Because the Cons spent eight years labeling all kinds of good things, like health care, “socialism”.
6.
TenguPhule
Because older people have all the jobs and the money and the benefits and didn’t leave shit for anyone else.
Sadly true.
Fuck all the Grandfathered in benefits while shafting the newcomers.
A reckoning is coming.
7.
Alain the site fixer
FYI: major outage and issues at Comcast but also likely to other backend connnections that folks need to make their cool internet services work.
I’m done for today, can’t work and so I’m going to go smack some fools with my nunchucks in Call of Duty. One of the perks of working at home…
8.
dm
What’s not to like? Old people like it, too — just try to touch their Social Security and Medicare.
9.
TenguPhule
American families are unsure whether they are benefiting from the tax cut, and small businesses say they are confused by the complex changes affecting them. A recent poll from Monmouth University found 34 percent of adults approve of the tax cut now, a slide from January when adults were about evenly split between approving and disapproving. And about a third of families say they are better off because of the cuts, according to polls by Politico and the New York Times.
Via Wapo.
27% is a universal insanity constant.
10.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule:
Grease the wheels of good government with the fat of traitorous greedo assholes.
11.
Joe Falco
The olds don’t just want to pull up the ladder behind them. They want to take it, carve it into a slingshot and take shots at the young below while asking them why don’t they make a ladder of their own.
12.
Ruckus
@chopper:
One would think that it’s simple. But if you are trying to disguise what you are doing with bullshit, somehow it isn’t.
13.
NotMax
Yup. We roll around, naked, in the money every night. And laugh.
(Is // necessary?)
14.
TenguPhule
Next question?
Are Republicans born evil or just indoctrinated that way?
15.
chris
A tiny bit of good news:
BREAKING: Federal judge says that HHS’s approval of Kentucky’s Medicaid work requirements was "arbitrary and capricious”Work requirements are BLOCKEDhttps://t.co/TgeE18J7kd— Dylan Scott (@dylanlscott) 29 June 2018
Indeed. Leave the broad brush to Tom Sawyer for whitewashing the fence.
All generalizations break down, including this one.
21.
Ohio Mom
Some of what you are seeing is an illusion. Yes, older people may have more assets because they’ve had more time to acquire them (e.g., paid off houses). But lots of us boomers are in no shape to retire. For one, when we started working, pensions were being replaced by 401k’s.
It is true that college costs are criminally high though. Everyone graduates with medical school-level debt even if they are not entering medical-pay level careers.
Anyway, can we stop with this inter generational warfare crap? The enemy is the 1% of the 1% and it only makes them happy to see us squabble.
22.
The Ancient Randonneur
As long the commie fuckmuzzles keep the gummint outta Social Security and Medicare everything will be just fine.
23.
Ohio Mom
@syphonblue: What was it George Carlin said? It’s a big club and you aren’t in it.
But Kennedy’s son and Trump are.
24.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule:
Indoctrinated. It’s a malignant mind virus.
Anyway, can we stop with this inter generational warfare crap?
Yes, yes and thrice yes. One of the first refuges of the simple minded.
I’d be beyond ecstatic to have ½% of what the youngsters who engage in this nonsense assume I’ve got.
26.
Brickley Paiste
Well put, Mr. Cole
For too long the DLC / Clinton approach has held sway: promote moderate candidate who don’t make too much noise about raising taxes on the wealthy or reigning in the bankers that provide funding while making polite noises that virtue signal regarding teh gays, abortion, and on down the check list
Until recently, this approach had the benefit – really the only benefit- of winning elections
But with Clinton’s defeat – a loss for which generations will suffer – perhaps it’s a good time to offer candidate who fight for the right things without constantly recalibration game their positions.
For those desperately clinging to their past strategies: If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
If the
27.
EBT
@Ohio Mom: Ultimately this is correct. We must work together to overthrow porky.
The subsistence retirement age folk, and a radialized politicalized 18-34 bucket would be a fairly powerful force.
Someone on NPR called the split between Democrats as the traditional Democrats vs the “Venezuelan” wing in all seriousness. Oh FFS is it too much to expect to ask for better pundits?
30.
TenguPhule
@A Ghost To Most: But think of the environmental impact statements! //
Oh FFS is it too much to expect to ask for better pundits?
Yes. SATSQ.
33.
The Dangerman
Next question?
Is it a bits too early to get Baud to run in 2020?
34.
Kay
I think it’s partly that they missed the 1980’s which is when a lot of the Right wing themes really became conventional wisdom- were redefined as “centrist”.
They’re more open to the ideas apart from the label- it doesn’t have the stigma where it’s just automatically off limits.
Someone on NPR called the split between Democrats as the traditional Democrats vs the “Venezuelan” wing in all seriousness.
Given that the successful candidate under discussion is named Ocasio-Cortez, that’s not a dog whistle — that’s an air horn of racism.
36.
Scamp Dog
Don’t forget the Republican claims that Obama was a raging socialist. Lots of young people thought he was a fairly good president, so socialism must not be so bad, right?
37.
Mai naem mobile
@Joe Falco: I didn’t hear it but I bet thats Paris Denard who is just dumb. He’s so dumb you can’t argue with him.
38.
EBT
@Joe Falco: What do you expect from Nice Polite Republicans?
39.
TenguPhule
@NotMax: Sorry, some of us are still bitter about the SS age requirement changes. Not to mention every union contract since 1988 (when they started really taking an axe to contracted pensions & benefits for the younger members).
Someone on NPR called the split between Democrats as the traditional Democrats vs the “Venezuelan” wing
That’s the narrow conventional view I’m talking about. Where there’s no thought to the actual proposals- it’s just THE LEFT(!) and they stop thinking. My sense is with some younger people it’s more like “why would it be crazy and unthinkable for everyone to have Medicare, again?” They look at the actual policy without some of the baggage.
I don’t think he ever suspended his last campaign. As far as I know there is just the matter of vetting Poco. He sometimes sniffs people by the ______. When you’re a dog they let you do it.
49.
WaterGirl
@Joe Falco: That’s a sweeping generalization. I get so tired of comments like this and the attacks on baby boomers as if we are all evil.
My eldest takes it further. He knows they have higher tax rates but he’s looking at bang for buck. It starts to look like a good deal. Part of why people hate our health care payment system is, it’s a huge pain in the ass. Do people really want to pore over insurance policies and resubmit bills and all that? Spend so much time and energy on these things? What’s the trade-off in quality of life?
What that, even peripherally, has to do with what I said totally eludes me.
52.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
I just commented in another post that I’m back working full time. I celibate another trip around the sun very soon, and I’ve been doing this type of work for 57 years. I want my fucking pony.
At least I learned long ago not to attempt holding my breath waiting for the bastard to show up.
53.
A Ghost To Most
@WaterGirl: To be fair, many of us are. Not that it makes it easier to hear.
54.
Mary G
I so loathe end of the month emails from politicians saying if I don’t give right now, the earth will explode. I’m giving a lot more than I can afford already.
55.
TenguPhule
@Kay: Tell me about it. I’d prefer straight taxes to the HMSA paperwork and copays. Simpler healthcare would be worth it. And so would the freedom from going bankrupt from one medical disaster.
56.
raven
@Ruckus: Celibate huh? That explains why you get cranky now and then!
57.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Reminds me of when I had to purchase HC ins for my company. I’d have loved to donate body parts to avoid that.
58.
Joe Falco
@WaterGirl: It is, I know, and I don’t actually feel like everyone over 50 is the enemy.
Reagan really did a number on people. What a disaster. Expanding Medicare becomes “Venezuela”. It’s just a cheap, easy shot but it’s not true in any practical sense. If it’s socialism for young people then why isn’t it socialism for older people? Are Trump voters socialists? They all love Medicare.
60.
jl
I went to the piece and read through it quickly. Most of it is clueless CW BS, as if Weigel and Chotiner were settling down into their career arc toward Gergenism through Cillizzahood. Look, guys, Matt Ygelisias peered into that abyss, wised up, and has been striving mightily to save himself, maybe you can try it too.
Weigel is some kind of person who has some kind of job knowing about politics, right? Can he look at the debates to see how much local issues shaped that race? And Crowley got so spooked he sent a surrogate the second debate (which is so weird, I never heard of such a thing, and it’s kind of a hoot to watch even a few minutes of what happened then). Edit: I read through it quickly, if Weigel mentioned that I missed it.
