Let it be added, as a lover of Istanbul, and someone whom would really wish Turkey to look towards Europe, rather than Russia and China - I pain all around!
With the current Erdogan thing I feel unsure to go back on holiday for the monent, but I feel that Europe frustrated the window of opportunity on purpose, as well.
Both sides losing heavily. And European insularists "winning" - maybe at the cost of a another war.
Should Erdogan go for death penalty, obviously he disqualifies Turkey for EU. Only I feel that by stallling Atatürk's vision of secular and modern Turkey aligned with EU, Europe did itself a massive disfavour, besides inhibiting Turkey from a positive trajectory, as much as positive encouragement means anything to any of us.
Istanbul, and Turkey - you have my love still.
Not that "underaged marriage to replace rape sentence" or "death penalty to make comeback" can be accepted with that love, because I find both ideas criminal and cruel.
But that was not what people were to my experience.
Supposedly our government once spent a few hundred thousand dollars to study shrimp on treadmills. Maybe they not spend money in that direction so citizens can have the I.Ds they need to vote.
Personally, I think voting is a very serious activity. People treat it as simply an exercise in a freedom, but I think John Stuart Mill correctly defined it as the exercise of power over others.
That being the case, it bothers me that people think voting should be "easy". IDs are required for numerous activities, such as driving, purchasing alcohol, applying for welfare, and simply opening a bank account. This is why I think that fears about "voter suppression" for requiring an ID are completely overblown.
I'm not saying it should be expensive, but people complain about free IDs because it might take up to three hours to complete the process at the DMV. Considering that voting can have somber consequences, I think sparing a couple hours and filling out some paperwork is the least we could ask for to ensure that 1. we recognize the solemnity of the act of voting and 2. ensure free and fair elections.
The cost is immaterial. Unless at least one of the IDs that Republicans are requiring is absolutely free of charge, it is a de facto poll tax.
Democracy is only as good as the names on the ballot paper, and honest people don't go into politics, they do proper jobs.
Public service is a more proper job than most. The widespread cynicism towards politics and consequent search for "saviours" who will "clean up everything" is a historical pattern that ends badly every time.
@Ayiekie Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institutution (by far the best left-wing think tank) makes this point quite effectively in an article he wrote about political realism. He notes the need for "professionalism" in politics and how some corruption is a necessary evil for good governance. He goes so far as to defend Tammany Hall in an exercise to illustrate his point.
I'm not sure if I agree with everything he says, but he does make a great case for making sure your approach to politics is geared toward achieving realistic outcomes.
On voter ID: While I think some calls for voter IDs on the right are self-serving, I also think every single call for ID-less voting from the left is entirely self-serving. There is no legitimate reason to oppose a free ID system, where people are only asked to give up minimal time in return for the privilege to take part in what is a highly valued civic activity.
On voter ID: While I think some calls for voter IDs on the right are self-serving, I also think every single call for ID-less voting from the left is entirely self-serving. There is no legitimate reason to oppose a free ID system, where people are only asked to give up minimal time in return for the privilege to take part in what is a highly valued civic activity.
Except voting isn't a privilege in the United States. It's a right. Certain laws about felons not being able to vote based on their previous convictions (after they have served their sentence) have made mockery of that, but it doesn't change the facts of what is in the Constitution:
"The Fifteenth states that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote" can't be abridged by race; the Nineteenth says that the same right can't be abridged by sex; the Twenty-Fourth says that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote" in federal elections can't be blocked by a poll tax; and the Twenty-Sixth protects "[t]he right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote."
There are many attempts to make it a privilege, and indeed, the same people who take the second half of the 2nd Amendment literally DO NOT seem to take the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments literally. But that's the kind of rank hypocrisy we're dealing with here.
The cards shouldn't be free or everyone in the country is going to be paying for them through hidden costs.
No, they will be paid for by the wealthy, who can easily afford it, since they contribute more in income tax.
Unless they are tax dodgers, in which case they belong in prison.
Theoretically true, but in practice the Chancellor isn't going to say in his budget speech "I'm increasing the higher rate of Income Tax by x% to cover the cost of ID cards". There would in fact be no direct increase in taxation to cover those specific costs, the money would be found from somewhere else either by appropriation within the relevant department or cutting the budget of another department (say, education or welfare) - we would all pay indirectly (and not necessarily monetarily) one way or another.
There is no direct link between government spending and taxation. If the UK government only spent what it earns in revenue it wouldn't be trillions of pounds in debt and planning on increasing it's borrowing.
Go ask the First Nations about the value of trusting the United States Government.
Right now I cannot think of any clear counterexamples to disprove this hypothesis, so if anyone thinks of any let me know. Every atrocity in the history of the world has been committed by a legitimate national government of some form. Genocide, secret police, Inquisitions, ethnic cleansing...you name it and some government has done it.
Go ask the First Nations about the value of trusting the United States Government.
Right now I cannot think of any clear counterexamples to disprove this hypothesis, so if anyone thinks of any let me know. Every atrocity in the history of the world has been committed by a legitimate national government of some form. Genocide, secret police, Inquisitions, ethnic cleansing...you name it and some government has done it.
