If you’re looking for a bottom of what is acceptable to the current Republican Party you’re not going to find it. Once Trump got elected even after the release of the “grab ‘em by their p—“ tape, the party saw that nothing was too embarrassing, too racist, or too cruel to be disqualifying. Is stealing the money from a dying dog worse th…
If you’re looking for a bottom of what is acceptable to the current Republican Party you’re not going to find it. Once Trump got elected even after the release of the “grab ‘em by their p—“ tape, the party saw that nothing was too embarrassing, too racist, or too cruel to be disqualifying. Is stealing the money from a dying dog worse than a planned program to separate children from their parents?
In previous comments I offered the opinion that the Republicans in the House were only there to create chaos, and that they had no plan of what to do next. Now, I am ready to admit I was wrong. After reading about Fair Tax Act, which has been brought to the House by Representative Earl “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) I am beginning to see that they have a plan for the future of America.
The Fair Tax Act, if passed, would eliminate all federal taxes as well as the IRS. It would allow the states to levy a 30% sales tax on everything. Of course, this is the most regressive form of taxation possible, helping the rich stay rich and putting the burden on the poor a middle class.
In other acts these Republicans want to end Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They also are forming committees to destroy the DOJ, Homeland Security, and every other regulatory agency.
What I am beginning to see as their objective is to create a state that is based on the form of government that Putin is attempting to bring to Ukraine. It is a state run by a few selected oligarchs who control all of the resources. They want to “purify” the country and keep immigrants out. Then they an exploit the middle and working class to work for small wages in order to survive. The state offers no safety net, no services, and little protection from the oligarchs. They do create stability by repressing any dissent.
The Republicans are no longer Trump’s party, they are Bannon and Tucker Carlson’s party. If you can stand it, listen to Carlson’s show three nights in a row. I guess Greene, Gaetz, Boebert, Gosar, et al, all expect to be included in the ruling class. Maybe they shouldn’t stand too close to open windows.
Rep. Santos (R-NY) will be a key brain trust on the House Small Business committee given his success in starting a dozen small businesses that he then grew into Fortune 500 companies. And regarding his other committe assignment, what more needs to be said other than to cite his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and his heroic experience as a NASA astronaut - with 4 moon landings no less!
I think the GOP has discovered that the way to succeed at being evil in the modern media environment is to just be so cartoonishly, shamelessly rotten that any accurate description of what you're doing sounds biased, so that the swing voter who could end this nonsense by consistently voting against them starts to roll their eyes and mutter, "there they go again...."
Very true. If you tried to make up the dog story for a 'fake news' outlet they'd reject it for being too evil to be believed. The only thing missing is Santos twirling his mustache.
Absolutely true. Stating facts sounds like a hit piece on the Republican party, so responsible media outlets bend over backwards to be "fair" ---hence the constant and inaccurate "both-sides-ism"
I'm willing to believe the Crazy Caucus hasn't a CLUE what the results of their actions would be. Nor do they care because they have never experienced consequences, thanks to a dim and weak Other Party. But there are those whose goal is precisely a ruling autocracy; two groups, really: religion and money or Dominionists and Donors. And they have been moving toward this since Reagan, aided amply by Newt and Mitch. I recommend immediate reading of the history of this movement "The Destructionists" by Dana Milbanks.
That seems to be the game plan, and those who go along do so at their own peril, until they become the next target. Witness Trump now calling out evangelical leaders as "disloyal" if they do not support him in 2024 -- their reward for backing the most Godless leader in American history. It was fairly literally a deal with the devil, and now they are seeing that there is a cost to sleeping in Satan's bed. Unchristian though it may be, there is some deserved Schadenfreude to be had for those who saw this coming all along, and more still when the Gaetzes and Boeberts and Greenes and Jordans of the movement learn the hard way that they have been played all the while. They are not elite and, like the nerds in high school, will never stand among the Beautiful People once their usefulness to them is at an end.
Civilization is hideously complex and requires the balancing of many factors. None of these people have the brains to understand much beyond their immediate interests. The donors are not actually much better.
The GoP was always first and foremost the party of plutocracy/oligarchy.
