#fiscal conservatism kills people too.

[bixels]

Always an experience watching the leftism leave FNAF fans when someone mentions that Scott Cawthon financially backed fascist politicians.

The switch from posting hardline leftist tweets about boycotts and signal boosts and critical takedowns of politicians and celebrities to ‘ohhh, well. everyone makes mistakes. who can blame him, listen he. he donated money to gay charities too. that makes it ok! a millionaire in his forties is allowed to have political beliefs. does it even matter? just let it go!’ is whiplash inducing. The antivaxxer celebrities have got to go, but this one horror dev who quietly handed wads of cash to antivax lawmakers? He’s chill, he can stay.

The charity thing is so funny too because suddenly utilitarian positive-negative point counting is the way to go. Maybe an abacus would help calculate the net good of donating to the Trevor Project minus donating thousands of dollars to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. -10 points if I push a kid in a lake but +11 points if I help an old lady across the street, so I’m chill. You can’t judge me. Hey, maybe. Just don’t push a kid in the lake period. How fucking low is the bar when we’re excusing maxing out the possible dollar amount of donations to Mitch fucking McConnell. That should be like. Default you’re a bad person.

[jraker4]

So most folks who read this will know I lean pretty hard left, if what I share (almost entirely by reblog) is any indicator, which it is. Even so, it’s not uncommon for me to think ‘am I being too hard on conservatives and republicans?’ Not that I think they’re worried or anything, but these days I am pretty well convinced that as a political ideology, American conservatism is on its best day-and it doesn’t have many of those-pretty goddamn bad, and on its worst and many of its ordinary days, outright evil.

I have that thought probably out of vestigial ‘fiscal conservative, social liberal’ childhood and young adulthood that that had me firmly believing in the ‘both sides’ myth, and voting for Dubya twice. (It gets worse: as a Floridian.) But then I read stories like this.

One of the most prominent republicans in the country, Gov Abbot of Texas, in a sop to Texas business interests and a general middle finger to anyone labor-oriented, under the classic ‘overregulation!’ rallying cry…have killed a man last year. Another man, I should say. A man who, by the way, was doing what they *claim* they went people to do: work super hard, in this case college and a construction job. In the midst of a staggering, record breaking heat wave that few politicians are innocent of, but American republicans in general and Texas republicans in particular holy shit, are guilty of abetting.

And for what? What is the fearsome regulation that is so burdensome it must be overridden by (hah!) small government republicans? Ten minutes break every four hours. Even construction workers in Texas can’t have it guaranteed that they get a break for ten minutes every four hours.

And then I come back to ‘yeah, fucking evil’. Abbot lives in Texas. On the way from his chauffeured ride to and from his air conditioned home and office and fund raising campaign events, at various points he’s felt the scorching rays of Apollo beating down on him. He had that knowledge in his head when he put pen to paper for the bill that said, courtesy of the state of Texas, ‘no, municipalities, you can’t even guarantee workers in your own city are protected. Because we can’t have overregulation.’

So yeah, fuck Republicans. It ought to be impossible for a Texas Republican to whine about regulation without someone getting right up in their face and shouting ‘Gabriel Infante!’ at them.

(There’s even more worse, more disgraceful details in the story, btw. I encourage y’all to read it.)

[thevividgreenmoss]

I stg I hate making "white people are like" comments cause it usually feels cheap and lazy to me but ykw truly white people love talking about how anyone averse to the idea of voting in general or for given individuals in particular is probably just an immature privileged white person with no skin in the game with a superficial self-obsessed approach to politics or whatever, and while that notion may seem to be contradicted by the (to this point unchanging) fact that people of color are generally way less likely to get involved in the electoral process than white people and also that likelihood of involvement in said process increases with one's wealth/income, it's actually not, it's just privileged white people that ever consciously make the choice to not vote under a given set of circumstances - any errant minorities and poors that may for whatever reason make that same decision instead of ritually playing their part in the election day pageantry and therefore helping uphold our sanctified procedural traditions can essentially be written out of this analysis either because they don't exist or because they're exhibiting privileged white person mentality which means both they and their actions and whatever possible motivations they may have are Not Valid. Or they're too helpless and stupid to know better, in which case they need to be cajoled into acting right by those who know better. I'm woke as fuck by the way

[lhs3020b]

Post Mortem

I promised some thoughts on the nightmarish debacle that has happened. Here they are.

TL;DR I am scathing about everything. Everyone who should have helped us, failed.

It's the morning after. They've won. Continuity Remain is dead; there isn't going to be any second referendum and Article 50 won't be revoked. You cannot imagine how I feel right now, typing those words. However, I have never sought to deny reality (however lovely denial might be) and reality is what it is. We've lost a referendum and two general elections; we're finished. There is no come-back from this. The country has made a sick, twisted, greedy, myopic and stupid decision - but that's the decision it's made. I have nothing good to say for what happened, except that it did happen.

Well, let's look at the one tiny silver lining: since the ship has now sailed, I can indulge my deep, seething pool of vitriol for our collection of useless opposition parties. I'd held back previously because I didn't want to add to the circular firing squad. But they've all shot each other now and the corpses have largely stopped twitching. So off we go. (Before we start, I won't be writing about CUK/TiG/Change-UK, because they were just annoying, and I can't be arsed. I think we've all spent enough time on that shower of idiots.)

Here's the core reason for why I'm so angry: all this was completely avoidable. The media will, of course, spin BoJo's victory as a paragonic triumph of political conservatism. Like that infamous Pravda article from the 30s, on the Soviet constitution, they'll fawn over BoJo and declare him a visionary and a victor, a veritable genius of the ages, dripping with lyricism and wit. He isn't. He's an over-promoted buffoon who lucked into the top office due to the self-destruction of his inept predecessor, aided and abetted by a lying and sycophantic media - and, by a collection of opposition parties whose sole interest was in fighting each other.

Here we have the real core problem. The people on our side only switch on for fighting each other. There's little sign that they actually really care about Brexit, or the wider state of the UK. But pursuing partisan vendettas against each other? Wheeeeeeeeeee!

Let's think back to the summer, when BoJo was faced with stalling polls and a hung parliament. He could have been ousted then - but, of course, the Lib Dems were adamant that they couldn't countenance the idea of Mr Corbyn as Prime Minister. They'd had this tendency for a while - it's not new - but it accelerated and was nurtured under Jo Swinson.

When she was elected as leader I was initially a bit sympathetic - it seemed reasonable to give her a chance. Unfortunately, it turned out that she might be the most rightwing leader they've ever had - I actually suspect now that she might be to the right of Clegg. And she went and turbocharged all of their most self-destructive tendencies. I think what she thought she was doing was clawing Tory Remainers off of the Tories. This ran into two problems; 1) there weren't that many Tory Remainers to begin with and b) most of them are more Tory than they are Remain. So they mostly stayed put, and they few who did leave (thank you, to those of you that did) just weren't enough. Meanwhile, the hard-right tilt scared off the Lib Dem's left-leaning supporters.

A while back I predicted they'd lose seats at this election; I'm sad to have been proved right. I am, however, grimly-amused that Swinson herself lost her seat. The other problem with Swinson's rampany anti-Corbynism was that it partially demobilised continuity!Remain. A lot of people sensed that she was more anti-Corbyn than anti-Brexit; that also implied no plausible chance of an anti-Brexit coalition. Hoenstly, given how overt and personal the vitriol between her and Corbyn got, it's hard to see how it could ever have worked. And there's no point voting for something that you know is impossible. I do wonder if maybe this switched some left-leaning people off, or perhaps even sent a few ditherers back to the Tories (under the assumption that any sort of government is better than no government, I suppose).

As for the Lib Dem campaign, it was a mess. At one point their leader went on air to deny killing squirrels (yes, seriously, this actually happened). She got all excited about thermonuclear genocide at one point, because that's not at all weird and creepy, amirite?! Then there was the bizzarity that was "skills wallets" (don't ask - basically, the sort of policy abortion that happens when a collection of wonks are locked in a room with a boxed set of the West Wing and too much cocaine).

[OK, I'll expand this one. Briefly, skills wallets were a weird continuing-adult-education idea, where you'd have a pot of money that you could access at certain ages, apparently to take some kind of training or re-education or something. Why the ages in question, why that amount of money, and why not just make adult-ed free at the point of use, were never really explained. Then there was the can of worms that was additional voluntary contributions - what I took away from this was it was the adult-ed version of pensions auto-enrollment. I spent the last four years fighting a corrupt auto-enrollment fund, so I have strong feelings here!]

