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Posts posted by washparkhorn
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39 minutes ago, Message Board User said:
That Bernie appears to be making some headway in the polls shows just how unserious some Democrats are in winning 2020. Him as the nominee would be an absolute gift to Dotard, guarantee his re-election, and fuck over down ballot Democrats in states and areas that aren't already deep blue.
But hey - they may lose the election, but at least they have values and give a damn. So that's something I guess that could give the Twitter Democrats consolation as Trump further shits on the Constitution through 2024 and replaces RBG with Amy Barrett.
Wasn't true in 2016. Bernie would have rolled Trump.
https://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-sanders
Is it true in 2020 (or just a Republican talking point)?
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Bernie in LA with AOC:
"It's called having values.
It's called giving a damn."
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Jimmy - this article might help:
Quote“‘The good news is that we may elect a Republican president this year,’ said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos. ‘The bad news is that it may be Bill Clinton.’”
How America broke up with the Democratic Party
In the past few decades, Americans “fell out of love” with the Democratic Party. What happened?
. . . Ironically, Republican President Eisenhower (1952-1960) knew that Americans loved FDR’s New Deal, and continued FDR’s trade policies. He had, after all, grown up with them (he was born in 1890), and fought World War II as the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe under FDR and led the invasion at Normandy.
He told his brother Edgar in a 1954 letter, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”
Eisenhower added, “There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are… Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
But Clinton and the “moderate” DLC Democrats embraced becoming Eisenhower Republicans, even as Eisenhower would have repudiated their policies.
. . .
As Harry Truman once said, “The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat…”
As jobs and economic issues became the exclusive provenance of what the media calls “far-left” politicians like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders, and the leadership of the Democratic Party stayed with Reaganomics, working people generally failed to show up in large enough numbers to keep George W. Bush out of the White House.
But George W. Bush didn’t repudiate Reaganomics, so the working class continued to stagnate economically. Frustrated Americans decided to take another try with the Democrats.
This set up Senator Barack Obama, who promised “hope and change,” to beat John McCain’s “steady as she goes” approach to the presidency.
But, vague rhetoric aside, Obama’s “change” was largely a continuation of Clinton’s Eisenhower-like corporate- and billionaire-friendly DLC policies. He restored dignity and sanity to the presidency, but also pushed hard to expand NAFTA-like outsourcing policies by throwing several years of political capital into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was ultimately as unpopular among a majority of Americans as was NAFTA in 1992. And his support of organized labor was weak, at best.
Since 1981, not one American president has seriously challenged the neoliberal basis of Reaganomics. Billionaires and corporations now largely run our politics, to the point that average working people’s desires are about as likely to be made into law as random chance.
As a result, Pew found that only about half of Americans qualified as “middle class” by the beginning of the Obama presidency. “From 1971 to 2011, the share of adults in the middle class fell by 10 percentage points,” they noted.
With fewer than half of Americans qualifying as middle class by 2015, Pew concluded their study: “The hollowing of the middle has proceeded steadily for the past four decades.” Four decades earlier, of course, the Democratic Party began a course that culminated in Bill Clinton leading the party to turn its back on FDR and LBJ, and embrace Republican-lite economic and trade policies.
https://www.salon.com/2019/12/18/how-america-broke-up-with-the-democratic-party_partner/
Bernie is attempting to move the Democratic Party back to their New Deal roots. DLC Democrats are scared of losing their golden teat.
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Left-wing Democrats (Sanders, Warren) in the US line with most center-right Euro parties. They are RIGHT of UK Conservatives.
The US is that far right on the political spectrum - thanks to the long reign of neoliberalism.
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White Suburban Democratic Party voter = thinks neoliberalism is a left wing policy, so will defend it when attacked.
Reality: Neoliberalism is a right wing economic policy. It preaches subsidies for the uber-wealthy and austerity for everyone else.
Wake up.
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2 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:
Yes. I get it. You’re just “asking questions.”
Black families, along with everyone else in the middle class, lost a shit ton of wealth due to republican disastrous policies that began with Reagan, culminated with Bush 2, came to a head in 2007 well before tan suit became president, and are being exacerbated to this day by president shitstain.
Are you somehow ignorant to this fact or do we need to answer more of your stupid ass questions for you?
Neoliberal economic policy started with Carter, went balls to the wall with Reagan/Bush I, was coronated as King by Clinton and rolled along with Bush/Obama.
Parties are an outdated filter for political stances, as I am sure you know by now. Right? Low information voters (by design) vote straight ticket - they are trapped in silos. You trapped in a silo?
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1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:
Washpark, you still caping for tax cuts or are you playing at collectivist populism again?
Power to the people my neoliberal friend. Still putting the jackboot down the throats of the poor?
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$29 Trillion for Wall Street.
Between 2007 and 2016, the average wealth of the bottom 99 percent dropped by $4,500.
Over the same period, the average wealth of the top 1 percent rose by $4.9 million.
This drop hit the housing wealth of African Americans particularly hard. Outside of home equity, black wealth recovered its 2007 level by 2016.