The government part we can agree with. The legitimate part I'll have to take issue with. The most glaring example of course is that the Nazi Party never got more than (I believe) 33% of the vote in any legitimate election. Most Germans never voted for Hitler before the consolidation of power. Within 3 months, all future elections would be a sham.
There are plenty of examples of legitimate governments doing horrible things. But I'd argue it's the ones who are/were already operating outside the bounds acceptable behavior who careene toward atrocity.
The cards shouldn't be free or everyone in the country is going to be paying for them through hidden costs.
No, they will be paid for by the wealthy, who can easily afford it, since they contribute more in income tax.
Unless they are tax dodgers, in which case they belong in prison.
Theoretically true, but in practice the Chancellor isn't going to say in his budget speech "I'm increasing the higher rate of Income Tax by x% to cover the cost of ID cards".
Which is where modern western governments are going wrong.
The biggest lie of the 20th century: Trickle-down. This is the idea that an expanding economy benefits everyone. This is demonstratively untrue. Wealth generates wealth, so free market economics inevitably increases inequality. Only those who already have wealth benefit.
The thing is, the poor have one great power: they can destroy everything, for everyone. This is why "Bread and Circuses" were so important in ancient Rome. Unless the mob is appeased, it can destroy everything, for rich and poor alike. But the rich have more to lose.
Thus, it is actually in the self-interest of the rich to pay higher taxes.
@jjstraka34 Hitler's government was legitimate because a) it brought more guns to the argument than the other side did and b) other legitimate governments recognized it as the official government at the time. Whether people voted for it or not is irrelevant. I *do* agree with you that governments which commit atrocities were already acting outside the expected norm of civilized behavior. The point I was trying to make is that placing too much faith in a government, even if it is the government for which you might have voted and that you state you want, is probably a bad idea.
@Fardragon To date, no national government has decided to follow my "bubble up" experiment--instead of giving huge tax breaks and/or rebates (or, in the case of TARP/"quantitative easing", outright gifts of tons of cash) to wealthy individuals and large corporations, give that money to the people in the lower tax brackets. For example, suppose we apportion $900 million (a relatively small amount for the Federal Government) to every household which made less than $30,000 last year, which breaks down to exactly $30,000 in tax-free cash given directly to them. What you do think those households are going to do with that money? That answer is simple--they are going to spend it or pay off outstanding debt. Where will they spend it? Local businesses and big-box chain retail stores, of course. Not only will this give a sales tax windfall to the local cities but that money will then filter through those businesses into the hand of secondary businesses (the distributors and commercial retailers who sell things to normal retailers) and, ultimately, into the hands of producers/manufacturers and get deposited into the large banks who were the primary targets for government bailouts a few years ago. The money multiplier effect kicks in and everyone benefits from the ground up.
@Fardragon To date, no national government has decided to follow my "bubble up" experiment--instead of giving huge tax breaks and/or rebates (or, in the case of TARP/"quantitative easing", outright gifts of tons of cash) to wealthy individuals and large corporations, give that money to the people in the lower tax brackets. For example, suppose we apportion $900 million (a relatively small amount for the Federal Government) to every household which made less than $30,000 last year, which breaks down to exactly $30,000 in tax-free cash given directly to them. What you do think those households are going to do with that money? That answer is simple--they are going to spend it or pay off outstanding debt.
That's called a living wage or universal basic income I've heard of it for Finland.
Bottom up instead of trickle down. Trickle down surely doesn't work they're already drinking from the faucet. How much money is enough when you've already got $5 billion dollars, ya know? Another billion wouldn't make a huge difference there one way or another.
On voter ID: While I think some calls for voter IDs on the right are self-serving, I also think every single call for ID-less voting from the left is entirely self-serving. There is no legitimate reason to oppose a free ID system, where people are only asked to give up minimal time in return for the privilege to take part in what is a highly valued civic activity.
Except voting isn't a privilege in the United States. It's a right. Certain laws about felons not being able to vote based on their previous convictions (after they have served their sentence) have made mockery of that, but it doesn't change the facts of what is in the Constitution:
"The Fifteenth states that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote" can't be abridged by race; the Nineteenth says that the same right can't be abridged by sex; the Twenty-Fourth says that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote" in federal elections can't be blocked by a poll tax; and the Twenty-Sixth protects "[t]he right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote."
There are many attempts to make it a privilege, and indeed, the same people who take the second half of the 2nd Amendment literally DO NOT seem to take the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments literally. But that's the kind of rank hypocrisy we're dealing with here.
You are coming entirely from a legal positivist viewpoint. I do not. Statutory rights are privileges, as well as rights in the legal sense.
Also, no, felons not being able to vote has most certainly not made a mockery of the right to vote. They aren't being denied that right because of race, gender or age. They are being denied that right for prior criminal convictions, which has been a practice during every era of this country.
None of the evidence you presented about the 15th, 19th, 24th or 26th amendments had any relation to at all to your argument that people are improperly being denied the right to vote.
Also, I see no hypocrisy, since nobody of any significance has called for banning women, minorities or adults in general from the right to vote. A free ID is also not a poll tax.
