The President delivers remarks on his Administration’s work to rebuild our manufacturing to make more in America, create good-paying union jobs, and lower energy costs for Americans.
The Secretary of Transportation and the Secretary of Energy, aka Pete Buttigieg and Jennifer Granholm, will attend, but this is being billed as a Biden speech so it’s not clear whether they will also have an opportunity to speak. Let’s hope so!
Oh, I see that the Jen Psaki press briefing is scheduled for just 15 minute later, so it’s most likely that this is just a speech by Biden.
Jen Psaki often has cabinet officials speak at the press briefing, so I would not be surprised if Buttigieg and Granholm make an appearance there.
You daily Jen Psaki – here’s Jen’s press briefing, scheduled 15 minutes after Biden.
Open thread.
Tony Jay
Open thread? Well, since it’s just lying around all innocent and untouched…
A SHORT NOTE FROM BREXITANIA
“Did Ya Think I’d Crumble?”
Another week, another PR effort to stave off Flobalob’s inevitable demotion from Britain’s Top Tory to “All our operators are busy, please try again later” status within the wider Conservative movement, and so another black-comedic daisy-chain of 200mph wall-splats caused, in the main, by the unalterable, unquestionable, unchanging fact that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is an unpolishable turd in a toilet bowl of diahoretic nastiness.
So, last week’s instalment of the infinishambles we call our national government was capped by five members of Johnson’s inner circle either resigning or being urgently told to resign, the first of whom, Munira Mirza, his former Wokebasher General Chief Goo-Goo Eyed Worshipper Head of Policy, disembarked from the HMS Titanic Failure with a “fuck you/bye-bye” salvo of vindictive bitterness unparalleled since Fleetwood Mac last parted ways with Lindsey Buckingham’s fragile ego. The immediate spin from The Bunker was that this disaster was in fact triumphant evidence of Johnson displaying the willingness to change his ways that he’d promised his fractious back-bench MPs, but in reality it was much more a case of “Could you please hold this basket of blame for a moment? Munira appears to have left the bus door open and… BOOT!”
No sooner had the decks been cleared of disposable minions before anonymous spokespeeps were briefing their favoured Court Stenographers that this was going to be an excitingly fresh new start for the Conservative Party and its beloved Leader. Now that all of those drunken yobbos who had somehow gained access to Downing Street (Who knows how? Not Flobalob, that’s for sure) had been evicted the Grown-Ups would be in charge, and now everything was going to function like the well-oiled machine the same Court Stenographers had been telling everyone was already in place years ago. Unfortunately, but in retrospect hardly surprisingly, it was soon embarrassingly clear that Number 10’s doors were hardly being battered down by eager columns of mature political adepts, the well-bred caste of effortlessly at-ease Westminster veterans who always know where the levers of power are and grace their brushed leather thrones with a certain salt-and-pepper gravitas while emitting the subtle cologne of seasoned confidence and fully-ripened authority. On the contrary. Those were exactly the type of operators who were ostentatiously ignoring all of Johnson Inc’s desperate pleadings, leaving Flobby to fall back on his usual trick of appointing mates and long-term backers to senior posts, with expected results.
Mirza’s replacement as Policy Chief was Andrew Griffith, the former Murdoch Empire executive who housed Johnson’s 2019 leadership campaign in his multimillion-pound London townhouse and was rewarded with the business advisory post and a seat at the table around which ‘reforming’ the BBC to death was being planned. Not content with that, Griffith was soon given a safe seat to contest at the 2019 General Election and assumed the role of Johnson’s Parliamentary Private Secretary (i.e. the Prime Minister’s eyes and ears on the backbenches). Such a speedy ascension, and what kind of initial impression would the new Policy Chief make?
“In the battle of ideas, we (Conservatives) remain an insurgent force: outgunned by the hegemony of leftwing orthodoxy that often lurks without challenge within swathes of the cultural and education establishment and in the state supported media.”
Just what the country is crying out for in the middle of a pandemic with Brexit shafting the economy and half the country facing a decade sucking nutrients out of discarded chef’s aprons just to stave off rickets, another stinking rich bannerman from House Murdoch eagerly stovepiping Qanon-adjacent conspiratorial victimitude into Government policy to feed a divisive Kulturkampf. I can’t see anything going wrong there.