The Traditional values, racism, and sexism are merely the candy that they hold out to the mob in order to get votes (not that the plutocrats actually care about those things one way or the other). These norms are also effective/useful tools of control.
After they no longer need the votes, who can say what will happen.
This allows the plutocrats (through their proxies, like the RWM celebrities Hannity and Carlson and Bannon, et al) to brandish their mob as a threat and weapon (and to use it as such, if necessary).
The performance politicians are happy to go along with the agenda, so long as they get their fame, "relevance" and grift.
The objective of the GoP and its backers has been (for quite some time) to create a new feudal age, where the peons are entirely dependent upon the good graces and favor of the actual important people, work for low wages and low expectations, stay out of things that aren't their business, and generally either behave or disappear. Oh and buy stuff so that they money they get paid gets transferred back into the hands of the "job creators."
All of the people worrying about the tyranny of government never seem to worry too much about the tyranny of rich people... which (to my mind) is actually worse, as there is little recourse from it.
Liberty is the freedom from dominance--it matters little whether it is the dominance of the government or the dominance of the plutocrats--the dominance of the gun or the dominance of the checkbook--it is still dominance. There will be no liberty.
Debt peonage.
Lack of job security
Lack of job safety
Lack of general health and safety on a societal level
Law at the whim of the plutocrats 9and obviously not applicable to them).
We are part way there already, after having struggled to escape it through the social and regulatory programs of the early to mid 20th century (which the plutocrats and their lackeys are always working hard to roll back).
One of the problems with modern consumer capitalism is that it needs those pesky consumers. people to buy stuff. The damn robots don't buy anything.
Except you have to pay them stuff, which cuts into your profits.... but, MAYBE, you can just sell stuff to foreigners--who think that $3 a hour is a lot of money (and actually is, given their cost of living).
OR, you could sell them the stuff on credit and lock people up in debt peonage--and if they default, the government will bail you out because the credit company is too big to fail (and you have a lot of pull with the politicians, as in you bought them) so you get your money anyway. Some stockholders and pension holders took it in the shorts--but they should have been smarter and harder working and been plutocrats like you, so screw em. The financial fund you oversee took a hit, but you made a lot of money on commissions/fees and you got out before it went south because you saw it coming.
A consumer-capitalist society is unsustainable in the long term. It is profitable for a few people until you hit the limit and subsequent collapse... because, too few resources left, or too many people (resulting in too few resources). A reliance on continual sustained growth ends up being very dangerous.
At some point you will run out of new customers or resources. May not be this decade or century, but barring the discovery of a viable FTL transport system and/or direct conversion of energy into matter a la Star Trek, it will come at some point.
Would you be able to summarize what the alternative(s )might be to constant GDP growth? It strikes a chord with me because this was something my late father frequently mentioned. Sometimes when I was grown and visiting home he and I would stay up late drinking a wee bit and he invariably brought up his worry that constant growth was unsustainable and alternative, prosperity creating, economies must be discovered/created.
As it is formulated, constant (unlimited, endless, infinite) GDP growth seems like a choice: if we want it, we can have it.
As it happens, we are on a spaceship called "earth", with limited resources onboard; therefore there will be an end to the growth path we are on right now.
What happens after we stop changing cars, computers, homes (you name it) every other year, it is impossible to say, because we are not there yet.
Perhaps we should stop thinking and talking about the GDP as much as we do. All growth is not measured by GDP; if you read a book and learn something new, isn't that growth too -- or simply the time you spend with people you like?
"Liberty is the freedom from dominance--it matters little whether it is the dominance of the government or the dominance of the plutocrats--the dominance of the gun or the dominance of the checkbook--it is still dominance."
This right here is what Libtardians always misunderstand about their idea of "freedom."
Yeah, we keep having this argument about health insurance. I get that people don't trust the government to approve treatment, but why are they more trusting of the company that makes a profit on refusing treatments?
My mom can't get surgery on the top of her spinal column because the hospital and insurance want OP/PT and steroid shots to be done instead, even though they all understand that the state of her degenerative arthritis demands that this surgery will eventually need to be done. They'd rather her go through and recover from that surgery at 75 than 71. It makes no sense to me. They will be spending more money this way, and yet still inevitably need to perform the surgery. It is so forking frustrating and I don't understand it.