@Fardragon To date, no national government has decided to follow my "bubble up" experiment--instead of giving huge tax breaks and/or rebates (or, in the case of TARP/"quantitative easing", outright gifts of tons of cash) to wealthy individuals and large corporations, give that money to the people in the lower tax brackets. For example, suppose we apportion $900 million (a relatively small amount for the Federal Government) to every household which made less than $30,000 last year, which breaks down to exactly $30,000 in tax-free cash given directly to them. What you do think those households are going to do with that money? That answer is simple--they are going to spend it or pay off outstanding debt.
That's called a living wage or universal basic income I've heard of it for Finland.
Bottom up instead of trickle down. Trickle down surely doesn't work they're already drinking from the faucet. How much money is enough when you've already got $5 billion dollars, ya know? Another billion wouldn't make a huge difference there one way or another.
I wouldn't call it a "bottom up" plan, because it is not an economic policy but a social one. The goal of most universal basic income/negative income tax policies isn't to spur growth to benefit all citizens, but to ensure that those who make less have disposable income.
Actually, bottom up is both an economic policy *and* a social one at the same time. I wouldn't recommend that it be used for more than five years otherwise you wind up encouraging people to purposefully put themselves into the income bracket which would benefit from it. For example, suppose you are trying to support a family of four on $40,000; depending upon where you live all I can say is "good luck with that". If, however, you decreased your income by $10,000--a 25% pay cut--you would then qualify for the program I cited above, which would effectively *increase* your income to $60,000--a 50% increase over the original $40k. That is not the direction you want people to move because you want people to improve their situations, not become dependent upon the extra income at the bottom. At that point, it becomes nothing more than a lucrative handout and I thoroughly dislike those sorts of government handouts--why bother getting an education or a decent job when you can just float through life cashing government checks every month?
On the one hand we don't want low-income people to wind up homeless, living behind a 7-11 or a Wal-Mart, trying to survive on the scraps they can pull out of the dumpster. On the other hand, we don't need to be giving tax breaks to people who earn $5 million or more each year--they already have more than they can spend. "Bottom up" was my attempt to find some sort of balance...but it also included constructing inexpensive and quickly-built housing for people to reduce the homelessness problem as well as cut monthly mortgage and utility bills. *shrug* What can I say? I try to consider all the angles.
That's why we divide things up into multiple different brackets: to discourage people from keeping their income low just to qualify for a certain set of benefits.
Actually, I don't see why we don't replace tax brackets with a progressive formula, which would ostensibly avoid that problem entirely.
That segment is absolutely right about the Democrats running a celebrity, because at this juncture in history, that is what this culture responds to. Since Reagan, the more charismatic candidate has won EVERY time. I continue to think this PC stuff is nonsense, and that Ana Marie Cox is right here when she says something fundamentally more true: That when historically unequal classes of people (under the law) start getting equality and rights, to the majority, privileged classes, equally starts to feel like oppression.
That said, Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead is now 2.1 million (I was laughed at for suggesting it would hit this number), and might continue to climb to almost 3 million. In the end, she's going to get more votes for President in history than anyone not named Barack Obama. And yet the media and even Democrats are acting like we're outnumbered and in the minority. As I saw in an article today, Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead is going to be more than the entire voting population of 40% of the States in the country. Why Trump won has never been more obvious, and gets more obvious by the day: The Electoral College is an antiquated relic that is flawed beyond belief, and he pulled an inside straight on where he was able to squeak out more votes.
The Electoral College is an antiquated relic that is flawed beyond belief, and he pulled an inside straight on where he was able to squeak out more votes.
It's tyranny of the minority.
Trump, the braggart, was saying how he'd only campaign in New York and California if there was no electoral college. That would be fine for his opponents because both of those places hate him. It wouldn't work.
The Electoral College is an antiquated relic that is flawed beyond belief, and he pulled an inside straight on where he was able to squeak out more votes.
It's tyranny of the minority.
Trump, the braggart, was saying how he'd only campaign in New York and California if there was no electoral college. That would be fine for his opponents because both of those places hate him. It wouldn't work.
People keep saying that if there were a national popular vote, campaigns, and thus the results, might take a different turn. In a country where at least 80% of the country is locked into one camp or another most of the time, I see no evidence that this is the case. Hillary wouldn't get anymore votes in Oklahoma if she visited Tulsa, and Trump couldn't rack up more votes in San Francisco or Seattle if his life depended on it.
People keep saying that if there were a national popular vote, campaigns, and thus the results, might take a different turn. In a country where at least 80% of the country is locked into one camp or another most of the time, I see no evidence that this is the case. Hillary wouldn't get anymore votes in Oklahoma if she visited Tulsa, and Trump couldn't rack up more votes in San Francisco or Seattle if his life depended on it.
Just to be clear @jjstraka34 my politics are similar to yours but not identical. My politics are practically Bernie or Bust / Jill Stein ( NDP, Syrzia, Podemos, Corbyn, Lexit) and ideally libertarian-socialist. Hope the following is taken as disagreement amongst people who are, more or less, on the same team.
