Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

I was promised a recession.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

I really should read my own blog.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Second rate reporter says what?

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

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Your Friday Night Must Read

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This, by Jebediah Purdy, may be the most important thing you read this year:

The structural buttresses of that world have been crumbling since 1989, but it took a long time to fall. The year 2016 brought the first genuinely post–Cold War election: the perennial carnage of American capitalism, intensified by forty years of growing inequality, prepared the ground for Bernie Sanders’s socialism, while the nativism and racism that had slunk just outside respectable politics returned full-throated. What unifies the crisis-of-democracy genre is the failure to understand this, that the present moment is not an anomalous departure but rather a return to the baseline—to the historical norm, one might say.

The result of this error is a response to the present crisis that is at once too dramatic and too sanguine. These books all claim that Trump is unprecedented—which is not at all true. (Rather, “unprecedented” was code for “terrible” in the language of American political consensus. And, of course, he is terrible.) But these authors are also rather modest in their suggestions. None of the proposals from this genre come close to the kinds of sweeping changes that made the New Deal or even the civil-rights revolution. What might that sort of transformation look like today? For one, we need substantial redistribution, starting with marginal tax rates at the 70 percent levels that lasted until the Reagan-era cuts of the 1980s. For another, we need entirely new institutions of planning and social provision, such as universal family leave and child care to help make the economy more humane, family life less exhausting, and get closer to gender equity. We might also have to do much more to strengthen labor unions, to the point of considering radical measures such as mandatory unionization, which is often the only way to break management’s hold on labor in large firms. It could also mean a new dispensation of basic legal rights, such as granting residents, rather than only citizens, the right to vote.

Read the whole thing.

Reader Interactions

158Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I’m not so sure about this “Bernie Sander’s socialism” shit. Because Bernie has no clue how to transform his rhetoric into reality, and neither does his fanbase. The actual work of making it happen eludes the lot of them.

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    We’re going to be told over and over, louder and louder, that anyone who proposes ideas such as these will doom the D party. DOOOOMMMM IT, I SAY!!!

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    Unfettered capitalism will be the end of us all, there is little doubt about that at this point.

  9. 9.

    Chyron HR

    Spoiler: What it actually means is the “make the white working class great again” left will combine with the “make America white again” right to form a white supremacist Duocon.

  11. 11.

    Cacti

    @Chyron HR:

    What it actually means is the “make white working class MALES great again” leftists will combine with the “make America white again” right to form a white supremacist Duocon.

    FTFY

    Wimmins will also have to get at the back of the line.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    I can’t possibly see how that’s the most important thing I’ll read all year.

  13. 13.

    schrodingers_cat

    The structural buttresses of that world have been crumbling since 1989, but it took a long time to fall.

    Whut? What the hell is he talking about, fall of the Soviet Union?

  15. 15.

    Brickley Paiste

    Purdy is on the right track.

    Tepid centrism isn’t going to solve this country’s problems and it doesn’t even win elections. It’s useless.

  16. 16.

    efgoldman

    these authors are also rather modest in their suggestions. None of the proposals from this genre come close to the kinds of sweeping changes that made the New Deal or even the civil-rights revolution

    What’s needed, and not present, is a transformative time of potential danger (Great Depression, WW2), a transformative charismatic leader (FDR) with most of the country behind him, AND transformative ideas he can sell.
    Weasel Face doesn’t fit the bill in any respect. Neither does Wilmer.

  17. 17.

    Chip Daniels

    America already has plenty of socialized factors of production, and always has.

    Think of how most utilities are socialized, how between Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and the ACA much of our health care has been socialized. How much of agriculture is sharply curtailed markets mixed with government support, how the military industrial complex itself is quasi-public.

    We’re not used to thinking of these things as “socialism” because we have this binary concept of what it means to put things under public control and ownership. But as any attorney will tell you, “ownership” itself is not binary; an object, or business can have many different stakeholders and controlling agents, even when they are not called “owners”.

  19. 19.

    TenguPhule

    @Baud:

    I can’t possibly see how that’s the most important thing I’ll read all year.

    John Cole is obviously very pessimistic about how the rest of the year is gonna go.

  29. 29.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    Oh but don’t you know? None of it matters on the campaign trail! What do you expect him to do? Write a 600 page treatise on it?

    Oh and his age isn’t an issue because he keeps himself in such great shape, according to Rationalwiki.

    /s

  32. 32.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Read the whole thing.

