You could not be more wrong about what the Kochs are doing with their money. Buying advertising (LOL!) ain’t even the tip of it.
I actually <ulp> mostly agree with **adaher **on this one (not about the Clinton Foundation though–s/he’s being typically partisan there). I started a new thread challenging my fellow progressives to explain to me how Bernie’s constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United could actually work without severely constraining free speech.
Well, as far as the Clinton Foundation goes, it’s a perfectly legal way to buy influence that Citizens United foes don’t really seem to have an answer for. Even if you trust the Clintons, pretty much any politician can follow that model if they’ve made enough rich friends.
And Shayna, your point about the Kochs is well taken. But in the context of Citizens United, Sanders is addressing their ads. Overturning Citizens United wouldn’t touch the other stuff they do.
The government is supposedly of the people, by the people, for the people, yada yada. You corrupt the system if you influence the government with a boat load of cash. But it’s not corrupting the system to influence the people with a boat load of cash. What?
Personally, I’d question the unspoken premise. Rich people using boat loads of cash to get what they want is why we have government in the first place – it’s a gentlemen’s duel between different sectors of capital. It beats the rich hiring a bunch of gangs and merc squads to do battle in the streets.
It is of the people, by the people, for the people. The fact that the people listen to people with money just because they have money is a problem, but you can’t solve the people’s problems by limiting what they can see, hear, or read.
Actually, the way Norway has handled its oil resources is a brilliant example of democratic socialism.
A little bit unrelated, but something that played a big role later: they refused to join the European Union, which allowed financial independence down the line. Then, they decided to not join OPEC, and to simply keep their prices in line with world markets. They also decided to allow three different companies to participate in the new petroleum industry: One state owned (Statoil), one semi-state owned (Norsk Hydro), and one fully private (Saga).
Statoil, the state-owned oil company, was overseen by the Ministry of Industry, and required to give a yearly report of its operations to the parliament. The semi-state company kind of taught Statoil to do stuff, and they all, including the private company, competed for revenue. Drilling, exploration, all of that was handled like it is with capitalism: who ever could do it, did it. The state was a major player, but it competed with everyone else.
In 2001, Statoil became a private company, traded publicly on the stock exchange, with the government owning 80% of the shares. Norsk Hydro and Saga merged, then that company merged its oil operations with Statoil, so today Statoil is 70% owned by the government of Norway, with 30% whoever else. It also controls about 70% of petroleum production in the country.
Now, another amazing thing is that the government decided to put ALL surplus revenue from their petroleum industry into a pension fund, the Petroleum Fund of Norway, for the future development of their country. They even have redundant ethics committees overseeing the fund, so that no money is spent on stuff that people don’t want it spent on – arms trafficking, tobacco, fossil fuels, etc.
The result, 40 years later? They have an $800 billion pension fund that owns 1% of stock in all global stock markets, including being the largest holder of European stocks.
But…
Only 4% of that pension fund is authorized for government spending per year, and it can’t be spent directly (see the ethics committee thing above). It can only be spent on improvements – expansions, parks, infrastructure, science shit – or welfare. That’s $320 million extra a year, for a population of 5 million people. And they don’t even use all of it every year – last year they only used 3%.
Over time, they’re going to see a 3% or better ROI from the global stock market, so it’s self-sustaining. But they’re also not tied to the oil profits if the global petroleum industry tanks.
And that’s the other amazing thing: They’ve already declared there’s not much else to explore, so they’re undergoing studies right now to determine how long they can continue using the resources they have, and how to approach cutting their dependence on oil. They’re not at peak oil, mind – they’re just being prudent to make sure they use the resources they have as well as they can.
TLDR; Norway finds oil, develops a petroleum industry in partnership with private companies, puts all profits into a self-sustaining pension fund that is only to be used for the future well being of its citizens, and makes common sense legislation on the sustainability of its resources.
And also adds ethics committees on top of everything so greed and corruption can’t take hold.
Now, how did America develop its oil, gas, and coal resources…?
Norway definitely did a good job, but part of that good job was actually exploiting their resources. The US, despite massive oil needs, doesn’t do that. We are the only country to put a large portion of our resources off limits. Which has made Norwegians a lot richer than they’d otherwise be. If we fully exploited our oil resources, oil would be cheaper, we’d be richer, and Norwegians slightly poorer. And Saudis and Kuwaitis and Iranians and Russians a LOT poorer.
To bring Sanders back into this, one major reason Scandinavian policies don’t translate well to the US is because we have a lot more diversity of opinion here about the proper role of government. Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland don’t have small government conservatives, Scandinavia basically has left socialists, nativist socialists, libertarian socialists, and the equivalent of our Democrats(which would be the mainstream conservative party). Because of that, there isn’t as much disagreement over ends and means. In the US, we have HUGE fights over issues like that and Sanders’ election to the Presidency wouldn’t change any of that.
My wife is Norwegian American, and it seems like a cool country in a lot of ways. But it is easy for them financially because they have all that oil and a small population. It’s also hard for me to take them as a lighthouse beacon for progressivism when they are one of the only countries in the world that still allows whale hunting.
You’re not understanding even the basics of brand advertising and promotion. You believe exactly what the the status quo wants you to believe. It’s makes you a mug.
Norway isn’t exactly a comparison. It’s like using the NHS as an exemplar of UHC; it’s the furthest from where the US is now, and it will never be adopted in the US.
Pointless comparisons.
Yep, had the Saudis etc created sovereign wealth strategies 30 years ago that while region would be in a very different place. As it is they acted like uneducated kids who’d won the lottery.
