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From this Friday evening's forum “Vision for a New America: A Future without Poverty” hosted by Tavis Smiley, which included guests Cornel West, Jonathan Kozol, Mariana Chilton, Newt Gingrich, Jeffrey Sachs, Rep. Marcia Fudge, John Graham and the National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro, I wanted to share a portion with Smiley and DeMoro which was also highlighted over at Daily KOS here: 'We Need a Real Economy' to Eradicate Poverty in the U.S.:

“We have to have an economy – a real economy. What do we have now? We want our jobs back. We want our pensions. We want our healthcare. We want to raise standards for everyone in America. We want a civil society…. Where’s our country?”

These questions, posed by National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro set the stage last night as TV and radio host Tavis Smiley convened a group of eight individuals for a landmark national broadcast promoting his goal of a “Vision for a New America: A Future Without Poverty.” [...]

Smiley is calling on President Obama to convene forthwith a White House Conference to Eradicate Poverty. He is asking people to sign on to this letter to the President. [...]

One solution for both the healthcare crisis and poverty, DeMoro said, is a single-payer healthcare system. “ It would cover everyone. The insurance companies would be gone. We could have cost, quality and access and the ability to be a civil society. If we had a single payer healthcare system, we could generate almost three million jobs, which would actually serve to stimulate the rest of the economy so you’re building and actually taking care of the people of America.” [...]

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Indiana Republican Sen. Dick Lugar and his 77 percent conservative voting record was not good enough to prevent him from having a "tea party" primary challenger, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock. Complete and total obstruction rather than an iota of compromise to make sure the government actually functions seems to be the new standard of what it means to be a "conservative" these days.

The panel on ABC's This Week weighed in on Lugar's primary challenge and pundits Bay Buchanan and George Will think it's just wonderful that Lugar is facing a primary challenge, despite the fact that he's got a lot better chance of defeating his Democratic challenger, Joe Donnelly. They might want to be careful what they wish for.

Nate Silver has more on that: Lugar Loss Could Provide Pickup Opportunity for Democrats:

The latest veteran lawmaker to be the subject of a vigorous primary challenge is the 80-year-old Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, who is being challenged for the Republican nomination by State Treasurer Richard Mourdock. [...]

If Mr. Lugar loses, it should increase Democrats’ odds of picking up the Senate seat in November. Democrats have a fairly good candidate in Indiana in the form of United States Representative Joe Donnelly, who represents the Second Congressional District and who narrowly retained his seat in a very tough environment for Democrats nationally in 2010. The Second District, which includes South Bend and Michigan City, is slightly Republican-leaning relative to the country as a whole but slightly Democratic-leaning relative to the rest of Indiana.

I'm not getting my hopes up on this one, but it would be nice to see Republicans lose a seat in the Senate because of their purity tests. This AstroTurf so-called "tea party" of theirs, which is nothing but a rebranding effort by the far right wing of the party which wants to push them continually to the right has done some damage in previous elections already. Maybe we get lucky here and they do it again.

Transcript of the panel discussion below the fold.

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From this Jan. 12, 2012 "Remaking America: From Poverty to Prosperity", which was held at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium.

CNN had a corporate modified debate on what's wrong with America's economy and capitalism during their show, Your Money this weekend. Here's a more honest one most Americans will unfortunately never watch and I thought I'd share just the end of it here and if it interests you, go watch the entire two and a half hours plus on C-SPAN's site here -- Poverty to Prosperity With Tavis Smiley.

The panelists included Majora Carter, Roger Clay, Barbara Ehrenreich, Vicki Escarra, Michael Moore, Suze Orman, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West.

Part one above with Roger Clay and Vicki Escarra is the first segment above.

Here's part two with Suze Orman.

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And the most fiery finish by the guests on the panel is below the fold with Majora Carter, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West and Michael Moore wrapping things up.

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Princeton University professor Cornel West thinks Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is wrong to suggest that racism no longer matters in this country.

Cain had told CNN's Candy Crowley Sunday that some simply used racism as an excuse when they failed to achieve their goals.

"I have seen blacks in middle management move up to top management in some of the biggest corporations in America," the candidate explained. "They weren't held back because of racism. No, people sometimes hold themselves back because they want to use racism as excuse for them not being able to achieve what they want to achieve."

Appearing on CNN Monday, West suggested Cain must be smoking something to think that racism no longer held back people of color.

"Well, black people have been working hard for decades," West remarked. "I think he needs to get off the symbolic crack pipe and acknowledge that the evidence is overwhelming. And I think he also knows that if brother Anthony Davis -- a brother who was just put to death -- were a white Wall Street banker brother, that the response in the nation would have been very different as opposed to a poor black brother."

"And that's just one small example -- one very small example of racism still at work holding people back."

