratic nominee.

Coincidentally, after making this point I ran across a video that I put into another previous post Elizabeth Warren Asked About Hillary Clinton & It’s Devastating.

How many ways do you have to be told that Hillary Clinton is from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party?  If you are from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, then Hillary is not for you.

Having voted for President Obama twice, my eyes are becoming fully open to the danger of electing a Democrat who isn’t entirely committed to progressive principles.  Over the past 7 years of the Obama administration, I have been rejecting the meme that Obama is our liar in chief.  His dishonest attempt to sell us on TPP has made me finally wake up to the truth about Obama.  To make matters worse, the few things he did get right can all be overturned by actions against the government brought by investors newly empowered by the TPP.

There is a YouTube video Elizabeth Warren Asked About Hillary Clinton & It’s Devastating.

“It’s no secret that Hillary Clinton badly wants the approval of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (and the liberal wing of the party she represents) in advance of the former Secretary of State’s near-certain 2016 bid. There was the meeting between the two at Clinton’s DC house back in December and the various rhetorical bows Clinton has made to Warren’s populist rhetoric over the past few months.

Given that recent history, what Warren had to say about Clinton during an appearance on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show Tuesday night has to be disappointing to Clintonworld. Here’s the exchange:

I ran into this video in an If You Only News article. I was doing some further research on a post I am about to make on Elizabeth Warren’s article about TPP.

The case for electing Hillary Clinton is diminishing to about zero as I write.