For the Independence Weekend a look back at what got us into our ruined or threatened lives. Plus new stuff from this week (esp. about how to fight for change).
Stars & channels: Remember This, CrashCourse, Gregory Thomas Jeffers, Upworthy, Gar Alperovitz (Democracy Collaborative), IWW Labor Organizer, Lisa Fithian, Jimmy Dore, Ralph Nader, and more…
Topics:
I. Independence Weekend: A Look Back
The Dead Middle Class (explained by Lewis Black)
American Revolution: Process, Not Single Event
American Revolution: Police a Standing Army against Liberty
Economic Democracy
Stabilizing Economy from the Bottom
II. Enough is Enough: This Week’s News & Discussions
Ralph Nader & Jimmy Dore Conversation about making Change
IWW: Modern Labor Movement
People Power: Mutual Aid Networks etc.
Ralph Nader Radio Hour: Getting Back Democracy & Getting Medicare for All
Meaningful videos from this week. Their main themes: the coronavirus-triggered economic crisis (with abuse from the corrupt ‘elites’) and capitalism, how it hurts, and where to move from that. Also, how Europe has handled COVID-19 far less harmfully.
BTW, if you ever wondered why we, the people, should connect differently than only through corporate social media, look at what happened within a minute of me trying to share a previous Video Weekend on Facebook (I originally suspected an anti-democratic algorithm, but it may have been a troll, either way is bad): Public Censorship by Facebook — Also, I am too busy with continued education currently for sharing these posts on social media. So, subscribers please make use of my posts to save your own time searching for informative alternative media publications and also share the videos you find good, or the whole post, with your friends so that the time I spend sharing them here isn’t totally wasted. 😉
Stars and Channels: Movement for a People’s Party (incl. Nick Brana, Jerry Perez, and more), The Jimmy Dore Show, “Useful Idiots” (Rolling Stone), Richard Wolff, The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow, Yanis Varoufakis, The Rational National, and the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
Topics:
European Stable COVID-19 Economic Crisis Treatment
Even the Fed Chairman Suggests Relief for the People
People’s Party Update (National Call)
Seriously Biden?
The Need for System Change
Beyond FDR / Capitalism = Anti-Democracy
Getting Capitalism Out of its Box: UB-Dividend
A Hacker Fighting our Oligarchy’s Un-Unemployment Slavery
Meaningful videos from this week, incl. People’s Party! (unfortunately me so busy struggling to get back into wage slavery taking continued education crash courses, I only had a few hours this Sunday to search and check these out… still worth sharing, though… esp. the People’s Party stuff). BTW, I lack time to share this link on social media (and I get censored on them), so please subscribe, comment, and share. Enjoy what you find here!
Stars & Channels: Richard Wolff (Democracy At Work), Jesse Ventura and Brigida Santos, Graham Elwood (The Political Vigilante), The Jimmy Dore Show, David Doel (The Rational National), and Nick Brana + Jerry Perez.
Topics/Sections:
Pandemic Ghost Towns
Our Predatory Capitalism’s Insanity
Jesse is Back (Notes: empire, socialism, bankruptcy…)
A conversation with my former employee – Dirty Capitalist Confession Session NonCompete
in which the American Johnson, who feels guilty about his conduct as a business owner in his younger years, says he would have been happier as part of a worker co-op, something important comes up and is only half-discussed, namely the different kind of working life when we can all participate in the business decisions of our workplace.
What gets discussed is the benefit from it, namely you are not being ruled from a top with no means of knowing that the management may be planning your lay-off or firing, and your expertise may actually make it into the decision making that may otherwise be flawed because of ignorance at the managerial (and salesmanship) level, and misunderstandings can be better avoided, and holding our cards close becomes less necessary, and those in key positions will no longer have to bear too much painful responsibility, and so on…
And I basically agree, often arguing for the same, but it also occurred to me – thinking back to when I was working in a similar small family-like company – and that company came down on its luck because of badly timed growth investment and crushing blows from mega corporations invading its market, that we (the people in that company) would also have had to endure a lot of suffering discussing how to survive the financial disaster, who could survive how much pay cut for how long, or who would have to be let go. (The company got so crushed by the mega corporations at the point that its ability to borrow money was gone that it was forced by its bank to slash its workforce by half within a month. That’s how dire the situation was. That’s why even democratic decision making would surely have had to deal with lay-offs.)
