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Post by Logoboros on Feb 7, 2017 16:02:56 GMT -5
Also, to clarify, I don't necessarily think this is a terrible idea or anything. Mainly I was just pointing out that his two examples of great, visible centralized public services are a fairly cherry-picked selection, and the larger track record of such projects is not an honor-roll of glorious achievement (especially when he deliberately contrasts them with programs designed to allow greater individualization and individual agency).
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Post by ganews on Feb 8, 2017 12:09:54 GMT -5
As I read about early 20th century politics from Howard Zinn and Theodore Roosevelt accounts, something that struck me was the movement to limit rapacious capitalism. Teddy hated those titans of industry, those infuriating robber barons with an inability to play the long game. If they could just settle for a $90 million year's profit and a sustainable resource model to support themselves for another decade, rather than a $100 million year with no plan for the next, they could stay in enough business to fund the Republican party AND stop short of making workers' lives shitty enough to foment a socialist or communist revolution. Zinn backed up this motivation pretty exactly, except as a polemic he seemed to resent the Roosevelt presidents for providing enough safety net to stop said revolution. Now that we're in the new alternative reality, what should be the goals for a leftist? If this conflict is real, to what extent are the goals of improving the general welfare (incremetalism, if you like, in practice) and starting a more fundamental political and economic revolution mutually exclusive? Incrementalism allows work within the pre-existing system using known rules advantageously, frustratingly grinding away and sputtering off the disillusioned but also moving along a track with an understood history. Starting a revolution is without a doubt far more difficult and dangerous, as it would throw out old rules, alienate as many allies as incrementalism, and can be more easily hijacked towards ends at odds with starting ideals. The lowest stand the most to gain, or have the least to lose, but also have the fewest resources to invest in the movement. The revolution can also be reincorporated into incrementalism, like the (partially AstroTurfed anyway) Tea Party movement. Both systems are tough on the low rungs ("They do the minimum to keep us quiet"/"We are asked to bear the brunt for an uncertain future"). Both systems require optimistic operators - you've got to believe this scheme will work if you're going to invest your resources. OK, what I'm really getting at (and I'm really not baiting here) is the sentiment underneath statements like "I hope the BerniBros are happy now". Take it on it's face, and it's the same question. Are the people who rejected Clinton as too far to the right embracing Planet Trump as a necessary catalyst? I have seen suggestions that the Democrats are continuing to move to the left, which is very good. What action is currently being taken or planned by the forces of the left that will be more effective toward ultimate goals than would have been under a hypothetical Clinton presidency? It seems to me that protest of anything is far more effective when the power has nominal-or-better empathy for the cause. Or if the goal really is full revolution, what plans are in place? |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Feb 10, 2017 1:08:59 GMT -5
Well the counterpoint would be "When people were hungry, we didn't given them debit cards they could use to buy food of their own choosing; we sent them crates of government cheese. And when people couldn't afford housing, we didn't help them with home ownership loans or subsidies towards their rent; we put them in centrally managed high-rise housing projects." The point of the article is that the (Democrat-controlled) government used to create straightforward, concrete programs and products that candidates could point to and say, "This was built for you," or "Here is a check to you for money". These were services that has real visibility at all times, unlike a tax break you get once. Or, for example, a medical program that you signed up for by visiting a doctor instead of logging on to a complicated portal to play actuary. Today in my office we were talking about our students whose parents don't work. So the students claim their younger siblings as dependents on their taxes, then claim the EIC and the Child credits AND the Education credits, etc. One of my co-workers was bitching about how people shouldn't be able to get tax credits back for more than they owed in taxes! And these people were awful for taking advantage of the system that way! I piped up that they weren't doing something they weren't supposed to do. The GOP WANTS them to do this. The GOP pushes for refundable tax credits to solve all of society's problems. The co-worker whined, "Why don't they instead do things like provide subsidies for child care, or fund public all day preschool, or increase the amounts people can get in unemployment or food stamps! They shouldn't be allowed to get tax credits if they didn't even owe that much in taxes! God knows what they will spend that on! We should be giving them the money up front, tied to specific services they actually NEED!" I said, "Write your congressman that". |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Feb 11, 2017 0:32:04 GMT -5
My coworker doesn't care that they are taking care of their siblings. (This is usually happening for students whose parents are undocumented and are actually working, just not legally.) She cares that they claim their siblings as dependents on their tax returns, claiming the EIC and child credits, plus the education credits - all refundable credits. Meaning they get paid thousands of dollars in tax credits, way exceeding what they actually owed in taxes. Usually these students are 18-20 years old. The file she was looking at had an 18 year old getting nearly $6000 in refundable tax credits, while working part time, for claiming his 3 siblings as dependents, while they lived with both parents.