As for general themes, really, the LD campaign didn't have one. There was a lot of "Corbyn, THE MONSTER, the monster, Corbyn!". And, kind of oddly, there wasn't actually that much about Brexit. It actually didn't figure very strongly in their campaign. You came away from watching it all with a) a bad taste in your mouth and b) a nagging feeling that these people didn't know what they were doing.

To be fair to them, their vote share did go up, a bit - from 7.4% in 2017 to 11.4% yesterday. Which is, uh, not exactly dizzying. And it seems to have happened in all the wrong places, so they still managed to lose seats overall.

OK, we've gawped at the piss-stained ashes of the old Liberal Party, lying in state where some eggregious family-member has dumped them, on a roadside verge in the middle of nowhere. (Perhaps some enterprising squirrel has buried a nut amongst them.) Let's move onto the other vast, soul-sucking black hole of despair, also know as the Labour and Co-operative Party.

Oh dear god. The Labour Party.

The Labour Party is Britain's perennial second party, and nothing that happened last night challenged its second-place status. Their vote share dropped by 7.8 percentage points on 2017; this is what produced the Tory landslide, essentially. The Tory vote went up a little, by about 1 point, but otherwise stayed largely flat on 2017. This time, though, Labour collapsed. They lost a swathe of seats across the country, including places like Bolsover and Blyth Valley, which were previously rock-solid.

What went wrong? Everything. Basically, the stars aligned against us, in every single way.

First of all, Labour's campaign was dogged by the antisemitism scandal. And you know what? It was bloody well right that it did. The leadership dealt with antisemitism by ... doing nothing. Anyone who tried to raise the issue instead would get "Corbyn outriders" dumping on them on Twitter. Apparently we're suddenly not allowed to be concerned about racism on the Left anymore? Frankly, fuck that.

What they should have done was a quick-and-brutal party purge, perhaps early in 2018, when there was still time. Take some initiative, get control of the narrative again, and get rid of people who are only going to shit all over your campaign. But, uh, no. That didn't happen. I'll note that the Chris Williamson show in particular went on far, far longer than it should have.

Then we come to Brexit itself. Corbyn spent three years equivocating on the issue. OK, I'll allow that in hindsight, perhaps strategic ambiguity made some sense back in 2017 (though note that they still lost that election too). It didn't by 2019. But Corbyn was still trying to stand in the middle of the road as late as the summer - and by doing so inadvertently opened up political space for the (brief) Lib Dem revival, which in turn shunted Labour onto the defensive. And as I believe Paddy Ashdown once said, if you stand in the middle of the road, you get hit by traffic.

Eventually, the Labour leadership reluctantly adopted a second referendum position, but by then the damage was done. Basically, Corbyn had convinced Leavers that he was a Remainer, and Remainers that he was a Leaver. Labour appears to have lost votes about evenly across both Remain/Leave areas(!). In a way, he actually did unite the country - just against him. Ooops.

The rest of Labour's prospectus was a mess this year. Home Office reform was de-emphasized (arbitrary deportation by the Home Office is a huge concern amongst ethnic minorities). Drugs-law reform seems to have fallen off the agenda. There was no obvious theme to the campaign - surprising given that 2017's "For the Many" theme did cut across. Instead the "offer", such as it was, appeared to be a largely-incoherent grab-bag of spending promises, some of them with very large headline numbers. (The £58 billion for the WASPI pensions thing stands out there.) A lot of people simply didn't believe the country could afford it. You don't vote for things that you fear will bankrupt you.

Also, in a way, there's a parallel to the skills wallets thing here. Labour would have been better off, I think, just doing something straightforward like saying, "If elected we'll raise disability, sickness and unemployment benefits by £x per week, and we'll get rid of the ATOS fit-for-work assesments". It would have the advantages of simplicity, clarity and a clear political theme. Instead we got this weird fiscal machine that would produce some of those effects, except via a complicated multi-part kludge (which probably wouldn't even work properly anyway). I don't know how this came about; presumably it was an after-effect of one of the party's unending internal power-struggles.

Corbyn himself is a controversial figure, from his past associations with the IRA (more vague than the press would have you believe, but still a drag on the doorstep) to the perception of socialist extremism. Again, let me note that the "but he's a Communist, because that starts with 'C' too!" stuff is disingenuous, but this perception exists, and the Party have not found any apparent way to challenge it. Honestly? If your candidate is a ship that's holed below the waterline, yes it is horribly-unfair and all the rest of it, but you do need to run someone else. (I see no point softening that punch ; while Corbyn's been leader, the whole UK has voted 4 times, at 2 general elections, 1 referendum and 1 EU Parliament election. Every time, Labour has bombed. It's hard not to see a pattern here.)

Finally, the Labour Party itself has failed to ever re-unite. It's effectively two political parties in one - or possibly three, depending on how you want to look at Momentum. On a fair day with a strong wind, the Parliamentary portion sometimes manages to move just-about-consistently, but nothing else seems to have that behaviour. Honestly I suspect a lot of people's real fear about a Labour government is not that it would be a socialist tyranny, but rather that it would implode within about six months. Labour has lost its way amongst a storm of factional infighting. To be fair to Corbyn, this isn't new. Ed Milliband's desperate tenure was derailed by internal struggles. Even the 1997-2010 period had the ongoing squabbles between Brownites and Blairites (remember them?).

So yeah, Labour's campaign was an absolute shambles this year, and the whole country is suffering now for that.

Lastly, let's have a quick look at the Green Party. Where were they this year? With Extinction Rebellion making headlines, the Amazon burning, Australia on fire and weather records being smashed everywhere - remember that day when we had summer back in February? - it should have been the Greens' year. Environmental concerns are going up in salience - people are starting to get genuinely worried. And, uh, where were they? I can't recall hearing a single peep from the Green Party during the election. Whatever it was they were doing, it seems to have completely failed to capitalise on the moment. Perhaps they should have been a bit more visible.

The only people who come out of this with any credit are the SNP. I haven't heard anything teeth-grinding about them - though, that might just be because I live in southern England.

Oh, and let's take a final kick in the teeth, shall we? If you add up the shares of the votes received by pro-second-referendum parties ... guess what it comes to? Yup: 52%, versus 48% for the pro-Brexit parties. 52/48 - aaaaargh! Yet, the 48% had a narrative that kept their vote all in one place, so they won an absolute majority at Westminster. Ours got scattered to the four winds by several separate inept campaigns and several useless party leaders. Had there been a second referendum, we could have won it. But we never got the chance, because everyone supposedly on our side were completely, perfectly, useless.

Sigh :(

[allthecanadianpolitics]

I’ve been thinking lately about the issues that Centre-Left and Leftwing parties in Canada have with being elected.

I don’t think it has that much to do with what they’re proposing as most of the policies established by these parties exist in many other countries with progressive governments (particularly in Northern Europe).

I don’t even think the issue is of myths spread about these parties about supposed fiscal mismanagement (even though most of these points are outright lies created by the Right and gleefully shared by Centrists).

I think the main issue is that in order for these parties to gain support, the people must be convinced that Canada has major systematic problems surrounding social issues.

And frankly I don’t think many Canadians are comfortable believing that there are major issues of poverty, racism, income inequality and sexism in our society. Heck Canada has one of the worst universal healthcare systems in the world, but we’re fine with that because at least we’re not the USA.

In Canada Liberals at best are just trying to stick with the status quo or make tiny tweaks here and there, as we’re facing crises of poverty and anti-native racism. Conservatives on the other hand are pretending there are no systematic issues in Canada and if we just killed ‘big government’ and got rid of the Liberals and their ‘bad policies’ that we’d be in a utopia. Its a huge joke.

It shows that many in the USA are having a more adult conversation around race, income inequality and social disparities than Canada despite the USA’s politics being shifted so far to the right in comparison. Many of the Democratic Socialist candidates in the USA are being more widely accepted than even slightly left policies in Canada. The NDP is accused of being a communist and creating a class war for daring to propose taxes on unused luxury mansions, and for raising the minimum wage to $15/hour (that’s only $11.71 in US Dollars!)

I’m just really getting sick of Canadians and their smugness, when they point fingers at the USA and not even blinking as we’re getting screwed left and right by Centrists and Conservatives, and our only option to make things better languish in a permanent 3rd place, discounted for being too ‘radical’.

