Guest Post by HK, not by Gary Farber
As the seemingly remote Civil War Sesquicentennial gradually floods into our lives over the next four years, we'll find — just as those of us who were around for the Centennial did — that a surprising number of issues from that period which we thought were settled, weren't really settled.
Nowhere is this more striking than in the Teapartiers' cries of "States Rights" — the great rallying cry of the Lost Cause movement. You have to wonder whether the modern Teapartiers have any better understanding of who they are really fighting for than the the hapless soldiers depicted in that poignant scene from Gettysburg where Union soldier Tom Chamberlain is trying to understand his Confederate captives, right after the battle of Little Round Top:
When Chamberlain asks the soldiers what they are fighting for, one of the Confederates responds that he doesn't care about slavery one way or another.
Instead: "I'm fightin' for my rats!"
Disbelieving, Tom Chamberlain repeats his question. But even more earnestly the Confederate repeats that he is fighting for his "rats." After a surrealistic split second, Chamberlain realizes that the man is saying that he's fighting for his "rights."
But the informed veiwer is left shaking his or her head, No, my poor son. In fact, you are not fighting for your "rats" or even your "rights." What you are truly fighting for is slavery. You are fighting and dying for demagogues who are trying to secure their slave-based wealth.
And the leaders know this very well. Following in line with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens's notorious "Cornerstone Speech," the Constitution of every Confederate State mentions its central goal of protecting slavery. And all the so-called property rights are elaborated in relation to that one goal alone. The "rats" of the hapless foot soldiers from the lower classes are a complete fiction.
Similarly, regardless of the "rats" which the foot soldiers of the modern tea party are led to believe they are fighting for, the Koch brothers and their friends know that the real goal of their so-called tea party revolution is protecting and securing their ever-increasing wealth. Michael Moore eexposes how the wealthy are manipulating the poor to do their bidding.
And looking at the right's attacks on collective bargaining, you start to wonder how much the goal might be to re-establish something ever closer to slavery, in which the workers have little to say about their working conditions or compensation.
Fascinatingly, even 150 years ago, William Tecumseh Sherman understood that the same thing was happening to the poor whites of the South. Sherman is a complex individual. As a woman, I'm taken aback by the level of violence he brought into the war. On the other hand, Sherman played a pivotal role in freeing the slaves, and (mostly forgotten) was an exceptionally magnanimous victor in accepting the surrender of Joseph E. Johnston's 89,000 troops, two weeks after the surrender at Appomattox. (Sherman and Johnston became BFF as a result of the terms.) He also deserves more credit in terms of his commitment to provide practical help for the newly freed slaves.
But as relates to the topic at hand, I'm especially impressed by how astutely Sherman analyzed the exploitation of the lower classes of whites by the wealthy plantation owners. At the end of the war, looking to the post-war situation, Sherman wrote a particularly insightful letter to Secretary of War Henry Halleck, predicting the future social relations in the South:
Second. The smaller farmers, mechanics, merchants, and laborers. This class will probably number three-quarters of the whole; have, in fact, no real interest in the establishment of a Southern Confederacy, and have been led or driven into war on the false theory that they were to be benefited somehow—they knew not how.
They are essentially tired of the war, and would slink back home if they could. These are the real tiers etat of the South, and are hardly worthy a thought; for they swerve to and fro according to events which they do not comprehend or attempt to shape.
When the time for reconstruction comes, they will want the old political system of caucuses, Legislatures, etc., to amuse them and make them believe they are real sovereigns; but in all things they will follow blindly the lead of the planters. The Southern politicians, who understand this class, use them as the French do their masses—seemingly consult their prejudices, while they make their orders and enforce them.
As William Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Guest Post by HK, not by Gary Farber
Some things never change: What’s The Matter With Mississippi?
So, where’s the slavery? I assume you’ve got some slavery, or something equivalent to point to, or else it might just be that those people who think they’re fighting for their rights really are fighting for their rights.
Now, I can think of a few things which, in today’s America, approach slavery for an evil, such as the war on Drugs, and the consequent incarceration state. But that kind of lacks for the other side fighting against it, doesn’t it?
One thing Sherman might have mentioned is that large predominantly poor-white areas stayed with the Union, or tried to: Kentucky and West Virginia successfully, and a big part of Tennessee unsuccessfully. Even one part of Alabama (the NW corner if I recall correctly) was full of unionists.
The secessionists only got 18% of the vote in 1860. A reminder of how you can leverage your numbers with determined violence and the creation of “facts on the ground”.
Another case was North Carolina in 1898. Republicans and Populists had swept the state in 1896, but the white supremacy Democrats were more unified and much better armed, and they forcibly overthrew the elected government, replaced it with a Democratic government, and changed the voting rules so that it could never happen again. (That’s an oversimplification — only the Wilmington city government was actually overthrown, but in such a way that the Republican governor was completely discredited).
While the insurrection was being planned (during the period of a year, and partly wide open in public) there was some talk in the north about sending the US military down to enforce voting rights. The murderous Democrats whined endlessly about how horrible it would be for federal bayonets to impose order on their wonderful selves.
What they were fighting against was “Negro supremacy”. If you interpret the data, you find that whenever one single black man had authority over one single white man (much less woman) that was Negro supremacy.
Self-pity is a useful tool for anyone planning violence. Not to break any internet laws, but Hitler reeked of self-pity.
“Michael Moore exposes how the wealthy are manipulating the poor to do their bidding”
*clicks on link* Hmm. Rants, maybe. Exposes? I don’t think so. “Exposes” implies a reasoned argument and evidence. All he does is scream that the rich aren’t paying their “fair share” of taxes, whatever that means.
A visit to the Gettysburg Memorial Battlefield in New Hampshire would set you people straight.
You can take in Lexington and Concord on the same trip.
Dead confederate rats everywhere.
What’s a matta with Mississippi?
Not enough rats, like a minimum level of health care.
You say that’s not a rat?
What Mississippi needs is an underground bullet train to deliver more rats.
Yever wonda why people like Haley in dose cracka states set out poison evey moning?
They want to kill yo rats. They fraid you might grow to like yo rats if dey was allowed to live.
Mr. President, default on the $14 trillion debt before the rats do it for ya.
Preempt Fort Sumter this time.
You got the nukes. Use ’em.
Kill the rats so that our rats may live.
> But the informed veiwer is left shaking his
> or her head, No, my poor son. In fact, you
> are not fighting for your “rats” or even
> your “rights.” What you are truly fighting
> for is slavery. You are fighting and dying
> for demagogues who are trying to secure
> their slave-based wealth.
In the original book (_Killer Angels_), author Shaara has a group of enlisted men from the 20th Maine holding this conversation with the prisoner. After figuring out the “rats” issue, one of these Maine fishermen/potato farmers replies “What about them Negro slaves you keep down there?”. In blocking out the scenes for a movie it makes more sense to have the Chamberlain character appear in this scene to keep the character focus tighter, but I believe it is historically accurate that many of the ordinary foot-soldiers of the Union Army were far better informed about the fundamental issues than their opponents.
Cranky
Sherman’s memoirs are well worth reading; it takes a few chapters to get used to the dense prose of the period but his life story overall is amazing (3 round trips to California via Panama in 5 years?!).
Grant, in his memoirs, also reflected on this phenomenon:
So, where’s the slavery? I assume you’ve got some slavery, or something equivalent to point to,
Rand Paul ran explicitly on wanting to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so let’s just take that as a starting point.
John, that was Jones County Mississippi. As might be expected, historians have argued a bit about that. This book was a debunking
Legend of the Free State of Jones
These two books debunked the debunking
Free state of Jones: Mississippi’s longest Civil War
and
The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy
not sure what the current consensus is, or if there is one.
Sherman was one of the founders of Louisiana State U. in a sense anyway. (He was a founder of a school that morphed into LSU). I don’t know anyone down there to ask whether it really happens, but it would make sense for the LSU marching band to feature “Marching Through Georgia” when the two schools play.
Can you say “self-serving crap”? I knew you could.
Abolition was a hugely popular political issue at the start of the War Between the States, and a heck of a lot of people wanted it to be about abolition. President Lincoln resisted this, because the war was “about” secession. The Constitution specifically reserve all functions not specifically enumerated in the Constitution to the states — i.e., states rights. It was only late in the war, when manumitted slaves fighting against their former masters became a serious military question, that Lincoln assimilated the slavery question to the War — and therefore cut the Gordian knot that had vexed Anerucab political life for four-score-and-seven-years.
It was the right thing to do, in the bigger picture — but that does not excuse your obliteration of issues that were important enough for our ancestors to put their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the line for, reducing the convictions of people who felt (wrongly) that their way of life was an embodiment of the Constitution to no-neck caricatures.
The War Between the States tested the Constiutution-as-written, and shattered it by force majeur — an event so traumatic, as you point out, that no one has really recovered from it.
Shame on you for your tactics. They do not do justice to your sentiments
The tragedy of the Civil War — and why it is a tragedy that still resonates, 150 years later — is that it accomplished a great good by doing a great evil.
I think that there’s a lot to be said that the Constitution as written was a sort of patchwork hodgepodge some of whose enormous problems were the result of attempts to protect slavery. I’m not a constitutionalist any more if I ever was one. I’m not sure how much you can separate the two issues.
Slavery was the big public issue constantly for decades before the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln danced around the issue, infuriating the abolitionists, but the fact of his election was one of the things that set the slaveholders off.
I do not really understand Bill Patterson’s point, much less his indignation.
If the war was about states rights and individual rights, does that mean that Southern Unionists didn’t care about these things? It seems to me that they just didn’t want to defend slavery, which everyone knew was the real issue. Why screw around with figleaves.
My ancestors were unionists. Someone else’s ancestors are non-neck caricatures, and the ancestors’ descendants are too.
Go back, re-read the post, and think about it for a few minutes, Brett–rather than dashing off a petulant “so what’s your point?” comment that clearly demonstrates that no, you did not in fact get the point.
The secession of the South was about slavery.
Period.
There is no legitimate historical debate about this. It is right there in black and white, in the words of its leaders. They were extremely explicit about it.
It is equally well-documented, as HK noted, that the underclass whites doing the majority of the fighting and dying in the Civil War were largely led to believe that they were fighting to defend their rights against so-called Yankee tyranny. This is made obvious in countless ways, not least of which is the too-clever-by-half euphemism used then in the South (and by its modern-day Lost Cause adherents) to refer to the war: the “War of Northern Aggression”. It was a little less than a century before Orwell would write his famous dystopian novel, but this was Orwellian language at its finest.
Clear enough so far? Good. Fast-forward a century and a half.
Now re-read the post starting with the sentence, “looking at the right’s attacks”, and think about it a bit. This is an analogy. Consider all the complaints commonly raised by the rank-and-file Teabaggers–and consider how little in common they actually have with the truth of the way things are (“keep gubmint outta my Medicare!”), or with the stated and actual goals of the wealthy politicians they elect to save them from government oppression.
The Republican agenda is not to their benefit. It is, at its heart, about protecting the status quo, further enriching the wealthy, destroying the middle class, eliminating workers’ rights, eroding the advances in women’s rights, and gutting public services in the name of small government while pushing intrusive “big government” policies wherever it redounds to their favor.
The Republican agenda, as actually practiced by Republican politicians, has little to nothing in common with what the so-called Tea Party says they want. It does, in fact, harm them and their interests.
Seeing a parallel yet?
If not, think about it some more.
a heck of a lot of people wanted it to be about abolition. President Lincoln resisted this, because the war was “about” secession.
Now just ask yourself why the states in question wanted to secede, and you’ll have arrived at your destination.
One thing Sherman might have mentioned is that large predominantly poor-white areas stayed with the Union,
They were predominantly white, and thus there was no need to manipulate the locals into taking the side of the wealthy against the blacks. In the absence of such demagoguery from the plantation class, they threw their lot with the union.
The tragedy of the Civil War — and why it is a tragedy that still resonates, 150 years later — is that it accomplished a great good by doing a great evil.
Fighting against spurious claims of “states’ rights” is not in any way evil and to draw an equivalence between a strong federal government and slavery is simply an insult. The death of the ability to use the excuse of “states rights” to enforce slavery and segregation does not enslave anyone.
Bill Patterson–
You’re making a logical error. You’re right that for Lincoln and many Northerners, the issue was secession. As you also point out, for many others the issue was abolition, but not for Lincoln, at least not at the beginning.
But for the Southern leaders, the issue was the right to own slaves. The fact that for Lincoln the issue was secession doesn’t negate this.
Well, how about a few facts not wrapped in a symbolic hoo haw. Mississippi has a 5B state budget, 44% is spent on education, another 7% on Higher education for atotal of 61% on educatio. I cant believe it would be a good thing to raid that. 6% is spent on prisons and another 7% on debt servicing. for a total of 73% of 5B or 3.65B.
Add 8.5% for current Social Welfare and 1.5% for Local assistance and you are at 4.15B and less tahn 900M to everythings else the state has to do. So adding 125M a year+ is a big nut when revenues are going down.
So you can couch the discussion in 150 year old debates all you want but facts are always convenient things to have.
All numbers from The 2010 Mississippi Budget Sunshine Review scroll down there is a nice table for 2010 appropriations.
BTW, some of are not amused by the cute insult of our southern dialect.
hk,
i luv this post
sorry, most of my comment was for bobbyp.
I’m scratching my head trying to grok how this relates to the core point of this post, as I understand it: the disconnect between the actual purpose of the South’s secession and what poor whites in the South thought it was about, the disconnect between the Republican agenda as practiced by Republican politicians and what the rank-and-file Tea Party think it is, and the parallels between the two.
Whereas some of us are from the South, love where we grew up, and still think it’s funny–as well as being entirely incidental to the point of the post. If it bugs you, set it aside; it doesn’t bear on the substance of HK’s argument.
“Similarly, regardless of the “rats” which the foot soldiers of the modern tea party are led to believe they are fighting for, the Koch brothers and their friends know that the real goal of their so-called tea party revolution is protecting and securing their ever-increasing wealth. Michael Moore eexposes how the wealthy are manipulating the poor to do their bidding.”
Since this seems to be the only paragraph to make a point in this post I would like to point out two things.
1) Michael Moore is quite self aggrandizing and manipulates the poor for his self interest, If you haven’t noticed.
2) Which people here are you trying to cry out to help?
Is it really your contention that over 50% of the people in the US are so stupid that they are cattle led to the polls without taking into account that wealthy self interested people are behind much of what they hear?
That perhaps 75% of people don’t sort the wheat form the chaff and determine that, out of the choices, they are voting for the one that best represents their interests?
Do you believe that your view of their interests is universally what they should believe?
Or is just the people with a Southern drawl that are that stupid?
CCDG,
I’m not sure if Mississippi is the best example. It has never had a very large tax base, and it’s a place that probably needs more in terms of federal largess than a lot of other states as a a matter of course, setting aside budget problems arising from the financial meltdown. You cite the budget percentages, and mention education and say “I cant believe it would be a good thing to raid that,” but my understanding is that the IHL trustees have already directed all the state’s universities to cut their budgets and I understand that program closures have been slated. Your link has a comparison between 2009 and 2010 and it notes that higher education is being cut by 3% and public education by 5%. As your link notes, that would have been higher had the federal government not required certain expenditures in order to qualify for federal funds.
After Congress approved federal funds for the states on August 10, 2010, Gov. Haley Barbour said Mississippi would be forced to rewrite its budget to qualify for $98 million in education funds, moving at least $50 million into education spending from public safety and health. “There is no justification for the federal government hijacking state budgets,” Barbour said.
So the current state administration does think it is necessary, so invoking it as something that is to be ‘raided’ is strange, especially when the federal government is the one forcing the state to keep it at certain levels.
So I assume that the cuts would have been more severe had the federal government not stepped in. I’m not sure if that helps your point.