PBS host Tavis Smiley found the notion that racism was no longer important so absurd that he was disappointed in CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux for even calling attention to Cain's comments.

"It just troubles me, respectfully Suzanne, that CNN and MSNBC and Fox News and all these cable channels go for this nonsense," Smiley said. "They fall for -- if I can quote Eddie Murphy -- you fall for the banana in the tailpipe, and every time that Herman Cain says something ridiculous or crazy, blaming poor people for being poor, calling protesters anti-capitalist or suggesting that racism doesn't hold people back... It's almost silly to respond to because the evidence is so overwhelming."

"Well, Tavis, I certainly don't think that CNN is falling for anything by simply bringing up this discussion," Malveaux argued. "That's his point of view and he certainly is rising in the polls among the Republican candidates there."

"My point, respectfully, anyone who listens to what Herman Cain says and asks a question, 'Does he have a point?' A point about what?" Smiley asked. "The numbers -- it's so evident. It's so abundantly clear. There's such great clarity here that race is still a factor. You covered the president in the White House. Why does President Obama have a Secret Service detail that there's no comparison in history for any president... and we're talking about whether he has a point about racism in America?"

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How pitiful is this? PBS's Tavis Smiley allowed Alan Simpson to come on the air and fearmonger about how Social Security is in dire straights without mentioning that raising the cap would keep it solvent for years to come. He also pretended that there is not solid information on how long Social Security will remain solvent and that there is some question yet to be resolved as to what that number is.

SMILEY: When you talk about Social Security, what are the American people to believe, because in this debate about the solvency of Social Security and how long it will be solvent, you can get any number you want to find from any source because there's so many axes being grind in on this issue, I'm not sure I know, as informed as I think I am about these issues with hosting this show every night that I know what to believe because you get so many different numbers on the solvency into the future of SSI.

Shame on you Tavis Smiley. There's one place to get info on that solvency. That's the Office of the Chief Actuary.. If you can't take the time to read through their publications, don't have fearmongers like Alan Simpson on your show in the first place.

Social Security is not broke. The politicians in this country are looking for reasons not to pay the debt that's been borrowed against that surplus back. Any lack of funds for Social Security has many, many years before it has to be addressed and raising the payroll taxes and making it a less regressive tax would fix that now if they really want to make sure the fund stays solvent for decades to come.

If you want to consider yourself a journalist or an advocate for the working class in America, you just proved you're not with this interview. Journalists check their facts before they go on the air and discuss a topic they know they're going to be talking about. Please don't pretend to your audience that there's no way to verify facts on Social Security. What you should be doing is making your viewers aware of where to get the information themselves, rather than telling them there's no way to get to the truth because of some conflicting talking points being pushed by the pundits and politicians who do not have Americans' best interest at heart.

Anyone that has done as many interviews and panel segments as you have who has put themselves out there as some sort of advocate for the working class in America should not be allowing the likes of Simpson to come on your show for some damage control and to pretend he's just looking out for the working class with his defunct deficit commission's recommendations.

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While I agree with Bill Maher that we do have a problem with the costs of Medicare and Medicaid and defense spending and I agree that our budget should not be balanced on the backs of the poor, what the hell is it going to take to get through to Maher that Social Security is not to blame for the deficit? It's running a surplus.

Maybe someone can send him this article by Robert Reich -- Budget baloney: Social Security isn't to blame for deficit:

Social Security won't be a problem for another 26 years, and even then, the problem can be solved.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican presidential hopeful, says in order to “save” Social Security the retirement age should be raised. The media are congratulating him for his putative “courage.” Deficit hawks are proclaiming Social Security one of the big entitlements that has to be cut in order to reduce the budget deficit.

This is all baloney.

In a former life I was a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. So let me set the record straight.

Social Security isn’t responsible for the federal deficit. Just the opposite. Until last year Social Security took in more payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits. It lent the surpluses to the rest of the government.

Now that Social Security has started to pay out more than it takes in, Social Security can simply collect what the rest of the government owes it. This will keep it fully solvent for the next 26 years.

But why should there even be a problem 26 years from now? Back in 1983, Alan Greenspan’s Social Security commission was supposed to have fixed the system for good – by gradually increasing payroll taxes and raising the retirement age. (Early boomers like me can start collecting full benefits at age 66; late boomers born after 1960 will have to wait until they’re 67.)

Greenspan’s commission must have failed to predict something. But what? It fairly accurately predicted how quickly the boomers would age. It had a pretty good idea of how fast the US economy would grow. While it underestimated how many immigrants would be coming into the United States, that’s no problem. To the contrary, most new immigrants are young and their payroll-tax contributions will far exceed what they draw from Social Security for decades.

So what did Greenspan’s commission fail to see coming?

Inequality.

Remember, the Social Security payroll tax applies only to earnings up to a certain ceiling. (That ceiling is now $106,800.) The ceiling rises every year according to a formula roughly matching inflation.