With the forced departure of Dan Rosenfield from the Chief of Staff position, Johnson really needed someone serious and authoritative to take the reins of the operation, but as with the Policy Chief appointment, he was shit out of luck there and had to reach again within the Party to tap Steve Barclay, a practiced bullshitarian (he was responsible for arranging the UK’s exit from the EU, which was a ripping success… said absolutely nobody, ever) as well as a sitting MP, which hasn’t happened before (the MP bit, obvs). This immediately led to a barrage of pertinent questions about how, exactly, Barclay was going to manage wearing more hats than the cast of Ru Paul’s Drag Race (Cabinet Office Minister, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, MP for North-East Cambridgeshire) in addition to overseeing the whole of Johnson’s staff and dealing with MPs, and exactly who he was answerable to (Parliament, the PM, his constituents?). No answers yet, of course, but that’s an accident just waiting to happen.
The most hilarious appointment had to be Guto Harri coming off the bench to replace former Daily Mail scumbag Jack Doyle as Communications Chief. Harri, a former BBC political correspondent (otherwise known as unofficial Tory Party spokesman) who left The Beeb for a PR firm before going to work for Johnson (thus making the unofficial official) back when he was stinking things up as Mayor of London, then left that job to work as a PR flack for Murdoch’s Empire (are we scenting the faint waft of a theme here?) before ending up moving sidewise into doing PR for Chinese Military Intelligence corporate front organisation Huawei. Politics is a funny old world, but it’s not often that a politician has to hand over chief spin-doctor duties to a former underling who has since described him as not only ‘sexually incontinent’, ‘hugely divisive’ and ‘destructive’, but also accused him of ‘dragging the country down’. There’s also the little matter of Harri being an outspoken critic of Brexit who recently got sacked from his job at Fox News UK GB News for taking the knee in solidary with England’s national football team. Anonymous backbench MPs are already comparing Harri to Anthony ‘In a flash, he was gone’ Scaramucci and prophesying his rapid departure, but until then we’ve already had a series of self-owns that really make you wonder if Harri has a secret dossier of filthy video tapes to thank for his continued employment, because unless he’s going straight from the starter’s gun with a cavalcade of distractions (not actually unbelievable) competent PR this ain’t.
Frex, this is Harri describing his first meeting with Flobalob after taking the job.
“I walked in and did a salute and said, ‘Prime Minister, Guto Harri reporting for duty’ and he stood up from behind his desk and started taking the salute but then he said, ‘What am I doing, I should take the knee for you.’
“And we both laughed. Then I asked, ‘Are you going to survive Boris?’ And he said in his deep, slow and purposeful voice, and started to sing a little while finishing the sentence, saying ‘I Will Survive’.
In an inevitable way that invited me to say, ‘You got all your life to live’ and he replied, ‘I got all my love to give’, so we got a little blast from Gloria Gaynor!”
What a magical moment, eh? I’m sure the relatives of the 180,000 + people who have died of Covid while Johnson has been living according to the tenets of D.I.S.C.O. will be much comforted by this glimpse within the inner sanctum of power. But never mind, Harri made up for it soon afterwards with this wonderful pencil portrait of the Great Man.
“Everyone’s focus has been on recent events that have caused a lot of hurt, but in the end, that’s nothing to do with the way people voted two years ago. He’s not a complete clown, but he’s a very likable character … He is not a vicious man as some misrepresent him.”
Thank you for the clarity, Guto. Please, keep talking.
Anyway, while all this was going on, there was still the simmering chamberpot of anger to deal with over Johnson accusing Labour’s (current, wispily transitory) Leader, Sir Keir ‘Is there anybody there?’ Starmer, of choosing not to prosecute creepy celebrity rapist Jimmy Saville back when he was DPP of the CPS (Head Lawyer of the State Prosecutor). Now, I’m old enough to remember when lobbing obscenely offensive and entirely untrue accusations at the Leader of the Labour Party was not only perfectly acceptable behaviour but actually a contractual requirement for continued membership of the UK’s political and media establishment, but apparently that isn’t this and it seems word has gone out that for once in his life Flobalob is going to be made to apologise for something he’s said – or else. His ex-Policy Chief named his refusal to do so as the line she wouldn’t cross for her man (which was bullshit, but it’s the lie that reveals more than the truth) and until he does numerous Tory MPs and grandees have begun rhythmically thumping the butts of their spears against the dusty earth and chanting the Asatru prayer for fallen warriors.
And then, oh and then, Mister Fan meet Mister Shit, and may I be the first to welcome you to the Chamber of Unintended but Inevitable Consequences.
