Forum Replies Created
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The above list is from the Cato Institute, a Koch brothers obscenity, filled with endless lies, especially on economic issues. It’s rabidly pro-corporate, pro-rich-white-dudes, anti-labor, anti-environment. Its idea of “freedom” is freedom for the rich to do as they please, and screw everyone else, especially the poor. It’s all about freedom from taxation and regulations and any attempt by the public sector to help the non-rich. It’s freedom from common sense preventative measures to improve quality of life, etc.
Take, for example, their recommendations on how to “improve” New York from its supposed ranking as the most unfree state:
Policy Recommendations
Fiscal: Cut spending on hospitals, housing, libraries, public welfare, sanitation and sewerage, public transit, employee retirement, and “miscellaneous”; cut all taxes, and pay down debt.
Regulatory: Abolish rent control. This move could have raised New York to 47th, just behind Connecticut, on regulatory policy.
Personal: Slash tobacco taxes, which are so high as to be almost tantamount to prohibition.In short, its use of “freedom” is Orwellian.
Nittany,
From wikipedia
“Democratic socialism is distinguished from both the Soviet model of centralized socialism and from social democracy, where “social democracy” refers to support for political democracy, regulation of the capitalist economy, and a welfare state”That’s why all the hysteria about Sanders was so out of place. He was actually pushing FDR, New Deal policies, updated for 2016. They weren’t even Democratic Socialist, a la Michael Harrington. And while he rightfully talked about how well Denmark works for its citizens — far better than our system, and it’s not close — he didn’t even go that far.
My own vision is anticapitalist, and that we need to repeal and replace our current system. And by “capitalism,” I don’t mean “commerce” or “business” or “trade.” Capitalism isn’t synonymous with those things. It’s a unique and unprecedented form of economics. Non-capitalist commerce, trade and business have been around for thousands of years, etc. I’m talking about M-C-M and exchange value, with a capitalist purchasing labor as a commodity, in order to get workers to make commodities for money, which the capitalist then appropriates (exploitation) for himself or herself.
One could easily have a non-capitalist business by avoiding the above. As in, you make your own custom chairs for sale, all by yourself. With your own two hands. You don’t have employees. You sell them yourself. You’re not a capitalist and do not own a capitalist business in that case. You become a capitalist, however, when you hire employees to build those chairs for you and collect the surplus value they generate as if you had done all the work yourself.
You could, of course, grow that business without it ever becoming capitalist if all new chair builders share equally in surplus value, and you didn’t have an employer/employee structure.
A society with nothing but sole proprietors and democratic co-ops would not be “capitalist,” but could produce the same things as a “capitalist” society.
Um, bnw,
He’s gonna be making mortgage payments, ya know? It’s not an outright cash purchase. There is no mention in either article — the right-wing Op-Ed, or the one from thehill.com — what he and his wife paid for the first two, or when they bought them.
It’s also the case that they both work. I know all kinds of people — family and friends — with middle class incomes who have managed to buy three homes along the way.
(Sanders is 74. His wife is 65. They’ve been working for a long, long time)
You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.
Unlike you I don’t buy into the lie. The polls showing him down double digits I do not believe for a second. The establishment is throwing everything against him and it won’t work. Especially the race baiting you bring into every discussion. Obama benefited from it to especially the blacks detriment. Trump stays on message about jobs and Hildabeast criminality he won’t lose.
He is the establishment, bnw. He’s benefited tremendously from being a part of that establishment, getting away with stuff you and I could never do, like refusing to make payments on massive loans and eventually shafting his workers and creditors. Another case of this has just cropped up. Hannity lied about Trump helping out some marines back in 1991:
Too good to check: Sean Hannity’s tale of a Trump rescue
And that “focus on jobs”? What is it, exactly? He has never come out with a plan to add even one single new job, anywhere. But he has told us he’s going to slash the tax rates for himself and his billionaire friends, and put hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of his heirs.
There is literally nothing new in his trickle down scheme. It’s warmed over Laffer, Cheney, Reagan/Thatcher, Bush (neoliberal) nonsense, and it’s never worked for anyone but the super rich.
