Can you define them for us, please?

The stupidity of the last administration? It amazes me how Trump and his loyalists find a way to blame the Obama administration for every stupid decision they make. Who got rid of the U. S. pandemic response team? Oh, yeah, Trump. And this administration's decisions regarding this pandemic seem more concerned with money and the president's popularity than with saving lives.

Yes, that is the trick. Too bad Trump didn't get that during the first three years of his administration. Instead of paying down the debt (as he promised) he pushed through a tax cut that mostly benefited the wealthy and big corporations and added a trillion to the debt before things started to go bad.

[quote=maximus]Trump can't do ANYTHING that is illegal for his office.

So you are saying the president is above the law, and he can do anything with no consequences? Hope you feel the same way when a Democrat gets elected. Of course, if he can do ANYTHING, he can just cancel the next election and make himself president for life.

I'm a Minnesotan who voted for Franken twice and am happy I did. We have two of the best senators in Congress in Franken and Amy Klobuchar. Yes, unfortunately there are stupid people in Minnesota. Remember Michelle Bachmann?

You will need that hope when social security and medicare are privatized, the FDA and EPA are not allowed to protect our food, drugs, and the environment, our new secretary of state urges Russia to take over the Baltic countries, and you realize that manufacturing jobs are not coming back in any significant numbers.

I would say what we need more of in education is cooperation, not competition. Charter schools were supposed to be educational laboratories where innovative methods could be tried, and if they were successful, adopted by other schools. But many charter schools actually force their teachers to sign non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses in their contracts which say they will be fined if they disclose "proprietary" teaching methods or go to work for another school in the area the charter school draws students from. Yes, teachers' unions want their members to get decent salaries and fringe benefits and to not be required to do non-teaching tasks like serving as bus monitors before and after school, but they also want schools where students succeed. After all, those students will pay the taxes that support the schools in years to come. It is in teachers' interests to prepare them to lead successful, productive lives.

In Minnesota, where I live, we have state wide open enrollment, meaning a student can attend any public school in the state unless the school he or she wants to attend has opted out of the program or has no room for additional students. Interestingly, the main impact of this program has been to reduce enrollment at smaller rural schools as students move to larger schools that offer more courses at the high school level. Rules have also had to be put in place to discourage transfers solely to participate in more successful athletic programs. We also have a program called Post Secondary Educational Options, which allows high school junior and seniors to attend any college or university that will accept them during their junior and senior years. If feasible, the students can attend college for part of the day and high school for the other part. Many schools also have cooperative agreements with area community colleges that allow college level classes to be taught in the high school by teachers who meet the college's requirements. Of course, there are also AP and IB classes available in many high schools. My take on voucher plans is that the most important consideration is to hold down the amount of money the state spends on education. Certainly our state, though it is better than most, has not kept up with inflation in what it spends on either the public schools or state-supported higher education. I think our society has lost faith in the value of education, even though there is ample evidence that a good education makes a huge difference in the quality of people's lives.

Charter schools are not private schools. They are public schools funded with taxpayer money (sometimes supplemented by grants from organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). They have more freedom to experiment and are not bound by all the regulations of "traditional" public schools, but they are still government-funded. Some of them do a very good job, and some have turned out to be very ineffective. I think that was the point of the state and federal government encouraging the formation of charter schools: to see if public schools could do a better job of educating a cross section of American children. One of the problems I see with charter schools is that people have seen them as an opportunity to turn a profit, so corporations have been set up to "package" charter schools and contract with school districts to provide "alternative" education. Again, some of these corporations are sincerely trying to provide an improved education, but some of them are only in it for the money. Read up on the pros and cons of KIPP schools, which now runs over 200 charter schools across the country. I think their original idea was great, the execution, at least in some places, not so much. Full disclosure: I am a retired public school teacher and coach.

Okay, I'll take a shot at explaining the differences between liberalism and communism as I see them.

As a liberal, I believe there are some services that should be socialized so they are available to every citizen: a socialized police force and fire department, not privately owned security forces that require payment for their protection; a socialized military to defend our country, not private contractors like Blackwater; socialized education that guarantees equal access and equal quality education to all of us, rather than private schools that skim off the "cream" and then brag about what a good job they do; socialized transportation networks, not privately owned roads and bridges that charge tolls and that I have read are a big part of Trump's plan to "rebuild" our infrastructure; and socialized health care, since I also believe that access to doctors, hospitals, and medicine, is a right, not just a privilege for those who can afford them.