I agree about the point about making fun of dialect, though I think it arises out of explaining what goes on in the video. Still, I agree that after that explanation, it shouldn’t have been used for a title or as a focus.
lj,
Again, I didn’t invoke it, I was responding to bobbyp’s first comment, bad commenting protocol on my part.
@ Amezuki, “Clear enough so far? Good. Fast-forward a century and a half.
Now re-read the post starting with the sentence, “looking at the right’s attacks”, and think about it a bit. This is an analogy”
“Consider all the complaints commonly raised by the rank-and-file Teabaggers–and consider how little in common they actually have with the truth of the way things are”
I don’t think anyone here is unable to understand that an analogy is being drawn. What is being challenged, is the accuracy/relevance of that analogy. I see no facts from you (or more importantly, this post) demonstrating survey data that reveals the interests of tea party supporters, and how they somehow conflict with the group’s socio-economic background. You can’t just say “look look look! analogy” without any actual evidence.
and by the way, pithy insults like “keep gubmint outta my Medicare” and “teabaggers” make you sound like a less-than-intelligent debater.
Michael Moore is quite self aggrandizing and manipulates the poor for his self interest, If you haven’t noticed.
This gratuitous swipe from you was inappropriate and unbecoming and speaks to the deep-rooted classism that infects conservatism– namely hatred and resentment of anyone who uses their resources to publicly take the side of the poor.
It also bespeaks a certain amount of cowardice I see from conservatives– they are socially constrained from advocating for liberal policies or acting with concern for the less-well-off because their social and business relationships would suffer or they themselves might be perceived as “poor,” so they resent those like Michael Moore with the social freedom to do so– even more so because Moore came from a modest background, so his behavior is taken as a insult to conservatives because he has the freedom to do what they can’t and he does it publicly.
I think this number, if anything, may be too low–although it’s less about stupidity and more about being inundated day in and day out with misinformation.
And it’s not about the accent with which they speak–it has far more to do with the ideology to which they adhere and the sources from which they get their news.
It is a demographic that is overwhelmingly Republican. And if it exists predominantly in the South, that is not because Southerners are inherently stupid, it is because the modern-day Republican Party has figured out that they can make the South a regional base of power by exploiting the grievances and resentments from the Civil War that never really healed in the South.
Also, slightly relevant to LJ’s point (to be clear, this wasn’t his argument–it’s a thought that occurred to me): I think that it is ideologically inconsistent for liberals to complain about how economically poor red states leech off the Federal teat, taking in $X in Federal funds for every $Y in taxes they pay. It is useful as a way of highlighting the hypocrisy of red state politicians, but if you think about it, it’s really the same dynamic at work between the underprivileged and the well-off, except between states and the Federal government.
In other words: some of us pay a little more in order to raise up those who are less well-off. I don’t have a problem with this. It’s at the heart of liberal social policy. We should welcome the fact that this works for states just as well as people–and point out that those who live in these states are the beneficiaries of the very principles they (if they are conservatives) decry.
“so they resent those like Michael Moore with the social freedom to do so-”
You mean like, for money?
I see no facts from you (or more importantly, this post) demonstrating survey data that reveals the interests of tea party supporters, and how they somehow conflict with the group’s socio-economic background.
I’m going to take the side of my right-wing brothers and sisters in a rare move and say that I don’t completely disagree here.
There is a certain interest that aligns here. Take someone who is middle aged and unemployed or underemployed. Odds are at 50 or so, he’s never going to work again unless he gets lucky. Assuming he’s from Mississippi, let’s look at what happens to people who commit the sin of advocating for liberal beliefs:
These guys are never going to work, never going to get promoted, and never going to have their businesses succeed unless they owe social fealty to a right-wing economic elite. And along with that comes a seething, angry resentment towards economic success stories that did not get their by advocating for a right-wing agenda and instead have the social freedom to stick up for those who are less well off.
But it’s not just “sticks” that keep them in line. It’s also carrots. By “acting” right-wing, people start to think you’re successful. I mean, when you’re a member of “the party of the rich and powerful,” you’re going to hope that “rich and powerful” aroma rubs off on you…and that gives all the more reason for people like CCDG to engage in that sort of gauche, classless anger and lashing out at those who don’t have to go through the motions and can advocate for the less-well-off without the social consequence that others would face.
Just remember the rules, folks: if a liberal earns a dollar, he’s a hypocrite and a parasite. If a Republican earns a dollar, he’s a wealth producer, and almost godlike.
“So I assume that the cuts would have been more severe had the federal government not stepped in. I’m not sure if that helps your point.”
No, They would have left 50M in the public safety and health, maybe where it is needed more, to education, So Instead of getting 98M from the Fed for education and being able to use that they were FORCED to move money inside their budget to qualify.
See thats a states rights issue. It is also a common sense issue. If the fed wants to help, great, but what is their criteria for saying that fifty million was better spent in Mississippi on education than public safety? In a very tight budget. That 50M was more than all the money left in the public health budget in 2010. and less than 2% of the education budget.
The overall budget, except the 98m was the same.
…and Tyro completely misses the point.
ME: I see no facts from you (or more importantly, this post) demonstrating survey data that reveals the interests of tea party supporters, and how they somehow conflict with the group’s socio-economic background.
TYRO: I’m going to take the side of my right-wing brothers and sisters in a rare move and say that I don’t completely disagree here.
There’s nothing to disagree about. The above commentary…contains…no…facts. No polling data, no survey data, no negative correlations between a tea party supporter’s positions and his self-interest. You and the author are just projecting your own opinions on a diverse swath of the US public, and calling them all (essentially) poor white southern and easily-fooled. There is no actual analysis here.
Just a group of Internet posters self-confirming their own opinions about the “others.” Those misinformed poor “others” who must only hold their beliefs out of ignorance. We know where there true interests should lie. If only they would listen to us.
Oh, and I forgot. 1950s Mississippi. Clearly this is a representative climate under which all tea partiers live.
There is a big misunderstanding about teabaggers and Republicans, and that’s the idea that they are mostly poor and uneducated. Actually, in education they’re about average, with a mix of well- and poorly-educated, and they’re probably a little more prosperous than average in income.
What Gellman’s “Rich state, Poor state….” found was that in poor states, both poor people are more conservative (Republican) than in better-off states, but that in these states the poor are more liberal (Democratic) than the rich.
In better-off states, the well-off are less Republican, and so are the poor.
As for education, the best Democratic demographics is the least educated 10%, and the most educated 10% comes next. High school grduates, “some college”, and college graduates without an advanced degree are a tossup.
Other surveys have found that the more educated a conservative is, the more extreme he becomes. (Same for liberals).
The hard right can’t be explained by ignorance.
I seriously doubt that the wealthy in Mississippi are overtaxed.
“The secession of the South was about slavery.”
Yeah, and the secession of the South was about 150 years ago, and the tea party is today.
So, I want to know what modern day evil comparable to slavery you think the Tea party movement is actually defending under the guise of states’ rights. I think you’ve got nothing.
So, I want to know what modern day evil comparable to slavery you think the Tea party movement is actually defending under the guise of states’ rights. I think you’ve got nothing.
The Tea Party prevented cap and trade from becining law, which ultimately hurt the CCX investors that did not sell out early.
It always astonishes me the superficial level of analysis on the left about how the big bad capitalists tilt the system to nefariously aid their interests. Of course they do, but how? Dig deep into the details and you will find, time after time, the use of big government to pass rules and regulations that hinder their upstart competitors (direct and indirect) and leave themselves largely free to continue making disproportionate profits.
The solution seems obvious, to enumerate all the regulations, sift through them, get rid of the ones who give the rich an unfair advantage, and maintain the structure as a regular counter to the inevitable attempts the well off will sponsor to put in a new crop in future.
But looking at the mechanics of getting rid of the unfair privileges of the upper classes and you find yourself looking at a process that is a lot more like a tea party Republican’s platform than a progressive Democrat’s. So put your shoulder to the grindstone and enumerate all the governments, enumerate all their laws, rules, and regulations. Identify in each what is upholding unfair privilege for the rich and you’ll find a large cadre of tea party people right there supporting the repeal.
I don’t believe for a minute that the left will actually do this because their anti-corporatism is a sham, a shakedown, an appeal for a check written to shut the leadership up. I would be pleasantly surprised to be wrong and more than happy to collaborate on freeing up our economy from welfare for the rich which is another thing that is choking this country.
“What you are truly fighting for is slavery. You are fighting and dying for demagogues who are trying to secure their slave-based wealth.”
Mais bien sur. Tout le monde connait, “le plus choses changent, le plus ils restent la meme”.
I’d be surprised if there are any real bosses here; nor any truly free people. We are all slaves, and, to some extent, fighting on behalf of our bosses to decide who will own us and what form the slavery will take. Will it be the stinging pain of the bullwhip or the slow dull soul rot of the life indentured to the mortgage/credit bank and unloyal company of employment? Pick your poison.
The typical ‘citizen’ of this country is a slave zombie that can tell you more about what Charlie Sheen had for breakfast than what is in the Bill of Rights.
But then we are all tools; even the intellectuals around here. Get over it. The civil war, like all wars, was about deciding which group of elites would control the wealth of a nation. Period.
Michael Moore is a fat greasy jackass who has discovered that he can make money by braying loudly and publicly. He has not accomplished one iota of quantifiable good for society.
apologies CCDG, I didn’t see bobby p’s comment. I gotta ask, is anyone here from Mississippi?
What’s the matter is that Barbour has presidential ambitions and so he has to stand on principles in order to make sure he can maintain his national base. If you are thinking about state’s rights, you could complain that national Tea Party activists are preventing governors from taking the local actions they need to in order to deal with the current set of problems. Or at least Republican governors with presidential aspirations.
In fact, there seem to be two groups of people who are potential Republican candidates, current governors, (Pawlenty, Jindal, Barbour maybe even Walker and Christie think/thought they had a shot) who feel they need to prove their bonafides and former governors (Palin, Huckabee, Romney) who claim they have already proven themselves, with Gingrich the odd man out (as he usually is) (note, the list of candidates is not based on any announcements, just a list of the usual suspects)
Do you have an iota meter for quantifying good, Avedis? I have a bunch of good to quantify and I sure could use it.
you will find, time after time, the use of big government to pass rules and regulations that hinder their upstart competitors (direct and indirect) and leave themselves largely free to continue making disproportionate profits.
Except that’s not all they’ll do–what they’ll do specifically is hide under the law to justify mistreating their workers and deceiving their customers and then appeal to the limited reach of the law to claim that they cannot be punished for it. The rest of what you write is just libertarian-window-dressing for unchecked corporate power.
Michael Moore is a fat greasy jackass who has discovered that he can make money by braying loudly and publicly.
You lived you life either in fear of what people would say about you if you advocated for the well-being of the less-well-off,or you engaged in a campaign of hate and rage against those not as well off at you, and now you lash out at those with the freedom and good spirit to care about the people and the issues that you don’t. It’s typical right-wing classist hatred and resentment against those more moral than yourself. I consistently see this classist resentment from the right over and over again, and it disgusts me.
Well, JE, I do have a meter. It is specifically designed for quantifying politically generated ‘good’.
To be honest I am not sure it works.I think it does, but I dunno. I built it in 2000 and every time I try to test it, it reads 0. The needle is just stuck there. Doesn’t seem to matter if the test material/subject is left, right, middle or whacko (e.g. tea party, McCain, etc).
I see this a lot– people have class ambitions– so they buy expensive clothes, carefully choose their friends to me pretty and rich, and say the “right things” about how lazy and stupid the poor are and how great rich people are. It’s their ambition. And who, really, can blame them? You are not going to make those business connections or land that sales contract by caring about stagnating wages.
But a guy like Michael Moore becomes successful and yet stays on the side of those who aren’t well off and have been screwed over by the economy, and it represents a certain defiance of all the class-ambitious. A way of saying, “I don’t have to act like you act. I am free.” And these people basically hate social and political freedom and kind of resent the sort of successful people for whom success comes with it social freedom to say what you want rather than success through a constant kiss up/kick down dynamic that they’ve dedicated their lives to. And to have to listen to Moore who isn’t one of the “pretty people” or members of the “born to rule” elite that they so desperately want to be led by makes it even worse– he committed the sin of being successful while not being of the right “class” that CCDG and Luta believes are “allowed” to have public positions.
Avedis, I suspect that your meter is not very useful for anyone who actually wants to know whether or not good is being done.
“I see this a lot– people have class ambitions– so they buy expensive clothes, carefully choose their friends to me pretty and rich, and say the “right things” about how lazy and stupid the poor are and how great rich people are. It’s their ambition.”
I called and read this to my best friend, he and my wife are still laughing that anyone could begin to describe me this way. But, I do know a couple of people like this, you are correct, they exist.
But my friends and family are mostly those people you see Michael Moore hanging around with, running his camera and making a million bucks off their day to day troubles.
The only people I know that really like Michael Moore are the people with lots of money walking around in their expensive clothes, with their pretty friends, who say all the right things about how they really do care about the poor from their multimillion dollar Manhattan apartments or Malibu beacn houses, who wanna think they are soooo good because they wanna be like Mike.
See, I can be as generically rude as you.
See, I can be as generically rude as you.
Yes, I can, but I would appreciate it if you weren’t. Thanks.
sorry lj
Maybe the fight is not over slavery this time but when we have a socio-economic system that produces 10% unemployment (or 20% by some measures) and provides an insufficient safety net for the populace then I would posit that the system needs to be changed, call it wage slavery if you will, but something is wrong when we accept that as the status quo.
JE’s earlier post on the media explains part of the problem, but there is plenty of ignorance on all sides. I would just point to this recent post by Krugman as an example of how even basic economic precepts are rejected based on misinformation and manipulation. Not everyone will educate themselves on the larger forces that drive our society, they are often too busy dealing with the day to day reality of surviving in this world.
I do not know when the tipping point will come but I was heartened that 100,000 folks in Madison showed up yesterday, that’s something, I just hope that carries over to the polls.
CCDG, I hope you didn’t seriously think I place you in the position of the class-ambitious. You’re just trying to scrape by and know that you’re not going to make it by caring about the poor. In fact you’ll have more social accolades to be gained making fun of Michael Moore than worrying about stagnant wages.
But, yeah, you don’t have much of a problem with well-heeling wealthy right-wing Bush partisans who were violently advocating for the use of torture and worked up into a demonic rage about how awful relatively honest politicians like John Kerry wear. You reserve your outrage for people like Michael Moore who have the social freedom to tell right-wingers to where they can stuff their horrible policies.
“Symbolic hoo-haw”.
My, that is indeed an argument that defies an answer. Perhaps you can answer this CC: The feds pick up the entire tab until 2016. Maybe you missed that part in your zeal to demonstrate how tight the state’s budget is. But I gotta’ ask, have you never heard of maybe a few of the richer in Miss chipping in a bit more to pick up the tab? I mean, it’s pretty damned stupid to turn down a 20 to 1 payback. Obviously, you are not a businessman, or for that matter, much of an optimist for the future growth path of the state’s economy. Perhaps you could explain further. I mean a $100m/year bite out of an economy that produces $88Billion annually is peanuts.
On another point, I thoroughly enjoy the conservative venom this post has unleashed. Highly unusual for this little corner of the internets…I mean we’re supposed to be impressed by folks calling Mr. M. Moore a “fat greasy jackass”? You can’t be serious. Isn’t that a logical fallacy, or something like that…
As for Mr. Lincoln. Prior to his election, he was indeed coy about emancipation, but let there be no mistake, his election sealed the doom of slavery as an institution since the outcome pretty much showed that slavery’s spread to the territories had ceased, and for the South this was the handwriting on the wall.
I would be pleasantly surprised to be wrong and more than happy to collaborate on freeing up our economy from welfare for the rich which is another thing that is choking this country.