Harvey is a big favorite of mine. Have his Enigma of Capital. Good book, but not an easy read. One of the finest Marxian economists in the world. I think it helps that he looks like Santa Claus, too. So people don’t get all scared when he talks about Marx and run for their closets.
Have used the Alternet article on other sites. Usually in the context of correcting people about the word “libertarian,” and usually to no avail. It seems an impossible hurdle at this point — demonstrating how the left has a much, much stronger “libertarian” tradition and that Marx was actually quite “anti-state,” seeing it as the ruling class’s hammer, etc.
(Not suggesting Marx is the best example of left-libertarian. In fact, much — if not most — of his opposition within the left came from left-anarchists, libertarian socialists, etc. etc. But he still has those elements in his writings)
The left’s version goes back two centuries, at least. The right’s to Milton Friedman. For some bizarre reason, however, most Americans only know about the latter.
OK, I’m saving that post. I cut it and pasted it in a folder.
The polls all show Trump losing big.
So, we will see in what, three months?
Here’s where you are wrong imho, bnw — You think the undecideds
are as angry at the system as the rightwingers. They are not.
And they are not as white or as male, either.w
vThere is another factor in play, WV, IMO. Leftists. I think leftists are more angry at the system than any rightwinger. From decades of discussing these things with arch-righties, they really don’t want wholesale changes to the system. They just want it to return to the way they think it used to be. We, OTOH, want a completely new framework, and an end to capitalism, if we’re in that camp.
We want full on democracy, inside and outside the workplace.
Righties don’t. They want capitalism unleashed. They want the “good old days” of the 1890s and the first Gilded Age . . . or, if they’re of the neo-confederate persuasion, pre-Civil War. If they’re of the minarchist persuasion, they want it unleashed with just a “night watchman’s” government in place . . . All of which would lead to far, far less democracy, far, far more inequality and injustice, etc. etc.
But, they’d have their unfettered, unrestrained businesses, guns and Jesus. And Ayn Rand.
If English has any meaning, it’s pretty obvious what Trump was saying. Look at the context. Look at the word order. He is talking about a Clinton presidency. The voting has already happened. She now gets to name judges. He says there is noting you can do about it at that point — except for “second amendment people.” They, unlike actual sane Americans, might nullify the election using “second amendment remedies.”
That latter term is already in the air, and Sharon Angle wasn’t or isn’t alone in saying it on the right. That term was also “coy” in a sense, passive-aggressive, cowardly, as was Trump’s entire speech. Cowardly, especially, because he (and she) didn’t have the guts to spell out their desire to assassinate fellow Americans who just don’t interpret the second amendment as they do. Passive-aggressive in that they want to appear to talk tough without actually having the courage to go for it.
Everyone knows what he was saying, if they’ve been paying any attention to the far right in America in recent decades. No one was fooled by his trademark “I don’t know”. And it really doesn’t matter at all if Trump (himself) wants assassinations of judges or HRC to occur. He put it out there for consumption, in a context of fearmongering about something that NO Democrat would ever do:
Get rid of the truly vile, racist and totally unnecessary second amendment, which has never given any individual America the “right” to “keep and bear arms” outside the context of state militias — which no longer exist. No Dem has ever talked about getting rid of it. None would. And no gun control legislation goes against it as written or interpreted for more than two centuries.
W,
And just how would you stop the technology march Billy?
It’s not about stopping the technology march. It’s about stopping economic apartheid (capitalism), so we can make technology work for us instead of billionaires. It’s about rethinking and repurposing economics itself. For too long we’ve accepted the idea that the vast majority of all the profits and compensation should go to a tiny percentage of the population, even though they do just a tiny percentage of the work. For too long, people have been okay with the idea that one person in sixteen — roughly the ratio of employers to employees in America — should get to call all the shots, set all the prices, wages, compensation and working conditions, while that huge majority gets no say.
It’s long past time, in short, that we make the economy work for us, and that we stop working for the economy. And I don’t mean that as a nice slogan. I mean it literally. That it’s literally insane that such a ginormous majority of human beings is at the mercy of such a tiny percentage of human beings, and that this is THE biggest reason for the massive gap/inequality in income, opportunity, access, power, quality of life and life expectancy itself.
