Starker on 6/9/2022 at 14:26
This channel I found recently had a pretty good video on the topic of who's to blame for Afghanistan that also included a list of people not to blame for it (SPOILER: Biden is not on it):
[video=youtube;TuUDS9FC7_k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuUDS9FC7_k[/video]
Cipheron on 6/9/2022 at 23:39
EDIT: that Gutfeld, what a riot of a show. The right wing really know how to match it with the Late Show comedy-wise. Seriously, right wing "comedy" is just spin-the-wheel-of-hate then make a snarky remark at that group or person.
Not Biden related, but Clinton stuff, so close enough
I was having a discussion elsewhere and a guy was saying that liberal in America means the same as "neoliberalism". However the guy also just switched interchangeably with "the left" through the discussion. Yes, all those well known left-wing neoliberals.
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism)
Quote:
Neoliberalism, or neo-liberalism, is a term used to signify the political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism. A prominent factor in the rise of conservative and libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them, it is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.
Yes, all those things which fully sum up the Democrats.
Then the guy pointed to how Clinton signed away Glass-Steagel, so that proves the liberal left was behind that. Umm well ...
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act)
Pushed by Republicans, written by Republicans, overwhelmingly passed by Republicans. That's a Republican baby for sure. What Clinton did was *fail to veto it*. There's a difference between the criticism "Clinton failed to push back against Republican deregulation!" vs "look at those crazy Democrats and their zeal to deregulate everything!" whenever this stuff explodes in everyone's faces.
Oh and then the guy was like, well the left did NAFTA so there!
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement)
Quote:
[image] Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, at the initialing of the draft North American Free Trade Agreement in October 1992.
Following diplomatic negotiations dating back to 1990, the leaders of the three nations signed the agreement in their respective capitals on December 17, 1992.[18] The signed agreement then needed to be ratified by each nation's legislative or parliamentary branch.
So It was already a signed international treaty before Clinton was even sworn in. This was Clinton's main addition:
Quote:
Before sending it to the United States Senate, Clinton added two side agreements, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), to protect workers and the environment, and to also allay the concerns of many House members. The U.S. required its partners to adhere to environmental practices and regulations similar to its own.
I'm pretty sure there's plenty to criticize Clinton for but if the only things that they can come up with is that Clinton didn't sufficiently crush the Republican Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and didn't renege on the NAFTA treaty created by Bush, then I'm not sure how this exactly proves that left-wing Democrats were behind neoliberalism.
Cipheron on 10/9/2022 at 22:46
This article is really good. Well written and interesting, it covers the rise and fall of different economic paradigms through the US's history and ties that into what's happening right now.
This might explain some of the escalated vitriol: neoliberalism's core ideas are under threat for the first time in basically whenever.
(
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/09/how-bidenomics-got-a-lot-more-progressive-00055653)
Quote:
I want to change the paradigm,” declared Joe Biden — not once, but three times — during his first press conference as president, back in March 2021. Biden was talking about his economic agenda, but what exactly he meant by “changing the paradigm” wasn't particularly clear. “We start to reward work, not just wealth,” he said by way of explanation.
But a year and a half later, with the ink now dry on the Inflation Reduction Act — the third major piece of economic legislation to pass across Biden's desk, along with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act and the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — Democrats' recent legislative victories have some in Washington asking: Are these new policies harbingers of a more fundamental change to America's prevailing economic order?
To summarize this, but this doesn't really explain the whole article:
neoliberalism = "top down" economics. Make the guy at the top richer and wealth will trickle down.
welfare = "bottom up" - help the poorest, then that will rise everyone's boat. Though the article is more of a critique of neoliberalism, since that is in fact the dominant paradigm in the USA.
new paradigm = "middle out" - build up a strong middle class, institutions and values
So the idea here is that (1) helping the rich, we've clearly seen that doesn't help. And that (2) things like welfare and food stamps, while helpful and necessary, those are only a band-aid measure, not growth measure. people need opportunity to get out of those situations long-term, and there being a strong middle-class economy actually provides those opportunities.
Nicker on 11/9/2022 at 02:56
The problem with all our economic paradigms is they are based on growth.