Then they can also claim Independent status for Financial Aid purposes, a status generally reserved for students who have no contact with their parents, or are military vets or are married.
I explained to her that the students aren't cleverly taking advantage of the system - it is that the system is actually set up for people to do exactly that.
She then complained that this system is completely backwards. Which is a more valid complaint.
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Post by ganews on Feb 14, 2017 15:41:10 GMT -5
As I read about the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saigon, when a few thousand South Vietnam refugees made it to the US and were protested viciously by democrats, I shake my head. Seattle's city council voted against settlement; Jerry Brown (who is governor of CA all over again) petitioned congress with "jobs for America first"; city schoolchildren joking shooting refugee kids.
Every shoe is eventually on the other foot.
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Post by Celebith on Feb 14, 2017 17:19:41 GMT -5
Well the counterpoint would be "When people were hungry, we didn't given them debit cards they could use to buy food of their own choosing; we sent them crates of government cheese. And when people couldn't afford housing, we didn't help them with home ownership loans or subsidies towards their rent; we put them in centrally managed high-rise housing projects." I grew up eating government cheese and that shit was dope (the peanut butter, not so much) |
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Post by Pastafarian on Feb 19, 2017 14:17:53 GMT -5
Today in headlines that could be from an episode of The Young Pope:
"Steve Bannon’s Cardinal Pal Denies Being Posted To Guam Post Is Punishment From Pope"
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Feb 20, 2017 11:20:46 GMT -5
Well the counterpoint would be "When people were hungry, we didn't given them debit cards they could use to buy food of their own choosing; we sent them crates of government cheese. And when people couldn't afford housing, we didn't help them with home ownership loans or subsidies towards their rent; we put them in centrally managed high-rise housing projects." The point of the article is that the (Democrat-controlled) government used to create straightforward, concrete programs and products that candidates could point to and say, "This was built for you," or "Here is a check to you for money". These were services that has real visibility at all times, unlike a tax break you get once. Or, for example, a medical program that you signed up for by visiting a doctor instead of logging on to a complicated portal to play actuary. Now if you want to talk about the quality of those products, that is a separate point. If there is traction in the idea that the government can't do a good job, there are complicated reasons behind that which include a political party seeking to ensure that he government does a poor job. I think it’s worth noting that in the Netherlands, at least (and I expect this to carry over to elsewhere in northern Europe), where they’ve actually managed to build a fairly durable welfare state that provides a lot of the necessities of life to citizens inexpensively, a lot of those services are way more patchwork, ad-hoc and indirect than most Americans expect. Housing’s a good example for this—many, if not most, Dutch citizens in Amsterdam and its vicinity live in incredibly inexpensive, high-quality “public” housing. But it’s not that the Partij von der Arbeid came into power and built a ton of housing and the local governments do a good job of maintaining for all the usual reasons (better gov’t accountability, stronger ties of social solidarity, lighter allergy to “socialism,” all that northern European good stuff). “Public” housing was built and is run by not-for-profit corporations, which the government facilitated in various ways, so it isn’t quite a government function even if they have a hand in it. Dutch healthcare is quite cheap, even for a noncitizen like me, but it’s basically Obamacare—the difference being that decades of regulation and encouragement led to insurance being not-for-profit in the Netherlands. Plus doctors don’t have to worry about paying off medical school debt, but Dutch universities are similarly complicated private-public things. I actually wonder whether state colleges (which are a super-effective and relatively centralized public services) is an underlying reason why a lot of people on the American left seem to favor big visible public investment schemes (I think nostalgia for the New Deal/Great Society giant public works approach might be another). I think it’s appropriate for some things—like giving everyone a basic income rather than a plethora of confusing tax credits and subsidies—but for complex stuff like housing I think a more decentralized approach might be more durable. |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Feb 21, 2017 20:12:00 GMT -5
I love this article and am actually writing something that expands on it (for another venue under my real name—we’ll see if it gets published), but just to build on it the open-sourcing aspect of NASA’s data has led to the potential spotting of a plume from Enceladus in old Voyager data. Note that the author is a philosophy professor at a community college in Tennessee—in space science terms a total rando. But, if it holds up (I’m not qualified to say, but it passed enough muster to get to a legit conference) it’s an important discovery about the longevity of this phenomenon that improves the prospects for a revisit, and will encourage further data diving. One thinks of Marx: |
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Feb 22, 2017 7:42:15 GMT -5