Any discussion of why Clinton lost has to start and end with Clinton being a terrible candidate. This was a right vs right / insider vs outsider election. Clinton lost because Americans -- especially young Americans -- are sick of politics as usual and the Democrats lost when they rigged the system against Sanders. Clinton lost in the rust belt because 'Clinton' is a synonym for free trade. Clinton lost because the anti war left refused to pull the lever for someone who was planning to escalate the wars we are -- especially the war in Syria.
Now, there is no defending the electoral college but there is 1) zero chance of ending it and 2) even if we were to eliminate it we would need to replace with another system that gave more weight to rural areas.
Yes, eliminating the EC would allow large parts of the country to be ignored because the economic interests of different parts of the country are different. 'Free' trade has been, on balance, good for the economies of states like California and Washington; it was been devastating for the rust belt.
'Free' trade pacts help silicon valley and most agricultural producers -- this why 'free' trade does indeed increase the wealth of both partners. It does not distribute that wealth equally, meaning that the new wealth made in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street is at the expense of workers in WI and MI. Those industrial workers who still have jobs are seeing their real wages decline year after year and the tax base of the rust belt has deteriorated so much that they are no longer catching stray dogs in Detroit.
Industrial workers rejected Clinton because she promised them more of the same and Trump promised to bring the factories back, to stop the TPP and renegotiate NAFTA. Clinton lost because she alienated the left and the industrial working class.
A national vote would lessen the voice of the rust belt. And for all the deficits of the EC, for all the praise the national vote gets in (geographically) smaller countries, look at what we don't have that national vote countries have -- successionist movements. Movements are that are a product of a system that favors the center to the periphery / the cities to the provinces.
People keep saying that if there were a national popular vote, campaigns, and thus the results, might take a different turn. In a country where at least 80% of the country is locked into one camp or another most of the time, I see no evidence that this is the case. Hillary wouldn't get anymore votes in Oklahoma if she visited Tulsa, and Trump couldn't rack up more votes in San Francisco or Seattle if his life depended on it.
A national vote would lessen the voice of the rust belt. And for all the deficits of the EC, for all the praise the national vote gets in (geographically) smaller countries, look at what we don't have that national vote countries have -- successionist movements. Movements are that are a product of a system that favors the center to the periphery / the cities to the provinces.
Except now we have a situation where if California had the same proportional representation based on population in the EC as, say Wyoming/North Dakota/South Dakota, it would have 199 instead of 55, meaning those 3 states (and many others) have FOUR times the weight relative to who actually lives there. We can TALK about the Rust Belt and rural Mid-America states getting a lesser voice hypothetically. But the coastal states with large urban centers are ALREADY getting a lesser voice, to an almost absurd degree.
But the coastal states with large urban centers are ALREADY getting a lesser voice, to an almost absurd degree.
Without question. And I don't know the numbers but it must be the case that magnitude of difference is even greater in the Senate. The Senator from Wyoming's vote counts just as much as the Senator from California.
But again, would we really want parity? I think that would create even more Bundy family like standoffs -- rural revolts. In other countries this effect is partially ameliorated by regional parties but I think the combination of national vote and two party system would be a recipe for disaster. What happens when Wyoming as zero chance of impacting the presidential election?
But aside from the concerns about a national vote, the biggest reason I wish my fellow lefties would put this point aside is that it is a discussion that is stealing air from other ones we should be having. We ned to make sure that we never, never again have another candidate like Clinton on the ballot. Someone who lost to Trump -- any politician's dream candidate. This was our Bob Dole moment -- the weakest possible candidate got the nod because she knew how to work the system.
But the coastal states with large urban centers are ALREADY getting a lesser voice, to an almost absurd degree.
Without question. And I don't know the numbers but it must be the case that magnitude of difference is even greater in the Senate. The Senator from Wyoming's vote counts just as much as the Senator from California.
But again, would we really want parity? I think that would create even more Bundy family like standoffs -- rural revolts. In other countries this effect is partially ameliorated by regional parties but I think the combination of national vote and two party system would be a recipe for disaster. What happens when Wyoming as zero chance of impacting the presidential election?
But aside from the concerns about a national vote, the biggest reason I wish my fellow lefties would put this point aside is that it is a discussion that is stealing air from other ones we should be having. We ned to make sure that we never, never again have another candidate like Clinton on the ballot. Someone who lost to Trump -- any politician's dream candidate. This was our Bob Dole moment -- the weakest possible candidate got the nod because she knew how to work the system.
I would agree with you, except she got the 3rd most votes in history. And I understand the large portion on the left who hates Hillary. I don't. Flawed, without question, but even based on her work with children's health in her career redeems her enough in my eyes. Let's not forget what she was running against: A 30-year smear campaign that has been nearly unrelenting, as neo-fascist opponent with help from Russian hackers (and make no mistake, the purpose of the Russian hacks was to hit her on her LEFT flank, and peak away Bernie voters), the FBI, and the always effective conservative media infrastructure. It was fairly ridiculous to nominate someone with that baggage, but in any normal country with a non-insane election system, she wins going away.
