applegrove
applegrove's JournalFree speech for some with Citizens United. Not for others with this NFL rule.
And the NFL owners get to benefit from both.
I know right. Some who commit violence are wrong. But people who care
about their country being Democratic and who don't want a permanent overclass in their country with the ladder being pulled up behind are in no way kooky. I fear this is to be used as a wedge to separate centrists from the rest of liberals. Don't let them own the word 'resistance'.
America's Version of Capitalism Is Incompatible With Democracy
By Eric Levitz at New York Magazine
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/americas-brand-of-capitalism-is-incompatible-with-democracy.html
"SNIP..........
Several social democratic (and/or, democratic socialist) thinkers, examining the patient from a few steps to the democracy movement’s left, have had their eyes drawn to a different set of symptoms. They see state and federal legislators who routinely slash taxes on the wealthy, and services for the poor, in defiance of their constituents’ wishes; regulatory agencies that serve as training grounds for the firms they’re meant to police; a Supreme Court that’s forever expanding the rights of corporations, and restricting those of organized labor; a criminal-justice system that won’t prosecute bankers for laundering drug money, but will dole out life sentences to small-time crack dealers; a central bank that has the resources to bail out financial firms, but not the homeowners whom they exploit; a Pentagon that can wage multitrillion-dollar wars that exacerbate the very problems they were supposed to solve — and still get rewarded with a higher budget — even as the Housing Department asks the working poor to pay higher rent for worse accommodations; and, seething beneath all of these defects, disparities in the distribution of private wealth so vast and consequential, the nation’s super-rich have come to enjoy an average life expectancy 15 years longer than its poor.
In these grisly conditions, social democrats see a textbook case of malignant capitalism. Democracies cannot survive on norms alone. When markets are left under-regulated — and workers, unorganized — the corporate sector becomes a cancerous growth, expanding until it dominates politics and civil society. An ever-greater share of economic gains concentrates in ever-fewer hands, while the barriers to converting private wealth into public power grow fewer and farther between. Politicians become unresponsive to popular preferences and needs. Voters lose faith in elections — and then, a strongman steps forward to say that he, alone, can fix it.
All this contraindicates the democracy movement’s prescription: If our republic’s true sickness is its inegalitarian economic system, then that illness won’t be cured by cross-ideological coalitions. Quite the contrary: What’s needed is a movement that mobilizes working people in numbers large enough to demand a new deal from capital. Thus, if the liberal intelligentsia wishes to save American democracy, it should devote the lion’s share of its energies to brainstorming how such a movement can be brought into being — and what changes that movement should make to our nation’s political economy, once it takes power.
Why this argument matters.
It’s important not to exaggerate the division between “normcore” liberals and “radical” leftists. Jedediah Purdy, the Duke University law professor who wrote a much-discussed critique of the former, has condemned Trump’s (norm-defying) lies about voter fraud as a dire threat to “self-rule” in the United States. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, whose book How Democracies Die is the bible of the “normie” center, argue in that very text that “addressing economic inequality” could help inoculate America against future populist demagogues. Each side recognizes that both our economic system’s tendency to concentrate wealth at the top and Trump’s assault on democratic norms are serious problems; they just disagree about which of these represents the more fundamental threat to American democracy at the present moment.
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I'm a woman. Are you saying that anyone who ever said anything sexist cannot vote for my party?
People get fooled. They change back. They change over time. I'll be having none of what you are having. I recognize Donald Trump as a dangerous populist who will use diversity against people. It is a weakness of democracy. We fight back using free speech and moderated forums like this where the right cannot get in and scare off Obama Obama Trump voters who voted economic and racial anxiety and regreat it because it was all bullshit and they know it now. Just because democracy had a weak momment doesn't mean we throw out democracy and try to offer the country better choices the next time around.
Nazis got people to March and hail. Looks like racists in the US are
getting their base to call AA into police. It is practice for voting. They don't have Obama and Michelle to torment anymore and cultivate the GOP garden of racism with. So the racist base has been deputized like Hitler youth. Act out authoritarianism by calling 911. It could be that the people are self-authoritarianisting to connect to their Trump.
I believe it is about more than contempt. It is about gumming up the lower ranks with
people who will be hapless and incapable of making it into the top 20% of the income braket. It is about creating a permanent overclass. In places like Pakistan and Italy, bribes do the gumming up work. But bribery is illegal in the US. So instead they tank social programs that get people up a rung or two on the ladder. How else to explain the cost of college loans going up. Corruption by another name.
I just had my first fajita in 20 years. I'm in love. Why did I ever stop
eating that? Name some food you forgot to enjoy? I'm looking for retro food ideas to feed my retro dad.
This 500,000 payment to Cohen kind of explains why Rudy came out
last week saying Trump paid Cohen the 130,000. They knew this oligarch news was coming. Rudy was trying to get out in front of this.
Rubio is definitely running for President as a compassionate conservative
The only question is which election? And will he go even more to the left (reality)? Good luck with that.
https://www.axios.com/marco-rubio-tax-cuts-american-worker-crumbs-19160f8a-e84a-4712-ae6a-ff5976952adf.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100
Big Banks Saved $3.6 Billion in Taxes Last Quarter
https://politicalwire.com/2018/04/20/big-banks-saved-3-6-billion-in-taxes-last-quarter/"SNIP........
An analysis by the Associated Press shows the nation’s six big Wall Street banks saved at least $3.59 billion in taxes last quarter, thanks to the recently enacted Trump tax law.
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