And ‘socialism’. Look into the details of BS and OC’s platforms, IMHO most of it is more like Truman than anything out of international socialist vanguard. OC’s government job guarantee is one exception, but I think for most of it, New and Fair Deal mixed economy is now socialism. Both interviewer and interviewee seem oblivious to that development. Only ruthless corporate dominated crony capitalism is real capitalism now, Welfare, subsidies and breaks for corporations, our uber-people, is real capitalism, and any suggestions of anything similar for the ‘lesser’ people is now socialism. It disgusts me.
@NotMax: The division was built in once tiers were established between the olds, the not so olds and the young uns. Its only human to want to blame the whole group that in general looks like they got the best part of the deal for themselves while denying the folks behind them in line any chance of ever getting a similar deal. Even I have problems with that sometimes. And I generally like older people.
64.
Ruckus
@raven:
Spelling gets me every time!
Of course I ain’t changing it. The effect is better this way.
This has already been alluded to above, but it’s probably worth spelling out – the RW spent so long demonising as soc!alism everything that has enabled our generation to live independently (in the somewhat rare cases that we’ve managed it) that we’ve ultimately decided, “Well, guess soc!alism isn’t so bad, then.” There probably aren’t that many people my age who are as far to the left as I am, but that’s like saying there aren’t too many people my age who love weed as much as Willie Nelson does. Doesn’t mean the under 35 cohort isn’t probably this country’s most consistently left-leaning generation overall since… ever? (Yes, even the Boomers. Especially the Boomers – around 52% of people under 30 voted for Nixon in 1972, IIRC.)
Someone who was born when the Soviet Union collapsed would be 27 this year. For their whole lives what they’ve heard is that tuition-free college is socialism and universal healthcare is socialism and progressive taxation is socialism. If that’s what you’ve been told socialism is for your whole life, why wouldn’t you support socialism?
@(((CassandraLeo))): I have a pre 68 election issue of Look where the interviewed guys who were in the Nam about the election and the Trickster. The conventional wisdom was “don’t stop the bombing until I leave this motherfucker”!
70.
jl
@Kay: Need to contact them and complain about either completely ignorant or biased pundits, hosts, and BS analysis.
71.
EBT
@Jeffro: Ask them if that is actually acting in the fashion of comradeship. Use your magic parent powers of shame generation, from an angle they are receptive to.
Anyway, can we stop with this inter generational warfare crap? The enemy is the 1% of the 1% and it only makes them happy to see us squabble.
This. This. This.
And ‘Young democrats’ aren’t the only ones so open to socialism. This not-so-young Democrat has been pretty Gaia-damned receptive since pretty much forever.
what do we do with 62 million brainwashed seditionists?
i understand there is a market for Soylent Green….. //
75.
The Moar You Know
And about a third of families say they are better off because of the cuts, according to polls by Politico and the New York Times.
@TenguPhule: Which means almost all of that 1/3rd haven’t run the numbers yet. And they are staggering. My tax guy ran ours back before they’d passed the bill, but the percentages were already out there and known.
Short version: We are middle class, not high income earners. I don’t know where I’m going to come up with $15000 dollars in six months. Seriously. No fucking idea. And that’s the kind of increase a lot of people are looking at. The new normal, as it were.
I know one person who is actually going to have their taxes reduced, and yes, they make over a half-million dollars a year. And yes, they voted for Trump.
76.
EBT
@Kay: Expanding medicare isn’t Venezuela until the largest power in the hemisphere spends 125 years with it’s dick in the continent.
@Ruckus: uh huh, heh heh heh, he said ‘celibate’ hehe heehheh snork
78.
gorram
People more directly witnessing the failures of capitalism than* their parents are more open to addressing those failures of capitalism than their parents.
*Note, young Americans, especially young White Americans are still on the whole pretty sheltered from the worst of the global economic system, but compared to prior generations of Americans, especially White Americans?
I read the interview and I give Weigel credit for saying that DC journos are all social acquaintances and socialize with one another after hours and that they don’t really understand the concerns of people outside the beltway. For them politics is all a theoretical discussion and for everyone else it’s real life with real consequences. That’s something you rarely hear from the Very Serious People.
Thought I would point out, since buried in my overlong (as usual) comment above.
Crowley really flubbed his campaign at the end. He got so spooked by the first debate, he sent a surrogate to the second to debate for him. I saw a little news blurb about it, and made a point to find a clip of it, since the idea was so outlandish I wanted to see what happened.
Maybe what happened in that district was a fluke, maybe not. We’ll find out. But to drone on about all the big implications of the results, without noting that Crowley did some weird stunts and flubbed out at the end is misleading. I’d be fine with either in Congress, as long as we keep a reliable Democratic vote. But I think a big part of it is Crowley got complacent and didn’t properly prepare himself for his first real election battle in a long time.
Only ruthless corporate dominated crony capitalism is real capitalism now, Welfare, subsidies and breaks for corporations, our uber-people, is real capitalism, and any suggestions of anything similar for the ‘lesser’ people is now socialism. It disgusts me.
“Socialism? That’s the insult? What do the rich call all their tax breaks and tax shelters and lower tax rates on dividends than on work? I call it welfare for the wealthiest. I call it giveaways to those who’ve already been richly given.
What do CEOs call all the tax breaks their companies just got, which they just turned into…NOT. JOBS. but yet more welfare for stockholders. It’s not like capitalism is some sacred system gifted to us by the gods…it’s an economic system, and if left unchecked, all the gains drift right on up to the 1%, while the people who DO THE WORK get zip. That is, if their job hasn’t been taken by a robot, or sent overseas.
This shouldn’t be a discussion about ‘socialism’…it should be about WHO. THE. GOVERNMENT. IS. LOOKING. OUT. FOR. The people, or the powerful? The workers who produce the wealth, or the 1% who pocket the gains?”
– every Dem stump speech from now until the Sun explodes
@Joe Falco: Reason # sixteen jillion I stopped listening to NPR. The poor bastards signed on to the drone command language channel and then lost the remote.
@Mnemosyne: Venezuela has been a RWNJ meme for anything they deem to be remotely socialist like the ACA. Don’t ask how I know.
89.
tobie
@Ohio Mom: Thank you, Ohio Mom, for this. I’m still paying off my house and it causes me a lot of heart ache and headache and I struggle to make ends meet and likely will not be able to retire till I’m 75. I may be the middle class but I’m not the enemy screwing the young. Can we please direct our ire at those who have worked their ass off to hurt working folk–you know, the folks gutting unions, pushing for right to work laws, streamlining if not eliminating what the government spends on education, advocating the privatization of everything including national parks, etc etc etc?
90.
jl
@Jeffro: Outlaw ‘dead peasant’ insurance today, death camps tomorrow! We’re already on the road to serfdom, since I think corporate ‘dead peasant’ insurance policies were outlawed recently.
Now, only dead peasants will have life insurance, thanks Obama!
91.
raven
@tobie: It’s stupid blog, who gives fuck where any of these dopes directs their ire?
92.
Mary G
I started working in the 70s and the inflation was awful. We were convinced that we were all doomed, because the price of everything went up so much faster than my salary. Getting gas for the car was a day-long struggle. President Ford put out those stupid “WIN” pins for “Whip inflation now!”
And I know a lot of people my age who’ll have to work until they die, because they have no savings at all. Boomers got screwed by the rich as much as anybody. They just want us to fight between ourselves rather than with them.
93.
Chris T.
I have a suggestion, that might actually work: convince Trump to rename the party the “Trumpublicans” (the narcissistic asshole would probably love that idea). That might help peel off enough of the so-called “independents” so that they don’t just vote Trumpublican to sideline what remains of the Treason Party, after which the Conservadems can split off from the actual Dems/Sockalist-dems and we can have two functioning parties (which used to be just called “the Democratic Party”.
(I don’t think I’ve ever even met a self-identifying communist offline, much less an actual Tankie.)
95.
Colleeniem
@The Ancient Randonneur: This drives me batty. We have the most information we’ve ever had ever, in the form of written and oral speech that is available for FREE from voices all over the place. People advocating on their own behalf. And they still only listen to each other. How freaking petty.
Hey Joe, not all of us “olds” feel that way. I got my first job with a real paycheck at 13,washing cars at the car store for my old man, I’ve been paying SS for 60 years, so yes, I’d like it protected. I’m 73 years old and worked and paid SS until last December. I’ve been paying into Medicare since it was invented, so that’s important too. I’m have zero interest in pulling up any ladders or hacking them to pieces. I own a nice house and I don’t mind paying taxes to send other people’s kids to school either. I went to my 50th college reunion last year and with a few exceptions the vast majority of my classmates weren’t old, greedy, cranky, assholish baby boomers. The business I was in didn’t have lavish retirement programs, so there isn’t anything there to worry about or to protect. My wife flew International flights and did training for US Air, the company blew up the pension program and her retirement when she takes it is going be less than a third of what it should be and it’ll come from the Feds, sure she’s pissed, but what she’d like to see is pilots, FAs and everybody else get the same deal she got when she started, so no fuck the kids attitude there either. I get really tired of dickish comments about my generation and I’m a guy who agrees the generations behind mine are getting screwed. Dial it down, okay?