These same people who are blaming the NDP or Quebec Solidaire for being too radical, are completely open to electing the Doug Ford’s of this country who have been gutting climate change policies, overriding the constitution, imposing austerity, cutting sex education back decades and appointing insiders to government positions. But of courses that’s not radical, that’s just Conservatism. =/

[theonyxpath]

The Lunar Exalted

The Lunar Exalted are Creation’s divine apex predators, monster-heroes chosen by Luna to hunt and prey upon the enemies of the gods in the Divine Revolution. Like their divine patron, the Lunars are puissant shapeshifters, devouring the forms of their human and animal prey and making these a part of their own nature. The Lunar Exalted are creatures of boundaries and transgression — the boundaries between hero and monster, between devil and saint, between civilization and wilderness, between the mortal world and the divine. They stand on whichever side of the boundaries they please, and cross between them with unmatched ease. A Lunar who embraces the power and freedom of becoming an untamed monster need not sacrifice her humanity; a Lunar who devotes herself to living among mortals and protecting them need not abandon the freedom of running wild and untamed.

In the Divine Revolution, the Lunars were monsters that even the most nightmarish among the enemies of the gods learned to fear. They waged war in the shapes of snakes as long as rivers, all-devouring swarms bearing devil-slaying plagues, beast-mothers with tusks like daiklaives and stampedes of murderous children, and countless other wild horrors. Fighting alongside the Solar and Sidereal Exalted, and with Dragon-Blooded armies, they toppled the makers of the universe and stained their fangs red with the blood of slain divinities.

As the First Age’s glories arose from the Exalted’s triumph, the Lunars enjoyed the fruit of the paradise they’d helped to win, and transformed themselves into the Lunar Exalted of an Age of Dreams. Though never forsaking the divine monstrosity at the heart of their Essence, they became guardians, guides, world-walkers, judges, and mystics.

The Usurpation brought an end to the First Age and a new transformation for the Lunar Exalted, the change that made them what they are today. The mass death of the Solar Exalted, and the foul murder of Lunars who fought beside their Solar mates or were deemed too dangerous to the usurpers’ plans to let live, awoke a keening fury in the souls of the Lunar host, a rage that had not been witnessed in Creation since the Lunars first hunted the enemies of the gods. The first Wyld Hunts perpetrated by the nascent Dragon-Blooded Shogunate and its Sidereal benefactors solidified the Lunars’ vendetta, ensuring that the usurpers would never know peace so long as one Lunar yet drew breath.

As the great wonders of the First Age unwound and crumbled into ash, the Lunars chose to remake themselves so that they could survive and thrive in this new Age of Sorrows. Over the course of years, they performed a mystical endeavor unparalleled throughout Creation, dissolving the fivefold castes that dwelt in the very Essence of Lunar Exaltation and creating new castes. Henceforth, the Lunar Exalted would be ferocious warriors slaying the usurpers’ legions, wicked tricksters testing society and plunging it into chaos, wise-eyed witches beckoning forth night’s mysteries.

It was this time that saw the birth of the Silver Pact. Though the Lunars had many different visions of how best to wreak vengeance on the usurpers and make a new place for themselves in the world — and in a few cases, had longstanding grudges against one another — the cruel reality of the Wyld Hunt made internecine strife a luxury they couldn’t afford. The Lunars came together in a loose-knit organization built on mutual aid and a shared vendetta against the usurpers, without any single leader or formal authority.

Throughout its history, the Silver Pact has become the single greatest force arrayed against the Dragon-Blooded and the Sidereal Exalted. The Realm’s borders fall where they do because the Silver Pact has denied them the lands beyond. The Sidereals of the Bronze Faction desperately coordinate the Wyld Hunt, because they know they cannot maintain the status quo they sacrificed so much for if the Lunars are unchecked. In the Time of Tumult, the Pact’s final victory may be at hand… or its best-laid plans might fall apart through the intervention of unforeseen foes.

War Against the Realm

The Silver Pact opposes the Realm for many reasons: as the successor state to the usurping Dragon-Blooded Shogunate, for its subjugation of the Threshold, and for its prosecution of the Wyld Hunt. Other Dragon-Blooded societies suffer the Pact’s wrath to the extent that they share in the Shogunate’s legacy and agenda; this includes Lookshy, Prasad, and the powerful cadet- house-led satrapies around the Inland Sea.

It’s easy for Lunars to find support against Realm aggression. For centuries, satrapies have labored under Imperial yoke. Farmers and merchants alike tighten their belts to pay their share of satrapial taxes, and face starvation or bankruptcy in bad years. Garrisons quarter soldiers in local homes. Threshold aristocrats begrudge their subservience and their own loss of income. Even the gods fume against Immaculate strictures.

The Realm’s power harms even those beyond its borders. Satrapies raid neighboring states and peoples to help pay their tribute, while Dynastic adventurers organize military expeditions to line their own pockets. Realm fiscal policies interfere with trade between satrapies and foreign lands. Immaculate missionaries destabilize traditional societies with their unfamiliar faith. And when the Realm finally conquers a neighbor, the aftereffects of war can be prolonged and devastating.

Blood Moon Rising: Lunar Victories

The Silver Pact doesn’t speak in terms of victory in the field. It’s no rival empire to seize and hold territory from the Realm. Rather, the Pact is a predator running down its prey, bleeding it from a thousand cuts until it’s ready to fall.

Across the Threshold, Lunars strike at Realm interests not to kill, but to wound. Piracy, raiding, rebellion, and civil war turn satrapies from obsequious sources of wealth to thorns in the Realm’s side. Sabotage, theft, and assassination strip away precious assets and undermine efforts at political reform. Harassment exhausts Imperial defenders and their auxiliaries, leaving them all the more vulnerable. Only at critical junctures wherein the Realm is overextended does the Pact strike with overwhelming force.

Where the Realm once spread networks of roads and bridges throughout its satrapies to better move troops and gather tribute, now it struggles to maintain existing infrastructure. Warstriders, First Age manses, and other irreplaceable relics have been sabotaged or destroyed outright, leaving only a small fraction of their previous number in Realm and Lookshyan hands. These strategies also played on the Empress’ conservatism and her obsession with perpetuating her rule. Knowing that overreach would play into Lunar hands, she slowed the Realm’s expansion to a crawl, tolerated greater independence in troublesome satrapies, and grew more reluctant to embark upon grand endeavors — subjugating the Scavenger Lands, reclaiming Prasad, seizing the West.

Centuries of Pact efforts diminished the Realm from unchallengeable hyperpower to “merely” Creation’s sole superpower. This was only the beginning. Running the Realm to ground might take centuries more and require enormous, persistent effort, but the Pact’s elders felt confident that their strategy was the best path to victory.

Now that the Empress is gone and the Solars are returned, everything is in flux. Many Pact elders favor continued adherence to a winning stratagem. Others are swayed toward immediate action, seeing an opportunity to finally go for the throat. Either way, destroying the Realm remains the Lunars’ objective.

Pact Organization

The Silver Pact has no official government. In principle, it’s entirely egalitarian, with no formal hierarchy or positions of authority. But even the Pact knows politics. Collective action requires direction, guidance, and leadership. Pact members align themselves along multiple social and political axes, including their approach to the Realm, their chronological peer group, and their association with the Pact’s shahan-yas.

The Shadow Fang Vanguard

Not all Lunars accepted the nascent Silver Pact’s loose, nonhierarchical nature. Some believed that war against the Shogunate required firm central authority; others sought strong leaders to serve; and still others were driven by ambition and craved the opportunity to command their fellow Lunars. Splitting from the Pact’s mainline, they largely coalesced over centuries into the Shadow Fang Vanguard, a unified authoritarian enclave.

Today, the Vanguard numbers only a score of Lunars, most dwelling in the deep Northeastern forests under the iron rule of the Vanguard’s reigning autarch, the Shogunate-era warlord Tayan Silver-Crowned, who is advised by Feather Drenched in the Blood of the Fallen, a First Age elder. They anticipate new blood, believing the Vanguard’s message will resonate all the more strongly amid the Time of Tumult.

Relations between the Vanguard and the Pact are complex and fraught. Both share the same overarching goals; indeed, many Pact members view the Vanguard as simply another part of the Pact. More than a few Vanguard members attend Pact gatherings, where they find themselves welcome, and while Pact Lunars encounter a cooler reception among the Vanguard, those in need are rarely turned away.

The major point of tension between the Pact and the Vanguard is recruiting new Lunars. Occasional skirmishes have resulted, as recruiters seeking the same young Lunar have squabbled or even come to blows — though both groups severely censure anyone whose squabbling escalates to vendetta, or drives a young Lunar away from Pact and Vanguard alike.

Shahan-ya: Elders and Mentors

Silver Pact elders are called “shahan-ya” — Old Realm for “guide” or “teacher” — and lead coteries of adherents, disciples, and supporters, known as schools. Any member of the Pact who’s accepted as a leader or mentor by a school may take on the mantle of shahan-ya.