As for the Senate, yes, it is even worse, and again, we are talking about a system that was designed when there were only 13 colonies that became States. It's untenable in modern society, certainly if you're a liberal. On top of how the Senate is structured, the gerrymandering the Republicans successfully engineered during the Bush years is almost impossible to overcome, as evidenced by the Democrats ALSO winning the popular congressional vote in 4 of the last 6 elections, and only taking control of it in on instance. The next census is in 2020, and if the Republicans don't get beaten on a State level in the next 4 years, that will be a near permanent fixture.
The fact is, Republicans are FAR more organized at the local levels, starting with local school boards and working up from there. The Democratic Party thinks it can show up every 2 years and inch out a victory without putting in the work that is required at the nitty-gritty level. It's why Howard Dean and his 50-state strategy was the only time we've made real gains. And it led to Obama's first 2 years. Which were either used (or wasted depending on your opinion, I think it's mixed) on Obamacare. But during that time we also saw the Lily Ledbetter act and two Supreme Court justices who helped usher in marriage equality. We stopped torturing. We (mostly) got the hell out of the disasters of the Bush Administration foreign policy.
I have no idea what would have happened with Bernie. I think people vastly underestimate how hard Trump and his dark actors would have played the "communist Jew" card against him. Most people aren't aware of the oppo research they had on him. And suffice to say, regardless of the ridiculousness of it, it would have made the Willie Horton ad look like child's play. It would have hit Trump's base in the same place Hillary did, just from different angles. This includes a claim he stole electricity from his neighbors in his 30s, video of him at a Sandinista rally (think the scene in the American President when Annette Benning is caught in a picture with a burning flag), and voting against the Amber Alert system. It would have been JUST as bad, and Bernie would not have walked into the White House. And I supported him in the primaries.
whether the dislike is warranted or not -- and, not to be coy, I believe it is warranted -- polls show that Clinton was the least popular Democrat in modern memory. Back to the point about the rust belt -- democratic voter turnout out was down in places in Wisconsin by about 3 percent, more than enough to cost the election.
Glad we are on the same side in the primaries. The problem with the 'they would have socked it to him with the commie narrative' that narrative no longer has any power. It's been used once too often about every Democratic nominee.
Google images no longer tells me how many hits but it looks like I can scroll all day. Not only does no one respond when the right calls socialist, the vast majority of millennials think being a socialist is a good thing. Really -- google it. This is cause for hope. As are the many people's movements that are emerging from this crisis.
I've looked at the public evidence on the Russian hacks -- that the hacking can be traced back to a French domain that was likely paid for by the Russian government -- and it's *anything* but a slam dunk. And the rest of the 'proof' is secret and after the Iraq war we should all be skeptical of judgments made on the basis of secret evidence that really smart people have looked over.
One of the very many reasons I couldn't vote Clinton was this Russian narrative. I was having flashbacks to the cold war. Half the time I thought she was reading from the script of a Chuck Norris movie -- except that she actually did that, that would have been awesome.
And even if the Ruskies did it, Wikileaks published the Truth. The DNC took down Sanders, the candidate that every poll said could defeat Trump. This loss is one the DNC. We can blame the Russians, rail against the electoral college, tell ourselves she really won but all this takes us away from our important task -- how to we build a movement that can take power in 2018 and 2020.
I too would've preferred Bernie as the dnc candidate. I am a genxer and don't think socialism is such a bad word - for example social security is great. Some things there should be government intervention or you end up with two or three hundred people with more wealth than 99‰ of the people in the country.
I think the problem is the baby boomers. These voters were living through the cold war and duck and cover times and the Red Menace and were propogandized to where anything socialist was evil. And this election is hopefully their last big hurrah.
@killerrabbit: Back on page 61, I brought up the notion of how the Democrats "rigged the system against Sanders," and said I wasn't convinced. I asked for specific instances of this happening, but nobody had them. Could you provide them?
1. Debbie Wasserman Schultz complained about Bernie in private emails, and left her job when people found out. 2. One Democratic party employee asked another employee via email if they could accuse Bernie of being an atheist to weaken him. The response was "no." 3. Bernie claimed that his speeches were given time slots when fewer people would be listening.
The third one is the only plausible scandal, because it's the only one where actual action was taken, action which could have impacted the primary results. The other two are just people talking. But I don't know how much truth is in the third one because because people seldom mention any specifics when discussing this subject.
@semiticgod it was rigged by Wassermanshultz and other cronies doing everything they could to hold back Bernie and prop up Hillary. It was rigged by existing rules like super delegates that get extra influence on whom the party selects. One of those super delegates is popular former president Bill Clinton. Basically what happened was that the establishment wanted Hillary and they were willing to put her in front of the peoples choice - Bernie Sanders.
To change subjects, I agree with this guy: “I didn’t like Clinton at all, but her positions are much better than Trump’s on every issue I can think of,” said Economist Noam Chomsky.
“Every Republican candidate is either a climate change denier or a skeptic who says we can’t do it,” Noam Chomsky said. “What they are saying is, ‘Let’s destroy the world.’ Is that worth voting against? Yeah.”
@killerrabbit: Back on page 61, I brought up the notion of how the Democrats "rigged the system against Sanders," and said I wasn't convinced. I asked for specific instances of this happening, but nobody had them. Could you provide them?