Insofar as many Democrats have bought into the neoliberal policies that are bringing this nation to its knees, I salute you. You might also read Dean Baker’s “The Conservative Nanny State” for starters. Then I ask you to join us in our effort to free politics from the control of the rich and the comfortable.
As for anybody else who was put off by my innocuous little one liner….I remain puzzled.
Look Tyro, I am not going to continue this. You have no idea what I think about “relatively honest politiicans” like John Kerry. Or how I get my social accolades. Or how much I care about the poor. Or, unless you read it here which would by and large refute your opinion, what I think about torture. So, no,you’re just wrong about everrything except my opinion of Michael Moore, and you are wrong about my reasons for that.
CCDG, I just think it’s interesting that when it comes to the multitudes of successful, well-off people out there, especially those with a high profile, that’s the particular person you single out for your rather gauche, uncalled for spasm of rage against. Simply because he ended up talking about economic inequities. It’s just kind of curious– like you think that other successful, popular people are ok when they advocate for the use of torture or become full-throated partisans of an incompetent Bush administration, but suddenly, if you advocate for the plight of the well-off, then that person becomes a target for your classist rage who should be guilty for being successful. It’s just a curious phenomenon about how you pick your targets, particularly someone who has a better moral compass than you clearly do, and isn’t afraid to say it.
But then, that almost answers the question, doesn’t it, CCDG? Plenty of people are like you… probably plenty of people you know. If you said the same things Michael Moore said, they might call you a flat slob and say you’re “self aggrandizing and manipulates the poor for his self interest,” probably shut you out socially, make it harder for you to get a job, etc. So your self-interest has to lie with the self-aggrandizing people who manipulate people like you for their personal benefit because you have no other choice. And those who don’t face the devil’s bargain that you have made are targets for your rage and resentment. It’s not an honest way to live, but I understand that you have to eat. But don’t take out your plight on others who have a certain social freedom of movement that you, unfortunately, do not.
bobbyp,
the problem with the 2016 thing is that nothing happens until 2014, then not much until 2016. But in the Kaiser study at the bottom it says that the states will start paying in 2014. So the facts aren’t clear, like everything else in the healthcare bill. One is clear, the dollars for uncompensated care go down 14B dollars in 2014. So either we get Medicaid, surprise surprise, or we don’t get the fed funds. Hmmmmmm, how could that have happened.
. 1950s Mississippi. Clearly this is a representative climate under which all tea partiers live.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from conservatives, it’s that human nature exists and doesn’t change. And conservatives thrive on an environment of social intimidation and economic attacks against those who don’t toe the line along with classist demands of conformity.
Bush was an advocate for torture. He had an army of right-wing toadies willing to advocate for bad policies which melted down the economy and got us mired into stupid wars. And you were too afraid to disagree because people would have called you a greasy fat slob who was just doing it for money and you depended socially and economically on those suck ups. You have top engage in these spasms of rage against people who advocate for the less-well-off because otherwise the right-wing will start targeting you. It’s a form of social positioning. And it starts by lashing out at anyone who points out the obviously while maintaining a cowardly silence against the self-aggrandizing immoral flat slobs who actually deserve condemnation. And this has been a constant within conservative culture for decades.
So if you’re not that well off (or even if you’re doing ok) and you want to avoid being called a self-aggrandizing fat slob by the right-wing people you depend on for a living, you learn to be silent and start looking for other people to lash out at in order to prove your social bona fides. And it’s uncalled for, classless behavior from someone whose parents should have taught them to behave better. I’m sorry that you’ve been afraid all your life to call out economic inequities. Don’t allow your personal insecurities and petty jealousies lead you to condemn others who have that kind of freedom to do so.
tyro, please turn it down a notch (or several). I would appreciate it.
tyro, the problem with Michael Moore is not his message per se, but that he delivers it being a fat greasy slob. Therefore, he may appeal to a segment of poor slobs who are getting the shaft in our society, but he has no traction with those who are of the class that make decisions. So it’s just a schtick. Moore makes money off the troubles of unfortunates and does nothing to help them. The power brokers like his form of buffoonery because it serves as a harmless pressure release valve.
On the other hand, if Moore presented in a more refined manner so as to gain more respect from the decision making class, I suppose he would lose the sense of identification he enjoys with the great unwashed. Which sort of speaks to one of the points of the post; which is that the unwashed don’t know what’s in their best interest.
Personally, I don’t trust anyone whose ass is wider than his shoulders and who can’t stand up straight, but then I don’t trust anyone who adds accesories like a Rolex to emmaculate demeanor either.
Moore doesn’t say anything that Krugman doesn’t say better; much better.
“Bush was an advocate for torture. He had an army of right-wing toadies willing to advocate for bad policies which melted down the economy and got us mired into stupid wars.”
Policies which Obama perpetuates. What’s your point?
Yeah, and the secession of the South was about 150 years ago, and the tea party is today.
I’m taking bets on how closely the ratio of “tea party member” to “Confederate flag bumper sticker” approaches 1. The over/under is .75.
Jesus Christ, Avedis. What a useless snot you are. What the Democrats need is a more refined manner, to get the maiden aunt vote I suppose. And a fake goodness meter to prove that nothing ever does any good.
Let’ see John Emerson, what has M. Moore done for anyone? Ummmmm……nothing that I can see.
What has Obama changed? Endless excessively costly war? Nope. Tax cuts favorable to the wealthiest? Nope. An increasing gini coefficient? Nope. Torture? Nope. Erosdion of civil rights? Nope. Coorperate lobbying, pandering and special favors that constitute market failures? Nope. Employment? Nope. Universal healthcare? Nope. Let me know if you want me to continue the list, ok.
Sorry. I don’t see any change I can believe in….In fact, I don’t see any change at all.
But I’m the useless snot…..hmmmm.Ouch.
There has been discussion of how stupid the southern troops were to fight for the interest of the wealthiest. What was the typical northern grunt fighting for? What did he get out of his service (if he survived)?
BTW, Are people here aware that there were even African Americans who fought for the south? Bunch of uncle tom’s or what?
All I’m saying is that all politicians work for some wealthy interest(s) or another; tea party, republicans, deomcrats…doesn’t matter. The job of the politicians is to enlist the support of the masses long enough to get elected and then to spin the screwing of the masses well enough that they can stay in office.
Whereas most soldiers fight for their own more personal reasons and don’t put as much stock in the political spin as the politicians would like them to. So the original analogy in this post isn’t totally wrong; it’s just skewed against southern troops in a way that creates a false dichotomy of right versus stupid and wrong – re; troop motivation – that is then supposed to be carried forward to today’s political arena.
I think it’s likely there’s a huge amount of misinformation being bandied about here regarding the mindset of southern participants in the civil conflict of the mid-nineteenth century. Here’s a list of those that I am seeing here:
1. From the quote in the video about ‘rats’ it is asserted that common southern soldiers were duped into thinking they were fighting to preserve their rights when, in fact, they were fighting to preserve slavery as a southern institution. The opportunity is taken to point to the level of ignorance among those, mainly from the hill country of western Virginia and eastern Tennessee, who did not support fighting to preserve slavery and opted out or tried to.
2. Wealthy plantation owners with slaves and others of their ilk closely tied to the continuation of the existing southern economic order who indeed, in their own pursuit of what they viewed as their self-interest, supported the secession.
3. And a third group, most of whom were neither ignorant, slave owners, nor particularly interested in fighting to preserve the institution of slavery. They were simply patriots answering the call to arms of their state political leaders to defend the sovereignty of their state.
My gg grandfather died on the battlefield in that service in 1862. His grandfather was born in North Carolina in 1781 and his father and a brother fought at Kings Mountain in an important turning point in the War for Independence. My gg grandfather’s father was a county sheriff and one uncle was a medical doctor and close associate of Crawford W. Long. These people don’t seem to be unable to have some understanding of what was happening. Memories of the revolutionary conflict and the years between 1776 and 1787 were likely still strong and that means there was a much stronger sense of state sovereignty unrelated to slavery than we can imagine 150 years later. I was born before WWII and I have strong knowledge and memory of that period. We still have enough political activists who support less Federal government and more devolving of power back to the states to make a difference. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have all this effort by the left to spread misinformation about those who support the Tea Party efforts. So, just consider for a moment that most of the combatants for the Confederacy would have had a strong sense of patriotism and willingness to serve their state to preserve its sovereignty. In other words, they fall into the third category above.
the problem with the 2016 thing is that nothing happens until 2014, then not much until 2016.
Assuming that’s the case, what’s the problem? Why turn down free money? What’s the big rush if nothing happens for 3 years?
But in the Kaiser study at the bottom it says that the states will start paying in 2014.
Yes. But Mississippi pays nothing for new enrolled eligibles. Again, what’s Barbour’s problem?
So the facts aren’t clear, like everything else in the healthcare bill.
Neat claim, but hardly convincing. The feds pay 95% of added costs to expand the program. Mississippi kicks in maybe $100+m/year. The return at 20 to 1 is huge for minimal cost. Further, you don’t address the fact that Mississippi is hardly “overtaxed” (about 6% of state income). The expenditure of an additional $100m/yr amounts to something like 0.1% of state income. You also don’t address how much of a burden this would be given some kind of reasonable assumptions regarding future economic growth.
Your case for stinginess is lacking. Much like the dismal results observed from the state imbibing the exotic fumes of the Galtian weltenschauung.
You tell me Avedis. How often has any public figure of Michael Moore’s type (writers, moviemakers, spokesmen) accomplished “an iota of quantifiable good for society”? Never. I have no idea what “quantifiable good” means to you.
Neither I nor Moore is a defender of Obama. I voted for him very fearfully, and gave up on him very quickly. “Better than McCain” isn’t much.
“Aware”? The story about African American who fought for the south is bogus. There were some black personal servants who attended their masters as camp followers.
A large number of black soldiers fought for the Union, and in several incidents the Confederates murdered them when they were captured.
The goddamn Confederates were stupid and wrong. Unfortunately they were treated too leniently after the war, and they’ve got control of the government again.
The “rats” of the hapless foot soldiers from the lower classes are a complete fiction.
Well, there is an important psychological ‘right’ in racism- the right to feel superior to someone else even if your life is objectively a failure. That is, the supposedly stoked-up fears about being “ruled” by the negro were not totally fictional in the sense that they represented a real attack on the psychological well-being of (some of) the lower class whites.
President Lincoln resisted this, because the war was “about” secession
And yet, the war was also “about” slavery, in the sense that without that conflict, the war would not have occurred. That conflict over slavery was possible because of unresolved tensions in the federal-state governing apparatus, but saying that the war wasn’t about slavery is like saying that the outbreak of WWII in Europe wasn’t about Poland (ie confusing proximity in the chain of ’causes’ with being correct or incorrect).
Did the victim die because he doublecrossed the wrong person? Or because that person shot him? Or because a piece of metal nicked his aorta, causing loss of blood sufficient to deprive his brain of a minimum level of oxygen?
The War Between the States tested the Constiutution-as-written, and shattered it by force majeur
The Constitution does not appear to allow for nullification or secession either; at least, no clauses of the document explicitly support those actions. Yet your position appears to be that the North broke the Constitution while the South attempted to adhere to it (in the name of a bad cause).
It was iirc only in the 20th century that the right of self-determination gave even a shred of legitimacy to the idea of peacefully withdrawing from a national unity- surely if the Founders had envisioned such a remarkable, novel action as being necessary for the preservation of freedom they would’ve included it.
[People from pro-union areas of the Confederacy] were predominantly white, and thus there was no need to manipulate the locals into taking the side of the wealthy against the blacks. In the absence of such demagoguery from the plantation class, they threw their lot with the union
In fairness, iirc those areas were not only different bc of their racial mix- they were culturally different from their lowland neighbors. So we ought not ascribe their different loyalties *just* to their racial composition.
Just remember the rules, folks: if a liberal earns a dollar, he’s a hypocrite and a parasite. If a Republican earns a dollar, he’s a wealth producer, and almost godlike.
If a liberal has money and advocates for the poor, they are a limousine (read: fake) liberal. If they do not have money and advocate for the poor, they are merely the head leech of an army of leeches.
(Ironically, Id already written that when it was stated unironically by another poster).
So Instead of getting 98M from the Fed for education and being able to use that they were FORCED to move money inside their budget to qualify.
See thats a states rights issue.
It is a states rights issue that if states are granted aid by the federal government (from other peoples’ pockets, no less) it must have no strings attached? There is a right to “get the handout I want and do what I want with it?”
I see no facts from you (or more importantly, this post) demonstrating survey data that reveals the interests of tea party supporters, and how they somehow conflict with the group’s socio-economic background.
It’s so, I dunno, cute(?) to say this at the same time as you ask people not to use the example of ‘keep your government hands off of my medicare’ because it is- insulting? That’s a picture-perfect example of the matter at hand: someone who’s trying digest these two facts: they want their Medicare, and they’ve been told that the government (excuse me, gubmit) is grasping and evil. And so you get this synthesis- stuff I get from the government, be it a tax break for my mortgage or cheap student loans for my kids, is from the sweat of my own brow. The 95% (in their minds) the federal government sends to Africa or spends on food stamps etc is being ‘stolen’ from them. And now, the nasty gubmit is out to take away their hard-earned welfare to spend on the unemployed or foreigners (excuse me, furiners).
Again, I can see why you’d want to proactively immunize your argument against that, but what’s not clear is how you can have the self-awareness of the flaw in your position & rather than fix it, attempt to preemptively dismiss it.
No, that’s not a poll. But it is an unavoidable fact that the GOP and significant chunks of their base were up in arms about attacks *on* Medicare from Obama’s health care bill. I havent seen any evidence that cutting defense is popular among Tea Partiers. What I have seen concerning support for cutting Social Security or Medicare is usually based on wacky assumptions (eg that they’d have done much better for themselves using private savings accounts).
So there’s a lot of angry rhetoric about cutting taxes (mostly helps the wealthy), cutting social programs (mostly helps the wealthy), and balancing the budget (unlikely to occur by cutting taxes and the small savings available from anything short of gutting non-discretionary spending even without tax cuts).
The closest Ive seen to a real TP budget is Ryan’s, and it 1)assumes that tax cuts dont lead to losses in revenue and 2)conducts a slow-motion gutting of Medicare/Medicaid by fixing their rates of increase far below the actual rate of increase of medical costs (altho to the 50-ish TPer, that may serve to “keep your gubmit hands off my medicare” at least until she’s dead, but screwing her children over might also be see as not in her best interests. ymmv.)
But looking at the mechanics of getting rid of the unfair privileges of the upper classes and you find yourself looking at a process that is a lot more like a tea party Republican’s platform than a progressive Democrat’s.
obviously, there are a lot of people who would disagree with that assertion. Since it’s the core of your argument, leaving it as a bad assertion seems kinda pointless.
Furthermore, many on the left would argue that the methods used by the rich to “tilt the system” often involve private actions, often in cooperation/collusion. And that those actions can be best prevented or their consequences addressed via government action. Your analysis presumes that all evil emanates from government power- again, a sentiment unlikely to be shared by many on the left.
I don’t believe for a minute that the left will actually do this because their anti-corporatism is a sham, a shakedown, an appeal for a check written to shut the leadership up.
Whereas I believe you’ve made a bunch of assumptions unshared by those on the left, and therefore reached a bunch of erroneous conclusions about their motives. If you assume that libertarianism is the answer and we all really know it deep down- well, you’re bound to have a whole bunch of fruitless conversations with liberals and then exile yourself to the likes of RedState, where you no longer have to hear it.
If that’s what you want, go for it I guess. But fwiw, I think there’s little risk to you to actually try to understand liberal positions rather than caricaturing them.
The typical ‘citizen’ of this country is a slave zombie that can tell you more about what Charlie Sheen had for breakfast than what is in the Bill of Rights.
