Friday Feedback: It’s hard for the public interest to compete with the special interests and their huge campaign contributions. Perhaps the way to go is to try to revive and enforce some of the regulations that the FCC used to have with regard to minority ownership, the Fairness Doctrine, the Equal Time Rule, a minimum number of hours of news and public affairs and children’s programming, etc.
Friday Feedback: Guest Worker Program?
Friday FeedbacK: Although somewhat unfair, initially the Guest Worker Program would be filled with all the current illegal immigrant workers now in the US. Families residing with them would remain here until the visa time limit was reached. Then all would return to their country of origin.
Friday Feedback: Enforce Immigration Policy
Friday Feedback: Let’s stop being so naïve about how we’re used by those who want to increase their political and economic power. It’s in our best interests and it’s even better for our immigrant populations if we enforce immigration policy, not just ignore the lawbreakers until the right wing can use it as a wedge issue.
Friday Feedback: Backtrack on Afghanistan
Friday Feedback: Let us backtrack a bit. The original purpose of the Afghanastan invasion was to “catch Bin Laden”–obviously an absurdity to think that this very wealthy Saudi would sit in a cave for 8 years or more. Then came the excuse of doing away with Al-Quaeda—all 100 of them !
Friday Feedback: Progressives, Stop Kvetching
Friday Feedback: Stop kvetching because in 13 or 14 months progressives haven’t gotten all they wanted. What you did get was numerous, immmediate reversals of Bush environmental policy, a pledge to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan in a discernable period of time, the biggest infusion of public works money since the federal highway system was built, and a complete makeover of our nation’s image into something more wholeseome and organic on the world stage.
Friday Feedback: Apple in the “Android Seat”
Friday Feedback: Apple isn’t interested in the quality of the app. They’re just trying to discourage cross-platform development. Companies develop for the iPhone first, then consider Android, and that’s how Apple wants to keep it.
Friday Feedback: Fighting Over Scraps
Friday Feedback: I saw a great sign downtown today in the Immigration Reform March, “Jose didn’t take your job — Goldman-Sachs did.” It is time that those who are having a hard time began to show the courage to blame the ones who have really trampled on them: Goldman-Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Chase, Exxon, BP, and the filthy rich who didn’t get that way by doing the work
Friday Feedback: Whither Sustainability?
Friday Feedback: “How do we take seriously his advice to deemphasize material consumption?” ANSWER: By personally taking seriously his advice -getting kicks from living life, not collecting or wasting goods. In some cases new technology is already massively helping: instead of humongous material resources to move people or goods, we can much more readily move information.
Friday Feedback: Education to Cure Job Losses
Friday Feedback: Once again it is stated by Dr. Reich that education is the best way out of the recession and job loss problems faced by many Americans. This is at a time when states are cutting funding for education causing teacher layoffs, program cuts and an ever increasing sense of unease among parents of school-age children. Technical schools are seeing their enrollments rise as many recognize that their former occupation either no longer exists or exist at a markedly lower pay scale.
Friday Feedback: Terrorist Threats Not “Free Speech”
Friday Feedback: When Sarah Palin tells her fans to “reload,” when she uses rifle scopes to depict pictorially her political enemies, when her rhetoric in Tea Bag rallies is filled with gun/violence imagery, one needn’t wonder for too long if this might have an effect in encouraging an extremist or two to shoot the man the majority of us voted into office. You don’t have to have a psychology degree to know the power of mob “groupthink” and how it can easily spur people to violence. History and research prove the deadly effectiveness of such “mob psychology.”
Friday Feedback: Take Away the Racist Soapbox
Friday Feedback: I believe that it’s not the universities that are failing us. The failures are on the part of the individuals that see UCSD, or any university, as a soapbox for these racist and hateful viewpoints. Some small minority of students have accepted admission to UCSD and have wasted an opportunity for personal growth and enlightenment. Clearly these spots could have gone to more deserving people.
Friday Feedback: Prison Reform
Friday Feedback: People are understandably appalled when violent offenders get early release and go on to commit horrendous crimes, including the recent murder of Chelsea King for which a parolee has been arrested. What is less understood is that thousands of people — including juveniles as young as 13 — are being handed life sentences, including life without any possibility of parole.