You said this much better and more thoroughly than I did. I am so gobsmacked I've gone over the edge into satire or graphic novel-land as much as possible.
PS: Ike called it the military/industrial/legislative something. In practice it has been unattended capitalism, hasn't it?
Unregulated capitalism is toxic as hell. we have spent almost the entire history of this country trying (and often failing) to get it under control--to separate the government from the plutocrats.
Wealth is power, often more power than the government has because wealth can buy the government (or at least its functionaries) and wealth can be more immediately and directly applied to oppress--in (usually) legal ways--or legal enough that the government cannot afford to prosecute it.
I wish I could give this a bazillion likes. As far as the 3G's and a B, they really really shouldn't stand close to open windows, and McCarthy should consider immigrating elsewhere.
It sounds like a horrible sitcom premise, except that it would never work because it would be almost impossible to caricature things any worse than they already are.
Let's begin by experimentally eliminating salary, health, and other benefits now paid for Representatives and Senators. See if that lowers the gov't's cost burden.
Yup. Oil and farm subsidies are going nowhere. Governments can intervene in markets, so long as they're blessing the *right* markets. Same could be said of FEMA flood insurance programs keeping the I-10 corridor in the south's housing market propped up at affordable rates via cheaper home owners insurance rates. Same with putting military and government bases in states like Mississippi and Alabama where federal/military employment makes up a huge chunk of their middle class. You take those government subsidies away and whole chunks of the southern/midwest economy collapse.
If you’re looking for a bottom of what is acceptable to the current Republican Party you’re not going to find it. Once Trump got elected even after the release of the “grab ‘em by their p—“ tape, the party saw that nothing was too embarrassing, too racist, or too cruel to be disqualifying. Is stealing the money from a dying dog worse than a planned program to separate children from their parents?
In previous comments I offered the opinion that the Republicans in the House were only there to create chaos, and that they had no plan of what to do next. Now, I am ready to admit I was wrong. After reading about Fair Tax Act, which has been brought to the House by Representative Earl “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) I am beginning to see that they have a plan for the future of America.
The Fair Tax Act, if passed, would eliminate all federal taxes as well as the IRS. It would allow the states to levy a 30% sales tax on everything. Of course, this is the most regressive form of taxation possible, helping the rich stay rich and putting the burden on the poor a middle class.
In other acts these Republicans want to end Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They also are forming committees to destroy the DOJ, Homeland Security, and every other regulatory agency.
What I am beginning to see as their objective is to create a state that is based on the form of government that Putin is attempting to bring to Ukraine. It is a state run by a few selected oligarchs who control all of the resources. They want to “purify” the country and keep immigrants out. Then they an exploit the middle and working class to work for small wages in order to survive. The state offers no safety net, no services, and little protection from the oligarchs. They do create stability by repressing any dissent.
The Republicans are no longer Trump’s party, they are Bannon and Tucker Carlson’s party. If you can stand it, listen to Carlson’s show three nights in a row. I guess Greene, Gaetz, Boebert, Gosar, et al, all expect to be included in the ruling class. Maybe they shouldn’t stand too close to open windows.
Excellent comment. The writing has been on the wall.
Rep. Santos (R-NY) will be a key brain trust on the House Small Business committee given his success in starting a dozen small businesses that he then grew into Fortune 500 companies. And regarding his other committe assignment, what more needs to be said other than to cite his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and his heroic experience as a NASA astronaut - with 4 moon landings no less!
I think the GOP has discovered that the way to succeed at being evil in the modern media environment is to just be so cartoonishly, shamelessly rotten that any accurate description of what you're doing sounds biased, so that the swing voter who could end this nonsense by consistently voting against them starts to roll their eyes and mutter, "there they go again...."
Very true. If you tried to make up the dog story for a 'fake news' outlet they'd reject it for being too evil to be believed. The only thing missing is Santos twirling his mustache.
