General Politics thread

I’ve resolved not to post anything on this forum anymore except Rob Ford images.

I don’t know and can’t assess the multitude of relevant factors, but I at least tend to imagine that the intimatadory efficacy of high-profile, anti-civil rights assassinations such as that of Marielle Franco’s, and the advantage that accrues from the individual’s elimination, is outweighed by their concomitant elevation of the deaceased’s notoriety and the enhanced exposure of the crimes they combatted.

But if they’re killing a great more campaigners as well, the opposite could well be true.

Well, at least you have some political children's entertainment on this very thread that you could interest your children in with the bootleg Pooh Xi Jinping Though cartoons.  Just show them Lemur's first link above and they'll be all like "Haha I get it, in the real cartoons Pooh likes honey but here he accidentally mistook a physical manifestation of Xi Jinping Thought for honey, and upon ingesting it became pro-autocracy.  That's a solid joke.  Thanks for showing us this pre-schooler-geared political satire, dad!"

Maclean's is uncharacteristically full of piss and vinegar as it calls for abolishing the Senate if it successfully halts marijuana legislation (it didn't).

Should one be unfamiliar, the Senate is basically Canada's version of the House of Lords in the UK, which is to say that it's an unelected body full of prehistoric fossils who rubber stamp legislation put forward by the actual politicians and whose members draw an idiotically generous paycheque from the taxpayers. Unlike the UK you don't need a title to join this body but are instead appointed by the government through horsetrading and favours and whatnot.

I don't know if the UK has any serious movement to abolish its House of Lords, but killing the Senate has been one of the central planks of the NDP platform forever and reasonable people from all parties have advocated the same. I would not be surprised if the Senate is gone in 50 years and consider that to be much more likely than for Canada to, say, get rid of the monarchy.

Anyway, some choice quotes:

the thing is, you don't generally get to be a Senator by being an honourable person. you get there by kissing a lot of ass and maybe do one or two high profile or culturally relevant (ish) things and generally gladhanding others politically (backroom or backbench, literal or figurative).



whenever I hear what Senators make in a given year (not including their very generous travel etc. stipends) plus their guaranteed pension for life (upwards of what, $80K a year? AS A FUCKING PENSION), I have a pretty heavily mixed reaction. I find it exceedingly depressing and infuriating. I think anyone would be hard pressed to find a better example of completely pointless graft and skimming right off the top.

didn't Mike Duffy pull some extremely shady shit with the landowner technicalities and his stipend? IIRC he was granted his Senator position as a "thank you" from Harper and co. for abusing his position as a well-regarded pundit by overtly mischaracterizing and skewing a bunch of high profile events that led to Harper's rise and painfully long term as PM.

with the stupid amounts of money they make as Senators, I'm surprised all of them don't own a bunch of real estate to begin with, but I guess that's a requirement to become and remain a Senator, right?

what a ridiculous system.

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/09/israel-has-launched-countless-strikes-in-syria-whats-new-is-russias-response

Put me in mind of this encounter almost fifty years ago:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rimon_20

So it's like that scene from Full Metal Jacket when they're shooting Vietnamese farmers from a helicopter: "Anyone who runs is a VC. Anyone who stands still is a particularly disciplined VC."

While he admonishes Washington and Strasbourg about the rising threat to liberal democracy from nationalistic demagogues who capitalize on widespread discontent and alienation-

nyti.ms/2FLgMfj

I think perhaps I will start treating this thread as "random policy ideas".

What if property taxes for education funding went into a single repository for an entire state (I say state and not federal, because, you know) to be divvied up equally among all public school districts on a per-child basis? Obviously I don't know how much of this is currently true, but that's the reason that rich school districts = better-funded/whiter schools, right? There would still be de-facto school segregation, but that result would also be true of reparations-type solutions where money is selectively poured into minority-concentrated communities. White people who demand the best schools for their kids and eternally-rising property values will fight it of course.

I Will Do Anything to End Homelessness Except Build More Homes

I think, like a lot of current satire, it misses the mark by being way too broad. While the joke’s that affluent progressives’ stance on homelessness is really just cover of their core conservatism, at least coming from LA I think this underrates:

1. The earnestness of a lot of the progressivism—people sincerely believe in Medicare for all, hate airbnb, are against gentrification, push for more transit, etc., while being wanting homelessness to be solved somewhere else. Of course, all of those causes are self-interested—everyone benefits from cheaper healthcare &c. (There’s also the weird, very LA-specific view I’ve heard that multifamily housing for the homeless will bring gentrification by establishing a beachhead for increased multifamily housing, which means more yuppies, obvs.—I can see why SoCal politics drove Montypark insane).

2. Resistance to homeless housing isn’t just a thing in white, affluent neighborhoods. I think this goes into a broader problem in American politics—more liberals in rich places wonder why people in poor in places like Kentucky vote Republican, but when people actually bother to talk to voters you see that the people who vote Republicans are generally ordinary professionals—teachers, nurses, etc., who don’t like redistribution down. This holds pretty universally in the US.

I do think that the emphasis on local community in American activism—regardless of its place on the political spectrum—plays a big role in this. It does poorly with people marginalized (e.g. homeless, sex workers) or people who might want in but currently don’t have a voice (people moving to cities for economic opportunity, refugees).