Well short of the above general revolutionary frame, there are all kinds of things we can do in the meantime. Reforms and tweaks, new laws and caps, new regs and rules. But the goal should be nothing short of ending the dominance of the few over the many — and, again, I mean that literally.
You’re trying to “debate it.” To me, that won’t work. It’s Rocky and Bullwinkle – that trick never works. All I personally see in this case like many others is you taking your own opinions as true, and therefore trying to convey that truth persuasively.
Problem is I have been in this particular debate, and variations thereof, for probably 45 years. And, so, being a well-meaning but also cranky old bastard, I just shrug at the debate, say let’s be a coalition, and move on. Way I see it most REAL political investments are at an emotional level too deep to be reasoned with. So, when it comes to alliances and coalitions, I like my approach better. We differ, we know we have impasses, we acknowledge that and move forward.
Now how can we be useful (in the best sense) to one another.
Well, one way we can be useful is to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Some of the terms you use seem unnecessary to me, and get in the way of that. Like “routine” and “trick” and, again, the original “purity” accusation.
Why use them at all? To me, they cause the “impasse” by changing the subject from the political issues on hand to one where we argue about the accuracy of meta-terms — with those meta-terms being implemented largely as a comment on one’s methods and (perhaps) hidden motivations, rather than the political issues themselves. Indirectly, cutting very close to directly, this makes the discussion about the poster, instead of the subject of national politics.
I’d much prefer talking about the latter.
As in, Can’t we all just get along?
;>)
Looks like we cross-posted.
Anyway, I’m not really seeing an “impasse,” so much as a misuse of terms which is kinda getting in the way of better understanding. I’d like to find some common ground on that, if possible. If not, so be it.
And this is yet another term I wouldn’t use:
Well just as you don’t buy my routine I don’t buy yours (ie. what I quoted). Yours is no more helpful. I reject it as categorically as you reject anything I said.
I don’t think of your comments as constituting a “routine.” I think you honestly believe what you say is the case, and that this isn’t some rote exercise for you. I would hope you would return that favor.
To me, in order for the claim of “purity” to be accurate, there has to be evidence of a maximalist position, of a zealous adherence to some platonic essence we need to meet. Orthodoxy on display. The overly dogmatic or doctrinaire. As mentioned, since a preference for Sanders over HRC doesn’t come anywhere close to any of that — at least for me, and for anyone I know who prefers him to her — I just don’t see the point in using those terms.
As in, if we were seeking to max out, say, 90-100% of our political dreams in the person of Sanders and his positions, you and others who use the term might have a case. But since Sanders’ New Dealism, IMO, just tries to get us back to where we were prior to Reagan, roughly, and in no way gets within light years of where I think we need to go — an end to capitalism, profit, hierarchy, M-C-M and exchange value, sustainable living on this planet, etc. etc. . . . it just makes no sense to me to employ the term.
Anyway, I’d rather discuss policy without the accusations of this or that failure to be “realistic” or the desire for perfection, etc. etc. Again, I think that just gets in the way.
Edited: Looks like he received four while in college, and one after school:
How deferments protected Donald Trump from serving in Vietnam
(The LA Times articles breaks it down in some detail)
He also recently (likely) lied about the NFL. Said the NFL sent him a request to reschedule the debates. He’s been complaining about them. The NFL says they never did any such thing.
Sounds similar to his claim that thousands and thousands of Muslims were celebrating in the streets in Jersey City when 9/11 hit. That never happened.
Clinton tends to lie to protect the status quo, business-as-usual, empire, capitalism, establishment-power-as-usual stuff. Trump tends to lie in order to whip up white fears and resentment to a fever pitch. Both candidates lie. But it’s quite likely Trump would also do the same kind of lying HRC does now, plus keep up the white resentment and white identity politix stuff.
This has got to be the crappiest election, evah.
Ok, but is this a leftist dance
or a rightist dance ?
w
vThe amazing thing is, it’s both, WV. As I mentioned, it has that symmetry thing going. And the contrapuntal. A move to the left requires one to the right, moving up requires moving down, and so forth.
The eyes are much trickier, however. I have not seen a dancer who can look left and right at the same time. Must keep searching for that.
;>)