    Okay, Imma read the whole thing, but please don’t anyone take it amiss if I observe that Jebediah Purdy is the bestest most perfectest 17th-century American name that ever was.

  34. 34.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Chip Daniels:

    But as any attorney will tell you, “ownership” itself is not binary; an object, or business can have many different stakeholders and controlling agents, even when they are not called “owners”.

    Sounds like you have a law practice like mine—representing lots of pimps!

  35. 35.

    Mary G

    I linked to Ian Milhiser’s tweets about that article earlier. Here are some more:

    12) Here's one nightmare scenario that strikes me as very possible — even likely. Imagine that President Harris/Booker/Gillibrand/Warren/Sanders gets elected with commanding majorities and enacts the most ambitious array of progressive legislation since the Great Society.— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) May 4, 2018

    13) Then imagine that all of that is struck down in a 5-4 decision joined by Judge Gorsuch — based on some legal theory that has no basis in the Constitution or legal precedent and that was invented by some Volokh Conspiracy blogger for the sole purpose of this litigation.— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) May 4, 2018

    14) Worse, imagine as well that the same 5-4 majority hands down a series of decisions that skew the electoral playing field even further against Democrats — a combination of Shelby County, Crawford, Citizens United, and Bush v. Gore on steroids. https://t.co/E6kP6Levw3— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) May 4, 2018

    He recommends reading Purdy’s piece, but I’m finding it quite hard to plow through.

  36. 36.

    Corner Stone

    I haven’t read the entire “most important thing” as yet, but however the author is classified, I am completely down with a higher marginal tax rate, child care, and moving toward gender equity. I am unsure about mandating union membership but in some relative aspect we’re going to need a serious addressing of Universal Basic Income as some form of mediation to what’s coming. The time for incremental policies and cowering behind a bulwark when someone screams “soc!alist!!!” is way over. The other side is Nazis.

  38. 38.

    Jeffro

    Yeah, ‘most important thing I read this year’ – sorry JC, this isn’t cutting it. Way to long, way too overblown, veering from the obvious to the silly.

    What might that sort of transformation look like today? For one, we need substantial redistribution, starting with marginal tax rates at the 70 percent levels that lasted until the Reagan-era cuts of the 1980s. For another, we need entirely new institutions of planning and social provision, such as universal family leave and child care to help make the economy more humane, family life less exhausting, and get closer to gender equity. We might also have to do much more to strengthen labor unions, to the point of considering radical measures such as mandatory unionization, which is often the only way to break management’s hold on labor in large firms. It could also mean a new dispensation of basic legal rights, such as granting residents, rather than only citizens, the right to vote.

    – good luck with 70% tax rates, even among pretty progressive folks
    – universal family leave and child care is not an ‘entirely new institution of planning and social provision’…it’s a couple of tweaks to the tax code
    – labor unions are not coming back and certainly not going ‘mandatory’
    – good luck “granting residents, rather than only citizens, the right to vote”

    How about
    – undo everything Trumpov, his cabinet secretaries, and his enablers in the GOP Congress have done
    – add “Medicare for all”
    for starters, and then we’ll see what else can realistically get accomplished?

  40. 40.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    What I would really like to see is a move towards workplace democracy and market socialism.

  42. 42.

    thewesson

    I’d like to see the centrist idea of “basic decency” (which is about norms) fused with a quietly revolutionary socialist perspective. Like basic decency means not having your neighbor lose their house because they get cancer, and then die in the street.

    Norms aren’t stupid but just because American capitalism is a norm doesn’t mean it’s good. Norms should be about recognizing that we have a collective good, and government should represent that.

  45. 45.

    Steve in the ATL

    @efgoldman: “you will encounter a strange older woman whom you thought was an internet myth but who will ply you with wine and Cajun chicken pasta when you run into her at a bourgeois casual dining establishment of the sort where the servers wear flair though just ‘of the sort’ as they don’t literally wear flair at this particular place”

  47. 47.

    tobie

    I will give the piece a read, but I think any interpretation of the rise of authoritarianism in the US that doesn’t address the crash of 2008 and the Citizens United decision that allowed for the flood of private money into politics and the creation of movements like the Tea Party is fairly blind. If 1989 was the trigger, how come we didn’t see more populist outcries between 1996 and 2010? Sounds like Purdy was pretty sure of his conclusion–“neoliberalism” and income inequality are the source of our malaise–before even researching the piece.