Ironically, breaking news is that Charlie Sheen broke into the Library of Congress this morning and ate the Bill Of Rights.
“Ironically, breaking news is that Charlie Sheen broke into the Library of Congress this morning and ate the Bill Of Rights.”
LOL!
“I’m different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart. I got tiger blood, man. Dying’s for fools, dying’s for amateurs.” Charlie Sheen
I guess now he has The Constitution.
It is a demographic that is overwhelmingly Republican. And if it exists predominantly in the South, that is not because Southerners are inherently stupid, it is because the modern-day Republican Party has figured out that they can make the South a regional base of power by exploiting the grievances and resentments from the Civil War that never really healed in the South.
Over at TiO, I have found a map of this base of power.
Well said — you mentioned the Cornerstone speech, by Stephens.
Far more important — and almost always overlooked – is that the Southern leaders issued Five Ultimatums to the North, according to Southern papers at the time.
All five Ultimatums were about the SPREAD of slavery. Not the protection of it , but the SPREAD of it. Essentially– help us spread slavery into areas that do not want it, or face war.
I kid you not. The First Ultimatum was that the territories accept and respect slavery. They meant Kansas. Kansas had just voted 98% to 2% against slavery! And they fought a war to push slavery out.
Still the Southern newspapers reported their OWN LEADERS Ultimatums to spread slavery there.
Gone was even the fig leaf, the farce, of states rights. These Ultimatums specifically said states would not have rights!! States could not stop slavery, no matter if 98% of the people didnt want it!
And the newspaper headlines in Richmond about the Ultimatum read: THE TRUE ISSUE!
The TRUE issue was the SPREAD of slavery.
That’s not what said, that’s not what some book said, that is what the SOUTH said at the time. In headlines. Bragging about it.
Plus, Jefferson Davis had his own “cornerstone speech” in a broadside he issued Jam 5 1863.
What these guy bragged about at the time, what they put in their headlines, their speeches, their Ultimatums, they dare not even mention now.
http://fivedemands.blogspot.com/
“they dare not even mention now”
They’re dead.
I think “they” here, in context, pretty clearly refers to the modern-day heirs of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
But looking at the mechanics of getting rid of the unfair privileges of the upper classes and you find yourself looking at a process that is a lot more like a tea party Republican’s platform than a progressive Democrat’s.
There’s a good point in there somewhere. That good point is that many “tea party” folks are, at some emotional level, uncomfortable with the power of very wealthy people, and of the influence they exert on public life.
Not all, because a non-trivial number of tea party folks are, in fact, wealthy. But many.
The problem is that the tea party platform, in fact, does nothing – not one thing – to address that in any practical way.
The tea party platform is:
1. lower taxes
2. smaller government
3. strict reading of the Constitution
Most would also include:
4. free markets
There is nothing whatsoever in that platform that will have any effect on the privileges, power, or influence of wealthy persons – whether natural human or corporate.
Not one damned thing.
So, populist, maybe, at some kind of emotional or notional level.
But to the degree the tea party agenda is about putting limits on the political influence and privileges of the “big guys”, however those “big guys” are construed, their actual policy recommendations are boneheaded.
I have nothing against tea partiers personally, and I appreciate their anger, but as far as I can tell they have no freaking idea about what the real-world consequences of what they’re trying to accomplish will be.
Blow it up, and let the chips fall where they may. That appears to be the agenda.
If they are interested in reining in the influence of wealthy people, that ain’t gonna get it done.
If you talk with tea partiers on any kind of regular basis, I encourage you to point this out to them, I’m not sure it’s occurred to them.
Russell:
‘The tea party platform is:
1. lower taxes
2. smaller government
3. strict reading of the Constitution
Most would also include:
4. free markets
There is nothing whatsoever in that platform that will have any effect on the privileges, power, or influence of wealthy persons – whether natural human or corporate.’
Implementing the Tea Party platform will reduce big corporate power in Washington by eliminating the spending, subsidies, and favors lavished on their behalf. Tea Partiers will work to remove any senator or representative who shows corporate interests is what they respond to. We sent Mike Lee to replace Bob Bennett and we will watch Senator Lee very attentively. Senator Hatch is working hard to avoid the same fate. The 17th Amendment made senators elected by state voters more responsive to national and international influences than to the states they represent. We actually need those senators to act in ways that do not impede small business success. Much of what they have been doing has helped big corporations at the expense of small business. This is actually the only way the people can regain control of events in Washington. No predictions on the sustainability of this effort, but I still have hope.
Similarly, regardless of the “rats” which the foot soldiers of the modern tea party are led to believe they are fighting for, the Koch brothers and their friends know that the real goal of their so-called tea party revolution is protecting and securing their ever-increasing wealth.
Which is probably why they each gave $10 million to the ACLU, that notorious bastion of Bircher fundamentalism. Not to mention the good $600 million they’ve given to other notorious right-wing causes, such as Sloan-Kettering and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Probably for a creationism display.
The political world is not about obvious black hats and white hats. I know, I know, you’d really like to live in simpler times when it was all about slavery or communism, but sadly, our current political reality is much more complex.
I have nothing against tea partiers personally
I don’t have anything against self-identified “tea partiers” any more than I have anything against Republicans. Which is to say, I realize that the success of their political agenda and their candidates will be destructive to everything I’m working for.
The Koch brothers are rightwing libertarians, which means that they can support the ACLU. The other “notorious right-wing causes” were not political causes at all; these donations were apolitical.
Your entire comment was premised on the reader’s complete ignorance of anything that the Koch brothers had ever done. How the f*ck could that have contributed anything to the discussion?
The Koch brothers are black hats, if you’re a liberal. If you’re a rightwing libertarian, they’re white hats. There’s no difficulty, subtelty, or paradox here. In the same way, to some people Jefferson Davis was a white hat, and to others he was a black hat. (Note that I did not mention Hitler).
What a goddamn fu*cking stupid argument. “Political reality is much more complex”. That’s a tired, tired old NPR cliche of limited application, and here it’s being presented as wisdom.
[This post has been edited on March 15th, 2011, 11:21 p.m., PST to comply with the Posting Rules; John, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make me have to be sure to check threads days later, and stay up late at night, to dive into the software, to deal with violations; you’ve been informed of the rules; it’s not hard to use an asterisk or different spelling to ostensibly avoid setting off workplace software filters, or, at least, the Rules; thanks for your future cooperation — gf]
JE- posting rules, man.
Gosh John, I am so glad they have your permission.
Now if somehow you could get a clue on the vocabulary permitted here.
John Emerson is having difficulty expressing his thoughts!
No, I am not. I made my point, and then I vividly expressed my exasperation at the stupidity and dishonesty of the comment I was responding to.
This is my second or third try here, and the experiment has not been successful so far. Civility is a good thing, but people impose on it.
John,
we do have a ‘no 7 words‘ policy here (actually more like 5 and a half), so I hope you can roll with that. Thanks.
Actually, I’m thinking of calling for the banning all Civil War related threads, unless you are talking Oregon vs Oregon State…
Gob avers: Implementing the Tea Party platform will reduce big corporate power in Washington by eliminating the spending, subsidies, and favors lavished on their behalf.
This is really depressing. This is the expression of a fantasy world with which I am totally unfamiliar. That you appear to share this belief (well, d’oh, you wrote it) is all the more distressing since you apparently read and participate in this forum…infested as it is with all manner of liberal elitists and a few who are even worse.
Tell all here how erasing federal funding for Planned Parenthood attains those stated goals. Go ahead. I dare you.
If this is truly its stated goals, the Tea Party movement has gone beyond tragedy and well into farce.
The TRUE issue was the SPREAD of slavery.
Well, the dynamic of the time was pretty messed up. eg the Southern States were very upset that Northern states (and Northern individuals) tried to prevent enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (which seems like a states rights issue going the other way, and even had its own nullification attempts). Or, as you point out, the issue of the expansion of slavery to the territories.
But I think it simplifies it to say that it was about spreading slavery per se- the Southerners wanted to spread slavery to the territories because without spreading, slave states would soon be outnumbered and would lose ground at the federal level (where the issue would eventually be decided). Spreading slavery was a strategy in the overall struggle over slavery rather than the driving force.
But this does point at a serious flaw in the states rights position- slavery was a national issue with all kinds of national implications. Claiming that any attempt to stop slavery was interference in local affairs was disingenous then and is disingenuous now.
‘Tell all here how erasing federal funding for Planned Parenthood attains those stated goals.’
This is not significantly related to the four points listed as parts of the Tea Party agenda. It just might be part of the Republican Party’s effort to convince Tea Party advocates that they are responding, but it won’t fly.
Nice try, bobbyp, but this is outside my realm of interest. I cannot imagine this is much spending anyway even if it is inappropriate.
Carleton,
The period of the 1850’s was also similar to the present insofar as positions had hardened so much on either side that compromise simply was not a possibility. The north, too, fell increasingly into the anti-accommodation camp as the election of 1860 neared. The abolitionists in the north were no longer a despised and barely tolerated minority like they were in the 1840’s and earlier.
Similarly to the ante-bellum era, we have an incipient and developing anti-accommodationist wing of the Republican Party. It is gaining influence. It is largely regionally based.
If there ever was a time for the repetition of history to be a farce, this is it.
Farce Alert Status: Magenta
If this is truly its stated goals, the Tea Party movement has gone beyond tragedy and well into farce.
I think it’s still just in an all-thing-to-all-people kind of moment, at least on the right. I’ve heard people telling me how it’s going to dismantle entitlement programs, or how it’s going to save them. It’s going to make the US more isolationist or how it’s going to prepare us for the coming conflict with China. It’s all about bringing us back to our identity as a Christian nation. Or is it all about liberating businesses from onerous regulation?
On one hand, that makes it seem pretty innocuous to me- a bunch of people rallying because they sense the American Century coming to a close and it makes them nervous. Because everybody always has a theory about how things ought to be done better and suddenly they imagine that this is the vehicle for that.
otoh, sometimes I think it could be dangerous; there’s a real threat when simpletons get into large groups and think that drastic solutions are necessary, especially when they’re threatened and frightened by changes in society and the world that they cannot control. When they turn, as conservatives do sometimes, to the stab in the back theory, the peter pan theory that national greatness has been eclipsed by a lack of clapping on the part of various unpatriotic scapegoats…
Mostly I think harmless though.
lj, you must mean “war between the states” related threads. I can’t abide the word civil.
I was going to quote the Poor Man (“Michael Moore is fat”). I hardly expected to see it become an issue raised without irony.
“Mostly harmless”? Great, we can expect to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Joking aside, this is no farce, alas. We are in big trouble.
unless you are talking Oregon vs Oregon State…
Point taken. But if you ban one, you’d better ban both. Irreparable hurt feelings and flying expletives characterize both of them!
If there ever was a time for the repetition of history to be a farce, this is it.
We do have some of the same regional tensions, but I think we’re just much too tightly integrated as a national now (Gov Perry nonwithstanding- ‘America- I love it so much I have to leave it?’). And while there are regional tensions in social policy etc, we dont have the regional differences in fundamental economic structures that we had in the 1850s. Lacking that kind of economic divide, or a wave of genuine religious fanaticism, I think we’ll be Ok.
Im mostly waiting for the other shoe to drop in 2012; I suspect that the GOP will find trying to manage the ideological split between the TPers and the independents to be impossible. The GOP spends a little time in the wilderness, putting up ‘electable’ or ‘true’ candidates for a while, then someone will give us a new synthesis from the right and we’ll move to the next phase.
‘But this does point at a serious flaw in the states rights position- slavery was a national issue with all kinds of national implications. Claiming that any attempt to stop slavery was interference in local affairs was disingenous then and is disingenuous now.’
Your idea here is correct and points to the flaws in the political thinking of those who knew that the admission of new free states would eventually result in an amendment to the Constitution outlawing slavery. A states’ rights argument could not support their effort. That does not mean that others who didn’t care or opposed slavery would not have thought that the Federal government was infringing states’ rights just as people in Wisconsin did in their ‘nullification’ of the Fugitive Slave Act as unconstitutional. There was more than one thing going on at the same time. Not everything was slavery. Kind of like bobbyp suggesting that I support the Tea Party agenda so I can get Planned Parenthood.
(Gov Perry nonwithstanding- ‘America- I love it so much I have to leave it?’)
I dunno, Newt just explained that he ran around on his wife because he loved his country so much
Now if somehow you could get a clue on the vocabulary permitted here.
Posted by: CCDG
and
John Emerson is having difficulty expressing his thoughts!
Posted by: GoodOleBoy
I seem to be the only one around this evening, and I’m about to hit the sack, so please note. Poking someone to get a reaction and then dancing around when you do is the precise definition of trolling. Stop it please.
Brett
So, I want to know what modern day evil comparable to slavery you think the Tea party movement is actually defending under the guise of states’ rights. I think you’ve got nothing.
Let me try to answer you with direct answer since no one did, but there were many indirect answers to this.
Tea Party is defending unlimited power of big corporations, under the name of what TP imagine “FREE market” means, under the Reagan’s myth “all federal government is bad”. States have power only over itself, on the other sides big corporations are over all states. So in order to control corporations in other state, single states would have to organize in order to control a corporation that is in one other state but has power to sell its products to every state. Only the state that hosts the corporation has benefits from the corp that sells faulty product, and would not want to undermine the cash/job cow. Non host states would not be able to satisfy complaints of their residents, except to ban the faulty product which would be ineffective until other states do the same and organize to do it. That’s why there is federal government.
‘The tea party platform is:
1. lower taxes
2. smaller government
3. strict reading of the Constitution
Most would also include:
4. free markets
There is nothing whatsoever in that platform that will have any effect on the privileges, power, or influence of wealthy persons – whether natural human or corporate
1,2 and 4 is the same as in small government. But if there is small government, then who will be there to enforce 3 (Constitution), since small government also means small DOJ.
There is a little bit of truth in free markets, without tax credits, loopholes that benefit particular corp/industry. A bit of truth if the conditions were such and now there are no federal regulators, but then who would enforce pollution controls from state to state where codes are different but pollution does not know borders. Who would enforce workers rights uniformly. So on and on…
TPs are advocating for no control over corporations/wealthy who would have all power trough attorney costs that poor would never be able to get their constitutional rights enforced trough courts.
Since the topic of the civil war has been raised, I cannot resist sharing this piece of trivia, which pair of college teams have met on the basketball court more than any other?
I bet you thought the record would be held by a pair of Ivy League or other East Coast teams but, in fact, the Ducks and the Beavers have played each other 333 times, an NCAA record.
As for the other Civil War, Oregon was granted statehood in 1859 and the State Flag and Seal bear the words “The Union.”
I think defense of tax subsidies for oil companies is probably a clearer example of Tea Party supported elected officials doing the exact opposite of what GoB claims the Tea Partiers are concerned about, on which the Tea Partiers have been absolutely silent in their response.
GoB, I’d be curious to hear your explanation of why a group very concerned with reigning in the use of Federal power to benefit corporations (so you say) and very concerned with cutting deficits (so many people say) is remaining silent as the people it elected support the continuation of tens of billions of dollars in tax giveaways to giant corporations.
Don’t make me pull this car over, kids.
Oh. Refusing to bargain collectively == slavery. Or even has any equivalence at all.
This, my friend, is a stretch.
Slavery was about denying that the enslaved were legally people. Removal of collective bargaining rights is nothing of the sort. If nothing else, teachers in Wisconsin now have exactly the same power to negotiate their wages and working conditions as I (and most of the rest of the country) do.
You may see it as just the beginning of a very slippery slope. If that’s the argument, fine. Just own it, is all.
When the Tea party became a household word, I couldn’t see what exactly the Tea Partiers stood for. I was struck by how thoroughly incomprehensible it all was.
