Clinton Embraces 21st Century Economy, Broadband for All of America

Automation is making human labor more valuable than ever VOX

The modern economy was built on automation, so it's natural to assume that the future will be defined by automation as well. It seems like every week there's a new study or think piece about the job-destroying potential of robotics and artificial intelligence. We post them regularly. 

But our collective obsession with job-stealing robots can cause us to not see the forest through the trees. Perhaps we can't return to the old ways and old days, but it's easy to overestimate the impact of automation. In many service-related industries in the American economy, human labor and a human imprint on products and services is a mark of luxury.

Accompanying the loss of manufacturing jobs -- many of the tied to automation -- the demand for labor-intensive products and services is soaring.

Related: Hillary Clinton announces tech platform Tech Crunch

Connectivity, education, and entrepreneurship — these are the principles of Hillary Clinton’s technology platform, unveiled today, June 28, at a Denver startup incubator.
The decision to announce her technology imperatives outside of Silicon Valley may seem strange, but it represents one of the platform objectives: to democratize tech industry growth across the country, rather than just leaving the industry isolated on its most well-known turf.

A $12 Minimum Wage by 2020 Would Give 35 Million Workers a Much-Needed Raise EPI.org

This fact is startling but remember to keep it in perspective. In saying that 3.9% of all American workers make the federal minimum, we are ignoring the reality that 42% of all American workers earn $15 an hour or less.

A major difference between the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders positions on minimum wage is that Hillary embraces a $12 minimum with state and local increases such as have occurred in CA and New York. Bernie has one number in his crosshairs and it's $15 for all.

The Economic Policy Institute wrote in July 2015 that a $12 minimum would life wages for a quarter of America's workers. Bernie Sanders is not the first politico to advocate for a higher minimum wage. Members of the Establishment Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representative Robert “Bobby” Scott’s (D-VA) Raise the Wage Act of 2015 proposes raising the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 and gradually eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers.

Very little conversation has occurred around the inevitable introduction of robots or robotic technology to replace lower-paid workers in America. In a 2016 PEW Research survey, only 1 in 10 American workers were concerned that a robot could replace them. Unfortunately, this is a bad analysis and especially for lowest-wage workers and especially in the fast-food industry where robots are in the wings ready to automate the majority of positions.

The truly progressive position would be focused on how to educate and train American workers for jobs with an element of job security in the 21st century. Such an endeavor is far more Hillary's intellectual focus than Bernie's. ~ Anne

Hillary Clinton Headlines June 27, 2017

Here's what Bernie Sanders has won in the Democratic platform The Washington Post

Hardly anybody wants to speak at Trump's convention Politico

Donald Trump bad month just got worse, because Sanders backers just rallied to Clinton The Washington Post

In new poll, support for Trump has plunged, giving Clinton a double-digit lead The Washington Post

Hillary Clinton leads, but Donald Trump supporters are more certain they'll vote The Washington Post

Sanders not ready to endorse Clinton: Stand up, be bolder' The Hill

Is America Looking At Trump-Style Civil War? The Rhetoric Is Killing!

Will Trump Swallow the GOP Whole? The New York Times

Every week or so during the spring, I met with Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, at the party headquarters on Capitol Hill. We fell into a familiar routine. I would enter his office, usually chaperoned by Sean Spicer, the R.N.C.’s chief strategist and head of communications. Priebus has a healthy appreciation for gallows humor, which is not a bad thing for an R.N.C. chairman these days. “I haven’t started pouring Baileys in my cereal yet,” he says often enough that it has become a signature line. I would regularly break the ice with something sarcastic, like asking Priebus how his party’s Hispanic outreach program was going on the morning after the committee’s head of Hispanic outreach resigned rather than work another day for Donald Trump’s election. “The scent of party unity is in the air,” I said in May when Paul Ryan reported that he was “not there yet” on supporting Trump. “No, that’s incense,” Priebus said, pointing out that he had been burning some behind his desk.
As suits a man occupying what might be the toughest political job in America, Priebus does his best to stay availed of serene distractions. He plays jazz piano at home late at night and gazes into the 29-gallon saltwater fish tank that he keeps next to his desk. “You see that big eel?” Priebus asked one day, pointing out a black slithery creature on the bottom, before noting others. “That’s a yellow tang, hippo tang, a spotted puffer. There’s an anemone. An urchin. An orange clown fish.” He took a hunk of shrimp from a refrigerator and dangled it with a set of tongs into the water. A race to the bottom ensued as bits fell away and the fish vied for pieces of flesh. It was difficult to look away from the feeding frenzy. The big orange clown fish flailed at front and center. I asked Priebus if it reminded him of anyone. “That’s not funny,” he said with something between a slight grunt and chuckle.

Trump: More Goebbels Than Hitler?

Donald Trump Isn't Hitler - He's Like Goebbels The Daily Beast

It's too easy and a total exaggeration to compare Donald Trump with Hitler, writes Clive Irving. But to say that Trump shares a remarkable understanding of how to use the media to convince the populace to support his ideas with media genius Joseph Goebbels is not an exaggeration. 