  48. 48.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Until the “white male working class” forgets about their problems with melanin and vaginas and languages other than out of the hollers English and starts focusing on the idea that economic well being isn’t zero sum, none of this will change the current paradigm. The “economic anxiety” crowd needs to sit down and face that they are their own worst enemies, because they keep propping up the very forces that kick them to the curb.

  50. 50.

    Corner Stone

    @Steve in the ATL: Bow chicka wow wooowwww!
    “Ding Dong!”
    “Yes?”
    “I have a delivery here for you. From Sum Yung Gei.”
    “Well don’t just stand there, come in! Although I seem to have lost my wallet and all cash. Oh no.”

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    Meh. I’ll pass, myself. Sorry.

    There are a whole mess of problems that need to be addressed, and the way to do it and have a lasting impact is via incremental changes. As Adam has reminded us many, the quickest way to get a backlash is to get too far in front of public opinion. Even if the new policies make all kinds of sense, and even if most people buy into the ideal in the abstract – vested interests will make up lies about everything in order to keep their power. We have to show people that the sky won’t fall if, say, millionaires pay 50% on any income above $5M or $10M a year. That would be a much easier sell than 70%.

    What would be done with the revenue brought in by making the top marginal rate 70%? In 1980 the top 70% rate kicked in for joint filers with taxable income above $215,400. 4.5% of all returns in 2015 had taxable income above $200,000.

    A relatively tiny number of people have taken almost all of the expansion of the economy in the last 35+ years. I’m all for more a progressive tax system, but to sell it we need to say what we’re going to use the money for – and get the public to buy in to it. Picking some arbitrary number and saying that we all have to support it or we’re not pure enough won’t get us where we want to be.

    Ultimately, we have to elect sensible people. That’s the way forward. Not demanding maximalist policies NOW NOW NOW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    M. Bouffant

    England’s Independent: Unlike sissy Murkins, willing to mention Marx.

    Karl Marx 200th anniversary: The world is finally ready for Marxism as capitalism reaches the tipping point
    The philosopher predicted that centralisation would lead to revolution and give birth to a post-capitalist society – globalisation has led us to that point

  54. 54.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Jeffro:

    How about
    – undo everything Trumpov, his cabinet secretaries, and his enablers in the GOP Congress have done
    – add “Medicare for all”
    for starters, and then we’ll see what else can realistically get accomplished?

    Include removing EVERY Donald appointment to the judiciary, to include Gorsuch.

    Donald has made it so that the usual “according to the Constitution” approaches to problems simply will not cut it. Membership in the Federalist Society, for example, should be a disqualification for sitting on the bench at any level. We are faced with problem the Founders could not possibly have imagined…they assumed a level of human decency that our 1% has laughed away.

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    @Corner Stone:

    I am completely down with a higher marginal tax rate, child care, and moving sprinting toward gender equity.

    Co-sign w/ minor edit.

    I am unsure about mandating union membership but in some relative aspect we’re going to need a serious addressing of Universal Basic Income as some form of mediation to what’s coming.

    Agreed, big time. We can’t all be “innovators” or “creatives” or whatever the hell the term of the moment is (at least not until the day when the robots are doing literally ALL of the work, and everyone else is off doing watercolor painting, in a band, or doing underwater basketweaving). Anyone whose job is eliminated by a robot ought to get a guaranteed income (from their company, NGO, or government agency) until they are either trained-up for an equivalent job or…not.

    Put the brakes on. If robots are so awesome and increase efficiency & profits…then at least the humans they’ve replaced ought to have a chance at contributing in some other manner (or at least, to enjoy having their jobs ‘put out to pasture’)

  56. 56.

    Aleta

    Giuliani, in his years as a U.S. Attorney, had an impressive run prosecuting Mafia figures. This track record helped set up his successful run for New York City mayor, in 1993. But he never brought down Gigante, the biggest boss in town.

    Gigante relied on a “front boss,” installing Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno as the nominal head of the Genovese family while he, Gigante, retained most of the actual power, to run his organized-crime empire at a remove, discreetly issuing his orders through the ever-loyal Dominick (Quiet Dom) Cirillo. In 1986, the same year that the Five Families voted on whether to kill Giuliani, Salerno was convicted as part of the Mafia Commission Trial. Gigante remained free for another decade.
    ….
    In this way, Gigante and Giuliani were allies. They both had an interest in high-profile, tabloid-cover prosecutions of loud, famous Mob figureheads. I have to assume that Giuliani understood the arrangement. He got his heads on a pike, and Gigante stayed out of the spotlight. Gigante was finally convicted—of racketeering and conspiring to kill other mobsters—in 1997, years after Giuliani stepped down as U.S. Attorney.