On his way to Parliament yesterday Starmer and the Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy were surrounded by a mob of far-Right anti-Vax gobshites who ever so calmly related their usual laundry list of reasoned objections to observable reality, including a volley of abuse referencing Starmer and Saville. The Police got involved, Starmer was bundled away, arrests were made, but for Flobby the damage was done. It was only a few days ago that the Tories ran a candidate unopposed in the Southend constituency left without an MP by the murder of David Amess, a horrible crime that saw Tory after Tory running in front of the cameras to decry all kinds of “hostile language” and trying their best to leverage public disgust with the murder into new laws protecting them from any scrutiny of their votes, donations and ideologies. The footage of anti-Vax thugs going all “legitimate political discourse” on Starmer while quoting the Prime Minister could have been designed to hammer a ten-foot pole into the yawning gap between what is politically necessary and what Johnson is emotionally capable of doing, even to save his own skin.
We already had a concerted effort by loyalist Ministers and MPs to gaslight the issue by claiming that Johnson hadn’t said what he’d actually said, but had instead said something very reasonable and complimentary about Starmer that everyone else in the world had somehow misunderstood, and today has seen that tactic doubled, tripled and googleplexed down on. There is, we are told, absolutely no possibility that the anti-vaxxers we’re triggered by Johnson’s conspiracy theory, and anyway, he already explained himself so that’s in the past, and anyway, they were saying all kinds of stuff so who really knows if they said anything about Saville at all? Whatever, Minister after Minister, MP after MP, insisting that Johnson won’t be apologising, doesn’t have to apologise, already apologised, deserves an apology.
On and on and on and on. It’s almost funny. I say almost because giving free-rein to extremist politicians and their supporters to vomit deliberately offensive lies about their opponents into the nation’s collective ear is a surefire way to entrench division and inspire pseudo-political violence. That said, it would have been absolutely swell if the pearl-clutching divines of the Church of the Status-Quo had shown a modicum of this outrage seven, five or even three years ago when much worse was directed for much longer against British History’s Greatest Monster, but I understand that they all feared the existential horror of having to pay a few pennies more in tax a year and maybe having to compete in the long term with people whose children don’t go to the ‘right’ school. That’s not the case anymore, so this time they feel free to turn the weight of their disapproval against the source of the venomous lies, rather than applauding their political savvy.
Still, while the fucking hypocrisy is thicker than a Fred Fenster monologue this really looks like another leg being hammered out from under Flobby’s already rickety support structure. They were trying so very hard to gin-up some public sympathy for Johnson’s former mistress/now wife Carrie ‘Antoinette’ Symonds-Johnson (pretending that the antipathy aimed at her by the far-Right Daily Mail and the references to her in a book by a Tory donor are, in fact, misogynistic slander, rather than evidence of the cut-throat nature of internal Tory factionalism) so they could wave her in the general direction of the Partygate scandal and cry “Why do you insist on hounding this poor woman?!?” Now they’ve got to spin on a dime and explain why it’s okay to ferment violence against Opposition politicians but wrong to aim the finger of (partial) blame at the former Tory Party PR hack who had an affair with a man 20 years her senior while his wife was getting treated for cancer and seems to have her fingerprints all over a few of the more egregious breaches of Lockdown laws at Number 10.
If I was capable of feeling sympathy for people like that, I would. But I’m not, so I don’t, and I’m perfectly happy to have turned out that way.
Anyway. There’s always more to blather on about, but time is a ticking on, and I’ve got places to be. Be safe and may your God(s) go with you.
WaterGirl
@Tony Jay: Is there any chance that if he hangs on long enough, all of this will eventually pass?
Tony Jay
@WaterGirl:
Tories can always lower themselves to justify anything, but I don’t think so. Too much damage done to the brand. The whisper amongst Tory backbenchers is he may be given another couple of months, more so that his successors can arrange their battle-plans than any sympathy for him, but the endgame is in sight.
Good riddance.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
I’ll believe it when I see it. While I don’t believe his replacement will be better, hopefully he or she will be weaker politically.
sdhays
Congratulations, Tony! You folks finally have your very own Jared! Maybe he could pop on over to Moscow and Kyiv and sort out this bit of bother between Russia and Ukraine after he settles in. And broker a settlement in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict on the way back, perhaps?
If it’s not too much trouble, of course.
WaterGirl
Well I guessed wrong when I thought this would just be President Biden speaking for 15 minutes or less
Hard not to notice that the first two speakers are female. Will Jennifer Granholm be next?
Baud
@WaterGirl: so Pete and Jen are speaking?
WaterGirl
@Baud: I must be missing the joke?
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
There does seem to be a theme to all of this and it runs through our political assininity as well and it is that name, you called it house of and yet I see it more as insane asylum than house, of Murdoch.