It didn’t take me long to get hipped, though. It was clear to me that while the buzz in such a “movement” was full of talk about the Palins, the O’Donnells, etc., that’s not what animated most of them. For in looking at the tenor of their rhetoric, it didn’t take me long to see that most of what they have protested is more about what they are against rather than what they are for, and while in the last mid-terms they huffed and puffed mightily over holding the new majority’s feet to the fire, the truth is that they have no effective way to make the GOP toe the ideological line they say they subscribe to.
Like most movements based on resentment and self-pity, look past the surface and you’ll find there’s very little there. So as Charles S pointed out above, the GOP has been happy to use the TPers for votes and anti-liberal resentment, and that’s the extent of the relationship.
“Personally, I don’t trust anyone whose ass is wider than his shoulders”
This, btw, is a form of bigotry. The size of your rear end has nothing to do with personal virtue. Well, unless you’re so obsessed with keeping your tush firm that you become a narcissist.
“Poking someone to get a reaction and then dancing around when you do is the precise definition of trolling. Stop it please.”
You know lj, this one has me baffled. I can’t find anything in this thread that qualifies as me poking anyone, the distiguished Mr. Emerson in particular. (except maybe tyro, and then I was poking back. Already apologized for even that.)
Perhaps you could, in this instance, point out how I was trolling Mr. Emerson before mildly objecting to his multiple objectionable word comment.
When the Tea party became a household word, I couldn’t see what exactly the Tea Partiers stood for
Electing right-wing Republicans.
Interesting choice of analogy for a guest post.
Michael Moore eexposes how the wealthy are manipulating the poor to do their bidding.
“Eexposes” is right. Geez, those Warren Buffets and Bill Gates, don’t they know their wealth is our national resource?
Yes, let’s take it all!
I think this is the right take . Is Moore offering up his wealth, too, as a “national resource”?
The “400 little Mubaraks” swipe was about as apt as the civil war analogy.
And looking at the right’s attacks on collective bargaining, you start to wonder how much the goal might be to re-establish something ever closer to slavery, in which the workers have little to say about their working conditions or compensation.
Yes, most federal workers are slaves, I guess, because they cannot bargain for even wages. What are the Wisconsin workers, part slaves, since they can still bargain over wages? And do you think the Wisconsin retirement benefits are slavery-like? Why not? If they are not and Wisconsin workers can still bargain for wages, how in the world is this a path to slavery?
Not to mention that if you don’t like the government job, YOU ARE FREE TO MOVE ABOUT THE COUNTRY (sorry SWA).
I’m somewhat open to the “raise the rates” discussion, but it ends when there is talk that taking away collective bargaining from public workers is akin to slavery.
BTW, where did all the disapproval of violence-inducing rhetoric go? Out the window as soon as it was being spewed in Madison? At least the protests in Madison did one thing for me-it confirmed taking away collective bargaining was exactly the right thing to do.
‘When the Tea party became a household word, I couldn’t see what exactly the Tea Partiers stood for’
Within the ranks of those who are labeled or call themselves Tea Party supporters are numerous and varied views of what is wrong in Washington and what needs to be changed. I happen to subscribe to the version set forth by Russell at March 13, 10:30 PM. Social and religious issues I typically exclude from my view of what is proper for the Feds. I just think we have more Federal government than we should have or need. This says nothing about State and local government. My assumptions are that some state governments would need to be bigger since some of what the Feds do would need to be addressed by State and local.
‘Electing right-wing Republicans.’
Few Democrats running as candidates for positions in Washington would agree with any of what I just stated, This is true, also, of many recent Republican incumbents and candidates. So, by elimination, that leaves: voila!, right-wing Republicans.
GOB, that doesn’t explain wanting to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with someone whose primary goal is making American more explicitly Christian; I might agree with the sentiment “something is wrong in Washington”, but Im not going to join a crowd protesting in favor of that sentiment when we have radical disagreements about what the something that’s wrong actually is.
At best, the TP has no coherent message and is incapable of anything more than being co-opted by groups that *do* have coherent messages and goals. Insofar as it’s capable of articulating a coherent message, that message, as you say, the message of the right-wing conservatism. As message that doesn’t get any more popular for being obscured by the TP’s unfocused anger.
There’s lots of polling that shows what the Teatards “think”. Spend ten minutes Googling and a picture emerges. They tend to be older white males from rural areas that have very rightwing views, particularly on religious issues, and a much larger percentage of them than the rest of the population believes in really, really stupid stuff like birthism. They are what used to be called “the rightwing lunatic fringe”. This is also clear from the candidates backed by the Tea Party and by their effect on the rhetoric of those pols who would like to be leaders of the Repblican party but are having trouble leading now that the party is so infested with shrill hysterical no-nothings. BTW Teatards overwhelmingly vote Repubican.
LIke I said: google the polling data. There’s plenty of it.
AS for violent rhetoric: the ony rhetoric in Madison that might have had the effect of inducing violence was the Governor’s when he mulled the possiblity of using agent provacateurs. The chief of police said that there have been very few arrests and none for violent behavior. The rhetoric from the speakers has not been violent, nor are the signs.
When I watched the tractor parade enter the city square I had what bc might consider a violent thought. The words of a poem came to my mind: “Where once embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world.”
I very much hope that events in Madison, the uprising of the normal people, will be a political revolution against the hypocritical, dishonest, frequently hateful ans stupid,but always self-serving edifice of rationalizations for selfishness that is the philosophy of the Repubican party.
At least the protests in Madison did one thing for me-it confirmed taking away collective bargaining was exactly the right thing to do.
I don’t even begin to understand this. Something gets people upset, and you consider that justification in and of itself for doing it? Do you see political and economic activity as zero sum- anything that irritates your ‘enemies’ must be a good thing?
This sort of attitude (if I understand it correctly) is one of the poisons in the American bloodstream.
Here’s a link to a poll about Tea Party beliefs and who they are–
link
“My assumptions are that some state governments would need to be bigger since some of what the feds do would need to be addressed by State and local.”
Hey, Alice, you may have been to a Tea Party but not the one you imagine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0-Z7YgDrxE&feature=related
Stick with this video, especially the last five minutes.
Try stealing money from Dick Armey at any level of government.
That scooter is theft regardless of who you think is going to pay for it.
From the Mary Katherine Hamm article that bc cites upthread:
The United States of America has about 400 billionaires. Moore calls them “400 little Mubaraks.” About half of those have less than $2 billion each, and those with a net worth in the double-digit billions is an exclusive club of about 30.
400 billionaires hold, minimally, 400 billion dollars. Based on Hamm’s comment here — half have less than $2B, half have more than $2B — it’s probably something well over a trillion dollars.
400 people, one trillion dollars. One million million dollars, as we count it here in the US.
That is one hell of a lot of money.
Median family net worth in the US is about $120K. That’s net worth, not income, and includes the value of the family’s home if they own one, all retirement savings including 401K’s etc.
Everything they own which could conceivably be made liquid.
If you have, frex, $1.2 billion, the value of what you own is worth what ten thousand people whose wealth is at the median own.
One person, ten thousand people. Or, if you will, 400 people, four million people.
In and of itself, I guess that might be sort of all well and good. They can’t help it if they’re lucky.
But it isn’t “in and of itself”. The people who own what ten thousand of their fellow-citizens own use that wealth to influence public policy.
They buy outcomes, because they can.
I find Moore’s rhetoric overwrought. I don’t bother watching his movies or reading his books because I assume that, entertaining as they might be, I’m going to have to fact-check every damned thing he says, and I just don’t have the time.
But any analysis of what he’s saying that fails to recognize the *astounding* disparity, not of wealth per se, but of the privilege and influence that that wealth buys, is bone ignorant.
Hamm has her head where it don’t belong.
Money is not neutral. People who have a lot of money have different interests than people who don’t, and their wealth gives them the means to make their interests prevail.
The rest of us have to work our @sses off to make that happen.
That’s why collective bargaining just doesn’t bug me. I don’t really care if it creates inefficiencies. Gross disparities in wealth create inefficiencies, too, but nobody ever seems to complain about those.
If all you have are your numbers, you bring your numbers. It’s either that, or eat sh*t. Why the hell should anybody settle for that?
And yeah, all of those cops, firemen, teachers, garbagemen, motor vehicle registry clerks, etc etc etc could just go somewhere else and get a real job.
But if you actually want public safety, schools, and your trash hauled, that’s probably not an outcome you should actually encourage.
Those people get out of bed every day and do useful stuff, for you and me. Stuff that not one of those 400 billionaires is going to do, for any amount of money.
Don’t forget that even before the protests started, it was Scott Walker who said he was ready to call up the national guard, presumably to be prepared to shoot, before illegalizing collective bargaining rights for state workers. If that’s not threatening violence, I don’t know what is.
Collective bargaining rights are fundamental. bc’s opposition to them seems driven mostly by spite. Thankfully, the people of Wisconsin don’t hate their own people and are taking the sides of the unions. I don’t quite understand bc’s attitude here– the people protesting in WI are his own people and neighbors who are upset at being subjected to unwarranted attacks by the governor. Why does bc have such unhinged hatred and spite towards his OWN PEOPLE?
The result of the Teatard influence on the Republican party in Michigan is passage of legislation that effectively ends democracy there. That, of course, has been the ultimate goal of the Republican party for decades. Not openly the the goal, of course! But clearly the goal based on the actions taken by Republicans once they have the bit in their teeth; voter supression, extreme pro-corporation activists on the Supreme Court, the decades of violent and eliminationist rhetoric and the use of real violence by proxy, the systematic demonizing of anyone who is hurt by Republican policies (which is happening right here on this thread–thanks for the example, bc!), the use of media to promote lies of which there are too many to list but the claim that the Republicans, creators of our current deficit, are opposed to deficit spending is a big one, …
I don’t care if it is agaisnt posting rules to say that Republicans and their enablers are behaving shamefully. I am not willing to maintain the polite fiction that Republicans and conservaties are just nice people with a different point of view. There is nothing nice about the political behavior of either the Teatards or the people who make excuses for them or the people who exploit them for their votes. People are responsible for the effects of the ideas they promote and the party they vote for. Granted neither party is perfect but only one of them is systematically setting up institutions and policies for the purpose of screwing over the average person to benefit a few. Willful ignorance sure as hell is not an excuse.
Its just shameful for people to, from the safety of their own economic security, attack the security of other people and future generations. Just shameful.
Easy.
Raise Michael Moore’s taxes, say, to 39.6% at the high marginal end, for starters.
If he joins the Tea Party as a result, he can then use his bullhorn influence to galvanize them around an issue the oligarchy (to whom Republican politicians and much of the Democratic Party are slaves — if you wanna throw the word slavery around) is covering its ears and eyes to ignore: the outsourcing of American jobs overseas.
It was the second most mentioned grievance among the “conservatives” who answered the cute survey Boehner and Cantor conducted last summer to let the whiners shriek.
Is it true? What, you’re going to raise the bar at this late date in the closing days of the United States of America.
That’s really not my bailiwick, but I’m telling you if you want to see a real revolution in this country, with heads in baskets, and a tsunami of anger, Moore is just the guy to get it moving among the subsidized deadbeat scooter crowd.
The Republican Party, or whatever these animals call themselves, is whistling past the Bastille on that issue.
Tea Party = GOP base, basically. They lost a couple of elections and got pissed off, turned out, and pushed back, hard.
…
True that “States Rights” rhetoric can be traced back to the Civil War, but then it can be traced back before that. I think back to one of the key policy divides between the Whigs and Democrats: tariffs and “internal improvements.” The Whigs were pro-tariff/internal improvements, which is to say they were in favor of taxation to pay for infrastructure projects. The Democrats were hostile to that (particularly Southern ones). Slavery took over as THE issue as time went on (and the South had basically won the tariffs fight at the time of Lincoln’s election), but the two are at least somewhat intertwined. After all, you’re probably not going to be excited about paying for harbors and railroads if you’re devoted to an agrarian economy powered by slave labor.
I think it’s pretty obvious that the internal improvements debate has raged down through the years and continues today. It’s a different flavor here in 2011, but the broad outlines of the fight are the same, IMO.
I don’t care if it is agaisnt posting rules to say that Republicans and their enablers are behaving shamefully.
I don’t know that that in particular is against the posting rules, and it’s not for me to say since it’s not my blog. As for me, though, much as I find the Tea Party’s views incoherent and their potential effect on the country horrifying, it accomplishes nothing to use language that would fit just right in a middle school playground tauntfest. It’s not a matter of some kind of abstract worship of “civility” — it’s that not only does it not convince anyone of anything, it makes you sound a lot like what you’re accusing other people of being. The fact that you’re getting some jollies out of it is a bad indicator of how it comes across to everyone else, and what effect it has on the people reading your words.
Not caring about the posting rules doesn’t mean that the posting rules don’t care about you. Good luck with that.
Money is not neutral. People who have a lot of money have different interests than people who don’t, and their wealth gives them the means to make their interests prevail.
So, for the TP rhetoric that we read earlier (we need to get big business out of government!), I wonder how y’all can explain the involvement of the Koch brothers in the Tea Party. Based on that resume, they are not your friends if getting business out of government is your intent. eg
During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas…. If convicted, the company faced fines of up to $352 million, plus possible jail time for company executives. After George W. Bush became president, however, the U.S. Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges. Two days before the trial, John Ashcroft settled for a plea bargain, in which Koch pled guilty to falsifying documents. All major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled the lawsuit for a fraction of that amount.
Koch had contributed $800,000 to the Bush election campaign and other Republican candidates.
Implementing the Tea Party platform will reduce big corporate power in Washington by eliminating the spending, subsidies, and favors lavished on their behalf.
Not to pile on GOB but we actually do have a budget proposal from the Republican House, which gives us as close of an approximation of what conservative Americans want to cut as we are likely to get.
Programs that will be eliminated or cut include:
Nuclear non-proliferation
International food aid by 50%, State Dept budget for refugees by 40%
Environmental protection, with a special emphasis on sticking it to any programs associated with addressing climate change
Food stamps, child nutrition, Medicare, Medicaid
Alternative energy
The NEH, also the NIH and CDC.
Also, job training, home heating assistance, Pell Grants, transportation, housing.
I could probably go on and on, that’s just my two-page Google random walk.
Obama asked for fossil fuel tax breaks to be removed, and for the resulting revenue to be repurposed for clean energy development. My understanding is that that proposal is not in the House budget.
Obama also asked for farm subsidies to be rolled back significantly. Rejected in the House.
I have no doubt that GOB is speaking in good faith when he expresses his hope that the Tea Party crowd will limit the influence of wealthy actors, whether natural human or corporate.
I just think it ain’t gonna work that way. Whether that’s the intent or not, de facto the folks in government who the tea party supports are furthering the interests of very, very wealthy people, and taking their cuts out of the hides of the rest of us.
Obama asked for fossil fuel tax breaks to be removed, and for the resulting revenue to be repurposed for clean energy development.My understanding is that that proposal is not in the House budget.
Oh, not just that, but Rep. Joe Barton — who, after last year’s oil spill, apologized on behalf of the US government to BP for subjecting them to a “shakedown” — actually argued with a straight face that ExxonMobil and others need those subsidies to keep from going out of business, then managed this beauty:
Yep, if you believe in the “free market capitalist system,” you must continue to provide billions in subsidies to the oil industry. The mind boggles.
Probably everyone will notice that linked article dates to 2009, when the Democrats were the majority party.
No one is asking you to pretend anything; we’re only asking you to understand and comply with the posting rules when posting here. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re free to find another forum to express yourself as you please. Stay and talk, or go as you see fit. That’s freedom, ain’t it?
Probably everyone will notice that linked article dates to 2009, when the Democrats were the majority party.
Hey my bad. I forgot the golden rule of googling, “Don’t assume all results will be 100% on topic”.
March 7, 2011.
How much of a cut does the DoD get in the House budget?