    I have found no evidence that Donald Trump ever met with or directly conducted business with Vincent (the Chin) Gigante. But Trump is widely believed to have struck a deal with Gigante’s front, Fat Tony, in the late nineteen-seventies and early eighties.

    -New Yorker

  58. 58.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Another Scott: Hillary offered that. A majority of voters thought it was a good plan. However, our save the slaveholders electoral system undermined the whole thing.

  59. 59.

    B.B.A.

    I think all the Democrats really need is younger party figureheads. Nothing against our current leadership, who can continue in behind-the-scenes roles, but Republicans have the olds sewed up and the youngs won’t vote for us if we’re also seen as a party run by the olds.

    Also, fewer white dudes, but that’s something everyone needs everywhere. Signed, a white dude.

  61. 61.

    schrodingers_cat

    T was not elected because of economic anxiety. When the country was really anxious about the economy they voted for Obama over McCain. So I do not agree with the central thesis of this oh so important piece.

  62. 62.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Another Scott:
    I agree. I think people who support Wilmer are impatient. In a way I don’t blame them but I truly think they overestimate the level of support the public has for their policies. We exist in a precarious moment where progress that has been made can be reversed fairly quickly.

  64. 64.

    Chet Murthy

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Include removing EVERY Donald appointment to the judiciary, to include Gorsuch.

    Every goddamn last one of these fuckers. Fruit of the poison tree, goddammit! Every. Last. One.

  65. 65.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Corner Stone: I’m fortunate enough to live in a city where the city owns the electric company and the water works.

    Others are not so fortunate.

  66. 66.

    Corner Stone

    @Another Scott: There is nothing maximalist about a higher marginal tax rate. To be afraid to push forward on progressive agendas that are popular among a majority of voters doesn’t seem to me like a screaming sockulist banshee riding down Main St.

  67. 67.

    Jeffro

    @Villago Delenda Est: I hear you, but I think the best we’re going to get after the dust settles is that any future president’s judicial nominees get an up-or-down vote within 60/90 dates, whether or not there is an upcoming election (unless it’s within those 60/90 days).

    Whether that becomes a Senate rule or actual law or amendment, I dunno. But we ought to push for it so that the future McConnells of the world know that they can’t pull this shit again.

    I can see courts saying “well, they may be horrible, but the Senate DID confirm them” and letting it go.

  68. 68.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: Sorry – my comment went up wrong, and then your comment noted it, and I just posted the edit I meant in the first place.

    I’m totes down with gender equity. Can’t happen fast enough, hence “sprint” in the edit.

  70. 70.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Jeffro:
    That’s the problem and something that amazes me the most. We’re not doing anything to prepare for this as a society. Neither political party in the US has a plan to deal with mass automation eliminating millions of jobs in the future. Out of the two, the Democrats have the best chance of creating a system that will deal effectively with this. The GOP doesn’t give one shit at all and is content to tear down the government until there is virtually nothing left.

  71. 71.

    Corner Stone

    @Jeffro:

    But we ought to push for it so that the future McConnells of the world know that they can’t pull this shit again.

    I humbly suggest we start by letting McConnell make his case to the crows.

  74. 74.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Corner Stone: The main reason for a high marginal tax rate is to get that capital that is doing nothing constructive out of the hands of the greedy and into the hands of people who will use it to improve society.

  75. 75.

    Corner Stone

    @Jeffro:

    If robots are so awesome and increase efficiency & profits

    We’re (US workers) are currently working on avg 42.5 hours a week in re: productivity. That’s the highest level for some decades, according to CNBC. Yet wages are still stagnant and have been. How much more efficient can we get without the worker seeing any benefit? I think when the time comes for the avg worker to be laid off as they roll in mass automation, and no one has anything to say about it beyond platitudes of “job retraining”, we’re going to have some trouble. The Mnuchins, the Puzdners, the Papa John’s. All those assholes should understand that what’s coming isn’t personal, it’s just business. No wait. It’s personal.

  76. 76.

    Another Scott

    @Villago Delenda Est: Until we have enough people in office, we can’t change the system for the better.

    I’m doing what I can to get more voters ready for November – supporting VoteRiders and the LWV.

    As you noted, Hillary beat Bernie last time. I see no evidence that his message would even be that popular this fall or in 2020.

    Revolutions are usually/mostly/always conducted by some small fraction of the population. But I don’t see a critical mass developing any time soon to throw out the Constitution and the US Code and starting over. YMMV.