I also believe that capitalism is an efficient way to produce goods and most other services, but with one qualification. I think capitalism works in the interest of ordinary people as well as the one percent who control the big corporations only IF it is thoughtfully regulated. The job of those who manage corporations is to create profits for the corporations' owners. They are not hired to treat their employees well, protect the health and well being of their customers, and avoid polluting the environment unless those activities also contribute to the corporation's profits. I don't think we can rely on the corporations' stockholders or boards of directors to run their corporations for the benefit of the workers and the environment, or to be overly concerned about the health and safety hazards their products may pose, unless an agency that represents us insists that they do those things. So I think the FDA, the EPA, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, etc., are needed to protect us. Yes, there are stupid regulations and stupid bureaucrats who enforce them, but that does not mean we should do away with regulations, only that we should make them more sensible.

That does not make me a communist. Communists want a completely socialized economy, with the government owning all means of production. I believe that according to Marxist theory, this highly authoritarian and controlling government is expected to eventually fade away and be replaced by "true" communism, but I don't think we have ever seen any "communist" government moving in that direction.

You mustr be David Duke's campaign chairman. How's that going?

Economists have criteria for what constitutes a depression and a recession, and this was not a depression, but we did come close. We have been recovering slowly for the last half dozen years. Why so slowly? I think two main reasons: first, the economic climate was changing before the crash of 2008, but that sped up the changes going on. We simply cannot ever get back to the kind of economy we had in the '90's, let alone that of the '60s and '70s. Productivity is at an all time high. That means more work is done by fewer people. I don't think we have figured out how to deal with that, but we won't bring back "the good old days." I have mentioned before on this site that I live in an area whose economy is dependent on iron mining. Today, 1,000 "miners" can produce the same amount of iron ore that 4,000 did forty years ago. (I put miners in quotes because a lot of the jobs are not what one thinks of when one imagines mining. Many of them sit at computers and don't get their hands dirty.) Second, no matter what trade agreements are negotiated or voided, we live in a global economy. Again, using the example of mining, I was amazed when miners I knew started thoughtfully discussing the relative price of taconite pellets (the form of iron ore we produce) shipped from Trinidad, Australia, and Brazil compared to pellets produced here on "the Iron Range" of northeastern Minnesota. If they couldn't compete, they would fail. And some huge taconite plants (mining is as much a manufacturing process as an extracting process today) have closed because they weren't competitive. A different example: when I call my regional telephone company, which started out as an adjunct to the railroads that were built to haul iron ore to Lake Superior, I usually end up speaking to someone with an Indian accent. I don't think he's a Minnesotan. So to me, it is great news that the economy is recovering. Unemployment is going down, wages are rising. Maybe we can figure out a way to avoid the cycle of boom and bust that has been part of our history for centuries.

Your first problem: Liberal does not equate to socialist. I am a liberal, and while I approve of some socialism, such as a socialized military (as opposed to for-profit mercenaries like those that were so numerous in Iraq), socialized law enforcement (as opposed to the private security Donald Trump has hired because he apparently doesn't trust the Secret Service), socialized education (as opposed to the for profit scams like Trump University, and the other for profit schools and "colleges" that are finally being investigated for their fraud and false promises), socialized highways, socialized postal service, and . . . here's a controversial one, socialized health care. I think people deserve quality health care no matter what their financial status.

But for the most part, I think capitalism is the way to go. But it has to be regulated. There is ample evidence through our history, including the crash of 2008, that for the most part, the CEOs and boards of directors of large corporations do not care about the welfare of their employees or their customers, nor do they care about the destruction of the environment they cause. As individuals, we are powerless to oppose them, but through our representative government, we do have the power to make them responsible. Of course they will cry that regulation is driving them into bankruptcy, but they know it isn't true.

I don't need food stamps and I can afford my own iPhone. I am not a liberal because I want "free stuff," and saddens me that this is the only reason some conservatives can see as our motivation. I want a government that makes people's lives better. Sometimes, the best thing the government can do is to leave people alone, but often people, especially those with the least economic and social power, need our help to allow them access to health care, education, a decent place to live, and a chance to rise above their current circumstances.

That is why I am a liberal.

If you are looking for Trump to respect the separation of powers, I think you are looking in the wrong place. He admires Putin, who is an oligarch, and I think that is how Trump would like to rule. If he should win, look for a declaration of a State of Emergency shortly after his inauguration.

In the same way that death is a cure for life, I suppose.

Voter ID doesn't prevent voter fraud. It does disenfranchise college students, the elderly, and the poor who do not have the "proper" documentation to get their state approved IDs. The voter fraud we really need to worry about is computer fraud, and what party do you suppose the corporations that manufacture voting machines support? In 2012, Anonymous took credit for preventing computer voting fraud in Ohio, and that may explain why Karl Rove had such a meltdown when Fox News declared Ohio for Obama. That wasn't supposed to happen! I don't think relying on hackers to prevent voter fraud is the best way to go. We need paper ballots that don't disintegrate when they are recounted. (Remember the "hanging chad" debacle in Florida.)