”GOB, that doesn’t explain wanting to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with someone whose primary goal is making American more explicitly Christian;’
I said what parts of the Tea Party so-called agenda I support and it does not include support for an item that would have as its primary goal making America more explicitly Christian. Voting for or supporting the same candidate for national office does not mean wanting to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them on all matters.
‘I have no doubt that GOB is speaking in good faith when he expresses his hope that the Tea Party crowd will limit the influence of wealthy actors, whether natural human or corporate.
I just think it ain’t gonna work that way. Whether that’s the intent or not, de facto the folks in government who the tea party supports are furthering the interests of very, very wealthy people, and taking their cuts out of the hides of the rest of us.’
So I get the choice to support a range of policies emanating from a philosophical perspective with which I have little in common along with whatever corruption and mismanagement that entails OTOH, or, supporting politicians who espouse views with some similarities to mine along with the corruption and mismanagement that entails. Pardon me for my lack of enthusiasm.
Not all that surprising, russell. Disappointing, but not surprising.
Democratic majority can’t get rid of ag subsidies. Republican majority decides to keep the ag subsidies. It’d be nice to put names and faces to this kind of folderol, so the guilty parties can be held accountable.
How much of a cut does the DoD get in the House budget?
IIRC it’s a very small increase, maybe 2%, which represents a lot less than what they asked for. The budget from the Republican-majority House has some substantial DoD cuts.
Pardon me for my lack of enthusiasm.
I feel you, brother.
Defense goes up 1.3%, from what I can see.
Slarti/Russell – thanks.
I live in Madison and have been to several of the rallies. Tens of thousands of people have gathered in an atmosphere of goodwill. Among literally tens of thousands of signs, I have seen maybe 2-3 that I found objectionable. I have heard literally zero people advocating violence in any form. Anyone who has told you otherwise has misled you.
I said what parts of the Tea Party so-called agenda I support and it does not include support for an item that would have as its primary goal making America more explicitly Christian. Voting for or supporting the same candidate for national office does not mean wanting to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them on all matters.
That’s not quite it IMO. There’s making a common cause with someone you disagree with on other matters. That’s pretty normal.
But the TP, it’s not even clear to the participants what the ‘common cause’ part of the equation is. When people gather together to support a cause but don’t agree on what that cause is, that is a weird situation.
So I get the choice to support a range of policies emanating from a philosophical perspective with which I have little in common along with whatever corruption and mismanagement that entails OTOH, or, supporting politicians who espouse views with some similarities to mine along with the corruption and mismanagement that entails. Pardon me for my lack of enthusiasm.
Well, yeah. That’s a pretty common sentiment across the political spectrum. And I wish I had a solution. However, Im pretty sure that getting all fired up to support the Democractic Party come what may isn’t the answer from my side. Heck, even if it’s what I want to do because I support their ideology for the most part, I wouldnt pretend that I was solving the underlying problems of corruption and mismanagement in the process. Right?
‘When people gather together to support a cause but don’t agree on what that cause is, that is a weird situation.’
Carleton:
I agree there is some of this, maybe a lot, I don’t know. Those who claim Tea Party status but go on to say don’t touch my Medicare, leave my Social Security alone, and/or don’t reduce defense spending seem a little confused or unaware. I am on Medicare, which I paid into from the day it became law until I stopped working, and I receive Social Security benefit payments as well. I support a good hard look at both to see what is reasonable going forward to achieve/maintain solvency. I also think we try to do way too much militarily and that we could reduce our defense spending a lot and remain secure. This last, of course, is where the industrial complex will get very involved and with about the same display of integrity as seen from the drug and medical device companies and the health insurers during the health care debate. That gets me to the politicians, most of whom seem to think their election establishes a career for them, who need to show some integrity, especially the ‘grit’ part, and forget the career part. I mentioned some major items but there are many more that would include agricultural and energy subsidies as brought up earlier. My opposition to tax increases might subside at the point I see substantial progress on the spending side.
Well, at least now that they’ve got Planned Parenthood, NPR, etc., out of the way, I’m sure that this English-only bill will create all those jobs and solve all those deficit problems.
That’s what the GOP promised to do, right? So how many jobs, exactly, have they created so far? Somewhere between 0 and -1?
Tea Party in favor of the ‘little guy’? Balderdash and crap. Google “Tea Party” and click on the first entry. Scroll down until you get to the part about net neutrality.
Therein the concept of net neutrality is characterized as “media marxism”.
This is how they roll. What’s that smell?
Sorry, just got back to my computer. CCDG asks
Perhaps you could, in this instance, point out how I was trolling Mr. Emerson before mildly objecting to his multiple objectionable word comment.
Your comment, along with GOB’s quote were directed at John Emerson’s ability to follow posting rules, specificially
Now if somehow you could get a clue on the vocabulary permitted here
Now, I wasn’t threatening to ban anyone, but I believe that if someone provokes someone to take a verbal swing and then implies they don’t have the mental ability to follow the posting rules, that is trolling, at least in my book. Your comment wasn’t as problematic as GOB’s, but I really did (and do) want to nip this in the bud. I’m not threatening to ban anyone, but I really don’t like it and I don’t think it is helpful. I imagine there is some mental calculus that is
[person X to lose his cool]=[the point he was making has been refuted] I don’t think it works like that. I also think it is much better to make comments early rather than wait till something happens that is very egregious and someone has to get banned. We are far away from banning anyone, but I think an earlier word is much better.
I’d also like to point out that there is going to be a lag in posting, so when I asked John to rein in his language, both your and GOB had already posted. Before I went to bed, I went thru the thread and say the two comments I called out and wanted to make sure that I addressed them and make the point that one shouldn’t equate a faiIure to following the posting rules with overturning an argument. I hope this is clear.
lj:
‘Now, I wasn’t threatening to ban anyone, but I believe that if someone provokes someone to take a verbal swing and then implies they don’t have the mental ability to follow the posting rules, that is trolling, at least in my book. Your comment wasn’t as problematic as GOB’s, but I really did (and do) want to nip this in the bud. I’m not threatening to ban anyone, but I really don’t like it and I don’t think it is helpful.’
Help me here. I need specifics regarding what you are taking from any comments I made that would be a provocation. I simply made a comment on the unnecessary language.
John Emerson:
What a goddamn f*cking stupid argument. “Political reality is much more complex”. That’s a tired, tired old NPR cliche of limited application, and here it’s being presented as wisdom.
NPR cliche or not, it’s actually a pretty accurate statement about politics, or any other form of reality, and a healthy skepticism about the depth of one’s own knowledge and is always due. If you’re not skeptical of your own ideas, others will gladly perform that duty. I am well-aware that the Koch brothers are libertarians; I’ll take the rest of your pedantic jackassery as a simple misread of my sarcasm.
When one sees blanket statements like this:
Similarly, regardless of the “rats” which the foot soldiers of the modern tea party are led to believe they are fighting for, the Koch brothers and their friends know that the real goal of their so-called tea party revolution is protecting and securing their ever-increasing wealth.
One is led to believe that either Mr. Farber really is thinking in simple black-and-white terms and projected motivations, or he needs a better editor. The latter is probably just a good idea, period, as casting your political opponents as confederates is a tired old trope just a small step above casting them as N*zis in the tier of political metaphor.
[This post has been edited on March 15th, 2011, 11:27 p.m., PST to comply with the Posting Rules]
One is led to believe that either Mr. Farber really is thinking in simple black-and-white terms and projected motivations, or he needs a better editor.
One is also led to believe that, as the very first line of type below the headline reads Guest Post by HK, not by Gary Farber, one might be inclined to check one’s own reading skills before one decides to take this particular approach. If one were interested in not falling into accidental self-parody.
The latter is probably just a good idea, period, as casting your political opponents as confederates is a tired old trope just a small step above casting them as N*zis in the tier of political metaphor.
Again, I’m offering an over/under of .75 on how closely the ratio of “I am a Tea Party member” to “I have a Confederate flag/bumper sticker/other” approaches 1. You want the under?
GOB, rather than asking John Emerson to stop, you suggested that his violation of the posting rules was related to difficulty expressing his thoughts. Please note the following from the posting rules
Don’t disrupt or destroy meaningful conversation for its own sake.
If you feel that your comment was an attempt at meaningful conversation, please be aware that I did not think it was. I also thought things might be getting out of hand, as did Slarti.
No need to explain how you were perhaps attempting John Emerson to state his points in a manner consistent with the posting rules and you were trying to find areas of agreement. If you were, it did not come across that way to me, so please adjust your internal monitors to take that into account. Thank you.
I’d also point out that I believe quoting words that we ask not to be posted is still a violation of posting rules, despite the fact that you did not ‘write’ them originally, so please stop doing that DBN. Thank you.
Sorry, that should read “attempting to help John Emerson”
Yeah, who needs the old tropes, when new tropes burst forth faster than a guy can condemn the old tropes:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/14/956355/-Michigan-Gov-Snyder-set-to-auction-off-MI-towns-to-highest%C2%A0bidders
I’m curious, when a Governor dismisses locally-elected officials and dissolves local municipalities and institutions without consulting those troublesome democratic procedures, it would seem gunpowder is close to replacing tea for those party refreshments.
I’m happy to dispense with old tropes, particularly in exceptionalist America wherein the fascism entrepreneurs think up new and better tropes.
“I hope this is clear.”
Not at all.
Here is what I assume is the heart of your point:
Yet prior to my simple objection to the language I hadn’t addressed a single comment to John in the whole thread. You want to cool tempers, fine. Don’t accuse me of trolling to do it, the effect is contrary to your desire.
CCDG,
Suggesting that people don’t have a clue about something is inflammatory. If you want to enter in the conversation to help out and ask someone to obey posting rules, please avoid inferring what the reason for their non-observance may be. Thank you.
lj,
uh….ok.
This is pretty cool:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/wis-goper-scott-fitzgerald-dems-in-contempt-not-allowed-to-vote-in-committees.php?ref=fpblg
Let’s see now, how’d it go?
Charlie Sheen leads to the King of England taxing colonies without representation, leading to tough guys dressing up like Indians and tossing their chamomile into the harbor, later they kill dead a whole bunch of Redcoats, then America secedes from England and …. ipso fatso, we’re right back to Kevin Bacon.
And yet the demonstrators in Wisconisn are so polite, according to law enforcement.
Something’s going to change.
Russell, way back: I have nothing against tea partiers personally …
I do. But maybe I attach a different meaning to “personally”.
I don’t know what a “person” is, if not an amalgam of expressed opinions, demonstrated skills, overt tastes, and perceptible physical attributes. Inside his own head, goddam Dick Cheney is probably lovable; inside her own head, Michelle Bachman is probably well-informed. But I don’t get to see the insides of people’s heads. I have no way to judge people except by what they say, what they do, what they look like and even (at close range) what they smell like.
I could not in good conscience say “I have nothing against smelly people personally”, because foul odors emanating from somebody are without question personal attributes. But so are foul opinions!
What I’m trying to say is that I really don’t get the distinction between one kind of “personal” attribute and another. I don’t quite get why “Your ideas stink” is more (or less) personal than “You smell bad”.
So that’s the sense in which I do have something “against tea partiers personally”. And, being a fair and balanced guy, I think they have every right to hold that against me personally.
We try too hard, in the US, to keep the political separate from the “personal”. In my own personal opinion, of course.
–TP
Carleton:
Do you see political and economic activity as zero sum- anything that irritates your ‘enemies’ must be a good thing?
No, Carleton, I agree I should be more specific. It wasn’t that it angered them. The protest in and of itself I have no problem with, or the fact that people were upset. But saying “this is what democracy looks like” while a) senators leave the state; b) protesters threaten members of the legislature; and c) counter views are derided as some sort of bigotry (because it’s a civil rights issue, you know) is just too much. This is a shakedown, a tantrum and a derailment of democracy all rolled into one.
And the mind-numbingly dumb sloganeering. (There is some of that on both sides and some definitely deserve the “teatard” label. But geez).
One thing that still bothers me is this: Unless the retirement plans are unfair, not being able to bargain on it harms nobody. It can still be changed, it just takes more political pressure. The biggest thing that changes the amount of retirement is salary, and that can still be bargained for.
The whole point in taking retirement off the table is that it is painstakingly clear when you bargain what the impact is going to be right now. It’s not putting off the day of financial reckoning to the future. Fighting for retirement plan bargaining means either: a) it’s not fair: or b) we want to be able to pass the buck on to future generations without too much attention. I realize there are c) and d)etc. but these are the main reasons. Since nobody is arguing the current plans are inherently unfair, I think it’s clear that losing b) is what the unions are concerned about.
Or maybe it’s the working conditions. Although I have read nothing on that.
Anyone who has told you otherwise has misled you.
I was referring to things like death threats and the pounding on the windows of Fitzgerald’s residence at 6 a.m. and this and this and this. .
russell:
Appreciate your comment. There is a lot in there that I agree with.
I suspect if Tip O’Neill had been alive to stroll among the Tea Party demonstrations last summer with the witch-doctor signs and the delightful weaponry references, and wore a name tag, he would have found out that all politics …. is personal, baby.
Oddly enough, that’s why they have the Secret Service.
Even though it doesn’t seem like it, I like all of the conservatives who frequent these pages.
But for example, I hate Ted Nugent, Grover Norquist, and I don’t know, Rep. Steve King, to throw out three Republican names.
I hate them personally and viscerally. Quite frankly, I could summon a pretty sizable bolus of hatred for their children, as well, just by association.
No discussion, no compromise, no civility, no nothing for those people and their ilk.
And I’m pretty sure they’d feel the same about me, if they knew me.
Which they may some day, if their luck turns.
Which, again, is why we have the Secret Service and personal (that word, again) security.
bc:
President Obama receives 30 death threats a day, since we’re keeping count, and that’s not counting the veiled threats from the floor of the House of Representatives or Sharron Angle’s political campaign.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/5967942/Barack-Obama-faces-30-death-threats-a-day-stretching-US-Secret-Service.html
And, what to you say we have a gentleman’s side bet ($5) about which end of the political spectrum the death threats to Fitzgerald originated from, just for fun.
I say it’s a nut case in a bathrobe who indulges the Wisconsin avocation of bar-crawling, or a self-styled political operative on the Far Right, who also indulges the same Wisconsin avocation.
Who do you think it is, my sixth grade homeroom teacher?
Not that she didn’t enjoy the occasional tipple.
We try too hard, in the US, to keep the political separate from the “personal”.
I grew up with an uncle who was, literally, a John Bircher, a father who had been raised in the South and who could never quite get his head around black people being the same as white people, a mother who thought Hispanics were “dirty”, and a step-father with odd and not very explainable acquaintanceships with Mafiosi.
Over the years I’ve had friends and acquaintances who kept guns and ammunition sheetrocked into the walls of their house, and guys who brought loaded shotguns to band rehearsals because Y2K was gonna somehow make bad things happen.
People who peed in their sink to save water, a guy who “washed his hair, but not with shampoo”, a friend who decided he was only going to eat fruit, another friend who rants on Facebook about how the brown people are making him hate them.
Lots and lots of friends who have, over the years, explored every variety of bizarre philosophical, political, and religious nook and cranny I can think of. The Marxist insurance adjuster. The Swedenborgian girl with the panther tatooed on her calf, who thought Alfa Romeos looked like an interesting way to break the law. The Christian Science nurse (?) who made a hobby of seducing middle eastern grad students. The very good friend who believed he had been sent by God to be an apostle to the drug addicted, alcoholic, and insane, his qualifications being his former insanity, alcoholism, and drug addiction. The guy who started a goat farm on abandoned land he squatted on in rural Indiana. The actually certifiable guy who saw brilliantly insane connections between things based on random similarities.
Did you know that “USA” is in the middle of “Jerusalem”?
People are weird and complicated. They believe crazy stuff, and they don’t even know why. I won’t even burden you with the laundry list of stuff I’ve thought was true over the years.