1. The DNC spread the false story about violence at the NV caucus. When John Ralston wrote the story about the Sanders supporters being violent and throwing chairs Mark Pastenbach instructed staff to spread the story without fingerprints
5. Atmosphere and Volume. Wasserman Shultz was in frequent contact with the Clinton campaign, referred to her as the presumptive nominee while Sanders was persona non grata. DSW issued a number of statements such as "please, he's not going to be president" "he is such an ASS" and the like.
8. Yes, the debates. As DSW said: “[Superdelegates] exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.”
Clearly she saw the institutions as ways to stop grassroots candidates.
9. Connections at elite institutions. The NYT was little more than an anti-Sanders factory for while
Remembering that the DNC emails only cover a few months -- we don't have the full story.
Also, rules that are rigged against *any* outsider -- rules that required people to register months in advance in NY even excluding the the working families party from the NY primaries-- a party made up almost entirely of figures trying to move the Dems to the left.
The Byzantine rules for getting a NPP ballot in California.
The superdelegates backing Clinton before Sanders even announced.
While there is no smoking gun, the 'october surprise' AP story that came out the day before the California primary that said that Clinton had the race cinched. "Sure, go to the polls just remember -- your vote won't count!"
Comments
With the current Erdogan thing I feel unsure to go back on holiday for the monent, but I feel that Europe frustrated the window of opportunity on purpose, as well.
Both sides losing heavily. And European insularists "winning" - maybe at the cost of a another war.
Should Erdogan go for death penalty, obviously he disqualifies Turkey for EU. Only I feel that by stallling Atatürk's vision of secular and modern Turkey aligned with EU, Europe did itself a massive disfavour, besides inhibiting Turkey from a positive trajectory, as much as positive encouragement means anything to any of us.
Istanbul, and Turkey - you have my love still.
Not that "underaged marriage to replace rape sentence" or "death penalty to make comeback" can be accepted with that love, because I find both ideas criminal and cruel.
But that was not what people were to my experience.
Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institutution (by far the best left-wing think tank) makes this point quite effectively in an article he wrote about political realism. He notes the need for "professionalism" in politics and how some corruption is a necessary evil for good governance. He goes so far as to defend Tammany Hall in an exercise to illustrate his point.
I'm not sure if I agree with everything he says, but he does make a great case for making sure your approach to politics is geared toward achieving realistic outcomes.
It is available here, and is a great read https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/political-realism-rauch2.pdf
While I think some calls for voter IDs on the right are self-serving, I also think every single call for ID-less voting from the left is entirely self-serving. There is no legitimate reason to oppose a free ID system, where people are only asked to give up minimal time in return for the privilege to take part in what is a highly valued civic activity.
"The Fifteenth states that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote" can't be abridged by race; the Nineteenth says that the same right can't be abridged by sex; the Twenty-Fourth says that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote" in federal elections can't be blocked by a poll tax; and the Twenty-Sixth protects "[t]he right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote."
There are many attempts to make it a privilege, and indeed, the same people who take the second half of the 2nd Amendment literally DO NOT seem to take the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments literally. But that's the kind of rank hypocrisy we're dealing with here.
Unless they are tax dodgers, in which case they belong in prison.
There is no direct link between government spending and taxation. If the UK government only spent what it earns in revenue it wouldn't be trillions of pounds in debt and planning on increasing it's borrowing.
Right now I cannot think of any clear counterexamples to disprove this hypothesis, so if anyone thinks of any let me know. Every atrocity in the history of the world has been committed by a legitimate national government of some form. Genocide, secret police, Inquisitions, ethnic cleansing...you name it and some government has done it.
There are plenty of examples of legitimate governments doing horrible things. But I'd argue it's the ones who are/were already operating outside the bounds acceptable behavior who careene toward atrocity.
Which is where modern western governments are going wrong.
The biggest lie of the 20th century: Trickle-down. This is the idea that an expanding economy benefits everyone. This is demonstratively untrue. Wealth generates wealth, so free market economics inevitably increases inequality. Only those who already have wealth benefit.
The thing is, the poor have one great power: they can destroy everything, for everyone. This is why "Bread and Circuses" were so important in ancient Rome. Unless the mob is appeased, it can destroy everything, for rich and poor alike. But the rich have more to lose.
Thus, it is actually in the self-interest of the rich to pay higher taxes.
@Fardragon To date, no national government has decided to follow my "bubble up" experiment--instead of giving huge tax breaks and/or rebates (or, in the case of TARP/"quantitative easing", outright gifts of tons of cash) to wealthy individuals and large corporations, give that money to the people in the lower tax brackets. For example, suppose we apportion $900 million (a relatively small amount for the Federal Government) to every household which made less than $30,000 last year, which breaks down to exactly $30,000 in tax-free cash given directly to them. What you do think those households are going to do with that money? That answer is simple--they are going to spend it or pay off outstanding debt. Where will they spend it? Local businesses and big-box chain retail stores, of course. Not only will this give a sales tax windfall to the local cities but that money will then filter through those businesses into the hand of secondary businesses (the distributors and commercial retailers who sell things to normal retailers) and, ultimately, into the hands of producers/manufacturers and get deposited into the large banks who were the primary targets for government bailouts a few years ago. The money multiplier effect kicks in and everyone benefits from the ground up.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/12/06/finally-someone-does-something-sensible-finland-to-bring-in-a-universal-basic-income/
Bottom up instead of trickle down. Trickle down surely doesn't work they're already drinking from the faucet. How much money is enough when you've already got $5 billion dollars, ya know? Another billion wouldn't make a huge difference there one way or another.