The only way to grow now is to offload the negative results on poor people and poor nations (aka brown people) or push the crisis into the future where the generations a'comin' can deal with it... or not.
Or we could all move to Mars!! Let's do it, Honey!
Cipheron on 11/9/2022 at 14:48
Quote Posted by Nicker
The problem with all our economic paradigms is they are based on growth.
The only way to grow now is to offload the negative results on poor people and poor nations (aka brown people) or push the crisis into the future where the generations a'comin' can deal with it... or not.
Or we could all move to Mars!!
Let's do it, Honey!I think that's a bit reductive.
Socialism and the whole historical materialism thing are also based on growth, growth in productivity. You could argue that all human systems are based on maximizing return on labor investment, not just capitalism.
Also, factors such as inflation which are often seen as a negative are in fact an important stabilizing and corrective force. For example a situation such as stagflation can still have many of the effective same mechanisms running, but it doesn't actually 'grow'.
Or you've got key mechanisms like supply/demand curves. Markets do not actually require "growth" to operate, they show how prices go up and down in response to changes in both supply and demand.
As an example take the national debt. Is it true that if the nation's debt increases then next year, the debt will be harder to pay than this year, and therefore one day, everything will explode?
Well, actually no. You might have heard some people saying the national debt can keep going up forever and it's not actually a problem. They're completely correct. What's important is that the debt increases *no faster than inflation*. So ... if inflation is 2% then you can have a deficit of 2% of the current debt, and next year the size of the debt, in real terms, will be no greater. So this 8% inflation in this year, well that effectively means the national debt from previous years just shrunk by 8% in real-dollar terms.
The problem isn't actually that the debt's going up, the problem is that politicians don't have enough restraint in the good years to save up for the bad years, so on aggregate, the debt goes up faster than inflation does. Plus the BS where the profits of the 1% are no longer being taxes, almost at all. Both those things are way more important than the idea that capitalism will collapse without 'growth'.
Nicker on 11/9/2022 at 15:57
It is reductionist by intent. The foundation an economy is ecology. This goes for any economic theory, regardless of the political underpinnings.
Natural boom and bust population cycles of prey and predators are measured in years. Humans have managed to defer this natural accounting by offloading the problem to the future. Well, that future is here.
An economy, on any scale, may thrive or fail because of the factors you covered, but it will certainly fail if the ecology it relies on to produce commodities and to absorb the resulting waste, collapses. This can occur, for example, because of reduced rainfall (natural) or the inability of the land to store water (in the form of plant cover) due to human exploitation.
Environmental collapse accompanies civilization collapse again and again in history, regardless of whether or not the degradation was human caused or natural. Of course other factors can cause or contribute to the fall of civilizations, a region only stays uncivilized of the ability to provide the basics of life have been destroyed.
Up until now there has always been new land to move to and exploit. Today, not so much. Our economic models are all based on growth: growth of demand, growth of markets, growth of production, growth of resource extraction, growth of waste and, most importantly, growth of population.
We have nearly exhausted forests to slash and burn, watersheds to drain or treat as sewers. Unless we drastically change to some form of steady-state economy and/or reduce and stabilize our population, nature (or the lack thereof) will adjust our expectations for us.
Starker on 21/6/2023 at 09:04
President Brandon's son Robert has been charged with tax offences and lying on a gun application form:
Quote:
(
https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-charges-income-tax-weapon-ea6b78d4bac037da24b485985b99bc1c)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will plead guilty to federal tax offenses but avoid full prosecution on a separate gun charge in a deal with the Justice Department that likely spares him time behind bars.
Hunter Biden, 53, will plead guilty to the misdemeanor tax offenses as part of an agreement made public Tuesday. The agreement will also avert prosecution on a felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, as long as he adheres to conditions agreed to in court.
Two people familiar with the investigation said the Justice Department would recommend 24 months of probation for the tax charges, meaning Hunter Biden will not face time in prison. But the decision to go along with any deal is up to the judge. The people were not authorized to speak publicly by name and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
[...]
He is to plead guilty to failing to pay more than $100,000 in taxes on over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018, charges that carry a maximum possible penalty of a year in prison. The back taxes have since been paid, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
The gun charge states that Hunter Biden possessed a handgun, a Colt Cobra .38 Special, for 11 days in October 2018 despite knowing he was a drug user. The rarely filed count carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, but the Justice Department said Hunter Biden had reached a pretrial agreement. This likely means as long as he adheres to the conditions, the case will be wiped from his record.