Goebbels was Hitler’s indispensable genius of spin. Long before the Nazis came to power, Goebbels understood what had to be done to gain that power. Fundamentally the German public needed to be made to happily acquiesce in the idea that the nation needed a demagogue to right its grievances.

Related: Why Trump Can't Become a Dictator Politico

Taking Down Huma Abedin (Again)

Trump Ally Clinton Aide Could Be Terrorist Agent Politico

As America faces the very real prospect of returning to the McCarthy era, Trump ally Roger Stone continues the top tactic of politicos in that era: guilt by insinuation.

Hillary Clinton chief aide Huma Abedin has already been accused by Republicans in 2012 of having pernicious ties to radical Islam and an anti-American agenda. Sen. John McCain condemned the attacks on Abedin.

Still, it's clear that Trump intends to attack Huma Abedin and HIllary Clinton visciously, holding his own modern-day McCarthy hearings by making speeches and calling into the morning shows, where he has a much larger platform.

“I also think that now that Islamic terrorism is going to be front and center, there’s going to be a new focus on whether this administration, the administration of Hillary Clinton at State was permeated at the highest levels by Saudi intelligence and others who are not loyal Americans," Stone said. "I speak specifically of Huma Abedin, the right-hand woman, now vice-chairman or co-chairman of vice—of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign."
Abedin was born in Michigan to an Indian father and a Pakistani mother. She moved with her family to Saudi Arabia at the age of two, and attended a British girls' school before returning to the United States for college.
Stone remarked upon reports from the likes of Breitbart, as well as Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and Harper's that Abedin "has very troubling ties to a man who was directly tied to funding terrorism, Abdullah Omar Nasseef. Now I have a very hard-hitting piece coming up in Breitbart that lays this out chapter and verse," Stone said, teasing out an upcoming article. "It’s not just Huma. It’s her mother and her father who are, who are hardcore Islamic ideologues, her brothers—“

After Orlando, It's Clearer than Ever: This Election Is a Civil War by Rebecca Traister New York Magazine

"On the night that Omar Mateen killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Donald Trump’s friend and former campaign adviser Roger Stone wrote a post on his website that was seemingly unrelated. It concerned Huma Abedin, a close aide to Hillary Clinton. In the brief post, Stone idly wondered if, in addition to being Clinton’s “chic gal pal,” Abedin might not also be a “Saudi Spy? ... Foreign Spy?” or “Terrorist plant?”
On any other day, after any other week, Stone’s comments might well have been written off as nothing more than his readily expressed bigotry. But at this juncture, they seemed in sync with the larger message that Stone’s compatriot Donald Trump was about to push through major media. Appearing on Fox News the morning after the shooting, Trump said of President Barack Obama’s refusal to use the words “radical Islamic terrorism”: “Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind — you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”
You don’t need to recall that Donald Trump got his political start with Republicans by waging a lengthy campaign to force our first African-American president to cough up a birth certificate to understand the Republican nominee’s suggestion that Obama is working with or supporting or at least sympathetic to Islamic terrorism. And you don’t need a roadmap to understand his ally Roger Stone — who on Monday took his show to the airwaves, arguing in a radio interview that “now that Islamic terrorism is going to be front and center, there’s going to be a new focus on whether ... the administration of Hillary Clinton at State was permeated at the highest levels by Saudi intelligence and others who are not loyal Americans” — was trying to cast similar doubt on the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, in this case via her long-time aide. “I speak specifically of Huma Abedin,” Stone said on Sirius radio, “the right-hand woman, now vice-chairman or co-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.” He went on to describe Abedin — whose background is well known — in birther-esque terms of mystery. “She has a very troubling past. She comes out of nowhere. She seems to have an enormous amount of cash ... so we have to ask: Do we have a Saudi spy in our midst? Do we have a terrorist agent?”
These suggestions from both Trump and Stone are so brazen and grotesque in their bigotry and dishonesty that they might take your breath away were they not so in keeping with the tone and substance of the larger electoral war being waged around us as we turn a perilous corner toward the fall."

Hillary Clinton Headlines June 24, 2016

How the Rebel Flag Rose Again and Is Helping Trump Politico

British Voters Unleash a Transatlantic Tsunami Politico

Trump celebrates 'Brexit' vote: When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry Washington Post

Uprising in the Rust Belt Politico

The Re-Re-Re-Re-Reboot of Trump The Atlantic

Why Is Donald Trump Begging for Money As If He's Broke? The Atlantic

Defiant Sanders tells supporters: 'You can beat the establishment' The Hill

How Donald Trump May Have Wasted A Monthlong Advantage Over Hillary Clinton NPR

Clinton Aide: Trump Will Cause Economic Ice Age Politico

Apple won't aid GOP convention over Trump Politico

Is Donald Trump's Endgame the Launch of Trump News? Vanity Fair

Trump C-Chair to GOP: Support Him 'Or Just Shut the Hell Up' Politico

Paul Ryan Is Worried About A Constitutional Crisis But Supports Trump Anyway Vanity Fair

Donald Trump and the Art of the Nasty Political Nickname Politico