Also, no, felons not being able to vote has most certainly not made a mockery of the right to vote. They aren't being denied that right because of race, gender or age. They are being denied that right for prior criminal convictions, which has been a practice during every era of this country.
None of the evidence you presented about the 15th, 19th, 24th or 26th amendments had any relation to at all to your argument that people are improperly being denied the right to vote.
Also, I see no hypocrisy, since nobody of any significance has called for banning women, minorities or adults in general from the right to vote. A free ID is also not a poll tax.
On the one hand we don't want low-income people to wind up homeless, living behind a 7-11 or a Wal-Mart, trying to survive on the scraps they can pull out of the dumpster. On the other hand, we don't need to be giving tax breaks to people who earn $5 million or more each year--they already have more than they can spend. "Bottom up" was my attempt to find some sort of balance...but it also included constructing inexpensive and quickly-built housing for people to reduce the homelessness problem as well as cut monthly mortgage and utility bills. *shrug* What can I say? I try to consider all the angles.
When I originally envisioned the plan it was in the aftermath of TARP and I thought it was *stupid* to be raining money on the very corporations which helped bring about the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008. If a corporation is too big to fail then it is too big to exist and we already set the precedent for the government forcing a corporation to break itself into smaller pieces.
Actually, I don't see why we don't replace tax brackets with a progressive formula, which would ostensibly avoid that problem entirely.
Bill Maher (and others) on how/why Trump won:
That said, Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead is now 2.1 million (I was laughed at for suggesting it would hit this number), and might continue to climb to almost 3 million. In the end, she's going to get more votes for President in history than anyone not named Barack Obama. And yet the media and even Democrats are acting like we're outnumbered and in the minority. As I saw in an article today, Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead is going to be more than the entire voting population of 40% of the States in the country. Why Trump won has never been more obvious, and gets more obvious by the day: The Electoral College is an antiquated relic that is flawed beyond belief, and he pulled an inside straight on where he was able to squeak out more votes.
Trump, the braggart, was saying how he'd only campaign in New York and California if there was no electoral college. That would be fine for his opponents because both of those places hate him. It wouldn't work.
Any discussion of why Clinton lost has to start and end with Clinton being a terrible candidate. This was a right vs right / insider vs outsider election. Clinton lost because Americans -- especially young Americans -- are sick of politics as usual and the Democrats lost when they rigged the system against Sanders. Clinton lost in the rust belt because 'Clinton' is a synonym for free trade. Clinton lost because the anti war left refused to pull the lever for someone who was planning to escalate the wars we are -- especially the war in Syria.
Now, there is no defending the electoral college but there is 1) zero chance of ending it and 2) even if we were to eliminate it we would need to replace with another system that gave more weight to rural areas.
Yes, eliminating the EC would allow large parts of the country to be ignored because the economic interests of different parts of the country are different. 'Free' trade has been, on balance, good for the economies of states like California and Washington; it was been devastating for the rust belt.
'Free' trade pacts help silicon valley and most agricultural producers -- this why 'free' trade does indeed increase the wealth of both partners. It does not distribute that wealth equally, meaning that the new wealth made in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street is at the expense of workers in WI and MI. Those industrial workers who still have jobs are seeing their real wages decline year after year and the tax base of the rust belt has deteriorated so much that they are no longer catching stray dogs in Detroit.
Industrial workers rejected Clinton because she promised them more of the same and Trump promised to bring the factories back, to stop the TPP and renegotiate NAFTA. Clinton lost because she alienated the left and the industrial working class.
A national vote would lessen the voice of the rust belt. And for all the deficits of the EC, for all the praise the national vote gets in (geographically) smaller countries, look at what we don't have that national vote countries have -- successionist movements. Movements are that are a product of a system that favors the center to the periphery / the cities to the provinces.
But again, would we really want parity? I think that would create even more Bundy family like standoffs -- rural revolts. In other countries this effect is partially ameliorated by regional parties but I think the combination of national vote and two party system would be a recipe for disaster. What happens when Wyoming as zero chance of impacting the presidential election?
But aside from the concerns about a national vote, the biggest reason I wish my fellow lefties would put this point aside is that it is a discussion that is stealing air from other ones we should be having. We ned to make sure that we never, never again have another candidate like Clinton on the ballot. Someone who lost to Trump -- any politician's dream candidate. This was our Bob Dole moment -- the weakest possible candidate got the nod because she knew how to work the system.
As for the Senate, yes, it is even worse, and again, we are talking about a system that was designed when there were only 13 colonies that became States. It's untenable in modern society, certainly if you're a liberal. On top of how the Senate is structured, the gerrymandering the Republicans successfully engineered during the Bush years is almost impossible to overcome, as evidenced by the Democrats ALSO winning the popular congressional vote in 4 of the last 6 elections, and only taking control of it in on instance. The next census is in 2020, and if the Republicans don't get beaten on a State level in the next 4 years, that will be a near permanent fixture.
