Question 1: What is going on with Social security and disability insurance and are these in danger?
Answer 1: Social security and disability insurance are funded by trusts, social security entirely and disability partially. Both are funded by payroll tax and Fica, so when it's needed you can draw on them. This is why it's being discussed to remove payroll taxes so the employed have more money to put into the economy and employers have the money they match to use to build their business. With Movement conservatives discussing the possibility of getting rid of Social Security, Affordable care act, and Medicare it promotes de-regulation and government restrictions to business owners. This causes a redistribution of wealth from people who have money to people who don’t have money. This is often perceived as socialism, but is definitely not. Unregulated business leads to monopolies which leads to personal interest of businesses and not of democracy overall.
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Question 2: Any updates on the voices of America Story?
Answer 2: The head of voice of america and deputy both resigned when white house put Michael Pac in charge of the Voice of America coverage. This covered Trump's handling of various topics. They employ journalists from around the world, by issuing them Visa’s and allowing them to expire to force them to go home. This is being done to silence journalists who are against Donald Trump, which provides borderline propaganda.
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Question 3: Why did the DNC use Donna Hilton due to her criminal past?
Answer 3: What she represented was redemption and gave them a figurehead of someone who has served time.
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Question 4: What have the democrats done?
Answer 4: Democrats believe that government has a role to play to level the playing field, whereas republicans mostly believe government runs best when it's left alone.
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Question 5: What is the difference between Right and Left?
Answer 5: This comes from the French Revolution when people on the right side of the speaker supported the King and the left of the speaker supported People. As government is a social contract, we can’t govern by ideology . The job of the government is to conserve things that protect stability. The modern “right” is actually not necessarily conservative and business focused, and the modern “left” is more traditional and supportive of the government has a role to play.
[From wikipedia] Richardson’s first book, The Greatest Nation of the Earth (1997), stemmed from her dissertation at Harvard University. Inspired by Eric Foner’s work on pre-Civil War Republican ideology, Richardson analyzed Republican economic policies during the war. She contended that their efforts to create an activist Federal Government during the Civil War marked a continuation of Republican free labor ideology. These policies, such as war bonds and greenbacks or the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act, revolutionized the role of the Federal Government in the U.S. economy. At the same time, these actions laid the groundwork for the Republican Party’s shift to Big Business after the Civil War.
In this 2001 book, Richardson "focused on the “Northern abandonment of Reconstruction.” Building on the earlier work of C. Vann Woodward, she argued that a more complete understanding of the period required appreciation of class, not only race. As Reconstruction continued into the 1870s and especially the 1880s, Republicans began to view African Americans in the South more from a class perspective and less from the perspective of race that had driven their earlier humanitarianism. In the midst of the labor struggles of the Gilded Age, Republicans came to compare “the demands of the ex-slaves for land, social services, and civil rights” to the demands of white laborers in the North. This ideological shift was the key to Republican abandonment of Reconstruction, as they chose the protection of their economic and business interests over their desire for racial equality." [From wikipedia]
In this 2007 book, "Richardson presented Reconstruction as a national event that impacted all Americans, not just those in the South. She incorporated the West into the discussion of Reconstruction as no predecessor had. Between 1865 and 1900, Americans re-imagined the role of the federal government, calling upon it to promote the well-being of its citizens. However, racism, sexism, and greed divided Americans, and the same people who increasingly benefited from government intervention—white, middle-class Americans—actively excluded African-Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and organized laborers from the newfound bounties of their reconstructed nation." [from wikipedia]
In this book, published in 2010, Richardson "focused on the U.S. Army’s slaughter of Native Americans in South Dakota in 1890. She argued that party politics and opportunism led to Wounded Knee. After a bruising midterm election, President Benjamin Harrison needed to shore up his support. To do so, he turned to The Dakotas, where he replaced seasoned Indian agents with unqualified political allies, who incorrectly assumed that the Ghost Dance Movement presaged war. The Army responded by sending one third of its force in order to avoid spending cuts from Congress. After the event, Republicans tried to paint the massacre as a heroic battle to stifle the resurgent Democrats." [wikipedia]
In this 2014 book, Richardson "extended her study of the Republican Party into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book studied the entire life of the GOP, from its inception in the 1850s through the presidency of George W. Bush. The party’s founders united against the “slave power,” a small group of wealthy white men who controlled all three branches of government. These Republicans articulated a new vision of an America in which all hardworking men could rise. But after the Civil War, Republicans began to emulate what they originally opposed. They tied themselves to powerful bankers and industrialists, sacrificing the well-being of ordinary Americans. A similar process took place after World War II, when Republicans sought to dismantle successful New Deal policies and prop up the wealthy. However, in both cases, reformers within the party were able to return the GOP to its founding vision of equality of opportunity, first Theodore Roosevelt during the Progressive Era, and then Dwight D. Eisenhower, who enforced integration and maintained the New Deal. The Nixon and Reagan administrations have represented yet another fall from the GOP’s founding purpose. It's ironic, Richardson points out, that Republicans treated Barack Obama with an unprecedented level of disrespect, as Obama's rise from humble beginnings to the highest office in the nation embodied the vision of the original Republicans." [wikipedia]
In her most recent publication, Richardson argues "that America was founded with contradicting ideals, with the ideas of liberty, equality, and opportunity on one hand, and slavery and hierarchy on the other. United States victory in the American Civil War should have settled that tension forever, but at the same time that the Civil War was fought, Americans also started moving into the West. In the West, Americans found and expanded upon deep racial hierarchies, meaning that hierarchical values survived in American politics and culture despite the crushing defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy. Those traditions--a rejection of democracy, an embrace of entrenched wealth, the marginalization of women and people of color--have found a home in modern conservative politics, leaving the tremendous promise of America unfulfilled." [wikipedia]