The structure of these schools varies. Most often, adherents live apart from the shahan-ya, visiting intermittently to study, discuss strategy and politics, take on new tasks and responsibilities, or simply to socialize with a friend or ally. Such shahan-yas occasionally gather their adherents en masse to discuss matters of mutual import.

Adherents may be loyal or devoted, but never slavish. Each is a Lunar hero and champion, not a servant at her shahan-ya’s beck and call. An adherent may sever her relationship to a shahan-ya at any time, and vice versa. Prestigious shahan-yas can leverage the value of their patronage to demand that adherents toe the line, but even so, most accept varying degrees of dissent lest they drive adherents away.

When Silver Cracks

Shahan-yas are not formal authorities, and so one shahan-ya’s refusal to recognize another’s status matters little to the Pact as a whole. But on rare occasions, a shahan-ya’s extreme views or actions may cause her peers to reject her authority en masse. The Pact’s laissez-faire approach to politics makes it vulnerable to such breakdowns. To combat this tendency, the shahan-yas aggressively police schisms once they form. When a shahan-ya’s behavior threatens Pact stability, her peers address this as a grievance in council (p. XX).

When the Pact has failed to alleviate tensions, consequences have ranged from schools isolating themselves from broader Pact culture, to outright schism. Early examples include Radhika Stormswift’s offensive against the Shogunate and Thousand-Swords Oravan breaking away to form his own kingdom. More recently, Raksi and Ma-Ha-Suchi went to war over the Pact’s future direction; Northern Pact members feuded with the necromancer Smiling Rat over his strategy of bedeviling the Realm by opening shadowlands en masse among its satrapies; and Klesamra Lotus-Seed polarized her Southern peers by courting aid from the Fair Folk.

Part of the purpose of ongoing communication and socialization within the Pact is to gain a sense of one’s neighbors’ inclinations and persuade them to one’s own points of view. A handful of Lunars dedicate sizable amounts of time and effort to such interaction, both on their own behalf and to forestall future rifts.

The Pact’s Endgame

Each individual shahan-ya and her school has her own vision of the future of a Creation without the Realm. Some dream of rebuilding the glories of the Old Realm under a Lunar Deliberative; others wish for a world free from all empires and tyrannies. Many would see the Scarlet Empress’ bloodline extirpated in bloody pogroms, yet some envision the redemption of the Dragon-Blooded as divine soldiers of the Pact. Thus far, the Silver Pact has focused on the destruction of the Realm, not what comes after. For most of its history, the Realm’s downfall has seemed distant enough that it made no sense to invite internal turmoil by squabbling over what to do after. But with the Time of Tumult accelerating the Pact’s timetable, many Lunars believe the the Pact’s endgame must be determined now.

[patriotsnet]

What Are The Republicans Afraid Of

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-are-the-republicans-afraid-of/

What Are The Republicans Afraid Of

What Are Republicans So Afraid Of

Elizabeth Warren: ‘Republicans are AFRAID of voters!

Instead of conspiracy-mongering about an election they did well in, they could try to win real majorities.

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

There was a time, in recent memory, when the Republican Party both believed it could win a national majority and actively worked to build one.

Take the last Republican president before Donald Trump, George W. Bush. His chief political adviser, Karl Rove, envisioned a durable Republican majority, if not a permanent one. And Bush would try to make this a reality.

To appeal to moderate suburban voters, Bush would make education a priority and promise a compassionate conservatism. To strengthen the partys hold on white evangelicals, Bush emphasized his Christianity and worked to polarize the country over abortion, same-sex marriage and other questions of sexual ethics and morality. Bush courted Black and Hispanic voters with the promise of homeownership and signed a giveaway to seniors in the form of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. He also made it a point to have a diverse cabinet, elevating figures like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales.

Whether shrewd or misguided, cynical or sincere or outright cruel and divisive these gambits were each part of an effort to expand the Republican coalition as far as it could go without abandoning Reaganite conservatism itself. It was the work of a self-assured political movement, confident that it could secure a position as the nations de facto governing party.

‘nobody Is Afraid Of Their Grandfather’

Many Republicans expect Americans will become dissatisfied with record levels of government spending and debt, an increasingly crowded U.S.-Mexican border;and new rules and regulations promulgated by the Democratic Congress and the Biden administration.

Pledging to work with the Biden administration on an infrastructure bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he is “hopeful” that “we may be able to do some things on a bipartisan basis; but they got off to a pretty hard left-wing start.”

“We don’t intend to participate in turning America into a left-wing,;kind of Bernie Sanders vision of what this country ought to be like,” McConnell told Fox News after the meeting between Biden and congressional leaders.

Fiscally conservative groups are stepping up campaigns against Biden and his spending proposals.

The organization Americans For Prosperity is preparing ads for competitive House districts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia. Biden wrested those states from Trump in the 2020 election, providing him his margin of victory in the Electoral College.

Some Republican criticism plays off Biden’s age and his occasionally mangled syntax, but that strategy has met limited success. Some of the attacks mirror the ones Trump made in 2020 against “Sleepy Joe.”

“Trump never found a salient way to brand Biden, and Republicans continue to struggle after the election,” Republican strategist Alex Conant said.

Opinion: What Are Georgia Republicans Afraid Of

It wasnt so long ago that disenfranchised Blacks and activist Whites were beaten and killed for attempting to secure the right to vote.

Among the better-known victims were civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three young men who were abducted, shot at close range and buried in an earthen Mississippi dam on June 21, 1964. Part of the Freedom Summer, the three had hoped to register Black voters and educate them so they could pass the literacy tests required to vote.

When their bodies were discovered nearly two months later, one of the dead men had red clay in his lungs and clenched in his fist, indicating he was probably still alive when buried. The perpetrators included members of the local Ku Klux Klan and the Neshoba County Sheriffs Office.

This incident was but one of many leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but is illustrative of how bloody and hard-won the right to vote was. Weve come a long way, as they say, but some people are still determined to make voting more, not less, difficult. Georgias recent 98-page voting reform legislation, signed into law on March 25 by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, is a case in point. These red-clay legislators dont require a literacy test, but theyve created a host of new regulations that potentially make voting more difficult for minorities.

Read more:

Also Check: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Opinion: What Are Republicans Afraid Of

Its almost funny, in a twisted sort of way. Election after election, Republicans have based their core political appeal on fear.

And yet as dual gun massacres this weekend starkly illustrate they refuse to offer solutions to any of the mortal threats Americans actually face.

President Trumps closing message;in the midterms was Be afraid, be very afraid; he and his co-partisans have lately doubled down on it for 2020. Of course, the perils that Republicans promise to rescue us from are often fictional, or of their own making.

We must fear the coming scourge of socialism . Trump likewise stokes public anxiety;over;a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before if anyone but me takes over in 2020 .

;Trump and allies urge us to cower in trepidation from helpless parents and children seeking asylum, a threat so grave they needed to be separated from one another and caged. We must also fear the supposed Muslim and Latino hordes, who threaten to;wipe out;Anglo-European culture and displace white babies with their own.

These are hardly the only foreigners who should inspire existential dread, according to right-wing fever dreams. Rogue nations should, too, thus justifying enormous increases in our defense budget. Of course, all the nukes and jets in the world wont protect us from the assault our enemies abroad are currently waging against us, and that Republicans;resist;confronting: the one on our electoral system.;;

Read more:

Senate Republicans Use Filibuster To Kill Jan 6 Commission

Only six Republicans joined Democrats in a procedural vote.

Senate Republicans block Capitol riots commission

In a remarkable political moment, Republicans on Friday blocked the Senate from moving forward on a bill that would establish a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

Six Republicans joined Democrats in the 54-35 vote, but that fell six votes short of the 60 needed to start debate on establishing a commission — which then, normally, would require only a simple majority to pass in a final vote.

“Out of fear or fealty to Donald Trump, the Republican minority just prevented the American people from getting the full truth about January 6,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said right after the vote.

“Senate Republicans chose to defend the ‘big lie’ because they believe anything that might upset Donald Trump could hurt them politically,” he said.

The Senate leader reminded GOP senators they “all lived the horrors of January 6.”

“I was no further than 30 feet from those white supremacist hooligans. Do my Republican colleagues remember that day?

“Do my Republican colleagues remember the savage mob calling for the execution of Mike Pence — the makeshift gallows outside the Capitol? Men with bulletproof vests and zip ties, breaking into the Senate gallery and rifling through your desks. Police officers crushed between doorways?” he said.

“Not so today,” he concluded.

No Republican spoke.