Dutch healthcare is quite cheap, even for a noncitizen like me, but it’s basically Obamacare—the difference being that decades of regulation and encouragement led to insurance being not-for-profit in the Netherlands. Plus doctors don’t have to worry about paying off medical school debt, but Dutch universities are similarly complicated private-public things. I worked in a hospital for a while here in Ireland and occasionally crossed over from the public area of the hospital I worked in to the private area I didn't (or was it the other way around - actually knowing those details weren't relevant to my limited, data entry job.) Holland was the model of healthcare our current Taoiseach (Prime Minister) was elected on promising to provide back in 2011, but we've always had that sort of divide. What, not even a passing nod to Kim Stanley Robinson, the guy who wrote a brick-sized novel trilogy about Martian communism? |
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Post by Jon Pertwees Shameless Gurning on Feb 22, 2017 9:22:29 GMT -5
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Feb 23, 2017 2:04:45 GMT -5
I think they're right about the dissonance between the anarchic culture of the alt-right and religious conservatives, but I'd be less optimistic that this would somehow decouple them from Trump. Breitbart and other agencies of this 'movement' have been brutal towards conservatives who they feel are too establishment (like Paul Ryan) and Trump himself, in his illiterate garishness, is closer to a creature of their culture than his half-hearted mouthing of Christian platitudes. In other words, if one can simply reduce the two sides to the alt-right being pro-porn and the religious conservatives being anti-porn, well, which end do you think Donald Trump falls into (and the answer is of course he made a cameo in a porn video.) |
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Post by Jon Pertwees Shameless Gurning on Feb 23, 2017 6:13:09 GMT -5
I think they're right about the dissonance between the anarchic culture of the alt-right and religious conservatives, but I'd be less optimistic that this would somehow decouple them from Trump. Breitbart and other agencies of this 'movement' have been brutal towards conservatives who they feel are too establishment (like Paul Ryan) and Trump himself, in his illiterate garishness, is closer to a creature of their culture than his half-hearted mouthing of Christian platitudes. In other words, if one can simply reduce the two sides to the alt-right being pro-porn and the religious conservatives being anti-porn, well, which end do you think Donald Trump falls into (and the answer is of course he mbade a cameo in a porn video.) Yrah, I don't think the divide is quite as facile as pro-porn vs anti-porn, and Trump is the glue holding this motley coalition together, but its unlikely to outlive him (the coalition, that is). And again, the Left (broadly defined) can't just wait for time and/or demographics to dissolve the forces that brought us 45, we need to be actively organizing for a better world now, not just a return to the neoliberal status quo (which still seems to be the goal of the Dems, btw) and yes, an international order not predicated on extractive, consumption-driven, capitalism. Socialism? Maybe. Or something new. But just as nationalism has failed (despite Bannon and the European right's efforts to revive it), so has global corporatism. |
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Feb 23, 2017 7:28:53 GMT -5
Jon Pertwees Shameless Gurning Trump will be in power either four or eight years. I would not be so sure what the GOP will look like after that is done, and, ultimately, the alt-right is a fresh coat of cultural paint on some very old ideas - racism and sexism delivered by meme rather than pamphlet. And their current ascendancy also reflects how thoroughly the rank and file voter has divested from the neoconservative project of the Bush presidency - Trump could go to a debate in South Carolina, declare the Iraq War a mistake and imply the Bushes were possibly criminally complicit in that mistake, and then win a state that had turned up solidly for a Bush in almost every GOP primary a Bush has run.
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Post by sarapen on Feb 23, 2017 8:23:03 GMT -5
"The Gramscians of the Right" is a goddamned brilliant description. |
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Post by Jon Pertwees Shameless Gurning on Feb 23, 2017 11:32:39 GMT -5
Jon Pertwees Shameless Gurning Trump will be in power either four or eight years. I would not be so sure what the GOP will look like after that is done, and, ultimately, the alt-right is a fresh coat of cultural paint on some very old ideas - racism and sexism delivered by meme rather than pamphlet. And their current ascendancy also reflects how thoroughly the rank and file voter has divested from the neoconservative project of the Bush presidency - Trump could go to a debate in South Carolina, declare the Iraq War a mistake and imply the Bushes were possibly criminally complicit in that mistake, and then win a state that had turned up solidly for a Bush in almost every GOP primary a Bush has run. Yeah, I'm not all sure what the GOP/conservative coalition looks like Post-Trump. But religious conservatives are already very leery of the "alt-right" and that distrust will only escalate. Now, another demagogue could step in and pull this band together again, but given the narrowness of the win this time, I just see diminishing returns for this approach. I am not saying conservatives can't continue to hold disproportionate power (indeed, without comprehensive redistricting reform, it is very likely), but it will look and feel different than it does now. |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Feb 27, 2017 14:15:52 GMT -5
