Quote:

---

Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
...did he really go rightwing...or has mainstream media drifted so far-Left?
https://www.lifezette.com/popzette/james-woods-free-speech-dead-libera
l-america/
conservative actor turns down most of the interviews he's offered these days

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Wishimay:
Left...Right...all roads lead to CircleJerk...

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6stringJoker:


It would probably be more appropriate to label the republicans Clockwise

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

LOL. Wishy, you made me laugh!


That's a really good point though. I started imagining people just walking in circles aimlessly.

It would probably be more appropriate to label the republicans Clockwise, and the democrats Counter-Clockwise.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Wishimay:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6stringJoker:


It would probably be more appropriate to label the republicans Clockwise

---

OK, but walking backwards with blinders on and their thumbs up their asses.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

I think the problem is that all politicians are garbage people.

What is somebody to do when the people who run the show are the worst humanity has to offer?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

I think you're over-generalizing people and not giving them enough credit Second. . . . Politicians are garbage people.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
I don't want to take things out of context, so I'd have to see the whole press conference... or at least the question that was asked of him before he said it. . . .

If he is indeed all of the sudden saying that they are legitimate now that he's president that's bullshit.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

The 4% numbers are new to me though. My thoughts without seeing the entire press conference is that this was not a discussion about unemployment in America, but in one of the states that is doing better than average if they're throwing around numbers so low.

Would not surprise me if the MSM took footage of him talking about unemployment in a particular area or state and said he was talking about the numbers in the entire country.

---

Quote:

---

I know the video of the entire Q&A must be out there somewhere, yet I can't find the goddamn thing, but you can be certain that for years Trump attacked the Bureau of Labor Statistics' reports on the US labor market, except now that he is in charge he's singing a different tune.- SECOND

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

But that doesn't change the fact that more people are unemployed than ever before.

---

Quote:

---

move to where the jobs are. - SECOND

---

Quote:

---

On the same graph at BLS that you posted, go back to 1950 when America was at Trump’s Peak of Greatness Again. Only 55% of people were working, less than 2017’s 60%.

---

Quote:

---

Nine New Findings About Inequality in the United States

By JEREMY ASHKENAS DEC. 16, 2016

In a paper published last week, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman expand their earlier work, examining how taxes and government spending affect income inequality.

1) The bottom half of the country has been shut out from income growth for 40 years.
The average pretax earnings of an American in the bottom 50 percent by income was $16,197 in 2014, a nearly invisible 2.6 percent gain over 40 years. Over the same period, the top 10 percent of Americans saw their pretax incomes grow by 231 percent.

2) Government spending has helped lift lower incomes, but only a little.
The study subtracts taxes, and then adds back the benefits of both direct (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps) and indirect (infrastructure, defense, education) government spending to arrive at an after-tax measure of income.

By comparing pretax income to income after accounting for taxes and government spending, we can see a clearer picture of how government policy has affected income inequality in the United States.

3 Increased health care spending on the elderly consumes most of the gains.
The effects of government assistance vary widely with age, especially within the lower half of incomes. Younger adults between 20 and 45 years old have seen their after-tax incomes flatline.

But over the same period, seniors in the bottom half have seen their after-tax incomes grow by over 70 percent. The bulk of that gain represents increased health care spending through Medicare.

4) The top 1% and the bottom 50% have swapped their relative shares of the national income.
Forty years ago, the top 1 percent of earners took home 10.5 percent of the total national income, and the bottom half earned 20 percent of it. By 2014, those percentages effectively flipped, with the top 1 percent earning a 20 percent share and the bottom half dropping to 12.5 percent.

5) Taxes in the United States are much less progressive than they used to be.
Between the end of World War II and the 1980s, the gap between effective tax rates on the rich and the poor narrowed as a result of reductions in corporate and estate taxes on the upper class, and increases in payroll taxes on the working class.

In 2013, the Obama administration sharply reversed the trend of declining top tax rates by allowing the 2001 Bush tax cuts to expire and introducing new surtaxes to fund the Affordable Care Act.

6) More women in the work force also helped mitigate rising inequality.
Since the 1960s, more American women have joined the work force and their pay has increased, counteracting measures of inequality. In 1964, women made up only 38 percent of the work force; they are now nearly half of it.

7)but there’s still a heavy glass ceiling.
Despite these gains, as you look farther up the income ladder, you find fewer and fewer women.
Women are 48 percent of the American work force, but only one in 10 of the top 0.1 percent of earners.

8) Since 1999, any upper-middle-class income growth has been after-tax.
Even for the upper-middle-class group, which the authors define as adults with incomes between the bottom half and the top 10 percent of Americans, pretax incomes haven’t grown over the past 15 years. Only rising public spending on benefits like health care has allowed upper-middle-class incomes to grow.

9) Taxes and spending helped blunt the effects of inequality and income stagnation.
Over the past 50 years, the total share of national income that flows back to individuals through the government has grown. And that income has increasingly been transferred to the bottom 90 percent of Americans, helping to slightly slow the rapidly growing income inequality in the United States.
Despite this, the study argues that more redistribution won’t fix the problem.

Because the labor income of the bottom 50 percent of Americans has weakened so drastically, Mr. Piketty, Mr. Saez and Mr. Zucman write, “there are clear limits to what redistributive policies can achieve.”

They argue that future policy should focus more on raising the primary income of the American working class. Possibilities include improving education and job training, equalizing distribution of human and financial capital, and increasing labor bargaining power, combined with a return to steeply progressive taxation.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Nowhere in there does it say anything about Democrats changing the trajectory. You can argue all you want, SECOND ... and I know you will ... but that doesn't change the reality of the situation. It's that willful blindness of the DNC against the real problems that real people face, and towards favoring their wealthy sponsors that has cost the DNC votes. Not "Russia". Is Trump the answer? No, Trump was a protest vote.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled discussion about James Woods ...

---

Quote:

---

Americans are becoming increasingly ignorant about their own rights as citizens. Forty-seven percent of a sample of 17-year-olds, on the verge of becoming eligible voters, did not know the simple fact, according to a recent survey, that each state elects two United States senators. More than half of the 17-year-olds and more than three-fourths of the 13-year-olds in the survey could not explain the significance of the fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination. One out of every eight 17-year-olds believed that the president does not have to obey the law, and one out of every two students at both ages believe that the president appoints members of Congress. Half the 13-year-olds thought that the law forbids anyone to start a new political party. Hardly any of the students in either group could explain what steps the Constitution entitles Congress to take in order to stop the president from fighting a war without congressional approval. If an educated electorate is the best defense against arbitrary government, the survival of political freedom appears uncertain at best. Large numbers of Americans now believe that the Constitution sanctions arbitrary executive power, and recent political history, with its steady growth of presidential power, can only have reinforced such an assumption.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
What was your point, Signym? That my parents should get jobs at Walmart so that I could say they are employed and their lives would instantly be more meaningful because of the importance of work to their spiritual well-being? (And pushing labor participation rate higher than 60% on the statistics?)
https://qz.com/1013664

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by AURaptor:

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
FEC ‘Fast-Tracks’ George Soros Deal To Take Over 200+ Radio Stations Before Election

https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/fec-fast-tracks-george-soros-deal-to-take-o
ver-200-radio-stations-before-election/

---