    186 days to go…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  77. 77.

    Jeffro

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Amazes me too. Nobody seems to walk it through: if robots and technology keep reducing the number of people needed to do X and Y and Z, and the profits by using such robots keep flowing to the top 1%…then eventually, BEST case, folks don’t have any money to spend on whatever the robots are making.

  78. 78.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    Eh. For the moment it’s not. But conditions would have to be pretty bad for (violent) revolution to be on the table. I mean desperately bad where tens millions are starving and out of work and have been for a decade or more and the government is seen as totally corrupt/inept.

    A totalitarian or garden variety authoritarian movement would be more likely to seize control in a revolution than a democratic socialist one.

  79. 79.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Another Scott: Getting out the vote, and voting out every Rethug at every level, is really the only way. Armed revolt seems like an alternative, but look where it got the French and the Russians. I don’t trust us to be able to do this thing ala the Glorious Revolution, frankly.

  80. 80.

    Mary G

    More disgusting stuff:

    This is a mind-boggling story. The fossil fuel industry hired hundreds of actors to pretend they were citizens and testify at pubic hearings against renewable energy. And it worked.https://t.co/rSuPmMcWJY— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) May 4, 2018

  81. 81.

    Jeffro

    @Villago Delenda Est: I’d argue the main reason is to keep them from having all that cash (i.e., weapon of mass disinformation) to throw around and distort society – what the majority of its citizens hear about, understand, act on. That’s why Citizens United is so prima facie stupid: how can anyone say that a guy pouring a billion dollars into political activities isn’t having an outside and undemocratic effect on our entire system, no matter which way he leans?

  84. 84.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Corner Stone: “Dear Balloon Juice After Dark Forum: I never thought this would happen to me, but I swept right on Tinder and this hottie named Judy is all ‘meet me at Chili’s’ and I’m all ’aw yeah’ and we drank house wine and ordered faux ethnic food and talked about this gossipy website we both frequent and then I left to go back to the hospital where my wife is lying in severe pain”.

    Is that an accurate summary, @SiubhanDuinne?

  85. 85.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Jeffro:
    And some think the solution is, “Don’t worry, everyone will be a programmer/engineer!”

    Well guess what, not everyone has the brains to be that, nor is that their passion. There’s only so many positions that would available anyway. Eventually, technology/software will be created and designed by the machines themselves and then what?

  86. 86.

    Brickley Paiste

    @Baud: You have to get people excited about something positive. That’s what pulls asses of the sofa and to the voting booth.

    Giving them a list of ways you are are marginally better than someone awful does not spark motivation.

  87. 87.

    Culture of Truth

    yeah, I remember Purdy from way back.

    current lectures are all well and good. not too many elections won, though.

  88. 88.

    oatler.

    Here’s the message I get from alleged liberals: “First of all, let’s shoot all the hippies.” Bill Clinton loved him some DEA.

  92. 92.

    Jeffro

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Right – “Hour of Code” (nor a degree in coding) for everyone ain’t gonna solve the problem.

    Everyone whose job is replaced by a robot ought to have an opportunity to retrain for current job X or projected future job Y, with said training paid for by whomever brought in the robots. If the robots’ owners are going to get to enjoy the profits, the least they could do is pay to give the displaced workers a shot at a new job. They’re also welcome to pay into a fund that lets the displaced sit on the beach with daiquiris all day. I don’t really care. The problem is that right now, there is no DISincentive for companies to quit replacing their workers with cheap labor of whatever type (robots most especially) – it’s the ultimate example of “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” there is.

  93. 93.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Brickley Paiste:
    And what happens when you can’t deliver? Look at the Republicans and the promises they’ve made to their base. Look what It’s gotten them. Further radicalization and anger over the last 20 years.

    I agree you need to excite voters, but you need to at least have some working theory of how your policies are going to be implemented. IOW, you can’t just make promises without knowing how your policies will work. You also can’t overpromise.

  98. 98.

    Another Scott

    @Corner Stone: 50% is higher than what we have now, but it’s not 70%. And I don’t think having it kick in at $215,000 x (inflation since 1980) would be an easy sell.

    Maybe it’s addressed in the piece, but I don’t think that picking 70% because it was the rate in 1980 is a good reason. It was 91% under Eisenhower – why not 91%? Give me a reason. Tell me what you’re going to do with the money, tell me who’s going to pay it, and tell me why you’ve made those choices.