The fact is, Republicans are FAR more organized at the local levels, starting with local school boards and working up from there. The Democratic Party thinks it can show up every 2 years and inch out a victory without putting in the work that is required at the nitty-gritty level. It's why Howard Dean and his 50-state strategy was the only time we've made real gains. And it led to Obama's first 2 years. Which were either used (or wasted depending on your opinion, I think it's mixed) on Obamacare. But during that time we also saw the Lily Ledbetter act and two Supreme Court justices who helped usher in marriage equality. We stopped torturing. We (mostly) got the hell out of the disasters of the Bush Administration foreign policy.
I have no idea what would have happened with Bernie. I think people vastly underestimate how hard Trump and his dark actors would have played the "communist Jew" card against him. Most people aren't aware of the oppo research they had on him. And suffice to say, regardless of the ridiculousness of it, it would have made the Willie Horton ad look like child's play. It would have hit Trump's base in the same place Hillary did, just from different angles. This includes a claim he stole electricity from his neighbors in his 30s, video of him at a Sandinista rally (think the scene in the American President when Annette Benning is caught in a picture with a burning flag), and voting against the Amber Alert system. It would have been JUST as bad, and Bernie would not have walked into the White House. And I supported him in the primaries.
Glad we are on the same side in the primaries. The problem with the 'they would have socked it to him with the commie narrative' that narrative no longer has any power. It's been used once too often about every Democratic nominee.
See:
http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/33500/Socialist-Hillary-Clinton-33763.jpg
Google images no longer tells me how many hits but it looks like I can scroll all day. Not only does no one respond when the right calls socialist, the vast majority of millennials think being a socialist is a good thing. Really -- google it. This is cause for hope. As are the many people's movements that are emerging from this crisis.
I've looked at the public evidence on the Russian hacks -- that the hacking can be traced back to a French domain that was likely paid for by the Russian government -- and it's *anything* but a slam dunk. And the rest of the 'proof' is secret and after the Iraq war we should all be skeptical of judgments made on the basis of secret evidence that really smart people have looked over.
One of the very many reasons I couldn't vote Clinton was this Russian narrative. I was having flashbacks to the cold war. Half the time I thought she was reading from the script of a Chuck Norris movie -- except that she actually did that, that would have been awesome.
And even if the Ruskies did it, Wikileaks published the Truth. The DNC took down Sanders, the candidate that every poll said could defeat Trump. This loss is one the DNC. We can blame the Russians, rail against the electoral college, tell ourselves she really won but all this takes us away from our important task -- how to we build a movement that can take power in 2018 and 2020.
And, again, there is cause for hope:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/opinion/the-art-of-the-protest.html
I think the problem is the baby boomers. These voters were living through the cold war and duck and cover times and the Red Menace and were propogandized to where anything socialist was evil. And this election is hopefully their last big hurrah.
These are the things I had heard of:
To change subjects, I agree with this guy:
“I didn’t like Clinton at all, but her positions are much better than Trump’s on every issue I can think of,” said Economist Noam Chomsky.
“Every Republican candidate is either a climate change denier or a skeptic who says we can’t do it,” Noam Chomsky said. “What they are saying is, ‘Let’s destroy the world.’ Is that worth voting against? Yeah.”
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/9423
2. Donna Brazille shared questions that were going to be asked in the primary debate with Clinton, not with Sanders.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/10/roland-martin-cnn-email-donna-brazile-wikileaks-229673
3. They pitched stories to reporters about how to portray Sanders in way that would do the most damage:
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5423
4. The DNC asked reporters and editors to change articles and headlines in a way that hurt sanders
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7713
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/2699
5. Atmosphere and Volume. Wasserman Shultz was in frequent contact with the Clinton campaign, referred to her as the presumptive nominee while Sanders was persona non grata. DSW issued a number of statements such as "please, he's not going to be president" "he is such an ASS" and the like.
6. Punishing of women who supported Sanders
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-the-democratic-women-fighting-for-sanders/
7. The Clinton campaign funneling money through the DNC
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670
8. Yes, the debates. As DSW said: “[Superdelegates] exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.”
Clearly she saw the institutions as ways to stop grassroots candidates.
9. Connections at elite institutions. The NYT was little more than an anti-Sanders factory for while
https://shadowproof.com/2016/05/19/establishment-collectively-stunned-see-citizens-reject-rigged-democratic-primary/
Remembering that the DNC emails only cover a few months -- we don't have the full story.
Also, rules that are rigged against *any* outsider -- rules that required people to register months in advance in NY even excluding the the working families party from the NY primaries-- a party made up almost entirely of figures trying to move the Dems to the left.
The Byzantine rules for getting a NPP ballot in California.
The superdelegates backing Clinton before Sanders even announced.
While there is no smoking gun, the 'october surprise' AP story that came out the day before the California primary that said that Clinton had the race cinched. "Sure, go to the polls just remember -- your vote won't count!"
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/us/politics/hillary-clinton-presidential-race.html