99.
EBT
@(((CassandraLeo))): I know a lot of Ancoms. And bog standard DSA type folks. (either DSA proper or aligning with the goals and ideals of)
I recently read a collection of essays put out by the DSA called The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century. Outside of a few old-school calls for the socialization of the means of production (what does that mean when your computer is designed in one country and assembled from parts manufactured in other parts of the world and runs software developed all over the world?), it was mostly a grab-bag of liberal ideas implemented or floated since the New Deal (single-payer/medicare for all; full employment; a minimum wage that is a living wage; guaranteed housing; free or low-cost higher education; equal rights for everyone, etc.) mixed with some libertarian/communist ideas (elimination of intellectual property, elimination of the police).
The one idea that was new to me (I’m sure it’s not to people who follow this) was socialization of capital (instead of socialization of enterprises), so that instead of having to get approval from a bank for the money to start your business (which means that the bank will only approve what will make it a certain amount of profit), you would get approval from a state organization whose concerns would be more as to how the enterprise would benefit society. I think the country as a whole is pretty far from embracing this idea, but, as a start, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Obama had nationalized the investment banks we bailed out in 2009 instead of making them whole and sending them on their way to record bonuses, while the homeowners who were conned by them got little relief.
Maybe what happened in that district was a fluke, maybe not. We’ll find out. But to drone on about all the big implications of the results, without noting that Crowley did some weird stunts and flubbed out at the end is misleading. I’d be fine with either in Congress, as long as we keep a reliable Democratic vote. But I think a big part of it is Crowley got complacent and didn’t properly prepare himself for his first real election battle in a long time.
Also, Crowley was the Old Guard representative of a district whose demographics were changing.
Incumbency is still a powerful advantage, with some good reasons, but the old leadership needs to make room for new blood.
103.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ohio Mom: This. Assholes like the Mercers, the DeVoses, the Kochs, the Waltons, Bezos, Ellison, Dorsey, etc are hoovering up everthing from everyone so it can sit somewhere and do nothing while others starve. They are the enemy…the system is rigged to transfer resources to them from everyone else.
@The Moar You Know: They won’t see the numbers until they do their taxes next winter/spring. Some of them are in for a shock.
105.
Yutsano
@A Ghost To Most: Nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. The saddest part is I’m only half kidding.
@Mnemosyne: JFC she’s not even all that socialist. She argued for Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, and free college tuition. Those are becoming bog standard Democratic positions. And it’s because she LISTENED to her district. Granted she’s a shoo-in to win but the fact that she took the time to figure out what people actually wanted is what Democrats need to do. And more of them will win that way.
I’d be fine with either in Congress, as long as we keep a reliable Democratic vote.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Virtually every Democrat in a safe seat is a reliable vote, so you are effectively suggesting that it doesn’t matter who holds the seat, and that is completely false. Here is part of Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign attack ad on Crowley:
It’s time we acknowledge that not all Democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water, or breathe our air, cannot possibly represent us.
If the Democrats win the House in November that vile, lying fucker had a decent chance of becoming speaker at some stage, and if he didn’t make that he’d be chairing something. Either way he would be influencing what legislation would be proposed, and Crowley is about the last Democrat in Congress I’d trust with that mission. Thank fuck Crowley is gone.
107.
Gelfling 545
@Kay: As I have mention ed before, around the Time of the 2008 election a was working in a field largely populated by young people, recent college grads mostly. At the time Palin was kicking the socialist theme around it cane to my attention that few had much of an idea of what socialism actually meant. After having it explained to them the almost universal reaction was “See, that’s what I’m talking about. “
@EBT: Fair point; I tend to think of them as anarchists first and communists second, but I guess they qualify as both. In any case, not Tankies.
(I probably qualify as anarchist by at least some definitions myself, but I’m also pragmatic about it to the point of being a Yellow Dog Democrat as well.)
@PJ: I’ve long thought postal banking is an idea whose time will soon approach us. That isn’t all that different. As an added bonus it would probably put every last payday lender out of business – almost worth pursuing for that reason alone.
113.
The Ancient Randonneur
@jl: You were right about most of it. I was just pleasantly surprised to see someone like Weigel make that observation.
114.
Seanly
I’m 100% for all of those things that Hannity hilariously posted are terrible things that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is for. If that is her platform, I am for her for fucking President when she’s old enough. If that means this 50-year old Democratic white male is now a young one again then so be it.
I assume I would have some differences in how those policies are carried out, but otherwise, I am for them all!
@EBT: More often ignorant, and in many cases both, but overall I don’t disagree. Most people have never heard an actual anarchist make the case for anarchism, though – they’ve only ever heard it defined by its opponents, who can be found across the political spectrum. (It also doesn’t help that there are some right-wingers claiming to be anarchists who… aren’t, which is all I’ll say about them.)
116.
HRA
Over on Memeorandum there is an article by the Babylon Bee (?) It says Occasio Cortez and Crowley are tied and there will another vote taken.
The Republican tax cuts are a humongous giveaway to the wealthy. I call that an entitlement, lucky ducky welfare.
118.
Gelfling 545
@Joe Falco: Then why portray yourself as thinking so? You interact on this blog with a fair number of us eho are 50 and up. Does it seem that we are trying to do you out of something?
119.
Mandalay
@HRA: It’s an attempt at right wing humor. You are on a RWNJ web site.
120.
B.B.A.
@Crœsos: I was 6 when the Soviet Union collapsed. I know how terrible it was, but this is one of those days when I wish enemies of the party could be rounded up and sent to the gulags.
121.
Joe Falco
@Jager: I’ve already responded to WaterGirl that I don’t actually feel that way about boomers and the older generations, but I’m the one who made that comment so I’ll say it again once more with feeling: I apologize for saying something incorrect and pig-headed that I should know better not to say, even in jest. It doesn’t further the cause of justice, and it plays into the hands of those who would rather see us divided and powerless.
American families are unsure whether they are benefiting from the tax cut, and small businesses say they are confused by the complex changes affecting them. A recent poll from Monmouth University found 34 percent of adults approve of the tax cut now, a slide from January when adults were about evenly split between approving and disapproving.
Obviously, most wage earners have adjusted their withholding. The only question for many will be credits they may qualify for which might increase their refunds.
Most analyses project that middle class and lower income taxpayers will see modest cuts in the first year, but that these may cuts may disappear in the later years of the Trump cut. But the rich will do well forever. Many small business owners will see cuts thanks to the new Section 199A deduction, and have already taken this into account by lowering their estimated tax payments.
But a lot of blue state taxpayers will be hit, as will various subgroups of taxpayers. But Trump and the GOP are counting on the kind of thing that I’ve heard from conservative workers in an office near me. A lot of people are happy with the small increase in take home pay that they are seeing. They have no idea how massive the tax cuts are that have been shoveled to the rich, or falsely assume that it is proportional.
Also, the Trump administration is making a big deal about the revisions to the 2018 Form 1040. Yep. It’s a postcard for people with the simplest returns. But since most people e-file, this is not that big a deal. And for people with more complicated returns, they will now have a shitload of additional Schedules detailing their information. But the new form is a great example of Trump’s bullshit showmanship. A lot of flash and little real substance.
Apology accepted. Now I’m going to give you a piece of advice I gave my grandson when he was 16 and being a real jerk to his Mom and brother. “Don’t Be A Dick!”.
125.
J R in WV
John, some of your best work is the shortest!!
On the other hand, this is so short that you imply that I and my fellow boomers are as a group screwing the youth out of great lives.
When what I think you mean is that the current business systems are built so as to screw workers of all ages nearly equally, but the older workers benefit from their head start.
I think taxes should top out by confiscating income above a couple of million dollars a year, and limit corporations to breaking even after paying a very small dividend to the owners, while management makes some small multiple of the entry level wage the corporation offers. And most or all that money being made by instant transactions on the markets should be going to education and medical care. Or just paid as income taxes…
Perhaps just keep equities from being sold for, say, at least 30 days of ownership. Make investment into ownership again. That rule would also level out the ups and downs, and slow down crashes while events are addressed by regulators and market makers.
I never (well hardly every!) make short comments, as all can see by this novel…
Thanks John for all you have done and continue doing~!!!!!