I just don’t worry about the weirdness anymore, at a personal level. I wouldn’t have any friends.
Ya gotta look for the diamond in the rough. There’s usually a way to make some kind of connection. That’s my thought.
The whole point in taking retirement off the table is that it is painstakingly clear when you bargain what the impact is going to be right now. It’s not putting off the day of financial reckoning to the future. Fighting for retirement plan bargaining means either: a) it’s not fair: or b) we want to be able to pass the buck on to future generations without too much attention.
False. You seem to be trying to distinguish between “the (cash) wage” and “benefits”. Rest assured, both are components of “the wage”. For example, on public works jobs, companies must pay, say, $50/hr. and at least $35 of that must be “wages” or cash. However, the employer, if open shop, can pay the whole $50 in cash, but no benefits. Similarly your attempt to sever benefits from “the wage” are false. Further, when these obligations are negotiated there is absolutely nothing that is “hidden” about them, and there is certainly no “passing the buck” to future generations absent a CONSCIOUS POLITICAL DECISION to do so. So if you support politicians who kick the can down the road, it is simply not logical nor correct to blame the employees for the employers breaking the terms and conditions of the contract. If you support politicians who assert the right to renege on the contract, then you are asserting a novel argument that has not one iota of legal or moral justification, and it makes even less sense if you are a libertarian type (I’m not saying you are such) who makes nonsensical assertions about “rights” and “contracts” in a world of self regulating markets all, simultaneously by god! tending toward the Galtian paradisio of equilibrium and thus the best of all possible outcomes.
No discussion, no compromise, no civility, no nothing for those people and their ilk.
Seconded. Ribbit. Ribbit.
Russell @ 9:06. Awesome. Your list makes me think I have indeed led a sheltered life. But due to the drink, I may have forgotten the many strange folks I have encountered, or possibly hallucinated, in my lifetime.
But truly, well put, sir.
typical musician, eh Russell?
typical musician, eh Russell?
LOL.
I haven’t even really gotten into the musicians yet. My good buddy the Irish drummer told me the other night that he not only had one spirit animal, but three. I forget what they were, but one was a lynx.
Some Indian guy told him.
Do they even have lynxes in Ireland?
Never mind that, do they have Indians in Ireland?
Haven’t really delved into the new age / hippie folks either, with their crystals, their Russian brain massage techniques and their spirit guides.
People are wacky. All of us. You can’t let it get to you.
While we do try too hard to separate the personal from the political and forget the personal and moral consequences to ourselves and others when we choose to support certain political causes, the truth is that at the end of the day, my right-wing and loony-libertarian friends and family members are very kind (to me) and are people who are very dependable (to me) and care (about my well-being).
People are annoyingly complicated like that. I don’t know Grover Norquist personally, but odds are that if you guys were neighbors, he’d take care of your pets while you were out of town and keep an eye on your kids while they were playing outside. He’s still a fucking malefactor with a blackened heart, of course. But he’d probably be nice to you if you dealt with him personally on a regular basis.
Russell:
“The Swedenborgian girl with the panther tatooed on her calf, who thought Alfa Romeos looked like an interesting way to break the law.”
I give up.
Not only what Russell said, but shut my mouth and just close down the entire internet thingy because there is nothing more required.
And Dobie, the fact that you once drove an Alfa is no excuse.
Except, of course, I would rather Swedenborgian girl take of the pets than Norquist.
I hate pets who make me sign a pledge against their own interests stipulating that I’m not permitted to subsidize their Kibble.
Feral pets.
And then russel was talked down, they gave him orange juice and bacon along with mild sedatives and 24 hours later he seemed nonetheworse for the blotter experience.
He’s still a fucking malefactor with a blackened heart, of course.
Yeah, IMO somewhere along the line Grover came to believe that money and freedom are the same thing, and it’s bent his brain and heart into odd shapes. Plus, he’s kind of a whore, or maybe a pimp, or maybe both, but none of that makes him particularly special or unusual.
But it’s like the Bible people say, hate the sin, not the sinner. That’s all I’m saying. Because we all fall short, somehow.
Doesn’t mean you have to trust him with your wallet, just means hating the guy is not an actual requirement.
People have a lot of sides to them. That’s all. So I try not to jump to conclusions. I’m frequently unsuccessful, but I try to keep it in mind.
Plus, my buddy Benny (Irish drummer) actually does have kind of a lynxy vibe. Sometimes the weirdness is a tiny bright window into another beautiful world. Not always, but sometimes.
I give up.
No man, you still wear the crown.
And then russel was talked down, they gave him orange juice and bacon along with mild sedatives
Bacon!
By the way, regarding violence-inducing rhetoric and death threats, what I love about the exquisite sensitivity of “conservative” Tea Party types to the matter is their advancement of such rhetoric from the floor of various Statehouses and the U.S. Capitol:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/kansas-goper-lets-shoot-illegal-immigrants-like-pigs.php?ref=fpb
People are weird and complicated. They believe crazy stuff, and they don’t even know why.
I think the way I would put it is that people suck. That is, everyone sucks, all of us (except for hilzoy), in one way or another. In this way, “progress” is defined as having people suck less. Thus, we create institutions, customs, laws, cultures, and other mechanisms in the hope that, in the grand scheme of things, the level of suckitude will decrease.
We can’t have a bunch of uneducated people running around sucking, so we have public schools and higher education. We can’t have people engaging in sucky samurai-AK47 battles in the streets to settle their differences, so we have government. We can’t have government suckily massacring the governed, so we have laws, courts, and elections. Etc. etc. etc.
The people who want to dismantle these things, to get rid of the public schools, to drown the federal government in a bathtub, etc., want more sucking in the world. Which, you knows, sucks.
‘While we do try too hard to separate the personal from the political and forget the personal and moral consequences to ourselves and others when we choose to support certain political causes, the truth is that at the end of the day, my right-wing and loony-libertarian friends and family members are very kind (to me) and are people who are very dependable (to me) and care (about my well-being).’
People are annoyingly complicated like that. I don’t know Grover Norquist personally, but odds are that if you guys were neighbors, he’d take care of your pets while you were out of town and keep an eye on your kids while they were playing outside. He’s still a malefactor with a blackened heart, of course. But he’d probably be nice to you if you dealt with him personally on a regular basis.’
I concur. Robert Heinlein’s description fits my experience well.
‘Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.’ and
‘I don’t trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.’
I’m very introverted so I have many reasons not to cultivate friends, but I do have many acquaintances (this maintains a safe distance) and I have a large family. I do help my family (and my neighbors) whenever I can. I really don’t think I can do much to save the rest of the world.
bobbyp:
“passing the buck” to future generations absent a CONSCIOUS POLITICAL DECISION to do so.
You are right. But the political decision tends to be more transparent when all of it occurs in the legislature, or, as here, by referendum if above COLA.
And either way, limiting it to true dollars makes it clear to everyone what is being asked of the harder-to-calculate portions of the overall wage are more or less set.
I agree that benefits are part of the overall wage. That is the issue here. Even Walker’s talk of “contribution” on the part of employees is in reality a pay cut as pensions are deferred comp. I get that.
So as I see it the state is setting a baseline on how much it will pay for pensions and health care and setting a soft cap on cash wages.
If you support politicians who assert the right to renege on the contract,
I don’t. I do not understand the bill to have done that. I read parts of the bill and saw several provisions that clearly stated the bill would affect only new contracts. The old ones have to expire. That’s why so many locals were rushing through the contracts before the law went into play. Do you understand differently? It was one of Walker’s points: that unions were not in fact agreeing to the cuts they said they had “offered” (although the ones saying they had offered the cuts were statewide and most of the contracts passed were local).
I agree that benefits are part of the overall wage. That is the issue here.
If we’re talking about WI, I beg to differ.
The issue is the loss of collective bargaining rights. Not wages, not pensions, not the WI budget. Those are all important, but they are not why 100,000 people showed up in Madison last Saturday.
The issue is the loss of collective bargaining rights.
The issue is the loss of collective bargaining rights.
Yes, but since it isn’t a complete loss of bargaining rights(although that is somewhat debatable) I was clarifying what was in fact lost: the right to bargain over the non-cash wage component of wages. If “wages” for purpose of the budget repair bill included benefits it would have been a much different situation, IMHO. Then maybe not.
But this right doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Nobody would cry over loss of collective bargaining rights to, frex, name state office buildings. This is SHOW ME THE MONEY!! and nothing more on both sides.
I was clarifying what was in fact lost: the right to bargain over the non-cash wage component of wages.
And hours, and sick time, and vacation time, and (in the case of teachers) class sizes, and safety conditions, and grievance processes, and lots and lots of other things.
Nobody would cry over loss of collective bargaining rights to, frex, name state office buildings
That’s a pretty silly counterexample.
Nobody complains over the loss of anything other than compensation, in all of its various forms, because compensation, in all of its various forms, is what collection bargaining addresses.
Nobody gives a crap what the name of an office building is. But, of course, you knew that already.
The reason 100,000 people were in Madison over the weekend is because the right to bargain over every aspect of their compensation other than base wage has been taken away from them.
And bargaining for wages is limited to the percent increase of the CPI. Not in the aggregate, but per person.
Damned straight it’s show me the money, because that’s what people live on.
This issue is not going to go away.
It was one of Walker’s points: that unions were not in fact agreeing to the cuts they said they had “offered” (although the ones saying they had offered the cuts were statewide and most of the contracts passed were local).
I understood that to be an offer, as in part of the negotiation process (insofar as there was one). Typically negotiations aren’t composed of unilateral concessions followed by waiting, hopeful that the other party will reciprocate.
I was clarifying what was in fact lost: the right to bargain over the non-cash wage component of wages…
Confining ‘bargaining’ to the cash wage, and further confining that small bargaining space to go from “minus something” to max out at some CPI number is not bi-lateral bargaining in any meaningful sense of the term. It is dicktat.
The whole idea of collective bargaining is to give workers a say in how the workplace is run, and what rules apply….you know, terms and conditions of employment.
But this right doesn’t exist in a vacuum..
Doesn’t that apply to any “right” you can name? I’ll charitably write that assertion off as a typo.
“SHOW ME THE MONEY!!”
Classic right wing projection.
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
Absolute bloody, unmitigated, utter, irredeeamble, baldly specious, sodding, total poppycock. The divide is between those who have and those who don’t…always has been…always will be.
bobbyp:
What happened to the Mayor of Miami-Dade? I thought the argument here was that the ‘voters’ wanted to take care of the unions.
Just astonishing presentation from Greenwald about “rats” and who is taking it. All around conclusion about the state we live in.
TM Lutas:
I’d like to know how to identify who is and isn’t a “tea party Republican,” please. How do I do this? Badges? Is there a single organization? And where is this platform published?
If you can’t answer these questions — and maybe you can, in which case, URL, please? — then how I can I either find out what the platform is, who belongs to such a group, what they actually stand for, and have any of this make much sense, or be verifiable or falsifiable?
And if it isn’t falsifiable, then what are you saying?
“So put your shoulder to the grindstone and enumerate all the governments, enumerate all their laws, rules, and regulations.”
I don’t understand what you mean by this; could you clarify, please? I know what the federal code is, same for state codes, same for the Federal register and state equivalents, but what sort of “enumeration” are you suggesting I or others engage in?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumeration
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/enumeration
“Identify in each what is upholding unfair privilege for the rich and you’ll find a large cadre of tea party people right there supporting the repeal.”
I do try to identify what I don’t like about laws, and discuss them. But I’m back to this question of how I’m supposed to identify, or make contact with, or ally with “tea party people,” when there is no single organization, or… what is there, exactly, beyond a lot of people who show up at rallies with a lot of sympathies that seem incoherent?
“I don’t believe for a minute that the left will actually do this”
This is of even greater interest to me: do you have an email address or phone number or web page for “the left,” please? I’d like to contact them, too, so as to learn what “the left” is up to, and whether I agree or disagree.
Seriously, what use is such utterly vague terminology? Who are you talking about? How can I tell? Am I a tea partier, or in the left? Both? Neither? How do you know? How do I know? If neither of us knows, what the heck are you talking about?
I’m completely serious: I have no idea what the use of these vague descriptives are. If you ask me if I belong to, oh, the Boy Scouts of America, or the ACLU, or subscribe to National Review, I can tell you. How I can tell who is or isn’t “the left” or “the tea party”? I’m baffled. But maybe that’s only me.
I don’t find much agreement among “progressive Democrats,” either, any more than I do among “conservatives.” Specific organization’s platforms are hard enough to argue out from year to year, and vote in.
Once we’re into vague adjectives, and even vaguer nouns like “the left” or “the right,” these things only seem meaningful from about a million miles away.
I don’t think so, though. But if I’m wrong, please please please explain how I can tell who is and isn’t being referred to here. Thanks!
The myth of the black Confederates.
There’s plenty here: THE MYTH OF THE “”blackconfeds”” PAGE.
Only slightly digressively, I quite recommend Reconstruction: The Second Civil War, the film and website. Try some other Southern myths on for size.
But let’s further discuss this The Black Confederate Brigade in the Civil War:
Once a Possibility, Now a Myth that Won’t Die:
But wait, let’s look at some official documents of the Confederated States of America government!
There’s more at that page!
We could go on discussing it. Would you like monographs, books, how many hundred thousands of words of professional military history on the topic, please?
Are “people here” actually much up on their military history of the Civil War?
Answer: mixed bag. Nobody knows everything, but there are a hell of a lot of things people believe that aren’t so.
Like all this nonsense about African-American troops fighting for the confederacy. Are we done on that one now, or shall we discuss it further? How much further? How many more cites would you like?
John, this is not an argument. Please make arguments. Thanks.
DBM:
I’m led to believe you are rather confused. What comment of mine are you referring to?
I also yet again point to The Posting Rules which have been on the upper left sidebar of this blog since, as they plainly say, December 01, 2003. Thanks for reading them, following them, and perhaps also reading words such as “Guest Post by HK, not by Gary Farber” which lead off this post, and words such as “Guest Post by HK, not by Gary Farber,” which close this post. I’m doubtful that repeating the posting rules yet again, given that they’ve appeared on every single post at this blog for over seven years, or posting yet again the credits for this post, will be helpful, but I direct your attention to these facts, nonetheless.
Thanks for any attention you can indeed address to them.
I’d also, as usual, suggest we try to discuss issues and facts, not personalities. Thanks!
Once more: Posting Rules:
This includes “Teatards.”
Laura Koerbeer, please also note the Banning Policy.
Both these sets of rules need to be updated a bit, but meanwhile, they are what they are. Anyone has been given reason to consider the possibility that they might have violated the Posting Rules is directed to please read, such as they are, the Banning Rules.
The relevant, not dated part, is that you should please consider yourselves Warned to not again violated the Posting Rules, at risk of the Posting Rules and Banning Rules being enforced.
I direct everyone’s attention to the non-dated, relevant portion of the latter:
That address, as stated unde the kitty, where the words “Email Me” may be read is, yet again: obsidianinfo at yahoo dot com
Use it as necessary, preferablly no more or less.
Thanks to all. If people have complaints, then please do use the email address; we don’t promise instant replies; goodness knows we’ve had a few… delays in the system, at times, but we do try to live up to our posted standards, and try not to be hypocrites, within the limitations of a changing set of front pagers, and individual interpretations of policies, so please do use the email address to either point to perceived violations of the Rules, or, if you’re banned, appeal your banning, but also rest assured that any bannings will be publically announced, and that mere Typepad glitches are NOT BANNINGS, and please do not bombard the email address with demands to know why you’ve been banned unless you actually have received email saying you’ve been banned, and/or have read a public announcment of such.
To say this is rare is an understatement.
And I do repeat that an update of all this is in the works when we can get to it.
Meanwhile, I doubt I’m going to stay conscious longer tonight to make my way through the rest of this thread, let alone any others, so do use the email address as necessary.