He seems to have stuck his appendage in far more places than it belongs and has done about as much damage as any of the former people he seems to admire, like Hitler, just that with his damage no formal declaration of war was declared, likely because he understood that what he wants the world to look like is more like what 12 drunks throw up all over the bar, or worse – crap on that bar, than any kind of actually livable human endeavor.
Tony Jay
@sdhays:
Haven’t you heard? Flobalob himself is leading the Western Alliance in their Crusade against Russian Imperialism.
Oh, no, that was last week’s nonsense claim. Now they’re back to hoovering up Russian oligarch donations like early 80’s Bowie with a table full of coke.
Baud
@WaterGirl: No joke. In the post, you said you weren’t sure if Pete and Jen would speak. Since you said Biden isn’t just speaking for 15 minutes, I was asking if they were speaking.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Biden up now. Looks like a ‘no’ on Pete and Granholm speaking. Unless they show up at Jen Psaki’s briefing.
Tony Jay
@Ruckus:
Yup. When that bastard dies the line of people quite justified in pissing on his grave is going to be geological in scale and lead to the formation of a new inland sea.
WaterGirl
Look out, China, here we come!
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
I did add a bit, which might just stink up the isle just a bit more, because I’m thinking that an ocean of pee just isn’t enough to show the entire picture.
Also it seems like there might be a fair number of people who would be more than willing to not wait till he’s dirt napping…..
germy
Charging electric vehicles will be quick and easy. Charging stations built by union members.
I like what I’m hearing from our president.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
These are Tories, there is no ‘better’.
That said, I’d take a new John Major over this shower of aborted murder pigs any day. At least he gave the general appearance of being an actual human being, even if that was just in comparison to his predecessor.
Tony Jay
‘The Aristocrats!!!’
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
I can’t keep up anymore. I see that Boris Johnson is reshuffling his cabinet. Jacob Rees-Mogg is to be Special Minister for Mince Pies or something.
BoJo also seemed to find a way to smear Starmer. The media seem to always precisely repeat the smear for maximum effect even as they claim it to be possibly, mostly false. This is a sick variation of what they did to Corbyn, but the old ways are always the best ways.
Zelma
@Tony Jay:
Tony, I follow British politics pretty closely (although I know more about 18th century politics than 21st.). I have a question for you: I’ve heard commentators compare the willingness of Tory politicians to decry Boris favorably to the arrant cowardice of Republican pols in the face of Trump.
I have been wondering, Does Boris have the kind of almost cult-like support among a segment British voters that Trump has? I don’t get the sense that such support exists. Just wondering.
germy
So we’re going to become a manufacturing leader again? Instead of relying on flimsy crap made by slave labor overseas? Union jobs with good salaries and benefits? Electric vehicle charging stations in every town and highway? I’m optimistic hearing Joe.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
I haven’t even looked at the reshuffle yet. What’s the point? It’s like Swinging Saturdays at an Old Person’s Home. Just scratching around the same old holes, shuffling the same worn deck of jokers.
And the thing to remember about our Media is that, while they may consider Starmer and his crew much more palatable than Corbyn and the prospect of actual substantial change, at the end of the day they all want Tories in power.
And I’m including The Fucking Guardian in that list.
WaterGirl
@germy: My ears perked up when they said the plant will be in TN. I wonder why that state was chosen?
Ruckus
@germy:
The country can not live on investment banking and importing crap. What has to change is that wages have to keep up so that people can purchase made in the US crap, rather than made overseas crap. (As a person who made a decent living – decades ago – working in the industry making useful products – and crap, I can tell you that the overseas crap is no worse than the worst crap we can make. We just have to lower our standards so that our crap is as affordable as their’s. OR – we could raise wages so that we can sell better stuff because then we could afford the businesses that it takes to make better stuff. Of course you have to understand, the people that make money by adding zero value to anything other than their bank accounts don’t want that kind of business here, because they make far less, because then people aren’t giving them money not to do anything because they fucking suck donkey balls at anything positive for anyone else.
germy
@WaterGirl:
I wonder if the various companies Biden mentioned make those decisions. I don’t know that Biden picks the states.
But I want to see good-paying jobs where they’re needed, even if Republicans will end up taking credit for them.
germy
@Ruckus:
This is where Biden’s tax incentives and penalties come into play, I hope.
Carrot and stick taxation. Do the right thing? Get a break. Do the wrong thing? Pay the tax.
Maybe I’m being naive that the zero value people can be controlled, though. I don’t know.