Also Check: Who Controls The Senate Republicans Or Democrats

Gop Lets Trump Fight Election For Weeks Despite Bidens Win

WASHINGTON Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday theres no reason for alarm as President Donald Trump, backed by Republicans in Congress, mounts unfounded legal challenges to President-elect Joe Bidens election victory a process that could now push into December.

Republicans on Capitol Hill signaled they are willing to let Trump spin out his election lawsuits and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud for the next several weeks, until the states certify the elections by early December and the Electoral College meets Dec. 14.

McConnells comments show how hard Republicans are trying to portray Trumps refusal to accept the election results as an ordinary part of the process, even as its nothing short of extraordinary. There is no widespread evidence of election fraud; state officials say the elections ran smoothly. The delay has the potential to upend civic norms, impede Bidens transition to the White House and sow doubt in the nations civic and election systems.

Trump remained out of sight at the White House, tweeting his views, but the social media company Twitter swiftly flagged the presidents tweets that he actually won the election as disputed.

Its not unusual, should not be alarming, McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill. At some point here well find out, finally, who was certified in each of these states, and the Electoral College will determine the winner. … No reason for alarm.

What Do Republicans Fear

What do Republicans fear?

Muslims? Political correctness? Taxes slightly higher than zero?

Having to adapt and compete with everyone, not a select few? Fully funded and functional public goods? Obamaphones?

Hearing strange languages? Waiting a little longer at the all-you-can-eat buffet line? Not being able to hunt deer with a rocket launcher?

Equality? Opportunity? Their own aging genitalia? Falafel?

Or maybe they fear for their wallets. Fair enough. I worry about my economic future, too. But, you know what? Economics is a policy question. Economics is not a science. If it were, we’d be doing the optimal thing all the time.

You know what is a science? Medicine. Reproductive health. Environmental studies. Geology. Biology. Meteorology. Science is a frikkin’ science! Believe me!

I think they’re scared of losing a dream of what they could have been. They’re nostalgic for a past that never existed. Norman Rockwell–painter of Great America–was married three times and one of his wives tried to burn his house down with him inside. There was never a perfect world.

“Make America Great Again”? America’s been great forever, but that doesn’t mean it’s been great for everyone.

I would love to be proven wrong. I mock, but I’m eager to learn, because right now, it makes no sense:

Republicans seem to fear being slightly uncomfortable. The rest of us fear being slightly dead.

I’m afraid of nuclear war and having to learn Russian or Mandarin.

Hooray.

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Primary Election Snafus Show Challenges For November Vote

Republicans’ and Democrats’ vastly different starting points help explain why the politics over voting and elections have been and likely will remain so fraught, through and beyond Election Day this year.

Sometimes it seems as if the politicians involved barely live in the same country. It has become common for one side to discount the legitimacy of a victory by the other.

And the coronavirus pandemic, which has scrambled nearly everything about life in the United States, makes understanding it all even more complicated. Here’s what you need to know to decode this year’s voting controversies.

The Rosetta stone

The key that unlocks so much of the partisan debate about voting is one word: turnout.

An old truism holds that, all other things held equal, a smaller pool of voters tends to be better for Republicans and the larger the pool gets, the better for Democrats.

This isn’t mathematically ironclad, as politicians learn and relearn regularly. But this assumption is the foundation upon which much else is built.

The Goal Is To Undermine Confidence In Elections

Why Are Republicans Still So Afraid Of Trump? | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Underscoring the point, Rep. Jim Banks , the chair of the Republican Study Committee, made an extraordinarily disingenuous appearance on Fox News Sunday. Banks had endorsed the Texas lawsuit, which would have invalidated millions of votes in four states based on fictions, and voted to overturn President Bidens electors in Congress.

Pressed by Foxs Chris Wallace to admit Biden won fair and square, Banks kinda sorta acknowledged it, but immediately pivoted to claiming those actions were entirely justified, by insisting that his serious concerns about the election were still valid.

This is not the act of a coward who fears Trump, and would vouch for the integrity of the election if only he could do so without consequences.

Rather, it is the act of someone who is fully devoted to the project of continuing to undermine confidence in our elections going forward.

This is for purely instrumental purposes. Republicans are employing their own invented doubts about 2020 to justify intensified voter suppression everywhere. Banks neatly crystallized the point on Fox, saying those doubts required more voting restrictions after reinforcing them himself.

Indeed, with all this, Republicans may be in the process of creating a kind of permanent justification for maximal efforts to invalidate future election outcomes by whatever means are within reach.

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Officer Goes From ‘sadness’ To ‘rage’

Sicknicks partner on the Capitol police, Sandra Garza, wrote an essay about the attack and the aftermath in which she said in part, I saw officers being brutalized and beaten, and protesters defying orders to stay back from entering the Capitol. All the while, I kept thinking, Where is the President? Why is it taking so long for the National Guard to arrive? Where is the cavalry!?

She added, As the months passed, my deep sadness turned to outright rage as I watched Republican members of Congress lie on TV and in remarks to reporters and constituents about what happened that day. Over and over they denied the monstrous acts committed by violent protesters.;

For example, when Gosar called the Jan. 6 attackers peaceful patriots.

During the Benghazi hearings, Republicans were laser-focused on trying to place blame on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But after four years of investigations, most of them purely partisan affairs, they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on her part.

Republicans dont want anything close to that type of scrutiny on the Capitol attacks of Jan. 6. In fact, they dont seem to want any scrutiny at all.

Almost as if they know what will be found.

Almost as if I didnt have to use the word almost.

Reach Montini at .

Cap Times Idea Fest: Panelists Consider How Law Enforcement Can Evolve

“They put up with the crazy in order to have the power and do the job,” Rucker said. “And then once they were in the job, they didn’t want to give it up, in part because they enjoyed the trappings of power, but also because they worried, ‘OK, if not me, who is going to be here next?'”

The bigger question, Rucker said, is why Republican members of Congress didn’t act as a check on the executive branch, even after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Republican members of Congress can be broken into three groups, Leonnig said. Some were willing to say privately they were concerned about or angry with Trump, but concealed their feelings because of the voting base he commanded. A much smaller group of officials was willing to publicly criticize him, like Sen. Mitt Romney and Rep. Liz Cheney. Finally, there were “true believers,” like Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green.

“Our country is in peril right now. It is on the brink,” Leonnig said. “‘It’s a republic if you can keep it’ is a serious question right now, because how do you continue along the path of democracy when … the overwhelming number of the members of are afraid of the former president and want his voters?

“How do you continue when you are feeding them baloney and they are believing it?”

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No More Distractions Maybe Maybe Not

Republicans said they were distracted in making the case against Biden by a lack of cohesion, including internal disagreements over what to do about Trump.

Some blamed Cheney, the now-former House Republican Conference chair who argued that the party should move past Trump and stop echoing his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him. She said those claims triggered the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, an incident Democrats would surely use against Republicans when elections roll around.

House Republicans voted Wednesday to demote Cheney from her role as third-ranking Republican. She responded that the GOP would struggle against Biden and his agenda if it continues to embrace Trump and his conspiracy theories.

“To be as effective as we can be to fight against those things, our party has to be based on truth,” Cheney told NBC News.

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., who supported demoting Cheney, said voters are disenchanted with Biden and the Democrats. Scalise told Fox News he sees “a lot of really serious concern about the direction that the socialist Democrats are taking us,” and “Biden has embraced that far-left Bernie Sanders;agenda.”

“People don’t want this to become a socialist nation, yet you see how far theyre moving,” Scalise said.

“It’s always difficult to generate a unifying message when you’re the party out of power,”; GOP pollster Whit Ayres said.

New Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Voting By Mail Amid Pandemic

Traditionally, Republicans have tended to support higher barriers to voting and often focus on voter identification and security to protect against fraud. All the same, about half of GOP voters back expanding vote by mail in light of the pandemic.

Democrats tend to support lowering barriers and focus on making access for voters easier, with a view to encouraging engagement. They support expanding votes via mail too.

The next fight, in many cases, is about who and how many get what access via mail.

All this also creates a dynamic in which many political practitioners can’t envision a neutral compromise, because no matter what philosophy a state adopts, it’s perceived as zero-sum.

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Blinken Cracks Up At Hearing Over Gop Senator’s Conspiracy Theory

Days after a bipartisan agreement was reached in the House to form a commission to examine the roots and events of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday that he opposes the bill.

) McCarthy doesn’t want to testify under oath about his phone conversation with former President Donald Trump on January 6“What I talked to President Trump about, I was the first person to contact him when the riots was going on. He didn’t see it. What he ended the call was saying — telling me, he’ll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that’s what he did, he put a video out later.” 2) McCarthy wants to be speaker badly.