More often ignorant, and in many cases both, but overall I don’t disagree. Most people have never heard an actual anarchist make the case for anarchism, though
I have. It’s as stupid as the libertarian case for their ideal society.
A friend of a friend was the disciple and heir of some mildly famous old style radical. I was invited to salons where he would circulate, speak, solicit contributions. Most of his supporters were solidly middle class and members of upper income groups. This was doubly odd since none of these people had any intention of giving up their lifestyles and comforts to live the kind of life this guy was advocating. They seemed to believe that the poor and downtrodden would be rescued by this guy and his lieutenants, and maybe the ultra-rich would get their just desserts, but those who contributed to the cause would just go on their merry way.
Apology accepted. Now I’m going to give you a piece of advice I gave my grandson when he was 16 and being a real jerk to his Mom and brother. “Don’t Be A Dick!”.
That’s NOT accepting an apology. Now you’re the one being a Dick.
A guy I worked for in broadcasting for 6-7 years is 96 and still going into the office everyday to piss around with his pet charities and family foundation. He got his MBA at Harvard B School in 1948 on the GI Bill, over dinner one night he said, ‘They don’t teach anything about business anymore, they teach financial engineering.”
130.
tobie
@raven: No, it’s not a stupid blog but we live in stupid times when asking pragmatic questions like, how can we switch from an employer-based healthcare system to a Medicare4All and who will pay for the program, is treated as some kind of reactionary, corporatist sentiment.
No, it’s good advice. Maybe he should write it on his hand so he doesn’t forget.
132.
PJ
@B.B.A.: Don’t worry, it might be coming, but it’ll be the Republican Party sending people to the gulag.
133.
tobie
@Yutsano: In the 1980s public universities were close to free because they had generous federal and state funding. Reagan cut federal funding for universities and state governments followed suit and that’s how tuition rose across the board for public and private universities.
I’m still not convinced Medicare 4 All will be an easy switch for the US given how many people currently get their healthcare through their employer. I would prefer to see the ACA turbo-charged so it’s more like the Swiss or German healthcare systems but I guess “Bismarck Model” doesn’t have the same ring as “Single Payer.”
I would prefer to see the ACA turbo-charged so it’s more like the Swiss or German healthcare systems but I guess “Bismarck Model” doesn’t have the same ring as “Single Payer.”
I’ve recently heard some conservatives admit that the Swiss system might be a model worth implementing in the US.
136.
Mandalay
@Jager: The poster made a sincere and genuine apology but you couldn’t let it go – you still had to go after them. I despise shitheads like you.
.
137.
PJ
@tobie: City University in New York was free until the fiscal crisis in 1975. Fear City, by Kim Phillips-Fein, which came out last year, has a good account of the how and why of this, in particular how the conservatives in the Ford Administration (Greenspan, Rumsfeld, Cheney) saw it as an opportunity to force the city to gut public services, crush unions, and sell-off real estate at bargain prices to developers.
@Brachiator: There have always been dilettantes like that in any political ideology. If the “explanation” you received didn’t once mention at least a couple of “Spanish Civil War” or “Catalonia” or “Free Territory” or “Nestor Makhno” or “mutual aid” or such, or if they demonstrated no understanding of their significance/meaning, you’re probably dealing with a person who listened to a Dead Kennedys song once and hopped on a bandwagon.
There are people who have examined the specifics of what an anarchist society would look like seriously, though. A few: Alan Moore. Ursula K. Le Guin. Noam Chomsky. George Orwell, for that matter – Homage to Catalonia basically describes a functional historical case of anarchy in its first dozen pages, and then spends its remaining pages examining why it didn’t last. (“Tankies” actually comprises approximately 50% of the explanation.)
If anyone talks about anarchy as though it’s a thing that will occur spontaneously in America, they have no idea what they’re saying. Occupy Wall Street attracted no small share of kooks, but along the way, particularly in the aftermath of Sandy, it did establish a basic architecture for what anarchy might look like in America – an effective charity that functioned as a gift economy, largely on an ad hoc basis.
I’m on a phone, so I’m not going to go into great depth about all the theory and history involved here. I’ll say a few other things, though. First, that many people define anarchy by the absence of a state, which is perhaps its least important feature. Eliminate the state with no other changes and you end up with corporate rule. The core defining principle of anarchy is actually the absence of rulers – the idea being that coercion is intrinsically immoral. It may be acceptable as a last resort – for violent criminals, say – but is otherwise to be shunned.
Secondly, people tend to think of anarchy in terms of what it lacks, but in order to bring about such a society, you will need alternative infrastructures that are absent in modern capitalist societies. If coercion is immoral, hierarchical organisations are unacceptable. There are necessary hierarchies – parent and child, student and teacher, trainer and trainee. But even these should be monitored for signs of abuse.
However, humans are social animals, so you’ll still need organisations. The replacement for the corporation becomes workplace democracy, but obviously you can’t have everyone vote on everything, so an animating principle becomes that people get say over decisions that affect them.
(This could extend beyond the workplace, I should note – women’s health is between them and their doctors; queer issues aren’t for cis/het people to determine; and so on. I would consider this a massive improvement.)
The problem becomes: how do you create such a society? And the answer is provided by the great political philosopher Hermes Conrad: “If you want a box hurled into the sun, you’ve got to do it yourself.”
Anyone who claims to be an anarchist but isn’t in some way concerned with constructing an alternative infrastructure for our economy probably isn’t very serious about it. Create workplaces that function with as much workplace democracy as feasible in today’s society. Make charities that help institute something more akin to a gift economy. Work in politics in a manner that reduces hierarchies’ influence. Something.
There are a lot of ways to contribute to such a society, but if a person isn’t focused on creating such a society, I’d argue that they’ve missed the point of anarchism. Anarchy that springs into existence spontaneously is like a shooting star – perhaps beautiful to look at, and short-lived. People accept widespread coercion because they don’t think anything else is possible, or they think it’s necessary. If they see that cooperation is necessary to the existence of human society, more productive than coercion, and more conducive to human happiness, it’s possible that someday, many years down the road, governments will no longer be necessary and capitalism will no longer be sustainable.
Anyone that talks like “Step 1: Revolution; Step 2: ?; Step 3: Anarchy!” is… not thinking clearly. I almost certainly won’t live to see anarchy, but it is a nice ideal to aspire to. By working to build cooperative organisations and opposing hierarchical ones it’s possible to at least move closer to it, even if it might be like Zeno’s Paradox, where you never quite get there.
I hope there weren’t any typos there, since I probably won’t be able to edit them. FYWP
“But with Clinton’s defeat – a loss for which generations will suffer – perhaps it’s a good time to offer candidate who fight for the right things without constantly recalibration game their positions. ”
You Russian Fudkturd, Clinton won the election by millions of votes.
Trump and your Russian boss stole a few thousand votes here and there to win a couple of states’ electoral votes, those electors didn’t do their sworn duty to protect the Constitution of the United States, and here we are, in a boat sinking into a sewage lagoon with the people of Russia. Thanks a lot, Russian tool~!!~
@Mandalay: @(((CassandraLeo))): one final note: a lot of upper/middle-class radicals would almost certainly need to give up some comforts for an anarchist society to exist; I don’t have any delusions that I’m not among their number. I don’t really care; as long as I have: food; water; shelter; a reasonably good computer; internet access; a turntable; a sound system; some records; some books; a phone; and perhaps a television, I probably wouldn’t miss my other possessions much. (I’d prefer not to even own a car, but Florida. Hopefully a proper anarchist society would have decent public transportation.)
I started working in 1964, when I was 14, and retired in 2008.
Wife and I both worked all our lives, she was also elected Sec-Treas of a nation-wide union local. She got a phone call right after Reagan was sworn in from a woman appointed to a Dept of Labor position.
That bitch was calling union officers to enjoy threatening them — she told wife that if she could catch her in an error in the union paperwork, she could and would take our home.
chopper
it really is simple, innit.
EBT
Them student loans too.
rikyrah
Can’t argue with you, Cole.
Not at all.
syphonblue
Anthony Kennedy’s son loaned Donald Trump $1 billion while working at Deutsche Bank
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21999314/anthony-kennedy-son-donald-trump-deutche-bank/
Juice Box
Because the Cons spent eight years labeling all kinds of good things, like health care, “socialism”.
TenguPhule
Sadly true.
Fuck all the Grandfathered in benefits while shafting the newcomers.
A reckoning is coming.
Alain the site fixer
FYI: major outage and issues at Comcast but also likely to other backend connnections that folks need to make their cool internet services work.
I’m done for today, can’t work and so I’m going to go smack some fools with my nunchucks in Call of Duty. One of the perks of working at home…
dm
What’s not to like? Old people like it, too — just try to touch their Social Security and Medicare.