This consideration drives me into the thought realm of the universal basic income (a UBI, better thought of as a citizens dividend when financed not by taxing middle income workers but only the rich as a method of reshaping our wealth and power pyramid into an egalitarian broad building with No Rich and No Poor). Because, if every earned dollar has at least another dollar going to the ultra rich at the top, as things are right now, many of us are struggling to make ends meet. But if that dollar was not robbed but stayed with each of us (by cap-taxing the wealthy and shaping the revenue into a UBI), we could all be way more relaxed in our working lives and business management. We could shape our workplaces as worker co-ops in a far more relaxed economy where no worker or worker’s relative would have to worry about sinking into poverty because all the money we earn from labor would only be extra money, not our full livelihood. Business downturns could be handled much more easily.
It’s something to think about for those who worry that a UBI could only be a hand-out to placate the poor, or those who regard it as too much state power becoming too much burden on the private sector. I really think that a correctly done UBI (a citizens dividend) would lead to a far more relaxed economy that would benefit all the unemployed, all employees, and even business managers and owners; in other words: everybody.
It is our current stressful economies that lead to brutal lay-offs, slashing of salaries and benefits, warlike struggles between companies, manipulating and cheating of customers, ruthless destruction of the environment (even our planet’s human-life-supporting climate!). It leads to offshoring jobs, illegal employment of undocumented migrants, worker-income-depriving automation (rather than reduced working hours at unreduced income), and to bloated pharmaceutical prices, because profits become the dominating decision making factor, and people all over the economy are desperate. Desperate people will do desperate things that often are catastrophic.
A relaxed economy would be far better, and it relies on a principle of there never being poverty for anyone. Additionally, to make it happen, there also must be no ridiculous richness for anyone turning that person into a modern day god-king ruling over thousands or millions of fellow people whom he or she rarely perceives as fellow people but as commodities.
Let’s aim for a relaxed economy, shall we?
A soon to come continuation on thoughts about this video: The Left-Right Division when we Fundamentally Agree
Ending Note:Don’t forget to subscribe to free updates andto share widely critical stuff you encounter here and elsewhere. Also, pleaselend supportif you can. Together we are the change we have been waiting for.
A sublime collection of great recent videos you will be amazed by and learn a lot from or simply rave, growl, sniff, enjoy, and cheer… or even stand up against the corrupt seats of power. 😉
The first 9 videos seemed a great enough package to start out the weekend with, but more super videos kept popping up over the weekend. So here are 20(!) this Sunday. Don’t miss them. Take a look. Great stuff like this takes a long time to find. Amazing revelations on immigration, war for profit, our slave state, rigged elections, an alternative economy of liberty & justice for all, religious (counter-)ethics, ideology, fight from the bottom, media manipulation, and more… And important comments worth reading!
Stars: Mike Gravel, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, John Spritzler, Richard Wolff, Jimmy Dore, Amy Goodman, Ralph Nader, and more… Channels: Democracy Now!, MCSC Network, Redacted Tonight, The Real News Network, Secular Talk, The Rational National, David Pakman, The Humanist Report, and more…
Topics:
United States of Police Brutality
The Real Border Crisis
U.S. Military Terror Laid Bare – Short, Succinct, & Wow! ***
Weekly News
Mike Gravel Revealing Painful Truth
A Cooperative Economy Alternative
Psychological Chains: Treating People Like Dirt
“Left” – “Right” = 0
Party Corruption & We Cannot Compromise on Life & Death
U.S. Election Integrity: Rigging with Impunity ***
Main themes of this week’s video compilation: systemic corruption, inequality, and abuse of the people, and the fight for true democracy in our lives. Stars: Bernie, Jon Stewart, Richard Wolff, Denise Hearn, Ralph Nader, The Ring of Fire, Glenn Greenwald, Thought Slime, The Humanist Report, Jimmy Dore, and many, many more.