Absolutely true. Stating facts sounds like a hit piece on the Republican party, so responsible media outlets bend over backwards to be "fair" ---hence the constant and inaccurate "both-sides-ism"
I'm willing to believe the Crazy Caucus hasn't a CLUE what the results of their actions would be. Nor do they care because they have never experienced consequences, thanks to a dim and weak Other Party. But there are those whose goal is precisely a ruling autocracy; two groups, really: religion and money or Dominionists and Donors. And they have been moving toward this since Reagan, aided amply by Newt and Mitch. I recommend immediate reading of the history of this movement "The Destructionists" by Dana Milbanks.
That seems to be the game plan, and those who go along do so at their own peril, until they become the next target. Witness Trump now calling out evangelical leaders as "disloyal" if they do not support him in 2024 -- their reward for backing the most Godless leader in American history. It was fairly literally a deal with the devil, and now they are seeing that there is a cost to sleeping in Satan's bed. Unchristian though it may be, there is some deserved Schadenfreude to be had for those who saw this coming all along, and more still when the Gaetzes and Boeberts and Greenes and Jordans of the movement learn the hard way that they have been played all the while. They are not elite and, like the nerds in high school, will never stand among the Beautiful People once their usefulness to them is at an end.
Civilization is hideously complex and requires the balancing of many factors. None of these people have the brains to understand much beyond their immediate interests. The donors are not actually much better.
The donors are worse. They're the ones funding all this. They're pulling the strings.
sigh
The GoP was always first and foremost the party of plutocracy/oligarchy.
The Traditional values, racism, and sexism are merely the candy that they hold out to the mob in order to get votes (not that the plutocrats actually care about those things one way or the other). These norms are also effective/useful tools of control.
After they no longer need the votes, who can say what will happen.
This allows the plutocrats (through their proxies, like the RWM celebrities Hannity and Carlson and Bannon, et al) to brandish their mob as a threat and weapon (and to use it as such, if necessary).
The performance politicians are happy to go along with the agenda, so long as they get their fame, "relevance" and grift.
The objective of the GoP and its backers has been (for quite some time) to create a new feudal age, where the peons are entirely dependent upon the good graces and favor of the actual important people, work for low wages and low expectations, stay out of things that aren't their business, and generally either behave or disappear. Oh and buy stuff so that they money they get paid gets transferred back into the hands of the "job creators."
All of the people worrying about the tyranny of government never seem to worry too much about the tyranny of rich people... which (to my mind) is actually worse, as there is little recourse from it.
Liberty is the freedom from dominance--it matters little whether it is the dominance of the government or the dominance of the plutocrats--the dominance of the gun or the dominance of the checkbook--it is still dominance. There will be no liberty.
Debt peonage.
Lack of job security
Lack of job safety
Lack of general health and safety on a societal level
Law at the whim of the plutocrats 9and obviously not applicable to them).
We are part way there already, after having struggled to escape it through the social and regulatory programs of the early to mid 20th century (which the plutocrats and their lackeys are always working hard to roll back).
Your comments echo my thoughts and are much more eloquent. Thanks for posting.
One of the problems with modern consumer capitalism is that it needs those pesky consumers. people to buy stuff. The damn robots don't buy anything.
Except you have to pay them stuff, which cuts into your profits.... but, MAYBE, you can just sell stuff to foreigners--who think that $3 a hour is a lot of money (and actually is, given their cost of living).
OR, you could sell them the stuff on credit and lock people up in debt peonage--and if they default, the government will bail you out because the credit company is too big to fail (and you have a lot of pull with the politicians, as in you bought them) so you get your money anyway. Some stockholders and pension holders took it in the shorts--but they should have been smarter and harder working and been plutocrats like you, so screw em. The financial fund you oversee took a hit, but you made a lot of money on commissions/fees and you got out before it went south because you saw it coming.
A consumer-capitalist society is unsustainable in the long term. It is profitable for a few people until you hit the limit and subsequent collapse... because, too few resources left, or too many people (resulting in too few resources). A reliance on continual sustained growth ends up being very dangerous.