TenguPhule
Via Wapo.
27% is a universal insanity constant.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule:
Grease the wheels of good government with the fat of traitorous greedo assholes.
Joe Falco
The olds don’t just want to pull up the ladder behind them. They want to take it, carve it into a slingshot and take shots at the young below while asking them why don’t they make a ladder of their own.
Ruckus
@chopper:
One would think that it’s simple. But if you are trying to disguise what you are doing with bullshit, somehow it isn’t.
NotMax
Yup. We roll around, naked, in the money every night. And laugh.
(Is // necessary?)
TenguPhule
Are Republicans born evil or just indoctrinated that way?
chris
A tiny bit of good news:
EBT
@TenguPhule: The Keyes constant.
Ruckus
@Joe Falco:
Like anything else with large numbers involved, not all the olds are selfish bastards.
And of course some are lots worse.
Joe Falco
@Ruckus: Yes, some of them use flamethrowers instead of slingshots.
rikyrah
@chris:
Yeah :)
NotMax
@Ruckus
Indeed. Leave the broad brush to Tom Sawyer for whitewashing the fence.
All generalizations break down, including this one.
Ohio Mom
Some of what you are seeing is an illusion. Yes, older people may have more assets because they’ve had more time to acquire them (e.g., paid off houses). But lots of us boomers are in no shape to retire. For one, when we started working, pensions were being replaced by 401k’s.
It is true that college costs are criminally high though. Everyone graduates with medical school-level debt even if they are not entering medical-pay level careers.
Anyway, can we stop with this inter generational warfare crap? The enemy is the 1% of the 1% and it only makes them happy to see us squabble.
The Ancient Randonneur
As long the commie fuckmuzzles keep the gummint outta Social Security and Medicare everything will be just fine.
Ohio Mom
@syphonblue: What was it George Carlin said? It’s a big club and you aren’t in it.
But Kennedy’s son and Trump are.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule:
Indoctrinated. It’s a malignant mind virus.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Yes, yes and thrice yes. One of the first refuges of the simple minded.
I’d be beyond ecstatic to have ½% of what the youngsters who engage in this nonsense assume I’ve got.
Brickley Paiste
Well put, Mr. Cole
For too long the DLC / Clinton approach has held sway: promote moderate candidate who don’t make too much noise about raising taxes on the wealthy or reigning in the bankers that provide funding while making polite noises that virtue signal regarding teh gays, abortion, and on down the check list
Until recently, this approach had the benefit – really the only benefit- of winning elections
But with Clinton’s defeat – a loss for which generations will suffer – perhaps it’s a good time to offer candidate who fight for the right things without constantly recalibration game their positions.
For those desperately clinging to their past strategies: If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
If the
EBT
@Ohio Mom: Ultimately this is correct. We must work together to overthrow porky.
The subsistence retirement age folk, and a radialized politicalized 18-34 bucket would be a fairly powerful force.
Mnemosyne
@Brickley Paiste:
4/10. Didn’t stick the landing.
Joe Falco
Someone on NPR called the split between Democrats as the traditional Democrats vs the “Venezuelan” wing in all seriousness. Oh FFS is it too much to expect to ask for better pundits?
TenguPhule
@A Ghost To Most: But think of the environmental impact statements! //
cleek
it would be a better question if younger people weren’t always more inclined towards socialism.
TenguPhule
@Joe Falco:
Yes. SATSQ.
The Dangerman
Is it a bits too early to get Baud to run in 2020?
Kay
I think it’s partly that they missed the 1980’s which is when a lot of the Right wing themes really became conventional wisdom- were redefined as “centrist”.
They’re more open to the ideas apart from the label- it doesn’t have the stigma where it’s just automatically off limits.
Mnemosyne
@Joe Falco:
Given that the successful candidate under discussion is named Ocasio-Cortez, that’s not a dog whistle — that’s an air horn of racism.
Scamp Dog
Don’t forget the Republican claims that Obama was a raging socialist. Lots of young people thought he was a fairly good president, so socialism must not be so bad, right?
Mai naem mobile
@Joe Falco: I didn’t hear it but I bet thats Paris Denard who is just dumb. He’s so dumb you can’t argue with him.
EBT
@Joe Falco: What do you expect from Nice Polite Republicans?
TenguPhule
@NotMax: Sorry, some of us are still bitter about the SS age requirement changes. Not to mention every union contract since 1988 (when they started really taking an axe to contracted pensions & benefits for the younger members).
Kay
@Joe Falco:
That’s the narrow conventional view I’m talking about. Where there’s no thought to the actual proposals- it’s just THE LEFT(!) and they stop thinking. My sense is with some younger people it’s more like “why would it be crazy and unthinkable for everyone to have Medicare, again?” They look at the actual policy without some of the baggage.
Jeffro
@cleek:
My kids are more full-on communists…with the resulting amount of work being done around the house that you would expect…
Which is kind of a shame, since our family is about as close to a true democracy as they’re likely to see in their lifetimes.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
They look at Sweden and Denmark and go “Why can’t we have this nice shit too?”
Llelldorin
Because better the red flag than the white flag or the white hood.
raven
@Ohio Mom: I still owe $18k on mine. In the words of Kinky Friedman, “I want the last check I write to bounce”!
raven
@TenguPhule: Xin Loi mofo.
A Ghost To Most
@Kay: Which brings us back to the question: what do we do with 62 million brainwashed seditionists?
Cacti
@TenguPhule:
Then I’d suggest the friends of Wilmer take a long, hard look in the mirror.
MomSense
@The Dangerman:
I don’t think he ever suspended his last campaign. As far as I know there is just the matter of vetting Poco. He sometimes sniffs people by the ______. When you’re a dog they let you do it.
WaterGirl
@Joe Falco: That’s a sweeping generalization. I get so tired of comments like this and the attacks on baby boomers as if we are all evil.
Kay
@TenguPhule:
My eldest takes it further. He knows they have higher tax rates but he’s looking at bang for buck. It starts to look like a good deal. Part of why people hate our health care payment system is, it’s a huge pain in the ass. Do people really want to pore over insurance policies and resubmit bills and all that? Spend so much time and energy on these things? What’s the trade-off in quality of life?
NotMax
@TenguPhule
What that, even peripherally, has to do with what I said totally eludes me.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
I just commented in another post that I’m back working full time. I celibate another trip around the sun very soon, and I’ve been doing this type of work for 57 years. I want my fucking pony.
At least I learned long ago not to attempt holding my breath waiting for the bastard to show up.
A Ghost To Most
@WaterGirl: To be fair, many of us are. Not that it makes it easier to hear.
Mary G
I so loathe end of the month emails from politicians saying if I don’t give right now, the earth will explode. I’m giving a lot more than I can afford already.
TenguPhule
@Kay: Tell me about it. I’d prefer straight taxes to the HMSA paperwork and copays. Simpler healthcare would be worth it. And so would the freedom from going bankrupt from one medical disaster.
raven
@Ruckus: Celibate huh? That explains why you get cranky now and then!
Ruckus
@Kay:
Reminds me of when I had to purchase HC ins for my company. I’d have loved to donate body parts to avoid that.
Joe Falco
@WaterGirl: It is, I know, and I don’t actually feel like everyone over 50 is the enemy.
Kay
@A Ghost To Most:
Reagan really did a number on people. What a disaster. Expanding Medicare becomes “Venezuela”. It’s just a cheap, easy shot but it’s not true in any practical sense. If it’s socialism for young people then why isn’t it socialism for older people? Are Trump voters socialists? They all love Medicare.
jl
I went to the piece and read through it quickly. Most of it is clueless CW BS, as if Weigel and Chotiner were settling down into their career arc toward Gergenism through Cillizzahood. Look, guys, Matt Ygelisias peered into that abyss, wised up, and has been striving mightily to save himself, maybe you can try it too.
Weigel is some kind of person who has some kind of job knowing about politics, right? Can he look at the debates to see how much local issues shaped that race? And Crowley got so spooked he sent a surrogate the second debate (which is so weird, I never heard of such a thing, and it’s kind of a hoot to watch even a few minutes of what happened then). Edit: I read through it quickly, if Weigel mentioned that I missed it.
And ‘socialism’. Look into the details of BS and OC’s platforms, IMHO most of it is more like Truman than anything out of international socialist vanguard. OC’s government job guarantee is one exception, but I think for most of it, New and Fair Deal mixed economy is now socialism. Both interviewer and interviewee seem oblivious to that development. Only ruthless corporate dominated crony capitalism is real capitalism now, Welfare, subsidies and breaks for corporations, our uber-people, is real capitalism, and any suggestions of anything similar for the ‘lesser’ people is now socialism. It disgusts me.
raven
@WaterGirl: Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.