[...]
Apparently, despite presidents pardoning their friends and allies being something of a tradition in the US, this time it seems like it won't happen.
demagogue on 21/6/2023 at 10:14
I always thought Hunter's influence peddling ($11 million in "business" that on its face looked a lot like it was for having the ear of his father) was dodgy and deserved being looked into and officially frowned on, although I trust that prosecutors may not have had enough evidence of any actual criminal wrongdoing to do anything with it.
Edit: Also, we're talking about influence that's ostensibly linked to the US commitment to protect Ukraine, and right now Ukraine is in a war for its life where exactly that US commitment is central to the future of democracy in the region, which is kind of an awkward footnote to Hunter's role. Not to mention, speaking of dodgy influence, of course Trump did everything he could to stop aid going to Ukraine transparently under the shadow of Putin's influence, and do you even need to ask how much money he accepted to listen to all manner of bad foreign actors proposing all kinds of reprehensible policies that he pushed without a second thought?
The plea deal here seems a bit politicized, at least going by the report that he paid his back taxes and the gun charge isn't normally filled. But I think politically it's important anyway. The right is raging so hard against Hunter with a perception of a double standard, and these are legit criminal claims, so it makes sense that something come down on Hunter so there's no perception that he was simply ignored because of who he is; if anything just the opposite. That's why Biden would want to make his peace with it.
All of that said, the GOP spin writes itself. They're going to look at it like a sweetheart deal that keeps him out of jail and doesn't even touch the "real corruption". But chances are prosecutors don't have much of anything more to work with. It's tough being a prosecutor and bound only to the law on the books.
RippedPhreak on 21/6/2023 at 15:00
Quote:
I always thought Hunter's influence peddling ($11 million in "business" that on its face looked a lot like it was for having the ear of his father) was dodgy and deserved being looked into and officially frowned on
Oh is that so? Too bad any discussion of it on social media was banned as "misinformation" up until recently.
This is a power flex by the Regime, showing that its connected favorites are untouchable.
heywood on 21/6/2023 at 15:16
Quote Posted by demagogue
I always thought Hunter's influence peddling ($11 million in "business" that on its face looked a lot like it was for having the ear of his father) was dodgy and deserved being looked into and officially frowned on, although I trust that prosecutors may not have had enough evidence of any actual criminal wrongdoing to do anything with it.
Edit: Also, we're talking about influence that's ostensibly linked to the US commitment to protect Ukraine, and right now Ukraine is in a war for its life where exactly that US commitment is central to the future of democracy in the region, which is kind of an awkward footnote to Hunter's role. Not to mention, speaking of dodgy influence, of course Trump did everything he could to stop aid going to Ukraine transparently under the shadow of Putin's influence, and do you even need to ask how much money he accepted to listen to all manner of bad foreign actors proposing all kinds of reprehensible policies that he pushed without a second thought?
The plea deal here seems a bit politicized, at least going by the report that he paid his back taxes and the gun charge isn't normally filled. But I think politically it's important anyway. The right is raging so hard against Hunter with a perception of a double standard, and these are legit criminal claims, so it makes sense that something come down on Hunter so there's no perception that he was simply ignored because of who he is; if anything just the opposite. That's why Biden would want to make his peace with it.
All of that said, the GOP spin writes itself. They're going to look at it like a sweetheart deal that keeps him out of jail and doesn't even touch the "real corruption". But chances are prosecutors don't have much of anything more to work with. It's tough being a prosecutor and bound only to the law on the books.
Agreed 100%.
I think the GOP has a point about Hunter's laptop, which the FBI quietly sat on while most of the centrist media tried to bury the story.
The other double standard I keep hearing about is the lack of zeal for prosecuting the property damage, arson, and looting following BLM protests in 2020 - as compared to the Jan 6 insurrection. But I don't have any sympathy for the GOP point of view on that issue. It's low level crimes of opportunity vs. an attempted coup d'état. Even though the latter was loosely planned and clumsy, I'm not seeing the equivalence.