Archive for April 29th, 2016
Bernie Sanders is Not a Radical: He Has Mass Support for Healthcare and Tax Positions
Posted on: April 29, 2016
Bernie Sanders is Not a Radical, He Has Mass Support for Healthcare & Tax Positions
“Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person… But he’s considered radical and extremist, [and] he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat.” – Noam Chomsky
During an event Tuesday night, Noam Chomsky was asked about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and said he considered him more of a “New Deal Democrat” than a radical extremist, as some have portrayed him.
Chomsky said Sanders’ positions on taxes and healthcare are supported by a majority of the American public, and have been for a long time.
He added that Sanders has “mobilized a large number of young people who are saying, ‘Look, we’re not going to consent anymore.’
If that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term.”
Chomsky is a world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century.
He spoke at the Brooklyn Public Library at an event hosted by Live from the NYPL.
The event also featured Greece’s former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. He discusses his role in the country’s financial crisis in his new book, “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future.”
Varoufakis will be a guest Thursday on Democracy Now!
TRANSCRIPT
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person. That’s pretty unusual in the political system.
Maybe there are two of them in the world, you know. But he’s considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization, because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat. His positions would not have surprised President Eisenhower, who said, in fact, that anyone who does not accept New Deal programs doesn’t belong in the American political system. That’s now considered very radical.
The other interesting aspect of Sanders’s positions is that they’re quite strongly supported by the general public, and have been for a long time.
That’s true on taxes. It’s true on healthcare.
So, take, say, healthcare. His proposal for a national healthcare system, meaning the kind of system that just about every other developed country has, at half the per capita cost of the United States and comparable or better outcomes, that’s considered very radical.
But it’s been the position of the majority of the American population for a long time. So, you go back, say, to the Reagan—right now, for example, latest polls, about 60 percent of the population favor it. When Obama put through the Affordable Care Act, there was, you recall, a public option. But that was dropped.
It was dropped even though it was supported by about almost two-thirds of the population.
You go back earlier to the Reagan years, about 70 percent of the population thought that national healthcare should be in the Constitution, because it’s such an obvious right.
And, in fact, about 40 percent of the population thought it was in the Constitution, again, because it’s such an obvious right. The same is true on tax policy and others.
So we have this phenomenon where someone is taking positions that would have been considered pretty mainstream during the Eisenhower years, that are supported by a large part, often a considerable majority, of the population, but he’s dismissed as radical and extremist.
That’s an indication of how the spectrum has shifted to the right during the neoliberal period, so far to the right that the contemporary Democrats are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. And the Republicans are just off the spectrum.
They’re not a legitimate parliamentary party anymore. And Sanders has—the significant part of—he has pressed the mainstream Democrats a little bit towards the progressive side.
You see that in Clinton’s statements. But he has mobilized a large number of young people, these young people who are saying, “Look, we’re not going to consent anymore.” And if that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized—mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term.
“Around the rest of the world, Mr. Sanders represents a point on the political spectrum that is mildly left of centre.
His “wacky” ideas of free education, free healthcare, regulating banks and corporations and so on are all actually staple ideas of many of the happiest and most prosperous countries in the world.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the happiest countries in the world index for 2016.”
How to read an academic paper?
Posted on: April 29, 2016
How to read an academic paper?
It is beyond me why juries on thesis, Masters or Ph.D, insist on producing voluminous books.
Probably, to initiate the candidate to learn Job’s patience for writing?
Or to give the illusion that what is produced is worth years of wasting time and energy on a book that barely anybody will ever read to refers to it?
Any one who went through this headache knows that half the time spent on a PhD program was reserved for writing the thesis. No wonder, most of these graduates gave up on writing anything afterward and refused to teach or pursue an academic life.
I suggest that professional writers who pressured their publishers to edit short books be included in such juries in order to lighten the book from redundant paragraphs.
What kills me is when you are forbidden to use the first personal in order to give an objective tone to the research. As if personal experiences are Not valid or our world views are not mainly generated from the few personal experiences we faced and tackled.
Adonis Diaries 