A Ghost To Most
@Ruckus:
Sorry to hear that.
TenguPhule
@NotMax: The division was built in once tiers were established between the olds, the not so olds and the young uns. Its only human to want to blame the whole group that in general looks like they got the best part of the deal for themselves while denying the folks behind them in line any chance of ever getting a similar deal. Even I have problems with that sometimes. And I generally like older people.
Ruckus
@raven:
Spelling gets me every time!
Of course I ain’t changing it. The effect is better this way.
(((CassandraLeo)))
This has already been alluded to above, but it’s probably worth spelling out – the RW spent so long demonising as soc!alism everything that has enabled our generation to live independently (in the somewhat rare cases that we’ve managed it) that we’ve ultimately decided, “Well, guess soc!alism isn’t so bad, then.” There probably aren’t that many people my age who are as far to the left as I am, but that’s like saying there aren’t too many people my age who love weed as much as Willie Nelson does. Doesn’t mean the under 35 cohort isn’t probably this country’s most consistently left-leaning generation overall since… ever? (Yes, even the Boomers. Especially the Boomers – around 52% of people under 30 voted for Nixon in 1972, IIRC.)
raven
@Ruckus: You put it on the tee and I hit it! :)
Crœsos
Someone who was born when the Soviet Union collapsed would be 27 this year. For their whole lives what they’ve heard is that tuition-free college is socialism and universal healthcare is socialism and progressive taxation is socialism. If that’s what you’ve been told socialism is for your whole life, why wouldn’t you support socialism?
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Because Shut up, that’s why.* //s
*Actual Republican Standard.
raven
@(((CassandraLeo))): I have a pre 68 election issue of Look where the interviewed guys who were in the Nam about the election and the Trickster. The conventional wisdom was “don’t stop the bombing until I leave this motherfucker”!
jl
@Kay: Need to contact them and complain about either completely ignorant or biased pundits, hosts, and BS analysis.
EBT
@Jeffro: Ask them if that is actually acting in the fashion of comradeship. Use your magic parent powers of shame generation, from an angle they are receptive to.
BruceFromOhio
@Ohio Mom:
This. This. This.
And ‘Young democrats’ aren’t the only ones so open to socialism. This not-so-young Democrat has been pretty Gaia-damned receptive since pretty much forever.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@jl: Carter, IIRC, tried to get a jobs guarantee passed, so even that bit of her platform isn’t solely the province of the Fifth International.
TenguPhule
@A Ghost To Most:
i understand there is a market for Soylent Green….. //
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: Which means almost all of that 1/3rd haven’t run the numbers yet. And they are staggering. My tax guy ran ours back before they’d passed the bill, but the percentages were already out there and known.
Short version: We are middle class, not high income earners. I don’t know where I’m going to come up with $15000 dollars in six months. Seriously. No fucking idea. And that’s the kind of increase a lot of people are looking at. The new normal, as it were.
I know one person who is actually going to have their taxes reduced, and yes, they make over a half-million dollars a year. And yes, they voted for Trump.
EBT
@Kay: Expanding medicare isn’t Venezuela until the largest power in the hemisphere spends 125 years with it’s dick in the continent.
BruceFromOhio
@Ruckus: uh huh, heh heh heh, he said ‘celibate’ hehe heehheh snork
gorram
People more directly witnessing the failures of capitalism than* their parents are more open to addressing those failures of capitalism than their parents.
*Note, young Americans, especially young White Americans are still on the whole pretty sheltered from the worst of the global economic system, but compared to prior generations of Americans, especially White Americans?
The Ancient Randonneur
@jl:
I read the interview and I give Weigel credit for saying that DC journos are all social acquaintances and socialize with one another after hours and that they don’t really understand the concerns of people outside the beltway. For them politics is all a theoretical discussion and for everyone else it’s real life with real consequences. That’s something you rarely hear from the Very Serious People.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
Have you considered contacting the IRS to get a hardship waiver? I suspect a lot of people are going to do so.
EBT
@Crœsos: A lot of today’s socialists aren’t Tankies/Stalinists.
A Ghost To Most
@Kay: “Are Rump voters socialist?”
Only National Socialists.
jl
Thought I would point out, since buried in my overlong (as usual) comment above.
Crowley really flubbed his campaign at the end. He got so spooked by the first debate, he sent a surrogate to the second to debate for him. I saw a little news blurb about it, and made a point to find a clip of it, since the idea was so outlandish I wanted to see what happened.
Maybe what happened in that district was a fluke, maybe not. We’ll find out. But to drone on about all the big implications of the results, without noting that Crowley did some weird stunts and flubbed out at the end is misleading. I’d be fine with either in Congress, as long as we keep a reliable Democratic vote. But I think a big part of it is Crowley got complacent and didn’t properly prepare himself for his first real election battle in a long time.
Jeffro
@jl:
“Socialism? That’s the insult? What do the rich call all their tax breaks and tax shelters and lower tax rates on dividends than on work? I call it welfare for the wealthiest. I call it giveaways to those who’ve already been richly given.
What do CEOs call all the tax breaks their companies just got, which they just turned into…NOT. JOBS. but yet more welfare for stockholders. It’s not like capitalism is some sacred system gifted to us by the gods…it’s an economic system, and if left unchecked, all the gains drift right on up to the 1%, while the people who DO THE WORK get zip. That is, if their job hasn’t been taken by a robot, or sent overseas.
This shouldn’t be a discussion about ‘socialism’…it should be about WHO. THE. GOVERNMENT. IS. LOOKING. OUT. FOR. The people, or the powerful? The workers who produce the wealth, or the 1% who pocket the gains?”
– every Dem stump speech from now until the Sun explodes
BruceFromOhio
@Joe Falco: Reason # sixteen jillion I stopped listening to NPR. The poor bastards signed on to the drone command language channel and then lost the remote.
jl
@The Ancient Randonneur: OK, I might have been a little unfair. I am grumpy today.
Brachiator
Love it.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Venezuela has been a RWNJ meme for anything they deem to be remotely socialist like the ACA. Don’t ask how I know.
tobie
@Ohio Mom: Thank you, Ohio Mom, for this. I’m still paying off my house and it causes me a lot of heart ache and headache and I struggle to make ends meet and likely will not be able to retire till I’m 75. I may be the middle class but I’m not the enemy screwing the young. Can we please direct our ire at those who have worked their ass off to hurt working folk–you know, the folks gutting unions, pushing for right to work laws, streamlining if not eliminating what the government spends on education, advocating the privatization of everything including national parks, etc etc etc?
jl
@Jeffro: Outlaw ‘dead peasant’ insurance today, death camps tomorrow! We’re already on the road to serfdom, since I think corporate ‘dead peasant’ insurance policies were outlawed recently.
Now, only dead peasants will have life insurance, thanks Obama!
raven
@tobie: It’s stupid blog, who gives fuck where any of these dopes directs their ire?
Mary G
I started working in the 70s and the inflation was awful. We were convinced that we were all doomed, because the price of everything went up so much faster than my salary. Getting gas for the car was a day-long struggle. President Ford put out those stupid “WIN” pins for “Whip inflation now!”
And I know a lot of people my age who’ll have to work until they die, because they have no savings at all. Boomers got screwed by the rich as much as anybody. They just want us to fight between ourselves rather than with them.
Chris T.
I have a suggestion, that might actually work: convince Trump to rename the party the “Trumpublicans” (the narcissistic asshole would probably love that idea). That might help peel off enough of the so-called “independents” so that they don’t just vote Trumpublican to sideline what remains of the Treason Party, after which the Conservadems can split off from the actual Dems/Sockalist-dems and we can have two functioning parties (which used to be just called “the Democratic Party”.
Probably just dreaming though.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@EBT: Probably at least 98%*
(I don’t think I’ve ever even met a self-identifying communist offline, much less an actual Tankie.)
Colleeniem
@The Ancient Randonneur: This drives me batty. We have the most information we’ve ever had ever, in the form of written and oral speech that is available for FREE from voices all over the place. People advocating on their own behalf. And they still only listen to each other. How freaking petty.
NotMax
@Chris T.
Less cumbersome than “The Greatest Party in the History of Creation,” I guess.
;)
SiubhanDuinne
@Brickley Paiste:
It’s reining. Now go away.