Friday Feedback: Illegal Immigration Enemy of All Workers
Friday Feedback: Illegal immigration is the enemy of all workers, regardless of color. An open border and an endlessly enlarging pool of labor brings the value of all labor down. One of the many problems facing the state of California is the LOW WAGES enforced here by an open border. Supply and demand always works in the labor market. Increase the supply and the demand lowers.
Friday Feedback: Elephant Crossing a Tightrope
The Tea Party people are already claiming credit for Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts a couple weeks ago. They are determined to steer the course of the GOP in November, come hell or high water. If they are allowed control of the party, their extremism will only turn off a huge segment of the voting population. If they are denied that opportunity, they will splinter off into third and even fourth party uprisings. Have you ever watched an elephant try to walk a tightrope? It’s more fun than a barrel of donkeys!
Friday Feedback: Gun Violence
Friday Feedback: n Australia, after their first experience of US business-as-usual (a massacre in Tasmania in ‘96), the Prime Minister called for gun control and an appalled population turned in their guns.
Friday Feedback: Martin Luther King Jr. Belongs to All of Us
Friday Feedback: Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream doesn’t just belong to any one particular group. It belongs to all of us. The civil rights struggle is a human rights struggle, and the LGBT community should be a part of it.
Friday Feedback: Real Democracy
The bigger our population and the better educated, the worse the discrepancy between all of us who could help decide – and the few who are given (by election or appointment) all the power to decide. We have far less democracy now in any one of our states or large cities than did the American colonies which in 1776 revolved against taxation without representation.
Friday Feedback: Martin Luther King Stood Up for What Is Right
I don’t care if you believe that whites are better than blacks, or if your religion teaches that the Bible says gays are immoral, you don’t have the right to oppress other citizens. You don’t have the right to deny the benefits of civil marriage to the children of gay citizens. Not in this country. That’s what makes Martin Luther King’s work so powerful – he stood up for what was ethically right, and his demands were in alignment with the Constitution of our great nation: Equal rights for all!
Friday Feedback: They Take Our Money and P__s on Our Boots
Friday Feedback: Two nights ago some right wing acquaintances accosted me at a meeting and were chortling because they were pulling for Smith and thought he would win. I fought back saying that we need national healthcare, (medicare for all), the EFCA, and other really progressive policies to be enacted and implemented and that the rich should be taxed to pay for the changes.
Friday Feedback: Politicians Caused the Credit Crunch
I will not name any bankers or politicians as my favorites in causing this credit crunch we are now having. I will say the politicians were the only people tasked with acting in our interest so as a group they are the most to blame. They developed and passed the laws that now haunt us and did not provide adequate over sight.
Friday Feedback: Idiot Responds
Fridays the LA Progressive features a comment that was particularly noteworthy. This week we are featuring a comment submitted by Robert Illes responding to comments on his article, Obama, Never Mind FDR, How about JKP?, by Ianam. Here’s Robert’s comment: Idiot responds: The point of the article was that Polk, the only President in history [...]
Friday Feedback: Ignoring Lessons
At the present rate, historians will be speaking of the dozen years of the OBushma administrations. It’s getting very fast to look as if the only thing that MIGHT save the Obama presidency for a second term is the Gop death wish to nominate Ms Death Panel – i.e. Ms Death Palin – herself.
Friday FeedbacK: The Only Western Nation Doing Without Universal Healthcare
Fridays the LA Progressive features a comment that was particularly noteworthy. This week we are featuring a comment submitted by Dr. Stephen R. Keister commenting on The Day the Democrats Died, by Paul Hogarth. Here’s Dr. Keister’s comment: As an 88-year-old, retired physician, and a member of Physician’s For a National Health Program, I am, of [...]
Friday Feedback: Call for Jobs Programs
I can’t say I was “disappointed” in the jobs summit, because I didn’t expect it to be more than window dressing, but every day I wake up with the hope that President Obama will read one of the articles by people like Paul Krugman or Bob Herbert in the NY Times and a light will finally click on in that sharp brain of his.

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