    If I were benevolent dictator in charge of the federal tax system, I would make a list of problems that need to be addressed over the next 2, 5, 10, 20, 100 years, and construct a tax system that would address them. It would be a combination of making life easier and better for the bottom half of the family income system, for the elderly and disabled (and those caring for them), for those growing up and attending school, etc., and investing in things that companies have little or no interest in investing in (basic research (especially with long timelines)), efficiency of all kinds, understanding of the brain and why we think and react the way we do, etc., mitigating and reducing climate change and GHG emissions, and all the rest. Minimizing the “tragedy of the commons”.

    Too many people think that taxes just end up in a black hole, spent by bureaucrats at conventions in Las Vegas or junkets to Fiji or Montreux or Cannes or foreign aid to tinpot dictators that thumb their nose at us. We can’t sell tax increases without telling people – even, actually especially, people who would never pay it because they would never earn enough to be affected by it.

    The excerpt looks like a demand for purity, and a way to split Democrats, to me. YMMV.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  99. 99.

    efgoldman

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The “economic anxiety” crowd needs to sit down and face that they are their own worst enemies, because they keep propping up the very forces that kick them to the curb.

    Right. Like that will ever happen.

  100. 100.

    Chip Daniels

    One thing we have learned is that there is no price for radicalism.
    For most of the past few decades, it was accepted wisdom that Murkins loved placid Broderist centrism and anything outside of that was unpossible.

    But as we are seeing, one can shatter norms and precedent in a lot of directions.

  103. 103.

    Corner Stone

    @Another Scott: I said “higher” not 70% nor 91%, thanks. I find your approach to be a recipe for short, mid and long term failure. Patiently explaining every number in a 400 page tax proposal is going to get us fucking hammered in elections we should be competing/winning. Not a big fan of more timidity in the face of kleptocracy/Nazi opponents.

  104. 104.

    B.B.A.

    @Chip Daniels: This is another IOKIYAR deal. A Democrat who wants to loosen work requirements on SNAP is a filthy commie to be hanged for treason, but a Republican who wants to bring back Jim Crow, that’s just straight talk and solid leadership.

  105. 105.

    efgoldman

    @Another Scott:

    the way to do it and have a lasting impact is via incremental changes

    Frog in the pot doesn’t work. There will be backlash; people are ignorant and vote counter to their self-interest. Nevertheless the correct analogy is ripping off a bandaid. If you have a working majority, use it.

  106. 106.

    Another Scott

    @Steve in the ATL: Pics or it didn’t happen.

    :-)

    Glad you and Subaru Diane got together. Fingers crossed for Mrs. in the ATL. Hang in there.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  107. 107.

    Jeffro

    @Brickley Paiste: Government’s just the rule-setter…it’s up to the governed to decide who will be in charge, how they get there, and in what direction(s) they will tilt the rules.

  108. 108.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Jeffro:
    True, but it’s better than all of the other known alternatives. Concentrating power into the hands of one of a few is dangerous, as you know.

  111. 111.

    efgoldman

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Include removing EVERY Donald appointment to the judiciary, to include Gorsuch

    Except for individual impeachments and removals, you know fucking right well there’s no constitutional remedy which accomplishes your goal.

  112. 112.

    tobie

    @Corner Stone:

    I think when the time comes for the avg worker to be laid off as they roll in mass automation, and no one has anything to say about it beyond platitudes of “job retraining”, we’re going to have some trouble.

    This. What labor will look like in the future is anyone’s guess, and not one of the current crop of populists–left or right–is addressing this question.

  114. 114.

    Brachiator

    What a load of bullshit. It’s like Bernie Bro loggorhrea. The country is being consumed by racist nativism. Women’s reproductive rights are being trampled in state after state. And what is the proposed current?

    For one, we need substantial redistribution, starting with marginal tax rates at the 70 percent levels that lasted until the Reagan-era cuts of the 1980s. For another, we need entirely new institutions of planning and social provision, such as universal family leave and child care to help make the economy more humane, family life less exhausting, and get closer to gender equity.

    It’s as though these people don’t even see Trump and the damage the Republicans are causing. They just keep on advocating the same shit they have always believed.

    The author also falls into the error of confusing marginal and effective tax rates that is typical of economy illiterates.

  115. 115.

    Corner Stone

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:

    And what happens when you can’t deliver? Look at the Republicans and the promises they’ve made to their base. Look what It’s gotten them. Further radicalization and anger over the last 20 years.