I actually just read something this weekend about an insect pest from the US that invaded Europe (probably by hitching a ride on a commercial flight) in the nineties—they were all primed for a major agricultural disaster but it turned out that Europe’s not-insane levels of monoculture were enough for it not to be a problem. |
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Post by haysoos on Feb 27, 2017 16:28:37 GMT -5
I actually just read something this weekend about an insect pest from the US that invaded Europe (probably by hitching a ride on a commercial flight) in the nineties—they were all primed for a major agricultural disaster but it turned out that Europe’s not-insane levels of monoculture were enough for it not to be a problem. That's actually not uncommon when it comes to introductions from North America into Europe. Not only does European agriculture not have vast swathes (like literally the size of most European countries) of monoculture crops ripe for insect invasion, but the ecosystem in Europe has had millions of years of intermixture with Asia, Africa and other sources. The species there are well adapted to dealing with invaders, and many of them use allopathic chemical warfare to kill off neighbouring plants. So when European species are planted in North America, they tend to become rampaging invasive species. When North American species are introduced into Europe, they usually die out very quickly. Basically "Guns, Germs & Steel" doesn't just apply to humans. Compared with the vast number of invasive European and Asian species we have causing devastation, Europe has seen just a few: Canada goose, raccoons, coypu, western conifer seed bug, common ragweed, Colorado potato beetle, Louisiana crawdads, and rainbow trout are about the only ones who have made it. Of course, when Europe does go for planting a monoculture, they open themselves up for a major pest outbreak - like the Irish discovered when their non-native crops of potatoes came down an imported strain of Phytophthora infestans. |
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dＬᵒ
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𝓐𝓻𝓮 𝓦𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓨𝓮𝓽?
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Post by dＬᵒ on Feb 27, 2017 16:47:49 GMT -5
Compared with the vast number of invasive European and Asian species we have causing devastation, Europe has seen just a few: Canada goose, raccoons, coypu, western conifer seed bug, common ragweed, Colorado potato beetle, Louisiana crawdads, and rainbow trout are about the only ones who have made it. The most horrifying one of all. |
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Post by haysoos on Feb 27, 2017 17:29:16 GMT -5
Compared with the vast number of invasive European and Asian species we have causing devastation, Europe has seen just a few: Canada goose, raccoons, coypu, western conifer seed bug, common ragweed, Colorado potato beetle, Louisiana crawdads, and rainbow trout are about the only ones who have made it. The most horrifying one of all. Bizarrely, my boss just asked for some info on control of Canada goose, and in the conversation I just repeated almost all of these same points. See, I am working! |
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dＬᵒ
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Post by dＬᵒ on Feb 27, 2017 17:49:27 GMT -5
The most horrifying one of all. Bizarrely, my boss just asked for some info on control of Canada goose, and in the conversation I just repeated almost all of these same points. See, I am working! Did you tell him that there's only one method that works?  |
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Feb 27, 2017 20:54:41 GMT -5
The most horrifying one of all. Bizarrely, my boss just asked for some info on control of Canada goose, and in the conversation I just repeated almost all of these same points. See, I am working! Are they doing a good job of controlling the Canada geese? |
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Post by haysoos on Feb 28, 2017 1:55:01 GMT -5
Bizarrely, my boss just asked for some info on control of Canada goose, and in the conversation I just repeated almost all of these same points. See, I am working! Are they doing a good job of controlling the Canada geese? Nope. Basically, everything we're doing is barely keeping their population from exponential growth. They're destroying infrastructure and turf, and festooning what remains with tons of goose crap. We have two people employed full time over the summer just cleaning up goose shit. I suspect they're driving away many other waterfowl species, like ruddy ducks, scoters and grebes. We can't even get the political will to back a feeding ban, let alone hazing & harassment, or what is really needed: targeted kulling. And so I managed to bring this topic back to politics! |
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Post by Lord Lucan on Mar 2, 2017 3:50:22 GMT -5
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Post by Lord Lucan on Mar 2, 2017 3:52:39 GMT -5
"The Gramscians of the Right" is a goddamned brilliant description. Trotsky described fascism as a caricature of Jacobinism. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2017 14:48:22 GMT -5
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Mar 7, 2017 13:32:32 GMT -5
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Mar 7, 2017 13:33:35 GMT -5
That said what’s up with Canada?  |
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Post by haysoos on Mar 7, 2017 13:37:51 GMT -5
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Post by sarapen on Mar 7, 2017 15:52:37 GMT -5
That said what’s up with Canada? Morpheus is played by Maxime Bernier, who is leading in the race for leadership of the Conservatives. I think he's your basic "starve the beast" con. I can't speak to his appeal or what the Matrix thing is about but I'm not really the audience - I consider the Liberals too right wing to ever vote for them. |
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