[arcenciel-par-une-larme]

I'm not sure how many times exactly we need to debunk these "No I'm not Christian and I feel nothing short of contempt for your benighted, backwards-thinking religion, but Jesus was a gay black trans polyamorous Palestinian Leninist" posts, but something tells me that no effort will ever be enough. I have a feeling that all those Jesus-wielding leftists do not want to understand Him in any way, but they are rather interested in bashing convervatives.

Sooooo....here we dive into the cringe again.

> Conservatives, socially, are against refugees, against equality, and fiscally are against social programs and financial aid to those in need.

It's the old socialist game of "You don't like MY brand of justice and equality, so you must hate ALL justice and equality". This has been going on since the days of Bastiat, haven't you grown tired of it yet?

Not to mention that the last sentence is a STRAIGHT UP LIE.

> I’ve read the bible six times, I know what it says.

Ummmm...and you think that merely "reading" it a bunch of times makes you in any way knowledgeable about it?

You know that biblical/ANE studies is an actual scientific discipline, right? The Bible is not fandom, you know. You can't understand a 2-millennia-old text just by reading it with your postmodern lens, much less declare death of the author over it...

> I’m also a polisci student, 

THAT STILL DOESN'T MAKE YOU BIBLICALLY LITERATE.

> Jesus said:

> [proceeds to cite Leviticus]

Yeah...I think we have a problem here, Houston.

> in the field of religious studies, we often call jesus one of the first radical leftists.

Yeah guys, because Jesus CONSTANTLY preached in favour of a strong centralised government, forced redistribution of wealth, and identity politics! [/s]

> he was a social anarchist with communist leanings

That's right, Jesus NEVER preached any BACKWARDS-THINKING CAPITALIST PROPAGANDA such as "render unto Caesar"!!! [/s]

> and that’s why his draw was such a threat to the imperial system—because he was calling for the dismantling of oppressive power structures.

And here we see these OMG BIBLICAL SCHOLARS of such INIMITABLE KNOWLEDGE completely forget the central axis of the message of Jesus.

Here's another idea: have you ever thought that maybe Jesus and his followers were NOT the communist revolutionaries you want to make them out to be, but were rather hugely unpopular because of His claims to divinity etc.? And that entailed that people ought to have an ultimate allegiance HIGHER than any government or political system?

Of course not. That's "bronze age fairytales".

> the conservative romans were the ones who killed jesus, and conservatives after are the ones continuing to kill his message thousands of years after his death.

Why don't you just call them straight white gun-toting Republicans and get it over with?

You know you can't arbitrarily label things that you don't like "conservative", right?

What about the fact that the Romans were a pagan empire? Are you willing to hold that against them, too?

For that matter, what about all the leftist regimes which have killed and persecuted (and continue to kill and persecute) Christians throughout the world? Are they "conservative" as well, by some miraculous process?

> Don’t forget he fought against slut-shaming,

And here's how you know that these people have never actually read the NT. Jesus' standards and commandments on sexual morality (to men and women alike) are so strict compared to these of our post-Kinseyan age that, had these SJWs really read His words, they would have been branding Him a "patriarchal misogynist sex-negative slut-shaming fundie" from dawn till dusk.

> embraced alcoholics and the homeless,

1. One of those things is not like the other.

2. He did not embrace the practice of alcoholism or encourage people to stay homeless at any point.

3. What does this have to do with conservatism?

> and straight up said you can’t get into heaven if you die rich.

Huh...I guess that these WORLD-CLASS BIBLICAL SCHOLARS over here completely forgot that Zacchaeus and Nicodemus existed.

> The greatest commandment of Christianity is to love your neighbor like yourself and that’s not what conservatives do.

THUS SAITH THE "RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY" once more.

> Jesus was a nice Jewish boy and how dare bigots align themselves with him.

....."nice"????

Jewish, yes. Meek, most certainly. But if you think He's "nice"...then you haven't been paying attention.

Central to His message is the idea of sin. That is BOUND to offend. He wants us to turn our ways to Him, and to renounce our sinful ways, no matter of what nature they are, and regardless of our political sensitivities.

Just because He is by no means the abusive heavenly dictator that ye olde biblethumpers presented Him as, that does not mean that He's the cool socialist hippie that you want to make Him out to be.

Christianity and conservatism are not compatible ideologies. Conservatives, socially, are against refugees, against equality, and fiscally are against social programs and financial aid to those in need.

Jesus demanded they help refugees, demanded equality, and demanded aid to the poor.

To be conservative means to not be Christian, and to claim you are both is to be a hypocrite.

Something Jesus also condemned.

[tridentine2013]

The History of the Conservative Party; and why you aren't really a Tory.

The Conservative party is arguably the oldest political party in the world. Way back in 1678, 'Tory' supporters of James Stuart, Duke of York were against his exclusion from the order of succession to the British throne on the basis that he was a Roman Catholic. The Tories opposed such exclusion, which was supported by the 'Whigs'. Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the 'Tories', (who in the 19th century became known as the 'Conservative Party',)  represented one side of divide within the ruling 'establishment', the other side being the Whigs. Initially divided along sectarian lines, these two parties constituted a parliament which for hundreds of years represented the interests of a de facto 'ruling elite', made up exclusively of very wealthy landowners, who had over centuries  been 'granted' land, great wealth and privilege by the crown. Their priority was their own continued wealth and power. The overwhelming majority of the British population during this period had no right to vote in parliamentary elections, and no effective representation. The first and second reform acts (1832 and 1867) each brought in a degree of social change, but this was limited, and largely based on the minimum possible concession to avoid Britain 'going the way of the French', who had earlier rejected the dominion of Kings and aristocracy, who were executed in a bloody revolution which brought about the first French Republic, and subsequently the French Empire, under Napoleon I.

Both Tories (Conservatives) and Whigs (Liberals) thoroughly rejected the idea that anyone but the ruling elite should have a voice in parliament, but recognised the danger which mass movements posed, of catalysing revolutionary change. In 1817, in St Peter's Field, Manchester, an initially peaceful mass protest, calling for parliamentary representation, was cavalry charged by order of the local authorities. Men, women and one child were killed, either by sabre or by being trampled to death under the horses. Many hundreds were injured. This became known as the 'Peterloo Massacre'. The ruling Tory Party sent official congratulatory letters to the local officials for their handling of the protest. Subsequently, gatherings of more than 50 people for the purposes of public political meetings were criminalised, and newspapers were taxed out of the reach of the working population.

Throughout the Industrial Revolution, the gross exploitation of workers by industrialists, without the constraints of protective legislation, commonly led to the death or disability of workers in large numbers. The Conservatives and the Whigs, taking a very familiar position, refused to effectively legislate to protect workers' rights for decades ... throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, concerned only with the interests of landowners and industrialists.

The Chartists, almost two decades after Peterloo, formed to demand a vote for all working men over the age of 21, secret ballots, and the removal of the landowning qualification for MPs as well as payment for MPs, which was intended to enable working people to participate. Other demands of the People's Charter included annual elections, and equal constituencies. The political establishment   were having none of this, and by the mid 1840's, under successive Tory and Whig governments, many Chartists had been imprisoned or transported. However slowly but surely, pressure from the working and middle class led to a pragmatic expansion of the franchise, always only barely sufficient to quell mass revolt, but enough to gradually change the face of British politics. It was a change which created a number of problems for the elite interests, still represented by the Conservatives and the Whigs. It became necessary to at least pay lip service to the interests of the working and middle classes, and under Disraeli, the notion of 'one nation conservatism' was born. It was a paternalistic pragmatic response to the expanding franchise. Workers were appeased with legislation for factory and health acts premised on the idea that the needs of the many could be met by the benevolence and altruism of the wealthy and privileged, whilst they in fact simultaneously prioritised the interests of power and social position. This manifested in policies which gave a little, but were in modern corporate speak, cost v benefit analysed … basically if industrial deaths were too expensive to prevent, they would likely continue. As one of countless examples, white phosphorous, used for matches, was much cheaper than red phosphorus, but also much less safe. Consequently, the cost saving saw generations of working class women and girls in the East End of London suffer horrific health problems.

The idea of the 'natural authority' of the powerful, (power which itself in most cases was hereditary, not meritocratic) and their primacy with regard to decisions to balance profit against social responsibility, was the stock in trade of the Conservatives throughout the latter part of the 19th century. The need to protect the interests of workers was seen by most of the elite as a 'necessary evil', with concessions usually made only to the extent required to maintain order in society. By the late 19th century in was very clear that the only political organisation which would truly champion the interests of working people would be an outgrowth of the trades unions, into which many workers in various occupations had organised themselves. (On several occasions trades unions were outlawed, and membership criminalised, however by the late 19th century they were legal)

The Labour Representation Committee was formed in 1900, to put forward as prospective MPs, representatives who promised to work in parliament for the rights and interests of workers. It was not until the early 20th century that ordinary citizens, those who in any form needed to work to live, were fully represented in Parliament, and even then it was some years before a full Labour government came to power. The most significant period under Labour, was of course the post war government under Clement Atlee, an administration which produced the NHS, and most of the foundations of the welfare state we have today.