Back in 1983, the ceiling was set so the Social Security payroll tax would hit 90 percent of all wages covered by Social Security. That 90 percent figure was built into the Greenspan Commission’s fixes. The Commission assumed that, as the ceiling rose with inflation, the Social Security payroll tax would continue to hit 90 percent of total income.

Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 84 percent of total income.

It went from 90 percent to 84 percent because a larger and larger portion of total income has gone to the top. In 1983, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income. Today the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent.

If we want to go back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000.

Presto. Social Security’s long-term (beyond 26 years from now) problem would be solved.

Bingo.

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Here's more of Tavis Smiley's panel segment that I posted this portion of yesterday. Cornel West reminds us of what the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. might be saying to President Obama and that the media's caricature of of President Obama as the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream is not true. He is A fulfillment, not THE fulfillment.

As West mentioned, King's real dream was the elimination of poverty and war.

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C-SPAN aired a panel discussion hosted by Tavis Smiley this week which included Cornel West, Arianna Huffington, David Frum, Dana Milbank, David Brody, John Chen, Maria Teresa Kumar and Maria Bartiromo. I didn't get to watch all of it but enjoyed the part I did catch because of moments like this one from Cornel West.

WEST: Black people's struggle has been the leaven in the democratic loaf. We look at the catastrophe and like the Blues, we responded with a smile, not revenge but justice, not hatred, but compassion. That's what Martin King's about. That's what Curtis Mayfield is about. You know what I mean? That's what John Coltrane is about. That's our tradition at our best.

But what happened during the Reagan years was the black freedom movement was confined to just another special interest group. Neo-liberal and neo-conservatives, intellectuals tried to reduce our movement to be just our self interests as if the black struggle was just for Negroes. That has never been the case. Never.

We start with Negroes, we start with black people and it relates to every citizen, poor working class, gay, lesbian and so forth, at our best. That's the legacy of Martin King. But what we get now, especially in the media is any time you talk about “the black experience” they view it as just a special interest group. You see what I mean?

It's like the corporate agenda. Is that just for corporations? Well see, in a democracy, once those labels begin to ossify; now here I agree with brother David on the end, that once they ossify then we can never communicate. That's where we've been for the last twenty five years. We can't even communicate.

So then brother Rush Limbaugh will say well, civility just wants to police me, so I can't express myself. No brother Rush, you can say what you want. We just want you to be truthful, don't be cruel and vicious and try not to lie. That's all. That's all.

But things are so polarized, they're so polarized that it's difficult for us to proceed and in a democracy you don't have high quality communications when it relates to public interests, you gonna' end up with private interests reigning and private interests have to do with might and power. Whoever has the power will define what's right. And no society can survive based on that kind of empty, empty orientation.

Here's the entire segment if anyone wants to watch more of the panel. Warning, it's three hours long if you want to watch all of it.

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George Will can never resist taking a shot at unions at every opportunity and this weekend's panel segment on This Week was no exception. While defending the Chamber of Commerce and their donations from foreign companies, Will compares that to international unions collecting membership fees from workers overseas.

Yeah, that's exactly the same George. Those unions that are representing workers in other countries like Canada aren't pushing to outsource American jobs. And as Greg Sargent at The Plum Line pointed out, "unions disclose far more about their funding than other political groups do."

Sadly ABC has kept Will as part of their regular Sunday lineup. I was hoping once Christiane Armanpour took over as host we'd see a little less of him.

AMANPOUR: Well, that's interesting, because we're reading and we're seeing that, in fact, a lot of these new candidates who are unknown -- I mean, we don't really know about them, they haven't been part of the political system -- and they're not doing a whole lot of traditional retail politics. People like Christine O'Donnell, it's said, is not seen much on the campaign trail. But the question really is, they apparently don't really need it, because the modern way of money and campaign finances and things coming in by Internet are -- seems to be replacing that need.

KRUGMAN: Well, we have to be a little bit careful here. There is money coming in through the Internet. That certainly played a role in some of these primary upsets. But if we're looking about the general election, we're looking at huge amounts of money being poured in from the usual suspects, from the Koch brothers, from the -- you know, there's probably going to be more corporate money -- I'm sure there'll be much more corporate money in this election than in any midterm election before in U.S. history. So we can talk about all the grassroots stuff, but when it comes to the actual election that's being held in November, this is not going to be the little guy getting into politics. This is going to be the big guys, the billionaires.

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Jane Mayer's expose in the The New Yorker explains how the U.S. is conducting a secret war in Pakistan using unmanned Predator drones. Americans have largely come to accept the Predator drone strikes as necessary but PBS' Tavis Smiley warned the attacks could turn futures generations against the U.S. "Killing is killing and somebody ought to say that," Smiley said Sunday on NBC.