Jager
@Joe Falco:
Hey Joe, not all of us “olds” feel that way. I got my first job with a real paycheck at 13,washing cars at the car store for my old man, I’ve been paying SS for 60 years, so yes, I’d like it protected. I’m 73 years old and worked and paid SS until last December. I’ve been paying into Medicare since it was invented, so that’s important too. I’m have zero interest in pulling up any ladders or hacking them to pieces. I own a nice house and I don’t mind paying taxes to send other people’s kids to school either. I went to my 50th college reunion last year and with a few exceptions the vast majority of my classmates weren’t old, greedy, cranky, assholish baby boomers. The business I was in didn’t have lavish retirement programs, so there isn’t anything there to worry about or to protect. My wife flew International flights and did training for US Air, the company blew up the pension program and her retirement when she takes it is going be less than a third of what it should be and it’ll come from the Feds, sure she’s pissed, but what she’d like to see is pilots, FAs and everybody else get the same deal she got when she started, so no fuck the kids attitude there either. I get really tired of dickish comments about my generation and I’m a guy who agrees the generations behind mine are getting screwed. Dial it down, okay?
EBT
@(((CassandraLeo))): I know a lot of Ancoms. And bog standard DSA type folks. (either DSA proper or aligning with the goals and ideals of)
Omnes Omnibus
@(((CassandraLeo))): I know some Wobblies.
PJ
I recently read a collection of essays put out by the DSA called The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century. Outside of a few old-school calls for the socialization of the means of production (what does that mean when your computer is designed in one country and assembled from parts manufactured in other parts of the world and runs software developed all over the world?), it was mostly a grab-bag of liberal ideas implemented or floated since the New Deal (single-payer/medicare for all; full employment; a minimum wage that is a living wage; guaranteed housing; free or low-cost higher education; equal rights for everyone, etc.) mixed with some libertarian/communist ideas (elimination of intellectual property, elimination of the police).
The one idea that was new to me (I’m sure it’s not to people who follow this) was socialization of capital (instead of socialization of enterprises), so that instead of having to get approval from a bank for the money to start your business (which means that the bank will only approve what will make it a certain amount of profit), you would get approval from a state organization whose concerns would be more as to how the enterprise would benefit society. I think the country as a whole is pretty far from embracing this idea, but, as a start, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Obama had nationalized the investment banks we bailed out in 2009 instead of making them whole and sending them on their way to record bonuses, while the homeowners who were conned by them got little relief.
Brachiator
@jl:
Also, Crowley was the Old Guard representative of a district whose demographics were changing.
Incumbency is still a powerful advantage, with some good reasons, but the old leadership needs to make room for new blood.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ohio Mom: This. Assholes like the Mercers, the DeVoses, the Kochs, the Waltons, Bezos, Ellison, Dorsey, etc are hoovering up everthing from everyone so it can sit somewhere and do nothing while others starve. They are the enemy…the system is rigged to transfer resources to them from everyone else.
Dorothy Winsor
@The Moar You Know: They won’t see the numbers until they do their taxes next winter/spring. Some of them are in for a shock.
Yutsano
@A Ghost To Most: Nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. The saddest part is I’m only half kidding.
@Mnemosyne: JFC she’s not even all that socialist. She argued for Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, and free college tuition. Those are becoming bog standard Democratic positions. And it’s because she LISTENED to her district. Granted she’s a shoo-in to win but the fact that she took the time to figure out what people actually wanted is what Democrats need to do. And more of them will win that way.
Mandalay
@jl:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Virtually every Democrat in a safe seat is a reliable vote, so you are effectively suggesting that it doesn’t matter who holds the seat, and that is completely false. Here is part of Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign attack ad on Crowley:
I can’t imagine that anyone who has seen the debate where Occasio Cortez uses Crowley as a floor mop could be fine with Crowley.
If the Democrats win the House in November that vile, lying fucker had a decent chance of becoming speaker at some stage, and if he didn’t make that he’d be chairing something. Either way he would be influencing what legislation would be proposed, and Crowley is about the last Democrat in Congress I’d trust with that mission. Thank fuck Crowley is gone.
Gelfling 545
@Kay: As I have mention ed before, around the Time of the 2008 election a was working in a field largely populated by young people, recent college grads mostly. At the time Palin was kicking the socialist theme around it cane to my attention that few had much of an idea of what socialism actually meant. After having it explained to them the almost universal reaction was “See, that’s what I’m talking about. “
(((CassandraLeo)))
@EBT: Fair point; I tend to think of them as anarchists first and communists second, but I guess they qualify as both. In any case, not Tankies.
(I probably qualify as anarchist by at least some definitions myself, but I’m also pragmatic about it to the point of being a Yellow Dog Democrat as well.)
KSinMA
@BruceFromOhio: Heavens yes… This!
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom:
Thank you.
EBT
@(((CassandraLeo))): Yeah the folks who think Anarchy means absolute chaos are childish.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@PJ: I’ve long thought postal banking is an idea whose time will soon approach us. That isn’t all that different. As an added bonus it would probably put every last payday lender out of business – almost worth pursuing for that reason alone.
The Ancient Randonneur
@jl: You were right about most of it. I was just pleasantly surprised to see someone like Weigel make that observation.
Seanly
I’m 100% for all of those things that Hannity hilariously posted are terrible things that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is for. If that is her platform, I am for her for fucking President when she’s old enough. If that means this 50-year old Democratic white male is now a young one again then so be it.
I assume I would have some differences in how those policies are carried out, but otherwise, I am for them all!
(((CassandraLeo)))
@EBT: More often ignorant, and in many cases both, but overall I don’t disagree. Most people have never heard an actual anarchist make the case for anarchism, though – they’ve only ever heard it defined by its opponents, who can be found across the political spectrum. (It also doesn’t help that there are some right-wingers claiming to be anarchists who… aren’t, which is all I’ll say about them.)
HRA
Over on Memeorandum there is an article by the Babylon Bee (?) It says Occasio Cortez and Crowley are tied and there will another vote taken.
bemused
@The Moar You Know:
The Republican tax cuts are a humongous giveaway to the wealthy. I call that an entitlement, lucky ducky welfare.
Gelfling 545
@Joe Falco: Then why portray yourself as thinking so? You interact on this blog with a fair number of us eho are 50 and up. Does it seem that we are trying to do you out of something?
Mandalay
@HRA: It’s an attempt at right wing humor. You are on a RWNJ web site.
B.B.A.
@Crœsos: I was 6 when the Soviet Union collapsed. I know how terrible it was, but this is one of those days when I wish enemies of the party could be rounded up and sent to the gulags.
Joe Falco
@Jager: I’ve already responded to WaterGirl that I don’t actually feel that way about boomers and the older generations, but I’m the one who made that comment so I’ll say it again once more with feeling: I apologize for saying something incorrect and pig-headed that I should know better not to say, even in jest. It doesn’t further the cause of justice, and it plays into the hands of those who would rather see us divided and powerless.
HRA
@Mandalay: @Mandalay:
Thanks for the information. I wasn’t sure about it.
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
Obviously, most wage earners have adjusted their withholding. The only question for many will be credits they may qualify for which might increase their refunds.
@The Moar You Know:
@Dorothy Winsor:
Most analyses project that middle class and lower income taxpayers will see modest cuts in the first year, but that these may cuts may disappear in the later years of the Trump cut. But the rich will do well forever. Many small business owners will see cuts thanks to the new Section 199A deduction, and have already taken this into account by lowering their estimated tax payments.
But a lot of blue state taxpayers will be hit, as will various subgroups of taxpayers. But Trump and the GOP are counting on the kind of thing that I’ve heard from conservative workers in an office near me. A lot of people are happy with the small increase in take home pay that they are seeing. They have no idea how massive the tax cuts are that have been shoveled to the rich, or falsely assume that it is proportional.
Also, the Trump administration is making a big deal about the revisions to the 2018 Form 1040. Yep. It’s a postcard for people with the simplest returns. But since most people e-file, this is not that big a deal. And for people with more complicated returns, they will now have a shitload of additional Schedules detailing their information. But the new form is a great example of Trump’s bullshit showmanship. A lot of flash and little real substance.
Jager
@Joe Falco:
Apology accepted. Now I’m going to give you a piece of advice I gave my grandson when he was 16 and being a real jerk to his Mom and brother. “Don’t Be A Dick!”.
J R in WV
John, some of your best work is the shortest!!
On the other hand, this is so short that you imply that I and my fellow boomers are as a group screwing the youth out of great lives.
When what I think you mean is that the current business systems are built so as to screw workers of all ages nearly equally, but the older workers benefit from their head start.