Topics:
Modern Working Lives Not Worth Living
The Flaws of our Corporatist Capitalism System
Corruption: Sometimes the Closed Doors are a Crack Open
Inequality by Design vs Full Democracy
System Corruption and a Celebrity Fighting for a Piece of Justice
Healthcare: The Need to Protect Medicare from Inflated Drug Prices
Healthcare: Drug Price Gouging and Life Expectancy
Insider Notes on False Christianity
Power of the People & Chaining It
Remember our Dubious Supreme Court? Learn from Brazil!
The Media vs Reality (incl. ref. to Bernie)
The Fake Freedom Map
Taxing Wall Street – Not Only Bernie Talking Interestingly
Useful Idiot Voters
Prevention of Poverty is better than the Cure
Consumerism
Warmongering by CBS & Other MSM
MSM Fertilizing the Right Wing Trap
Intelligent Conversation: Mike Gravel & Jimmy Dore
Jesse Ventura: Iran, Hong Kong, Egypt, Monopolies and the Death of Competition
I. Modern Working Lives Not Worth Living
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for Thought Slime and the title: “My First Job: The Lazybones Manifesto”)
Note: I grew up during the tail end of the ‘golden age’ expecting a just and fair life. All I have had is a shitty life. Similarly to this man, I have wished all the time I had never been born. That’s why on my way out of it, I fight for better conditions for those coming after me. Continue reading “Political Awakening Video Weekend 2019-06-23 (20 videos)”→
Another great video weekend for those who can find time in this busy holiday season. More great facts and insight on the Yellow West Movement, public mind manipulation, the core nature and effects of capitalism, and so on.
Topics:
Yellow Vests News
War, Morals, & Veterans for Peace
Hypernormalization
Election Meddling
Refugees: Fleeing U.S. Dirty Wars in Central America
Filling the Swamp (Mnuchin)
Cool Conversation (Paul Jay, RoseAnn De Moro, John Cusack, and Bob Pollin)
An interesting speech by Richard Wolff approaching the solution to our miserable economy from a philosophical angle:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Master-Slave Dialectic in Capitalism and What to Do About It”)
Petition
The current federal budget decimates Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid by $1.8 trillion (kicking millions of seniors, children, and disabled people off their health care), cuts $215 billion from food stamps, $203 billion from college students, and $1.5 trillion from schools, highways, medical research, and environmental protection — all that to make the super-rich richer through special tax cuts and such for them. Here you can sign a petition against this theft from the top.
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A co-op economy is a great alternative to our American one-share-one-vote anti-democracy.
Jimmy Dore held a delightful interview with Richard Wolff, nicely describing the core-problem of our economy and a bloodless, peaceful way out of it and towards democracy, first in the workplace and then in the public sphere (once the plutocratic oligarchs – our money aristocracy – have had the rug pulled out from under them).
Our current corporate economy gives 1% of people nearly all the wealth (including three quarters of all company shares) and along with it all the decision-making power not only in the business sector but the public sector as well. In contrast, when workers own their companies, when they can democratically make all the important decisions (whether or not to move their jobs to China, for example), when they can hire and fire the managers who work for them rather than the other way round, then we not only walk into our places of work with our heads held high (being co-owners), but our daily work lives are democratic in nature with important decisions reflecting our needs and wishes, and so can be the country when it is resting on a truly democratic base rather than the rotten plutocratic base we currently have.
And the best news is that the conversion from the plutocratic economy to a democratic worker co-op economy has already begun. Here is the sweet interview:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Solution For Capitalism’s Brutalities Easier Than You Think w/Prof. Richard Wolff”)
Note: Support at the national level, such as offered by Jeremy Corbyn in he UK, would of course accelerate and strengthen the economic conversion, as would putting a stop to corporate welfare and exclusive tax gifts to the rich. Hence worker co-op friendly policies should be on the People’s Platform.
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Ending Note: Independent media like this site are vital! It takes me at least 100 hours a month to research and write for this site. If you find any value in what I do, please consider becoming a patron and supporting this site with an automatic monthly donation of $1 or more. If you can’t afford this, then don’t, but please share my posts, tell folks about my online course offering, refer others to this site, refer me to paying outlets, partake in discussion, or contribute essays of your own. Thanks. Only together can we change the world. 🙂