But average black home equity was still $16,700 lower.
Much of this decline, we will argue, can be laid at the feet of President Obama. His housing policies led directly to millions of families losing their homes.
What’s more, Obama had the power — money, legislative tools, and legal leverage — to sharply ameliorate the foreclosure crisis.
He chose not to use it.
Why?
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35 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:
Messed up my previous post. This is some serious dumbass shit you’re posting here.
Did you read the article? Just curious why black families lost wealth under Obama.
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Great to hear from the centrist white suburbans.
A retort from elsewhere:
The Obama presidency was a disaster for middle-class wealth in the United States. Between 2007 and 2016, the average wealth of the bottom 99 percent dropped by $4,500. Over the same period, the average wealth of the top 1 percent rose by $4.9 million.
This drop hit the housing wealth of African Americans particularly hard. Outside of home equity, black wealth recovered its 2007 level by 2016. But average black home equity was still $16,700 lower.
Much of this decline, we will argue, can be laid at the feet of President Obama. His housing policies led directly to millions of families losing their homes. What’s more, Obama had the power — money, legislative tools, and legal leverage — to sharply ameliorate the foreclosure crisis.
He chose not to use it.
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/obama-foreclosure-crisis-wealth-inequality
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Durham's investigation is a long way from conclusions.
The lawyer who is alleged to have falsified information for the Page FISA warrant according the Horowitz may be looking at liability.
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The shortage of women/girls in China/India:
We are learning right now what happens when the sex ratio becomes wildly out of whack, through a huge unintended experiment. In the world’s two most populated countries—China and India—there is a serious woman shortage.
The consequence is that in those countries combined—which together have a population of about 2.73 billion—there are now an estimated 80 million extra men. “Nothing like this has happened in human history,” the Washington Post wrote in an April 2018 article.In India, many families used sex-selective abortion to choose boys, prompting the passage of a law that made it illegal to screen for the sex of the fetus and conduct sex-selective abortions. In China, similar decisions were encouraged by the “one-child” policy in place from 1979 to 2015, which prompted many parents to decide that their sole child must be a boy.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/essay/you-should-be-worrying-about-the-woman-shortage
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Populists v. Autocrats:
The Dark Side of Autocratic Rule
Despite the mounting resistance, the forces of autocracy have been on the rise. For example, Brazil elected as president Jair Bolsonaro—a man who, at great risk to public safety, openly encourages the use of lethal force by the military and police in a country already wracked by a sky-high rate of police killings and more than 60,000 homicides per year.
Established autocrats and their admirers continued their disregard for basic rights. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi persisted in silencing independent voices and civic groups and locking up thousands for their presumed political views. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte encouraged more summary executions, supposedly of drug suspects, but often of people guilty of no more than being poor young men. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban implemented his brand of “illiberal democracy.” Poland’s de facto ruler, Jarosław Kaczyński, sought to stack his country’s courts with his preferred judges, undermining the judiciary’s independence. Italy’s interior minister and deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, closed ports to refugees and migrants, scuttled efforts to save migrants’ lives at sea, and stoked anti-immigrant sentiment. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to halt the demonizing of Muslims while attacking civic groups that criticized his rights record or environmental policies. The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, tightened his grip on power by holding sham elections from which the opposition party was banned. US President Donald Trump disparaged immigrants and minorities and tried to bully judges and journalists whom he deemed to stand in his way. Russia under President Vladimir Putin continued its multi-year crackdown on independent voices and political opposition. China closed off any possibility of organized opposition to the increasingly one-man rule of Xi Jinping.
Beyond the immediate victims, some of the economic costs of autocratic rule became more visible over the course of the year. Oil-rich Venezuela once enjoyed one of Latin America’s highest standards of living but today, under the autocratic rule of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuelans suffer severe shortages of food and medicine, causing millions to flee the country. President Erdogan, persisting with large-scale building projects that often benefited his allies, oversaw a plummeting currency and a skyrocketing cost of living in Turkey. Mozambique discovered that $2 billion in government funds had disappeared from its treasury.
China’s much-touted “One Belt, One Road” initiative to develop trade infrastructure fostered autocratic mismanagement in other countries. In keeping with Beijing’s longstanding practice, Belt and Road loans come with no visible conditions, making Beijing a preferred lender for autocrats. These unscrutinized infusions of cash made it easier for corrupt officials to pad their bank accounts while saddling their people with massive debt in the service of infrastructure projects that in several cases benefit China more than the people of the indebted nation.
In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad cancelled three major infrastructure projects financed by Chinese loans amid concerns that his predecessor, Najib Razak, had agreed to unfavorable terms to obtain funds to cover up a corruption scandal. Unable to afford its enormous debt burden, Sri Lanka was forced to surrender control of a port to China, built with Chinese loans but without an economic rationale in the home district of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Kenya came to rue a Chinese-funded railroad that offered no promise of economic viability. Pakistan, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, and the Maldives all expressed regret at having agreed to certain Chinese-funded projects. Talk of a Chinese “debt trap” became common.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/keynote/autocrats-face-rising-resistance
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Syria:
Syria: 60,000 civilians flee surge of violence in Idlib
Syria's Idlib province has been hit by over 400 airstrikes over the past 24 hours, monitors said, prompting tens of thousands of people to flee. Rescue workers described the situation as a "humanitarian catastrophe."
Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced in recent weeks due to heavy airstrikes the province of Idlib in northwestern Syria, the United Nations said on Friday.
Up to 60,000 people have fled the region, news agency DPA reported, citing a spokesperson with the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
The area, which is one of the last opposition strongholds in Syria, has been the target of intensified airstrikes carried out by the Syrian army and Russian forces.
More than 400 airstrikes have hit civilian areas in Idlib over the past 24 hours, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Syrian army and Russia, which is allied with President Bashar Assad, deny indiscriminately bombing civilians and say that they are targeting al-Qaida-inspired militants.
https://www.dw.com/en/syria-60000-civilians-flee-surge-of-violence-in-idlib/a-51758942
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Islamist Militancy in Pakistan:
QuoteTaliban Gunmen Kill Two Pakistani Police Escorting Polio Team
Taliban militants in Pakistan have shot and killed two police officers who had been deployed to protect a polio vaccination team in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The unknown assailants opened fire as the officers were heading to a basic health unit in the Maidan area of Lower Dir district, local police told RFE/RL said on December 18.
They said a search was underway to find the gunmen.
Muhammad Khorasani, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), said the militant group was behind the attack.
In the past decade, Taliban militants have killed scores of health workers and police guarding them because they believe anti-polio vaccination campaigns are intended to sterilize Pakistani children.
Pakistan, where polio is still endemic, regularly carries out anti-polio drives. https://gandhara.rferl.org/a/taliban-gunmen-kill-two-pakistani-police-escorting-polio-team/30332066.html -
Venezuela
Maduro Holds Talks With U.S. Creditors in a Push to End Embargo
President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, dismissed as a goner after the U.S. put its weight behind his political rival and crippled his government with sanctions, is offering an unorthodox payback to Wall Street creditors as part of a long-shot effort to get the Trump administration to reverse its policy.
In recent weeks, several American financiers have huddled in Caracas with top government officials, including Maduro, according to five people familiar with the matter. They discussed a complex plan to pair up creditors, who hold $60 billion of defaulted bonds, with a foreign drilling company that would be granted the rights to some of the country’s richest oil fields. Some money could go to humanitarian aid for crisis-stricken Venezuelans.
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The situation as a whole in Latin America:
QuoteUNDER LEFT- AND RIGHT-WING LEADERS, THE AMAZON HAS BURNED. CAN LATIN AMERICA REJECT OIL, RANCHING, AND MINING?
THE CHAPTER IN Latin American history that opened in 1998 with celebrations in Venezuela has ended with a coup and violence in Bolivia. As with all tidal waves, the “pink tide” recedes to reveal a terrain transformed. The left movement landscape that produced variously striped socialist governments in a dozen countries is fractured and disillusioned. Central and South America face a resurgent right and the return of austerity, often through a scrim of tear gas. This state of disarray also marks the continent’s literal terrain: the forests and mountains cleared and ripped open, their minerals and hydrocarbons sent to port and shipped abroad in the name of a socialist project whose achievements have proven fragile, temporary, and superficial.
https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/amazon-latin-america-extractivism/
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1 minute ago, bernorange said:
Oh, so now you are inclined to entertain the WTO's recent warnings? Imagine what happens when the world is gripped by a global recession and numerous sovereign currency/debt crises.
I always learn from you bern . . . you know that. Thank you.
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China - Uighurs
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/13/china-muslims-uighur-detention/
Quote[A] panel of U.N. human rights experts said Uighurs in Xinjiang were being treated as “enemies of the state” and announced that it had received credible reports about the “arbitrary and mass detention of almost 1 million Uighurs” in “counter-extremism centers.”
One. Million. People. It’s an astonishingly high number.
In the context of the Uighur population as a whole, it’s even more shocking: There are around 11 million Uighurs living in Xinjiang, which means that almost one in 10 of them has been detained, according to the U.N.
How is this not anything other than one of the biggest, and most underreported, human rights crises in the world today?
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7 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:
OK, I'm not watching that. What's the point of your thread?
Decade is ending - State of the World as the decade ends and we begin the next on. Will it be worse or better in 2029?
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Hong Kong:
Graphic
Spoiler -
Chile:
Crushing protestor between two armored vehicles (caution: cannot be unseen/brutal/disturbing)
Spoiler -
Great flick exploring the fight against DuPont for their dumping of toxic chemicals related to the manufacture of teflon-type products. Serious and somber.
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2020 Democratic Nominee
in Cloak Room
Posted
As I recall, we were conversing about the effects of taxes on the employing class. No?
For those generating jobs, an increase in the income tax burden can hurt employment. Correct?
I am all in favor of Sanders and Warren's wealth taxes. You?
Congrats if you are at $32.1 million wealth mark. If you have $10.1 billion, bravo.