    I agree you need to excite voters, but you need to at least have some working theory of how your policies are going to be implemented. IOW, you can’t just make promises without knowing how your policies will work. You also can’t overpromise.

    34 State lege, both the Senate and House, the presidency, a majority in SCOTUS, a willy nilly confirming of Federal judges, unfettered cash and dark money in elections, voter suppression, mass incarceration of black folk, a destruction of public education, unprecedented debt levels for kids to go to higher education, record deficits, tax cuts that spiked the .01% of the wealthiest, Planned Parenthood defunded and abortion laws rolled back,a shellacking to the ACA…hmmmm. But yeah. Let’s lay out a comprehensive 400 page plan that addresses every single step we’re planning to take to help racist white people stay better than the best black people.
    Winner!

  116. 116.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @efgoldman:
    It depends. If it’s feasible and can get the votes, I say go for it. All I’ve ever cared about is if it can work. However, isn’t making promises that can’t be kept partly contributed to the GOP’s rightward tilt?

  117. 117.

    Jeffro

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Oh I agree completely that it’s better than all the others. It was just an observation, one that politicians ought to throw out there now and then, to help manage expectations. Probably only Dems would even come close to saying something like this, of course – the GOP likes the electorate dissatisfied with democracy.

  118. 118.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Corner Stone:

    Let’s lay out a comprehensive 400 page plan that addresses every single step we’re planning to take to help racist white people stay better than the best black people.

    When the fuck did I ever claim this? It’s important to have that plan in place but you don’t have to explain every little fucking detail in your campaign. Broadstrokes. The important thing is that you have done the work and can explain when asked. That’s it. This isn’t a zero-sum game and you’re ridiculous.

  119. 119.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Very much O/T: Sorry I can’t recall who it was, but someone in the last +/- 24 hours mentioned they had developed a recent allergic reaction to grilled eggplant.
    In the same timeframe, I’ve apparently developed a terrible skin allergy to one of Band-Aid®’s adhesives. A small infected spot on my arm has, after several hours of application of a Band-Aid® with Neosporin®, turned into a livid raging sensitive skinswamp — not actually at the site of the original wound, but in the whole area surrounding it where the adhesive touched. Ugly and itchy. Ugh.

  121. 121.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Another Scott: Subaru Diane, who actually drives an AMC Pacer, is every bit as fun and funny as clever as you would expect, plus she says things like “PRO-ject” to remind you how sophisticated and international she is

    @efgoldman: willing to go extra-judicial to solve a problem of this magnitude

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: universal basic income

  127. 127.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    Maybe it’s addressed in the piece, but I don’t think that picking 70% because it was the rate in 1980 is a good reason. It was 91% under Eisenhower – why not 91%?

    Nobody ever paid taxes at a 91 percent rate. Nobody. The average effective rate was around 35 percent, and maybe a few paid 50 percent. But there were also quite a few ultra rich people who paid zero, zilch, nada, which is why the alternative minimum tax was introduced in the 1960s.

  128. 128.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne: allergic to grilled eggplant? That is an oddly specific and unlikely condition, reminiscent of Homer Simpson Syndrome. Are other grilled nightshades problematic as well?

  129. 129.

    Another Scott

    @SiubhanDuinne: Wasn’t me, and I didn’t see it, but I occasionally have oral allergy syndrome. In my case, when pollen levels are high, I can have reactions to carrots that I never have problems with otherwise. Pollen levels have been monstrously high recently up here in NoVA.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if just about everyone is “colonized” with MRSA on our skin these days. I’m convinced that I heal up much better and faster without band aids. Using them causes things to fester in ways that don’t happen when they’re covered. It didn’t use to be that way, but …

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  130. 130.

    ET

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: sadly the country doesn’t really have a plan for when ALL of the Baby Boomers are not working, don’t have enough retirement funds to live, are racking up huge health care costs, and that many that will have costly/labor intensive illnesses like alzheimer’s. That is going to blow things up and soon. I think it will have devastating consequences that might lead to some big changes if people are paying attention but may only be possible if the current flavor of GOP is passe at all levels of government.

  132. 132.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @efgoldman: Yes, this is true. The problem of course is that the Constitution wasn’t constructed by madmen intent on destroying anything approaching a democratic republic, but instead ushering in industrial feudalism.

    Which is what the Federalist Society is all about.

  134. 134.

    efgoldman

    @Steve in the ATL:

    willing to go extra-judicial to solve a problem of this magnitude

    You’re willing to take on the entire Marshalls’ service, ATF, the FBI and local police?
    I don’t see any utility in that.