Thanks to all for cooperatoin in helping make Obsidian Wings a community where kittens and puppies can hiss and claw, but also not run with scissors, because you can put an eye out with those things.
Thank you.
A) going to a British newspaper for reporting on American politics without filtering for ignorance and laziness is like going to a Pakistani paper for news on (I’m tempted to say anything, but let’s say “India,”), B) Toby Harnden sucks as a reporter; c) I refuted all this stuff in a long comment last week.
d) Even the link goes to a story from 03 Aug 2009, which isn’t very recent, even if the reporting wasn’t shite, even if the source was reliable, even if the claim were true.
Just because we want to believe something doesn’t make it so.
I’ll also mention yet again that would work a lot better if you’d actually link, given how you drop in cut and pastes approximately every other post, dozens of times a day.
This is a wonderful contribution, and I love it, but it makes for a heck of a lot of extra time in the day constantly having to go do your links for you. I realize this is ObWi’s fault for not having a post-2003 template, but we’re working on it, and I probably should be finding the widget now, as well as working on the FAQs as well as trying to do the posts I’m trying to do, as well as as well as.
Few people will even click on links, so giving these cut and pastes are kinda futile, though naturally my saying so will generate the smattering of people will do cut and paste to emerge to refute someone because the best way to generate a response on the internet is to say something someone can can say Is Wrong. Thus I generate more comments for this thread, yay!
Meanwhile, please read this and following comments; thanks! I’m surely not going to retype it all.
Meanwhile: This is a “dead link.” It’s the URL most folks know how to cut and paste. It’s not clickble: http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html
This is the active link version:
Barebones Guide To HTML and Tags.
How To Link:
http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html#links
Link tags.
TEXT
< >
<A HREF=”URL”>TEXT</a>
< A HREF="URL" > TEXT < /A >
OR:
left angle bracket A HREF =”URL”right angle bracket
left angle bracket TEXT /A right angle bracket
[A HREF=”URL”]TEXT[/A]
Substitute pointy bracket for rectangular bracket
Special characters = Special Characters, including pointy brackets.
< < > >
bc: But saying “this is what democracy looks like” while a) senators leave the state; b) protesters threaten members of the legislature; and c) counter views are derided as some sort of bigotry (because it’s a civil rights issue, you know) is just too much. This is a shakedown, a tantrum and a derailment of democracy all rolled into one.
No, it’s civil disobedience. The shakedown/tantrum/derailment of democracy would be Scott Walker’s refusal to negotiate in good faith, his threats to call in the National Guard, the Republican voting tactics (e.g. calling a vote during a recess, holding votes in violation of the Open Meetings Law), physically barring Democratic Assembly members from access to the Assembly on the day of the vote, etc.
One thing that still bothers me is this: Unless the retirement plans are unfair, not being able to bargain on it harms nobody. It can still be changed, it just takes more political pressure. The biggest thing that changes the amount of retirement is salary, and that can still be bargained for.
The Constitution can still be changed, it just takes more political pressure. Is it appropriate, then, that all budgetary discussions be held to the same standard?
The whole point in taking retirement off the table is that it is painstakingly clear when you bargain what the impact is going to be right now.
No. The whole point in taking retirement off the table is to be able to massively underpay (or undercompensate, if you prefer) public employees. The example that’s oft-cited is healthcare; by removing the ability to negotiate for health care, the Republicans hope to be able to offer minor raises in base salary that don’t keep pace with the costs of health care, hence giving public employees a de facto pay cut.
[And to be clear, this is more-or-less what the Republican negotiators said to my union when they were stripping us of our zero-premium health care, one of the few genuinely good benefits we had. They’ve not been subtle about this at all.]
Ditto on retirement monies. The goal isn’t to compensate public employees fairly but under a different distribution; the goal is to grind them — or at least the ones that vote Democratic — into oblivion. Again, this has been explicitly stated. And (as I noted in an earlier screed) the Republicans on JCOER have clearly demonstrated their bad faith in union negotiations time and time again.
Or maybe it’s the working conditions. Although I have read nothing on that.
I don’t know whether articles have been written on this, but I can tell you that local teachers are deathly afraid that union-based protections like class size, etc, are going to be put on the chopping block in future contracts. Why not? They’re no longer negotiable.
I was referring to things like death threats and the pounding on the windows of Fitzgerald’s residence at 6 a.m. and this and this and this.
The death threats are beyond the pale, I agree, though I’m fairly sure the Wisconsin 14 have had more credible threats made against them. [Some by Scott Walker, actually.] As to the two videos… Christ, what a whiner. We do worse to each other at Badger games. My god, if we spontaneously broke out in “Eat Sh**/F*** you” — which we do at every single game — I do believe the little babies might actually cry…
Also, from another post:
I read parts of the bill and saw several provisions that clearly stated the bill would affect only new contracts… It was one of Walker’s points: that unions were not in fact agreeing to the cuts they said they had “offered” (although the ones saying they had offered the cuts were statewide and most of the contracts passed were local).
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Let’s try this again:
1) No contracts between the state and the union are binding through the subsequent biennium. None. They are renegotiated every two years (or 2.5-3 when Republicans are in office). I believe that’s a larger requirement of Wisconsin’s budget but I’ve only interacted with the union contract portion thereof.
2) What the unions put on the table was to agree to all of Walker’s proposed cuts for the next biennium. They reserved the right to renegotiate in the subsequent biennium because, well, that’s how it works in Wisconsin.
3) Walker and the Republicans claimed that this was inadequate because the fiscal health of the state required unions to be stripped over their rights to negotiate for their compensation. As a fiscal measure, this proposal had to be included in a fiscal (here, budget) bill, which required the larger quorum, hence the Wisconsin 14 et al.
4) The Republicans then proved they were lying when they broke this provision off as a separate bill that was deemed non-fiscal and, in violation of the Open Meetings law, rammed it through regardless.
[Incidentally, if I read the timestamp right, this is why the Republicans are being “harrassed” with cries of “SHAME!” in that first video you linked. They basically admitted they were lying the whole time, and quite possibly broke the law in their attempts to pass the f***ing thing. If being called on this makes them cry, tough.]
Copied from Balloon Juice concerning the “Financial Martial Law” about to be passed by Republicans in Michigan.
“This legislation – which allows the Governor to declare financial emergencies and appoint individuals or corporations to serve as city managers with the power to dissolve local elected councils and nullify employment contracts for public servants – is the first step in an effort to do away with municipal and local government altogether in favor of quite literally having private enterprises replacing government and contracting out its functions to the lowest bidder. How beautiful it will be: Wackenhut cops and local jails, Waste Management goons collecting trash, utilities sold off to Aqua America and Exelon, tax assessments mailed to homeowners from a financial services boiler room in Bangalore, and municipal employees of all types fired and replaced by temps from Manpower, Inc.
Gives a new and literal meaning to the phrase “company town,” doesn’t it? And the kicker is that the Governor is empowered to pay the new city managers any amount he sees fit before turning over total control so that they may further profit from a variety of harebrained privatization schemes.”
So let the rationalizing continue!
1. Nitpick, quibble, split hairs to make this look like it isn’t as bad as it is.
2. Refuse to connect this to the deliberate creation of deficits in twelve other states by Republican-led legislatures for the purpose of using their deficit to destroy the social fabric of their states. Refuse to connect this with the deliberate creation of a national deficit by the Republican party at the federal level.
3.Rationalize that just because one personally doesn’t support this and the mulitpilcity of other Repulblican extremist policies that it is OK to vote for politicians that do.
4. Invoke an ideology as if an ideology is more important than real people or as if the adherence to an ideology absolves one of responsiblity for the effect that ideology has whhen turned into policy.
5. get all philosophical and pretend the converastion is about the hypothetcal effects of hypothetical theories instead of about how a political party is systematically attackinng not only the standard of living of fellow citizens but the processes of democracy.
6. Demonize. All those people being screwed over deserve it.
7. ignore context and facts and glibly dismiss it all as no big deal.
8. Pretend that billionaires invest in Republican politicians out of alturism with no expectation of buying inflluence.
9. change the subject
10. Accuse Deomcrats of doing what Republicans have been doing for years while continuing pretend away Republican tactics.
Republican politicians could not succeed at their devide and conquer techiniques, get away with their lies, or pass their extremist legislation if it wasn’t for the poeple who engage in the sort of self-serving, self-indulgent rationalizations demonstrated so many times on comment threads here.
Of course a person can be a bad citizen but a good neighbor or relative or employee or whatever. So what? The bad citizenship still hurts the other citizens. For a person, from the safety of his or her own security to rationtionalize support for the party and politcians who are attacking the security of other Americans is shameless selfishness and bad behavior. That those individuals are nice to their neighbors isn’t relevant to my point. My point that is in interms of their citizenship, in terms of their participation in government people, people who vote for Republicans seem to be incapable of caring about anyone they aren’t personally acquainted with and that is bad citizenship.
Out here in my state those altruistic billinaires invested heavily in a TV campaign of lies and successfully bamboozled voters inot passing one of those California style anti-revenue iniatives. As a result there are no longer sufficient funds for anything including care for the disabled. As a result an old lady who worked all of her life and paid taxes all of her life and who is now bedridden with rhuematoid arthritis is having her care cut back. If she dies of an impacted colonthe people who vote for Republicans will probably rationalize that away too. Or maybe they will be honest like the Repulbican politican who said tht disabled people should be sent off ot Siberia. In any case if she dies she will be one less American for people who vote for Republicans to use as target for their selfishness.
I’m done with the polite fiction that peole who vote for Republicans are just nice folks with a different point of view because the different point of view is just that they don’t give a shit about anyone they aren’t acquainted with and so long as Republicans aren’t screwing them they are willing to collaborate in the screwing of others.
I’m done now. It’s been a wonderful five or six years. Take care of yourself, Gary, and Bedtime, if you read this, I hope you and your dogs and your family will see better times, although if the people who vote for Republicans have their way, you won’t.
Goodby.
Wonkie
The law wonkie refers to is here.
It repeals and replaces this.
The careful (and patient) reader will note that the new law allows for government functions to be contracted out to private actors.
Read’em and weep.
For a variety of reasons, I feel obliged to not make political issues personal.
But it’s also clear to me that a huge amount of the impetus behind “fiscal responsibility” etc comes from the greed of private actors who either want to be free from public regulation and oversight, or who want a chance to become the new private owners of what used to be public functions and institutions.
There are a lot of greedy f**kers in the world, and I sure as hell am not talking about WI public employees. It behooves us all to watch our backs, personally *and* collectively.
You can love money, or you can love your neighbors and the given world, but you can’t love both. So say I, and it certainly is not original with me.
I and I (how Rasta) would guess many of you have heard the argument that the states are great places to try things out before doing them on the national level. When the grand experiment in privatization of public functions fails in Michigan, I hope the rest of the country takes notice, and that it all happens before too many people get hurt. I’m glad that it’s not my state signing up to be the guinea pig.
Is there a non-Balloon-Juice write up the Michigan law, cause it really sounds like whole lots of awesome. I look forward to outsourcing the judiciary.
If you google around for Michigan HB 4124 2011 you will find a lot of discussion.
Something to note about the bill is that the authority for the governor to, basically, take over the financial affairs of a local government was already in place with the prior law.
The new law expands the authority of the “emergency manager” role somewhat, and allows for employing private companies to act as auditors and to provide services. I don’t see that in the old law.
So, the “fiscal martial law” aspect of it was already in place. I’m not sure if the residents of MI were aware of that.
HSH
WI is not a guinea pig with Walker laws, the whole lot of southern states have had same laws for years and you can check the stats on the results. South states are in the same debt as any other states, less health coverage, more poor, smaller incomes and worse education scores, hence voting more for republicans.
Wonkie, don’t go. Or if you do, know that I at least will miss you.
Russell, I don’t take it personally that you don’t share my view about the overlap between the personal and the political. I am willing to see it as a mere political disagreement 🙂
–TP
Russell, I don’t take it personally that you don’t share my view about the overlap between the personal and the political.
Dude, stack overflow!
Also:
Wonkie, don’t go.
Seconded.
Me too.
Wonkie don’t go.
Shane!
On the other hand, the Galts are going.
Secession is in the air.
They’ve left us.
So, why shouldn’t the Wonkies go too?
Two countries can play that game.
Look, thank you.
But I really better take a time out for a while. I don’t feel like being polite so it is better to take a break on my own than to get kicked out. To quote the song, I wanna to right but not right now.
So take care of yourselves. Except for you all who rationalize rightwing thuggery. Karma to you.
Wonkie
But I really better take a time out for a while.
A time out is one thing. Just come back some day (not too long from now).
“So, the “fiscal martial law” aspect of it was already in place. I’m not sure if the residents of MI were aware of that.”
Thanks for pointing this out russell, I
didn’t want to be the one to do it based on stress in wonkies comment. The new law does expand some of the governors ability around who to appoint as the emergency manager, but, more important, places extra restrictions on the local officials in doing things while the emergency is in place.
I don’t know if this is in response to local officials trying to get around an emergency situation or just an expansion of executive authority(not unique in our country), but it certainly is not a new concept in total in MI.
I think my biggest beef with all this talk of poor, or middle class, or wealthy is that both sides turn the debate about anything into a sort of class struggle. There really isn’t that sort of difference in the country. Sure, some people make more money than others. Some make very little while some make obscene amounts. But when you get people in this country together, there is little to do with class involved. It is an imaginary conflict between groups of people that aren’t that easy to define. As far as I’m concerned (and this is coming from someone who would at best be considered lower middle class, but more accurately poor), I don’t care how much money you have or how much I don’t have. And I don’t propose that people with ridiculous amounts of money pay more taxes so that I can be better taken care of. Between my wife and I, we barely make enough to pay our bills, buy groceries and keep gas in the car. (I confess that we own 2 cars, but one is a base model Altima and the other a base model Versa) My point is, I don’t have a Tea Party affiliation, but I do agree with a lot of what they stand for. Some of it is hypocritical, such as wanting a limited government but not wanting to sacrifice any social security benefits or medicare, but all in all, it’s a pretty solid group. And I want to know why it’s so wrong for states to take away bargaining rights for public unions. The majority of the people in the United States don’t even belong to a union, yet they pay the taxes that subsidize all the public unions benefits? How is that fair? I’ve learned to be a lot more moderate about things, but this union business seems a little out of control.
And I don’t propose that people with ridiculous amounts of money pay more taxes so that I can be better taken care of.
Well, Brad, it ain’t all about you. Public money pays for a very broad range of things. “Do we need to take care of Brad” is not necessarily the critical metric.
wonkie:
Time outs make sense for all of us some of the time. Some don’t announce them, and just aren’t here 24 hours a day. 🙂
But we all get enraged at what we should get enraged at, and it’s often hard not to want to shout at what or who is in front of us.
Take whatever time you need, wonkie, but know that you are a much loved figure here, and we look forward to your return when you feel more happy chatting and talking with less of your perfectly understandable rage at the awful things that happen making you feel it’s difficult to converse.
Yes, we do believe in arguing with each other here, and with those not of like mind.
That’s hard, but that’s also politics. If we’re just an echo chamber: what’s the point? The point of politics is to change minds, not feel good and self-righteous. And I say this as someone as prone to the next person to engage in self-righteous denunciation.
But we also can’t change anyone’s minds if we don’t understand why they think the way they do. It’s not willful evil.
And I believe in nonviolent change, unless self-defense as an absolute last resort forces otherwise.
Though I have to say that Emma Goldman’s “I Will Kill Frick”: Emma Goldman Recounts the Attempt to Assassinate the Chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company During the Homestead Strike in 1892 has been on my mind.
Not that I think anyone should kill anyone. But Emma Goldman was fascinating, and everyone should know the history of the naked battles between capital and workers that aren’t so long ago, and live on today.