The real issue: America was and always will be a nation of individualist assholes. A bunch of people who think they could make more, or do whatever it is better than that asshole over there. It’s what made us great, it’s what makes us terrible in crisis situations and long term planning.
Someone discovers resources in America? Well, who “owns” the land? They get all the profit, even if they simply won a weird kind of lottery they didn’t know they were playing. Oh, the person who owns the land is some poor ass farmer, or some race we don’t like, or one of those stupid Native Americans? Fuck them, they wouldn’t know what to do with all those resources anyway, we’ll just take that for them.
America doesn’t have oil profits not because they don’t drill enough, but rather because it’s a capitalist economic system, run like an oligarchy. Norway found oil, said “hey, that could pay for a lot of really cool shit we can’t even think of right now, let’s figure out how much we have, allow private corporations to teach us how to build an industry from scratch, protect the resources so they’ll last as long as possible, and put all surplus profits in a massive rainy day fund” and their citizens went: yep, sounds reasonable. America found oil and a bunch of psychopath individuals ran in yelling “THAT SHITS MINE,” buying and stealing everything they could, while the American government looked on and went “eh, what are you going to do about it?”
Bernie resonates with young people because we all grew up with the internet and have a general idea of how other countries operate. We read about places like Norway and think, why the hell can’t we have that? We also grew up during the Bush years, the financial crises, the bailouts, all that shit, and quite a few of us Did What Our Parents Told Us To Do and we’re graduating with a college degree and nobodies hiring, the minimum wage is laughable, we could never afford a house, we can’t even afford cars. We realize that American politics are all lies designed to keep a select few extremely wealthy – like the petroleum industry – and fuck everyone else.
We also watch people talk about global warming as if there’s a debate to be had, and we again see moneyed interests buying political favor, and it’s all very insane. We know we’re going to see massive climate change in our lifetimes, after all these asshole politicians are long dead, and we’re the ones that are going to have to make a worthless effort to fix something that can’t be fixed.
Bernie comes along (in elected office 40 years, net worth: about $300k, give or take) and says “hey, what if we do a bunch of common sense things, like focus on improving infrastructure, or removing corporate influence from politics, or addressing climate change, or removing systematic racism from government institutions, or paying people a living wage, or ending the privatization of the prison industry, or actual health care for all, etc? And by the way, we can do all this if we just close some corporate loopholes, make taxes go back to the levels they’ve been at every single time American has prospered (read: tax the fuck out of the 1%, get it back down to historical averages), and end a lot of corporate subsidies?”
And we, the young people go… yea, that seems reasonable. Thanks for not talking to us like we’re idiots.
Meanwhile…
What’s the Republican platform right now? What are they running on? What policies? Something about building a wall, abortion, umm… No healthcare? Fuck, who knows. Trump’s leading the race, what are his policies? He knows everything, he hates a bunch of people, he wants to deport Mexicans… that’s a great platform to build off of.
None of the Republicans are “conservatives” – they don’t actually believe in conservative economic principles. Us young people see through that shit, we know they’re just saying whatever they have to so they can get into office and make themselves and their friends rich. They want to cut taxes… while at war with two countries. Fuck that.
So yea, democratic socialism might not work in America, but not because America doesn’t have the resources. Rather, it’s because America is full of self-serving individualist assholes who think someday they’ll be CEO’s of that oil corporation, or as rich and “successful” as Donald Trump, or whatever, so fuck anyone who might take my future billions of dollars!
We could all have a better standard of living, and be wealthier, as a whole population, but a few hundred people at the top of our society would have to come down a litttttttle bit in income. Or we as a whole population could become poorer, sicker, and have far shittier lives, just so those few hundred people at the very top can… buy more jets? Put golden toilets in their offices? Who knows.
I actually really like my ISP, not that it’s as good a deal as in some places. I feel sorry anyone who’s stuck with a choice of Comcast or AT&T.
Rick Scott is taking the same tack in Florida with the cable companies, and he’s as deplorable a Teabagger as there is. It doesn’t take much to find out who pisses people off and denounce them, does it?
Still would like to know what Sanders has actually accomplished in his decades in Washington.
This is…confused. We did that. In the 1960’s. And oil was cheap, and we were the richest nation in the world. But we didn’t socialize the profits, and we never built a sovereign wealth fund. We had massive environmental problems and widespread poverty. Since that time, our consumption has kept growing beyond what we can produce; and we still never did socialize the profits, nor establish a sovereign wealth fund.
Anyway, the cheap energy we’re leaving on the table now isn’t so much petroleum as solar and wind power.
Well! He lost the Roosevelt Coalition. He (and Newt Gingrich) took credit for the results of a PAYGO standard put in place under Poppy Bush, without maintaining the legislative coalition that built it. He took credit for the GDP rise of a dotcom bubble, so at least he gave us Elon Musk; that’s one good thing. He put more cops on the street without caring that 10% of them were brutal racists. He sent mercenaries to Bosnia and protected them from any law as they raped and enslaved. He managed to be impeached for perjury as a sitting–
–wait, that’s your Bubba.
Bernie? I think he tried to pass bills. What was he supposed to do?
ZebraShaSha, that is one fucking fantastic post.
Yeah, it is, actually.
That’s just the thing, when a country is in broad agreement about social policy, they don’t tend to have many qualms over how to raise the money. If liberals in the US knew they were going to get to spend half the money raised from oil exploration, we’d be drilling all over Alaska.
On the contrary, opponents of Citizens United believe what the media and political class want them to believe: that political speech is property their bailiwick, and anyone else who dares to reach the masses is “interfering” with democracy.