  136. 136.

    NotMax

    @SiubhanDuinne

    Might – emphasize might – be a reaction to the latex. If a cloth band-aid isn’t readily available, see if instead using a small piece of gauze pad affixed with non-latex adhesive tape helps.

    As for the grilled eggplant thing (aware it wasn’t you), could be the culprit was contamination on the grill or the utensils used while grilling.

  137. 137.

    Corner Stone

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Very much O/T: Sorry I can’t recall who it was, but someone in the last +/- 24 hours mentioned they had developed a recent allergic reaction to grilled eggplant.

    It was Spanky. Said it made his mouth itch. Didn’t seem to have any other ill effects so who knows?

  138. 138.

    J R in WV

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I’m not acquainted with Jebediah Purdy – but I suspect his name is actually Jedediah Purdy. He grew up home schooled in Chloe, WV on a farm, and went straight from home-schooled to Harvard, and is now a professor of law at Duke.

  140. 140.

    Corner Stone

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:

    The important thing is that you have done the work and can explain when asked. That’s it. This isn’t a zero-sum game and you’re ridiculous.

    You have no idea what you are talking about. Elections are the ultimate zero sum game, you fucking imbecile. Explain what? And to who? This mamby pamby bullshit you seem to be pushing this evening is the ridiculous line.

  141. 141.

    cgordon

    “whether the versions of capitalism that have emerged in the last forty years are compatible with democracy”

    They are not. Read, for one, “Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?” by Robert Kuttner. We’ll either get an FDR or a smart Trump (Putin).

  144. 144.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @efgoldman: If you’ve got all those agencies on your side, it makes it much easier. Making a case to get rid of crooks, liars, and thieves will go a long way to doing that.

    We are in extraordinary and interesting (in the ancient Chinese curse sense) times.

  145. 145.

    Citizen Alan

    @M. Bouffant:

    Marx’s mistake was failing to recognize that Capital has a sense of self-preservation and js perfectly willing to adopt limited social welfare that applied to just enough people to create a working majority and keep everyone else suppressed. The capitalist response to Das Kapital can be summed up in 14 words from Jay Gould.

    I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

  147. 147.

    Brachiator

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Totally OT, but worth a look. Bryan Fischer says non-Christians have no First Amendment Rights.

    Jesus, Mary and Mohammed, what a dope.

    These nutcases feel especially emboldened now that Trump is their president.

  148. 148.

    Citizen Alan

    @Jeffro:

    There’s a much simpler way to do it. Calculate how productive automated factories are compared to human workers, and then tax the companies for an amount equal to what they would have paid on behalf of workers for SS taxes and on what their former employees would have paid in income taxes had they not automated. Then use that money for welfare spending for people who can’t get jobs.

  149. 149.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Corner Stone:
    Go fuck yourself, you fucking asshole. You knew what I meant. I meant you were presenting a false dilemma with your asinine argument; is it that controversial to say you should know what the fuck you’re talking about? You’re talk of “600 page comprehensive plans” is what is ridiculous.

    But you do you, prick. You sure knocked down that straw man.

  152. 152.

    Sab

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Calm down. He’s just being a curmudeon. It’s what we olds do. You are our future, so you probably should mostly ignore us and get on with your life (except occasionally some of us actually have learned something from experience.) Your challenge is to figure out which old knows something, and which are just ranting.

    I suggest consult the not olds, like Adam

  154. 154.

    patroclus

    Mandatory unionization? No thank you. Marginal rates at 70%? No thank you I like Medicare for all and free college and expanded reciprocal trade and investment in green technology and a massive infrastructure program and marijuana legalization better as campaign issues. Plus enforcement of women’s liberty rights, less restrictive immigration laws, a Dreamer fix and expanded and enforced equal protection of the laws for minorities. No more Wilmer or Wilmer-like supposed solutions please.

  155. 155.

    Vhh

    @Mary G: Read about the Supreme Court in the time of FDR. One justice refused to appear in group court photos because he could not stand being seen with Brandeis, who was Jewish. They were pissed because Congress lowered their pensions, so they tried to kill the New Deal,and FDR tried to increase the Court size to pack it. Under pressure, they relented.

  157. 157.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Jay: I was talking about the economy not an individual circumstance. Even in a great economy some people will still be struggling. HRC had the most labor friendly economic agenda of all candidates in the last election. I do agree that we need to support more labor friendly economic policies but I see no proof that the electorate is waiting to be rescued by a left wing Messiah.

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