At some point you will run out of new customers or resources. May not be this decade or century, but barring the discovery of a viable FTL transport system and/or direct conversion of energy into matter a la Star Trek, it will come at some point.
“A consumer-capitalist society is unsustainable in the long term.”
It is possible to live sustainably and successfully without the constant need for GDP growth. But it requires a whole different mindset.
Would you be able to summarize what the alternative(s )might be to constant GDP growth? It strikes a chord with me because this was something my late father frequently mentioned. Sometimes when I was grown and visiting home he and I would stay up late drinking a wee bit and he invariably brought up his worry that constant growth was unsustainable and alternative, prosperity creating, economies must be discovered/created.
It seems to me that your question has a flaw.
As it is formulated, constant (unlimited, endless, infinite) GDP growth seems like a choice: if we want it, we can have it.
As it happens, we are on a spaceship called "earth", with limited resources onboard; therefore there will be an end to the growth path we are on right now.
What happens after we stop changing cars, computers, homes (you name it) every other year, it is impossible to say, because we are not there yet.
Perhaps we should stop thinking and talking about the GDP as much as we do. All growth is not measured by GDP; if you read a book and learn something new, isn't that growth too -- or simply the time you spend with people you like?
GDP growth, but less by goods and more by services?
"Liberty is the freedom from dominance--it matters little whether it is the dominance of the government or the dominance of the plutocrats--the dominance of the gun or the dominance of the checkbook--it is still dominance."
This right here is what Libtardians always misunderstand about their idea of "freedom."
Yeah, we keep having this argument about health insurance. I get that people don't trust the government to approve treatment, but why are they more trusting of the company that makes a profit on refusing treatments?
My mom can't get surgery on the top of her spinal column because the hospital and insurance want OP/PT and steroid shots to be done instead, even though they all understand that the state of her degenerative arthritis demands that this surgery will eventually need to be done. They'd rather her go through and recover from that surgery at 75 than 71. It makes no sense to me. They will be spending more money this way, and yet still inevitably need to perform the surgery. It is so forking frustrating and I don't understand it.
They are playing the actuarial odds that she will die before she has to have the surgery (and they have to pay for it).
Sounds about right.
IKR
You said this much better and more thoroughly than I did. I am so gobsmacked I've gone over the edge into satire or graphic novel-land as much as possible.
PS: Ike called it the military/industrial/legislative something. In practice it has been unattended capitalism, hasn't it?
Unregulated capitalism is toxic as hell. we have spent almost the entire history of this country trying (and often failing) to get it under control--to separate the government from the plutocrats.
Wealth is power, often more power than the government has because wealth can buy the government (or at least its functionaries) and wealth can be more immediately and directly applied to oppress--in (usually) legal ways--or legal enough that the government cannot afford to prosecute it.
I call it Predatory Capitalism, feed the shareholders & C suite, plus plus the political class & screw the workers who make them that profit!
Predatory Capitalism is a good label
"almost our entire history" -- another very good point which I hadn't thought of.
There's a quote about democracy needing constant attention by citizens. We've gotten too soft and too lazy and I hope it isn't also too late.
I wish I could give this a bazillion likes. As far as the 3G's and a B, they really really shouldn't stand close to open windows, and McCarthy should consider immigrating elsewhere.
Points for "3Gs and a B"!!!!!
It sounds like a horrible sitcom premise, except that it would never work because it would be almost impossible to caricature things any worse than they already are.
We face the death of satire, because how do you satirize thus stuff?
Satire has become reality!
Today’s GOP wants to eliminate all government services and subsidies except ones that benefit themselves or their donors.
Let's begin by experimentally eliminating salary, health, and other benefits now paid for Representatives and Senators. See if that lowers the gov't's cost burden.
Yup. Oil and farm subsidies are going nowhere. Governments can intervene in markets, so long as they're blessing the *right* markets. Same could be said of FEMA flood insurance programs keeping the I-10 corridor in the south's housing market propped up at affordable rates via cheaper home owners insurance rates. Same with putting military and government bases in states like Mississippi and Alabama where federal/military employment makes up a huge chunk of their middle class. You take those government subsidies away and whole chunks of the southern/midwest economy collapse.