WaterGirl
@germy: I agree that the companies make the decisions, but if Biden insists that these must be union jobs, then I think that would impact where they plants are located. I would also speculate that the president could put a bug in someone’s ear if there was a location preference. ?♀️
germy
@WaterGirl:
Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
I get the feeling that Labour wants the Tories to remain in power if they cannot have a perfect leader and a perfect platform.
There are folks who seem to think that they can wait centuries to get what they want, so there is no need to participate in politics now. The only people who seem to be willing to try to seize the day are many of the people of Scotland.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Good transportation, likely better available locations for manufacturing, possibly there is a company located there that already manufactures similar or actual products and has the requirements already in place to do the work? It’s likely that there is a bit of infrastructure necessary to get the work done and they may meet a lot of the points up front. They also may have asked first…..
debbie
@Tony Jay:
How many letters of no confidence have been sent?
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Tax breaks and incentives. How do you think Ohio got Intel?
Ruckus
@germy:
The first issue in any change is recognizing the needs and roadblocks. This country has done what needs to be done before, think FDR. And yes Truman. Ike wasn’t bad. After that the rethuglicans have done everything they can think of to fuck over the country for their and their donor’s betterment and the total disregard for everyone else in the country, including their own voters.
CaseyL
@Brachiator: Imagine an political party most of whose voters are Purity Progressives, and that’s Labour. Not the Party itself (not once they got rid of the Corbynites) but its voters.
Of course they never actually want to govern, because that would require compromising with someone who doesn’t share their pure ethos.
Like their counterparts in the US, they’d rather bitch, nitpick , and sabotage any luckless liberal-ish government that does manage to make it into power.
Geminid
@germy: Republicans are shameless when it comes to claiming credit for projects they voted against. Democrats have to get good at calling out their lies. Billboards might be one good technique.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
There is nothing magical or inherently special about “made in America.” Trade has always been global to some degree.
So, here is a thinking exercise. The US must have “made in America.” This also means that the US can never get raw materials from overseas or sell its own goods overseas.
Also, no more multi-nationals or multi-national investing.
Are you up for that?
germy
@Brachiator:
Surely there are certain rare metals and such that can only be found in other countries? We purchase them and final manufacturing happens here.
American manufacturing jobs?
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
I don’t see that at all. When the membership of the Labour Party were offered an actual choice they rejected stale, failed Blairism and quickly became the largest mass-participation political movement in Europe with an army of eager activists and a message that reversed the collapse in the Labour vote for the first time since 1997. We desperately wanted to win.
The people who deliberately sabotaged the last two elections in favour of the Tories are the people currently calling the shots at the top of the Party. They weren’t in charge so they engaged in a five year tantrum right in front of the cameras and simply would not compromise. Now they’re way more invested in nailing down the minority rule in the Labour Party than they are in troubling the Tories.
I’d love to be a part of ejecting the whole stinking Tory crew from power, unfortunately the people running the Labour Party right now see me and millions like me as the real enemy, so chances are we’re going to be suffering Tory misrule for another decade.
But that’s just, like, my opinion.
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
Also, a great deal of BREXIT affects the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. And yet various factions appear willing to let Boris Johnson and the Tories make all the decisions rather than put aside any of the Union/Loyalist battle.
And I know this situation is profoundly complex. But I think that if the Northern Ireland Assembly cannot meet, they cannot enact new legislation. The civil service can only deal with existing law and the UK government ultimately is in control.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay: Is it too early to crack open a cold one before I start this linguistic journey?
Tony Jay
@Zelma:
There’s certainly a large chunk of the electorate who, for the oddest of reasons, saw the lazy, entitled, Eton posh-boy as “one of the lads”. I never understood it, but that’s the media image Johnson was going for with the ‘Boris’ character he played on TV, and with the help of a willing Media it worked for him.
Even with all of the disgraceful failures of the last two years there’s certainly a chunk of people out there who, whether it’s because they can’t admit they were fooled or because they genuinely think Johnson has done as well as possible in the circumstances, who still defend him.
It’s different from Trump, though, in that Johnson hasn’t taken over the Party. At the end of the day he’s just another MP and if enough of his peers want him out, he’s out.
Tony Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
It’s always beer-o’clock somewhere. 8-)
RaflW
McConnell dropped a doozy of a ‘Repubs in disarray’ this afternoon, saying “[J6] was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election.”