During the 20th century the Conservative Party presented themselves as authoritative, experienced and a party of 'natural leaders', who due to their history and experience were safer hands to run the many branches of state.  But it was not until the election of Margaret Thatcher as leader that the Conservative Party, who came to power in 1979, made serious claims to be a party who's aspirations and objectives could truly also embrace those of working men and women. The dream which Thatcher, and neo-liberalism in general sought to sell, was a meritocratic, inclusive society of home owners and shareholders, in their own modest way acquiring capital not only from their labour, but also from interest on shareholdings, (mostly in newly privatised businesses which had until that time been in collective (state) ownership). Many middle age Britons still subscribe to the view that they are now 'middle class', having elevated their social position as property owners, courtesy of Thatcher and the Right to Buy' Act. However this was in many respects a ruse, cost shifting property maintenance to the now mortgaged purchaser, and providing an asset against which further borrowing (debt) was secured. Some years later many found themselves in negative equity and unable to pay mortgage interest which peaked at almost 14% in 1982, and was still over 9% in 1988. Nor did successive governments use the income raised from council house sales to build new social housing. The Conservative Party continued after Thatcher, with a Thatcherite 'business as usual period under John Major.  (During which the claim of Conservative primacy in matters of fiscal policy was severely tested. In 1992 Major presided over ‘Black Wednesday’, and the UK’s ignominious ejection from the Exchange Rate Mechanism.) 

Subsequently, in  1997, Tony Blair 'stole the Conservatives' clothes'. The Tories did not regain power until 2010. However since 1979 the prevailing ideology of unfettered 'laissez-faire capitalism, and the idea of 'trickle down economics' has been pursued by the Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown Governments, as well as the Conservative led coalition of 2010, the Cameron Government of 2015, and into the current administration. The 'same 'trickle down theory' which has led to 85 people owning as much wealth as the poorest 3.5bn people on the planet. It can be demonstrated that this economic theory is flawed to the point of being groundless. It does not lead to economic growth, wage growth, income growth, or to job creation. But what it does do is provide huge wealth for a shrinkingly small elite. That elite, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, have acquired control of every lever to manipulate states; that elite controls almost all of the media in the major developed economies, utility corporations, the arms industry … the entire 'military industrial complex.. For all practical purposes, that same elite controls the Conservative Party. 

The Labour Party, branded 'New Labour' under Blair, operated in the thrall of the same interests. Since 2010, the austerity agenda pursued by the Conservative or Conservative led governments has served to illustrate that the Tory ideology which so repressed living standards and social mobility for hundreds of years is alive and well. The reversion to type is obvious and stark. The same Tory Party which fought tooth and nail against extending the franchise on consecutive occasions, and under who's administrations troops and cavalry have been deployed on the streets of the UK, is alive and well under a paper thin veneer of social concern. The Tories used military and tanks in Wales, Liverpool, and Glasgow against strikers or protestors. The Police were used as a paramilitary force against striking miners, not least at Orgreave. On each occasion, the use of force has been the extent to which Conservative governments have been prepared to suppress the demands of working people. Many of these events are almost lost to history, airbrushed out by establishment revisionists.

What has happened in recent times is the opening up of a fault line in the power holding superstructure. 'The Establishment' in the UK has a fatal flaw. That flaw, is that the entire edifice is not, as conspiracy theorists would have us believe, a nefarious fine tuned, elaborate, integrated architecture. It is actually largely reliant on a convoluted mosaic of elements with no individual overall management or managers. It simply relies on many disparate component parts tending to naturally harmonise and integrate through a common cause and common interests.

The fault line arose from a simple error of judgement. Ed Miliband (a claimed ‘leftie’ with barely more genuine left wing ideas than Blair himself, had intended to significantly weaken the power of trade unions, with sweeping reforms to Labour's internal voting system. It involved requiring union members to individually 'opt in' to Labour Party membership, as a disrupter to the union block vote. It also allowed for a 'supporter' membership, open to anyone, at just £3. No-one at the time imagined that it would bring about the circumstances in which anyone from the left of a party which was still mired in 'Blairite' 'New Labour' centre right praxis, could become the Labour Party leader. But then Jeremy Corbyn happened. The existential risk which anyone with a socialist agenda posed to the controlling elites was so glaringly obvious, that long before Corbyn was elected, the tsunami of slurs, smears and misrepresentations overwhelmed the objectivity of much of the population. A relentless barrage of anti-Corbyn rhetoric did much to form the majority view of Corbyn. Criticism repeated so often, by all media, at every opportunity, as to be believed by many purely on the basis of endless repetition. The Tories led the barrage, aided and abetted by the so called Labour 'moderates', and every other party and authority which feared a Labour Party truly committed to fairness and social justice. 

The abundance of anti-Corbyn rhetoric was undirected, unleashed in a scattergun approach, since it was impossible to particularly target Corbyn's potential constituency. In some respects directing criticism, whether justified or not, into the consciousness of the body politic achieved a short term advantage, but in no way sufficient to disrupt the election of Corbyn as Labour leader. It should not be forgotten that the unintended consequence of a socialist Labour Party leader arose with not only the approbation and dissent of the man on the Clapham omnibus, by the means under discussion, but also the active disruption and interference with process of much of the Labour Party in parliament, as well as the general secretary and much of the party heirarchy. This happened for one simple reason. Corbyn's core message had not been heard for more than a generation, and was inspirational.

Every time you hear about the impracticality or dangers of current Labour Party policy, it will originate from a source fearful that their interests and influence may be compromised. But it is an argument which is losing traction. It is true that there is a huge swathe of the population of the UK, particularly amongst the now middle aged, being somewhat comfortable, perhaps particularly by comparison with their own parents or roots, which still clings to the notion that they are middle class, and as such natural Conservative voters. Managers, small business owners, white collar workers, who fundamentally misunderstand both the Tory Party and their own best interests. The Labour Party is not 'the party of the feckless, the lazy and the unemployed' it is not even in any limited sense, the party of the working class. It is, and is especially under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, a socialist party. It aspires to a more equal distribution of wealth, and as evidenced by the recent party manifesto, to do this without the smallest disadvantage to 95% of the population. The problem with such a suggestion is the vast middle and moderately high income earners who believe that they would be personally disadvantaged by a Labour government. This is to misunderstand the gargantuan step change in the assets of 95% of the population compared with the top 5%, the even greater disparity between the top 5% and the top 1%, and the gigantic, almost inconceivable disparity between the top 1% and the top 0.1%. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the top 5% own 40% of the disposable wealth in the UK. The top 1% own 24% of disposable wealth. The top 0.1% earn an average of £1m annual income, and the top 3000 taxpayers pay more tax than the bottom 9 million ... (more than 35% of all income tax payers in the UK), whilst the wealth gap continues to grow. The Tory claims about cutting tax for the very highest earners to incentivise their further economic activity, seem somewhat hollow given these circumstances. Tax increases which had no more effect than maintaining, not growing the wealth gap would be socially beneficial, and in real terms, victimless. Labour is about making people more equally rich, not more equally poor.

We do not have to look far for examples of the type of economy which Labour proposes; contrary to the hyperbolic scaremongering which is a natural manifestation of the fear of various vested interests, many western economies function broadly in the way which Labour proposes for the UK. Denmark, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand all subscribe to some, even many of the democratic socialist principles advocated by the Labour Party in the UK. Canada, Finland, Norway and Ireland are in the top ten countries to live in the world, as determined by the UN. Others, including Belgium, France and Germany have successful and popular state ownership of utilities, often through state run businesses which also have major investments in foreign countries. Many of the countries listed above have excellent welfare provision alongside an affluent and contented middle class, and nothing which is current Labour Party policy would be controversial in many already successful economies.

