Downward causation and free will

Following up on this post, see the video below. It's a long one, but this is the latest in the neuroscientific evidence for free will.

Senator Sanders on social security

He says it best so I'll let him say it:

Republicans hate Social Security because it has been an extraordinary success and has done exactly what it was designed to do. Since its implementation in 1935, Social Security has lowered the poverty rate amongst seniors from about 50% to less than 10%. And today it also covers 11 million Americans living with disabilities including 3 million children, making it the most successful social program in our country’s history. However, the success of Social Security has only emboldened conservatives’ attempts at privatizing and cutting. In fact, currently in Congress, members of both the House and Senate are attempting to divide the American people, telling them that unless we cut benefits today, they won’t be there for future generations. Let me be clear. Social Security has not contributed one nickel to our deficit or our national debt. It has a $2.8 trillion surplus. It will be able to pay 100 percent of promised benefits to every eligible recipient for the next 18 years, just as it has done for the past 79 years. And, all we need to do is ask millionaires and billionaires to start paying their fair share and we not only extend the life of the Social Security trust fund, we can afford to expand benefits for millions of Americans. Today, February 10, marks the day when the top one percent of wage earners in America stop paying into Social Security. This is because, right now, only the first $118,500 of a wage earner’s income is subject to the payroll tax that funds Social Security. Stand with me and Social Security Works in demanding that millionaires and billionaires start paying their fair into Social Security. When they do, we will be able to expand, not cut, benefits for millions of Americans.

Never say never

Regressives are really concerned about income inequality

Say what? Yeah, all the regressives are jumping on this bandwagon, at least in word, since it is the key campaign issue for 2016. But they are just words, or in other words, lies. Their actual policy suggestions belie their blatant, lying manipulation. Here's Robert Reich on that hypocrisy.

"Suddenly every Republican presidential aspirant is talking about it. Jeb Bush focused on inequality last week at the Detroit Economic Club; Marco Rubio is now emphasizing it while noting he's the son of a bartender and a maid; Rand Paul, saying he shops at Walmart, is 'worried' about it; Scott Walker fears the 'American dream has become out of reach' for too many Americans.

Why Hillary is just more of the same

See this article, which discusses a weekend NY Times piece on Clinton. Her propagandists are trying to build a centrist policy that doesn't alienate the rich, since that's where her money comes from. But a recent study shows we need far more than so-called balanced centrist ideas, since the inequality situation is far worse than even the most horrid of imaginations. Such centrism doesn't make a dent in it, and some of its framing assumes regressive assumptions thereby actually perpetuating the problem.

Lawrence Summers, one of the said Clinton team, calls this kinder, gentler Democrat policy "inclusive capitalism." This is the Wall Street guy that was influential in the deregulation of the banking industry and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. He was on Obama's economic team and instrumental in the bailout of his banker buddies after the financial collapse. Yeah, that's just who we need advising Clinton in her own corporate-backed campaign with this sort of lip-service to progressive ideals when it's merely that; the policies maintain the status quo of power and money.

Regressives love to hate women

So the Republican healthcare plan is out and it hates women, as usual. It once again makes pregnancy a pre-existing condition and cuts maternity care. Women must also pay more for this 'condition.' It also kills contraception coverage. Those regressives love the fetus but hate the children and their mothers. Don't you just love them ladies?

Governor Walker caught in an outright lie

Another regressive Governor, this time from WI, was caught red-handed in a boldfaced lie. His own budget proposal deleted from U of WI's mission statement "basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth."  We know that regressives do not like the truth or even education, so this is right in line with their agenda to defund education and dumb everyone down so they cannot discern the truth. But when he was confronted by this deletion he quipped that is was simply an error overlooked in the draft. Again the facts contradict this lie, in that there was a long chain of correspondence where his administration not only proposed this deletion but proofed and approved it. When the university fought back they were told to go to hell. This is typical operating procedure for the regressives. It's just amazing that their idiot constituents believe their lies and degradation of the social good.

Governor Christie's blatant corruption

There have been several examples of this, but this one is making the latest rounds. The NJ Governor has taken lavish trips at the expense of billionaires and foreign heads of State. Normally this would be illegal, but coincidentally Christie earlier signed an executive order making such graft legal. No, that's not corrupt, right Tony Soprano?

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Libertarian socialism as methodology

See this definition of libertarian socialism. It describes it as a methodological approach, since ideological ones tend to try to fit everything into its preferred model whether they fit or not. One example is Marx's "linear and inevitable historical progression." The same can be said for Wilber's ideologically fixated attachment to a linear and inevitable evolutionary progression, as well as the developmental model of hierarchical complexity. There are other forms of both development and complexity that do not adhere to this sort of teleology, like this as but one example.

The newer age

"To bring an end to the age of spiritual terrorism." Amen brother.