Because Mitch is a wily ol’ turd, my immediate thought is, he’s dropped this today to grab Beltway attention away from Biden’s media event.
oatler
@Tony Jay:
In The Guardian’s angry letters, Johnson is referred to with contempt as “de Pfeffel” (his middle name), “Spaffer” (I looked it up in Urban Dictionary so you don’t have to) and (inexplicably to me) “Stroner”.
trollhattan
Such a posh way of saying “I’m being treated so unfairly.” And only a former empire’s resident can cite galloping hegemony without getting head scratches in response. Hippies as hegemons didn’t even work for Reagan. Not that he didn’t try.
BoJo’s ego demands BoJo remain in #10, not hauled out with the rest o’ the trash. Yet another covid failure. Damn you, covid!
trollhattan
@RaflW: Huh, Pence and now Turtle? There must be a game afoot. Frank Luntz maybe had a Come to Butthead convo with them.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I lived manufacturing for decades, I actually do understand that no one has a lock on products and that many of the tools and materials are made elsewhere. That said we are a large country and have a lot of the tools – or could have a lot of the tools available. But decades ago the concept of building a labor force of actual humans who understood and could do the work was unnecessary and most of that was stripped out of our educational system – the concept being that we could live as a purchasing country would make more money for the monied class. Now maybe I’m being a bit cynical in that view but I grew up in manufacturing – literally. I watched as what had been the powerhouse in the US, manufacturing, was more than just somewhat given up, for whatever reason you what to use. We were the powerhouse in airliners for example, now many parts are made overseas. Computer manufacturers where mostly here in the US, now they all are overseas. And because I spend decades in the manufacturing food chain and looked at it and what/where it was going because that was my livelihood, I’ve seen that it still exists here but investment in it is lacking what other countries have spent. Those people in this country who invest, mostly are interested in making money, not anything else that can make them money, they want to skip all the actual work stages of making money. And so all the countries that are willing to do it a bit cheaper than this one do it. Now it there was something to replace that for the actual people that get paychecks making things at anything like the wages manufacturing should pay then we could do that, but there really isn’t in a modern world. So we import things that we could pay Americans to make. And yes the US still is in manufacturing. But next time you go to the store, look at any goods on any shelf and tell me how much is made in the US. I’ll wait. I’d bet on 10% made in US. Our wages have really not kept up with their needs and so we mostly buy cheaper stuff made overseas. It’s not always bad it’s just less expensive. And our actual under employment ratio sucks donkey balls. And we have a monied class that is way, way overly wealthy, making money while overall the country sinks and our conservative party makes buck telling even their own supporters how to get in the hole even deeper.
And yes, no country can do everything, we are part of the whole, no question. But giving up so much at such a price for most is wrong.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
I hear what you are saying, but some things are simple.
Is current Labour as bad as the Tories? The same as the Tories.
I don’t think so.
I don’t care if it’s Starmer or Corbyn or that fiery woman whose name I currently forget (it ain’t sexism, I cannot remember every nation’s politicians).
The Tories are not just bad, they are engaging in mis-rule. They lie, steal and seem to want to return to laissez-faire capitalism.
Everything about BREXIT is shit. And the NHS seems to be up for grabs. People have died from Covid who should still be alive.
Some people feel abandoned by current Labour. I get that. But why do they enjoy getting fucked by the Tories? I thought you had to have gone to Eton in order to enjoy that.
Martin
@germy: I’m skeptical the feds can pull it off. Too many competing interests. And the feds haven’t figured out the kinds of policy formulas that California has. There’s this whole shadow taxation system that happens. Fuel companies can offset their carbon taxes by building public vehicle charging networks? But only if those companies are in California and employ Californians?
The federal problem is that West Virginia will never back schemes like this because those jobs will move out of West Virginia. You can bake all kinds of assurances into it, but at the end of the day it’s going to represent a technological shift which will favor the states that have invested in educated workforces. Republicans can whine about California’s taxes all they want, but when your average manufacturing employee out here produces $1M-$5M in revenue per year usually due to that masters degree in EE, nobody fucking cares about the tax rate any more. And so there’s a whole bunch of states that really struggle in this competition for workers.
So any federal action on this front gets diluted down to such a degree that it just turns into a tax program, easily abused. Any kind of real action here requires oversight and regulation. You have to show up at the factory and see that it actually exists and actually does something, and isn’t just some phantom entity on a form – as what happened with Foxconn/Wisconsin.
More than anything else, the complete dismantling of federal staffing for this kind of oversight makes anything like this impossible. The FDA might show up at your drug factory once every 3 years. The USDA mostly just takes your word for things. The EPA will probably never show up at all.