I think taxes should top out by confiscating income above a couple of million dollars a year, and limit corporations to breaking even after paying a very small dividend to the owners, while management makes some small multiple of the entry level wage the corporation offers. And most or all that money being made by instant transactions on the markets should be going to education and medical care. Or just paid as income taxes…
Perhaps just keep equities from being sold for, say, at least 30 days of ownership. Make investment into ownership again. That rule would also level out the ups and downs, and slow down crashes while events are addressed by regulators and market makers.
I never (well hardly every!) make short comments, as all can see by this novel…
Thanks John for all you have done and continue doing~!!!!!
Brachiator
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I have. It’s as stupid as the libertarian case for their ideal society.
A friend of a friend was the disciple and heir of some mildly famous old style radical. I was invited to salons where he would circulate, speak, solicit contributions. Most of his supporters were solidly middle class and members of upper income groups. This was doubly odd since none of these people had any intention of giving up their lifestyles and comforts to live the kind of life this guy was advocating. They seemed to believe that the poor and downtrodden would be rescued by this guy and his lieutenants, and maybe the ultra-rich would get their just desserts, but those who contributed to the cause would just go on their merry way.
Mandalay
@Jager:
That’s NOT accepting an apology. Now you’re the one being a Dick.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mnemosyne:
DQ’ed for “reigning in the bankers.”
Jager
@J R in WV:
A guy I worked for in broadcasting for 6-7 years is 96 and still going into the office everyday to piss around with his pet charities and family foundation. He got his MBA at Harvard B School in 1948 on the GI Bill, over dinner one night he said, ‘They don’t teach anything about business anymore, they teach financial engineering.”
tobie
@raven: No, it’s not a stupid blog but we live in stupid times when asking pragmatic questions like, how can we switch from an employer-based healthcare system to a Medicare4All and who will pay for the program, is treated as some kind of reactionary, corporatist sentiment.
Jager
@Mandalay:
No, it’s good advice. Maybe he should write it on his hand so he doesn’t forget.
PJ
@B.B.A.: Don’t worry, it might be coming, but it’ll be the Republican Party sending people to the gulag.
tobie
@Yutsano: In the 1980s public universities were close to free because they had generous federal and state funding. Reagan cut federal funding for universities and state governments followed suit and that’s how tuition rose across the board for public and private universities.
I’m still not convinced Medicare 4 All will be an easy switch for the US given how many people currently get their healthcare through their employer. I would prefer to see the ACA turbo-charged so it’s more like the Swiss or German healthcare systems but I guess “Bismarck Model” doesn’t have the same ring as “Single Payer.”
Llelldorin
@HRA: When you see something outlandishly weird online, it’s usually safest to check with a primary source like the actual New York State board of elections site.
Brachiator
@tobie:
I’ve recently heard some conservatives admit that the Swiss system might be a model worth implementing in the US.
Mandalay
@Jager: The poster made a sincere and genuine apology but you couldn’t let it go – you still had to go after them. I despise shitheads like you.
.
PJ
@tobie: City University in New York was free until the fiscal crisis in 1975. Fear City, by Kim Phillips-Fein, which came out last year, has a good account of the how and why of this, in particular how the conservatives in the Ford Administration (Greenspan, Rumsfeld, Cheney) saw it as an opportunity to force the city to gut public services, crush unions, and sell-off real estate at bargain prices to developers.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Brachiator: There have always been dilettantes like that in any political ideology. If the “explanation” you received didn’t once mention at least a couple of “Spanish Civil War” or “Catalonia” or “Free Territory” or “Nestor Makhno” or “mutual aid” or such, or if they demonstrated no understanding of their significance/meaning, you’re probably dealing with a person who listened to a Dead Kennedys song once and hopped on a bandwagon.
There are people who have examined the specifics of what an anarchist society would look like seriously, though. A few: Alan Moore. Ursula K. Le Guin. Noam Chomsky. George Orwell, for that matter – Homage to Catalonia basically describes a functional historical case of anarchy in its first dozen pages, and then spends its remaining pages examining why it didn’t last. (“Tankies” actually comprises approximately 50% of the explanation.)
If anyone talks about anarchy as though it’s a thing that will occur spontaneously in America, they have no idea what they’re saying. Occupy Wall Street attracted no small share of kooks, but along the way, particularly in the aftermath of Sandy, it did establish a basic architecture for what anarchy might look like in America – an effective charity that functioned as a gift economy, largely on an ad hoc basis.
I’m on a phone, so I’m not going to go into great depth about all the theory and history involved here. I’ll say a few other things, though. First, that many people define anarchy by the absence of a state, which is perhaps its least important feature. Eliminate the state with no other changes and you end up with corporate rule. The core defining principle of anarchy is actually the absence of rulers – the idea being that coercion is intrinsically immoral. It may be acceptable as a last resort – for violent criminals, say – but is otherwise to be shunned.
Secondly, people tend to think of anarchy in terms of what it lacks, but in order to bring about such a society, you will need alternative infrastructures that are absent in modern capitalist societies. If coercion is immoral, hierarchical organisations are unacceptable. There are necessary hierarchies – parent and child, student and teacher, trainer and trainee. But even these should be monitored for signs of abuse.
However, humans are social animals, so you’ll still need organisations. The replacement for the corporation becomes workplace democracy, but obviously you can’t have everyone vote on everything, so an animating principle becomes that people get say over decisions that affect them.
(This could extend beyond the workplace, I should note – women’s health is between them and their doctors; queer issues aren’t for cis/het people to determine; and so on. I would consider this a massive improvement.)
The problem becomes: how do you create such a society? And the answer is provided by the great political philosopher Hermes Conrad: “If you want a box hurled into the sun, you’ve got to do it yourself.”
Anyone who claims to be an anarchist but isn’t in some way concerned with constructing an alternative infrastructure for our economy probably isn’t very serious about it. Create workplaces that function with as much workplace democracy as feasible in today’s society. Make charities that help institute something more akin to a gift economy. Work in politics in a manner that reduces hierarchies’ influence. Something.
There are a lot of ways to contribute to such a society, but if a person isn’t focused on creating such a society, I’d argue that they’ve missed the point of anarchism. Anarchy that springs into existence spontaneously is like a shooting star – perhaps beautiful to look at, and short-lived. People accept widespread coercion because they don’t think anything else is possible, or they think it’s necessary. If they see that cooperation is necessary to the existence of human society, more productive than coercion, and more conducive to human happiness, it’s possible that someday, many years down the road, governments will no longer be necessary and capitalism will no longer be sustainable.
Anyone that talks like “Step 1: Revolution; Step 2: ?; Step 3: Anarchy!” is… not thinking clearly. I almost certainly won’t live to see anarchy, but it is a nice ideal to aspire to. By working to build cooperative organisations and opposing hierarchical ones it’s possible to at least move closer to it, even if it might be like Zeno’s Paradox, where you never quite get there.
I hope there weren’t any typos there, since I probably won’t be able to edit them. FYWP
J R in WV
@Brickley Paiste:
“But with Clinton’s defeat – a loss for which generations will suffer – perhaps it’s a good time to offer candidate who fight for the right things without constantly recalibration game their positions. ”
You Russian Fudkturd, Clinton won the election by millions of votes.
Trump and your Russian boss stole a few thousand votes here and there to win a couple of states’ electoral votes, those electors didn’t do their sworn duty to protect the Constitution of the United States, and here we are, in a boat sinking into a sewage lagoon with the people of Russia. Thanks a lot, Russian tool~!!~
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Mandalay: @(((CassandraLeo))): one final note: a lot of upper/middle-class radicals would almost certainly need to give up some comforts for an anarchist society to exist; I don’t have any delusions that I’m not among their number. I don’t really care; as long as I have: food; water; shelter; a reasonably good computer; internet access; a turntable; a sound system; some records; some books; a phone; and perhaps a television, I probably wouldn’t miss my other possessions much. (I’d prefer not to even own a car, but Florida. Hopefully a proper anarchist society would have decent public transportation.)
(((CassandraLeo)))
@(((CassandraLeo))): IDK how Mandalay got in there. Sorry for the confusion – I was making an addendum to my own post.
tobie
@PJ: You’re right. This goes back to Ford. I still remember the Daily News headline: “Ford to New York: Drop Dead.” That was/is an all-time classic.
J R in WV
@Mary G:
I started working in 1964, when I was 14, and retired in 2008.
Wife and I both worked all our lives, she was also elected Sec-Treas of a nation-wide union local. She got a phone call right after Reagan was sworn in from a woman appointed to a Dept of Labor position.
That bitch was calling union officers to enjoy threatening them — she told wife that if she could catch her in an error in the union paperwork, she could and would take our home.
A real Reagan sweetheart~!!~
Villago Delenda Est
@J R in WV: Was her name Gorsuch?