Martin
@Brachiator: But her emails.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
No matter how they think, and yes I believe their “thinking” is massively flawed, still they can see the writing on the wall when they have no other choice. The country as a whole is better served by Joe Biden than their choice did for any of them. And they have zero choice for anyone better. That doesn’t mean they endorse him, the world hasn’t imploded from that extremely far out there premise, but it may be that they see that supporting their extremely far out choice hasn’t actually worked for them either.
Tony Jay
@oatler:
Stroner? That’s a new one on me. I can’t imagine what that one’s about.
Regarding the Guardian I was surprised that today of all days the Guardian politics live-blog was closed to comments. Then I saw that one of the most read stories was Starmer’s Labour getting slapped down in court for trying to hound yet another elderly leftwing Jewish lady out of the Party for being
opposed to apartheid and illegal occupationantisemitic.Yeah, I can see why even their banhappy moderators wouldn’t want the bother of enforcing a ‘poor likkle Starmer’ wankathon with that inconvenient reality constantly intruding on the circle-jerk.
Yes, I do so hate the FTF Guardian.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
The US used to be big in farming. Then we were a big manufacturing nation.
A lot of our lead after World War 2 was helped along because the rest of the world got blown the fuck up.
But the West kept its foot on the neck of China and Japan. And the UK took a great deal of the wealth out of what is now India and Pakistan.
The rest of the world rebuilt and is catching up.
Some of the moaning about the return of manufacturing to America is as empty as Trump moaning about keeping coal in West Virginia.
The world moves on. We have to adjust to that.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
TBF we’ve never not been big in farming; industrialization of farming meant what once took a hundred is now done by one.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
I know. Its not the casual brutality and greed that irritates me. These are Tories, that’s how they roll. It’s all the bloody whining.
You’re not a phalanx of hard-riding renegades taking on the Forces of Evil, you’re a soft-skinned mob of over-stimulated posh boys throwing punches at half starved children while your Security hold their arms behind their backs.
Wankers.
West of the Rockies
@RaflW:
It may be a calculated trade by McConnell, but seems like trading your rook for a pawn.
narya
This.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Propaganda. I seriously think that’s the only answer. When people tell me “oh you can’t blame the Press”, I wonder why all those successful dictators went to such lengths to make sure they controlled the newspapers and TV studios from day one. We’re they mistaken?
The UK’s Media is unbelievably bad for democracy. So slanted, so destructive, and so well-insulated from any need to improve. The poison they’ve dripped into the ears of millions for decades has changed Britain for the worse and made everything currently wrecking the country possible.
And other than an asteroid, I don’t see any non-violent way of changing that.
Frank Wilhoit
@debbie: It sure didn’t have anything to do with a workforce.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Fair point.
But we were never going to be the nation of yeomen farmers that Thomas Jefferson dreamed about.
And by 1870 the US was an industrial giant. Estimates are that our GDP equaled or surpassed that of Great Britain.
H.E.Wolf
Perhaps we can think of it as being in honor of Dolly Parton. :)
Baud
@germy:
@WaterGirl:
@H.E.Wolf:
Aren’t union jobs illegal in Tennessee?
Professor Bigfoot
@germy: Nothing really special about “American manufacturing jobs,” unless you can guarantee the kinds of wages manufacturing generated for the same numbers of people.
Better to “put some respect” on the myriad “service sector” jobs and pay those people in line with the wealth they generate.
germy
@Professor Bigfoot:
Yes, and that’s why unionization is so important.
Anyway
@Tony Jay:
Always punching down – hallmark of rightwing govts
germy
Let’s Go America!
H.E.Wolf
@Baud: “Aren’t union jobs illegal in Tennessee?”
Per Google, unions in TN cannot “force” [sic] employees to become members.
In my first full-time job after college, I was a member of the janitorial & secretarial union at my place of employment. There is power in a union! :)
Tony Jay
@Anyway:
It’s like they get taught ethics in the Mirror Universe.
debbie
@Ruckus:
I don’t know. Lots of them really only wanted to piss off libtards. And that he did, royally.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
British media may be worse than that of the US. Or maybe I just see some things that stand out as I tried to follow BREXIT.
And Sky News Australia. Damn. They love to lie straight to your face.
Still, Labour supporters have to decide whether to accept the rule of the Tories or try for something better.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Yes. Yes we do. And I’m not saying go backwards. But in this country we have largely given up on manufacturing for money moving, with every step of the way getting a cut. And that wouldn’t be an issue if there were a lot more steps with more people getting a cut. But there isn’t and so those that play the game of moving money for a small cut get obscenely wealthy and the majority get fucked.
Because the modern world includes manufacturing, yes it takes less people to create more. But there are more people to manufacture crap for and more people that could make a decent living making crap. And yes we still manufacture crap, I know, I just retired about 6 months ago, from a manufacturing job. That makes over 41 yrs I worked in the field of manufacturing things. And crap. And it is not even close to the business it was 40 yrs ago. And yes, that is a good thing, that it isn’t as labor intensive, because that builds upon the possibility that we can have better lives than working till we drop. We don’t need to do that any longer but for that to work we have to not support the class of economic rape artists. People like SFB, who has spent an entire lifetime of fucking up everything he touched because he’s such an ignorant douche who started out with money from his racist father. Like father like son is a saying for a reason.
IOW we can look back for guidance on what not to do as well as what to do. And one of those things is not to think that making money from nothing is the only way to go. We need far better healthcare for every damn person. And the education getting there is so expensive we miss the possibility that exists, because intelligence is not based upon income and people who would like to be a doctor and would be excellent at it but don’t have 3 or 4 hundred thou to spend on the 8 years of education to get there. We could fix that but that would require a complete overhaul of so much of our political and educational system that I doubt it will ever even be considered. We’d also have to fix our political system to remove stupidity as a major requirement of one of our political parties. And it’s rather difficult to make that change as long as that requirement is one of their major cornerstones.
Ruckus
@debbie:
Joe still better serves them.
I’m not saying they actually deserve that but that’s one thing that makes him good, he doesn’t think they should suffer for their ignorance. He seems to think that if they learn from things positive maybe they won’t be such shits. Wouldn’t that be great if he’s right?
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
I wonder if it is because of a difference of the cultures and histories of the two countries?
Funny that we ended up not all that far off in results, given the differences in the ways our different governments work. Maybe greed and racism have worked their magic as the underlying rules of the game. Or maybe the one common factor is the last name Murdoch and the chaos that seems to follow the family everywhere they go.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
I don’t know what to tell you. The supporters did, but a large chunk of the elected representatives and back room bureaucrats decided they’d rather help the Tories than see their ideology proven wrong.
Until Labour faces up to what it’s Right wing did the Party will remain divided. There’s no easy way around that.
Tony Jay
@Ruckus:
I think it’s the political architecture. The US President is Head of State, with all the patriotic legitimacy that comes with it. The whole nation votes to pick one and it’s intentionally a bastard of a task to get rid of one outside on an election.
While the role of Prime Minister has taken on Presidential trappings over the last few decades, all of that is reliant on being able to retain the loyalty of a majority of your Party’s MPs. Piss off enough of them and you’re out of the door.
Basically, imagine all of the political powers of the Presidency being transferred to the Speaker of the House, then imagine how hard it would be for any Speaker to cling onto that power without antagonising the other 200 or so Representatives who look at them and think “That could totally be me.”
sab
@Ruckus: You should read some Canadian history, where they formed their governmental structure trying to avoid the American mistake of too much federalism before the Civil War. The Canadians wanted a strong central government, but it being Canada and really large and diverse, it almost instantly devolved into something much more federal ( i.e. strong provinces) than Americans ever contemplated.
We end up with the governmental structure that suits us, whether it is a good idea or not, and whether or not it is what we thought we wanted.
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
@sab:
I didn’t think I was going in the direction you have taken. But you both seem to think I was so your version is likely closer than my intention.
I was looking for a common theme to why we are in similar situations even with the dissimilar governments. I see one of the possibilities to be Murdoch and the publishing/”news” business that the family runs, mainly in the UK, the US and Australia because the misinformation that flows out of every orifice they have is similar.
I’m not saying the governments are the same or even is the bullshit, I’m saying that there is a commonality among the countries that goes beyond the governments. And that seems strange if for no other reason that the governments, countries and histories are different.
sab
@Ruckus: Yes. Lately Murdoch has done huge damage.
Trump could have called in troops to stop capitol riot, but of course he did not want to, because they were his rioters.
Trudeau could not call in anybody, because all the troops were under the control of provincial premiers
I think the more interesting question is why, with such similar history we have such different governments. Not just similar history. Government derived from the same common roots ( English common law.) Yet we turned out such different governments.
Burnspbesq
@germy:
That sound you just heard is Elon Musk stroking out. Tesla will be organized over his dead body. Works for me.
Burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
Then it won’t be Tennessee. The state’s Republican administration put a very heavy hand on the scale when the UAW tried to organize the VW assembly plant in Chattanooga (which, ironically enough, is now building electric cars). The company wanted the union; IIRC, it is in technical violation of German labor law because there is no works council at Chattanooga.