Returning to the Conservative Party, it is today, and has always been serving the interest of an already hugely wealthy elite. It's reinvention, first under Disraeli and again under Thatcher, was necessary to retain power. Policy needed to maintain a degree of credibility for the premise that the interests of the many, and particularly the middle classes were of genuine concern, have of necessity been implemented, but only ever with the greatest of care to protect, at the same time, the 1%, and most importantly, the 0.1%. If you are reading this, it is almost inconceivable that you are anything but one of the 99%. When Jeremy Corbyn speaks of 'the many', he is speaking of you and I. Consider this. Consider the possibility that 99%, or even 95% of the population, including yourself, would be advantaged by a democratic socialist model, as successfully implemented in many Nordic states. Now if you do not have enough personal assets and resources to test the hypothesis for fear that it might fail, then you are without doubt a member of the social group which Labour seeks to advantage with it's policies. If you do have the resources to comfortably undertake such an experiment, then you have little to lose. To deny millions of hard working people the hope that a fairer, more equal society is possible, is frankly crass, selfish, and worthy only of the Harmsworth’s, Desmond's, Barclay's, and Murdoch's of this world. I will end with a challenge. If you remain convinced that you are a Tory; by all means, read and digest the pro Tory, or anti Labour, or anti Corbyn news or opinion pieces. You are free of course also to agree with them. Just check, as an academic exercise, who actually owns the organisation which originated the article.

[racingtoaredlight]

Weekend Eve Opening Bell - February 9th, 2017

Adventure Time. 

Weekend Eve. 

Snowflake is a hilarious term for sensitive Liberals when Republicans are so terrified of women and children refugees they are returning them to be killed in the horror show of Syria’s endless conflict. 

These are the kind of people Republicans are scared of: 

Fiscally prudent is a hilarious term for the GOP when Trump’s policies, tax cuts and ludicrous wall will massively balloon the deficit. Conservatism works until you run out of other people’s money? 

Trump’s first weeks in office beggar belief. How does he do it all? I never understood how Bush could invade Iraq, Trump can ban Muslims unconstitutionally while destroying corruption/environmental regulations and Obama couldn’t confirm a Supreme Court Judge or get jobs for veterans? Trump can actually destroy the internet with seemingly zero consequences. Fuck the high ground, there isn’t one and GOP voters and politicians do not care. The GOP does horrible shit but by fuck they accomplish what they want, this excellent article explains how. 

Defunding Planned Parenthood was a disaster for Texas. 

Wolftenstein as imagined by people who think it is immoral to punch nazis. 

The left cannot turn to neoliberalism to oppose Trump. The Left must galvanize itself as a party of resistance with answers for working Americans. 

Canadian’s want our shitty lying cunt of a Jazz Hands Prime Minister to oppose Trump even it requires our own economic peril. 

I too would like this answered: 

Headline of the week: A Very Comprehensive Guide To Getting Drunk At Disney World. . 

India is changing the status quote with demonetization and a look towards a Universal Basic Income. 

Ireland fights for abortion and will win. 

Here’s thousands of words about Anthony Bourdain. 

Wind power is creating jobs, fucktons of them. 

Fuck you Comcast. 

Massive and inspiring demonstrations in Romania will topple their newly elected corrupt government trying to pass South Dakota-esque laws. 

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[thatsmyfuckingopinion]

Conservatives Hate Real People

When you try to distill the core differences between Conservatives and Liberals, there are some key elements that surface. One of the most glaring is the Conservative love of fake people, and their hatred of real people.

A real person is anyone who has been born but has not yet died. An actual living, breathing human being. Conservatives hate them. With a burning passion. Women, especially pregnant women, people of color, people who don’t adhere to the concept of rigid binary sexuality, people who speak a different language or with a different accent, people who worship God differently, or worse who worship a different god, people they don’t personally know – the list is endless. They are reviled. Beneath contempt.

A fake person is anyone who is not yet born, is mythical, or is a legal fiction. Think embryos, deities and corporations. And “The Market”. Let’s not forget “The Market”, one of the most important people in the Conservative ideology. These fake people are beloved, revered, and worshipped by Conservatives.

And let’s not forget the fakest of fake people, themselves. Yes, for the most part Conservatives are faking it. They are faking their religion by ignoring anything that interferes with their hate. They endlessly judge despite specific scripture to the contrary. “Love thy neighbor” is entirely conditional on that neighbor looking, acting and worshiping the same as them. Again, the examples of their faithlessness are too long to list. Most importantly they are faking their Conservatism. They pretend to value fiscal responsibility, but continually support those who behave the in the least fiscally responsible manner. The pretend to want small government, but eternally attempt to insert government into the most personal aspects of people’s lives (identity, religion, family). They love their nation, but vote for those dedicated to diminishing and ignoring the core principles of its founding.

They value “The Market” only until the market steps on them, then they cry endlessly for government intervention. They believe that the market will treat them fairly, even after being bitch-slapped by the market time and again. Their love of the market is premised on the fantasy that someday they will be among the wealthy people who are above the effects of the market.

The abject failure of Conservative ideology is based on the fact that they hate real people. It’s hard to have a “big tent” when the only people you allow inside are yourself, people exactly like you, and a bunch of people who don’t actually exist. This failure can be seen by the need to gerrymander, restrict voting access, and constantly spread lies and disinformation in order to maintain their grasp on power. The real irony is that their stranglehold on the electoral process is going to kill the fake person they profess to love so much – the United States of America.

[teeky185]

Win McNamee/GettyThe House of Representatives approved a sweeping budget bill on Thursday that includes spending hikes for both domestic and military programs and a suspension of high-stakes debt fights until the next presidential administration. The bill, which passed by a 284 to 149 margin, is expected to easily pass the GOP-held Senate when it votes next week, sending it to the president’s desk. The deal’s bipartisan support is the latest evidence of the shrinking influence of pro-austerity voices in national politics. Not only does it usher in some $320 billion in increased spending, but the final language also includes a two-year extension of the debt limit—which Congress must raise in order to continue borrowing to spend the money they’ve appropriated. The measure could have gone even further than the version that passed. That’s because lawmakers considered including a provision in the legislation that would have effectively eliminated the high-stakes debt ceiling fights entirely. According to a source familiar with the talks, the idea of doing away with the debt limit “came up” during the course of negotiations. The source said that “although interest was expressed, the decision was that it was too difficult to do in this bill.” Other sources cautioned that the proposal was not seriously considered, if discussed widely at all. And a senior Democratic aide said that by the time negotiations entered their critical, final stages—with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin taking the lead—the notion of getting rid of the debt ceiling was never actually broached. But had it been, Pelosi would have found a receptive audience. According to three people with knowledge of the deliberations, both Mnuchin and President Donald Trump have, as recently as May, discussed privately how counterproductive the debt limit is to the legislative process, and that it would be ideal to eliminate it altogether.“For many years, people have been talking about getting rid of [the] debt ceiling all together, and there are a lot of good reasons to do that,” Trump said in September 2017. “So certainly, that's something that will be discussed. We even discussed it at the meeting that we had yesterday. It complicates things, it's really not necessary.”It's Time to Kill the Debt LimitWhy neither Pelosi nor Mnuchin raised the idea of eliminating the debt limit in their talks is not entirely clear. But Democrats suspect that both he and the Speaker recognized it would have been an impossible lift in the Republican-run Senate, where GOP lawmakers view a vote to raise the ceiling as a means of extracting future spending cuts or policy concession. Republicans did as much during the Obama years until then-President Obama said he would no longer negotiate on raising the debt limit, on grounds that the default that would be triggered by not doing so would be too cataclysmic to even ponder. As Democrats came out in support of the just-agreed upon deal, they did so with trepidation that their GOP colleagues would weaponize the debt limit once more should a Democrat unseat Trump in November 2020. Democrats, said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) in a Tuesday statement, “are losing our leverage by agreeing to a lifting of the debt ceiling for the remainder of this term but then in turn handcuffing a future progressive President in 2021.”But even those fears were not enough to compel Democrats — including Khanna — to oppose the bill in significant numbers. He told The Daily Beast before the vote on Thursday that he’s supporting the deal because it boosts domestic spending by $100 billion. “I think gambling with our future on these domestic programs is not worth it,” he said, but reiterated Democrats needed to fight to make sure the debt limit isn’t used as a bludgeon in 2021 if a Democrat is elected president. “Anything that extends the debt limit, as long as possible, is better than anything that is a short term extension of the debt limit,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who wants to abolish the vote to extend the borrowing limit for good, and has introduced a bill that would do so. “I don't support using the full faith and credit of the United States as leverage in a partisan negotiation.”Other Democrats took it as a win merely that President Trump backed off from brinksmanship this time around. A two-year extension, said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), is “a lot better than using the debt ceiling as a way to get the president’s wall. In the scheme of things, it could be a lot worse.”The agreement that the House approved on Thursday was the product of months of negotiations between lawmakers on the Hill and officials in the administration hoping to stave off two looming fiscal crises. The first was a default on the debt, which would have been triggered by the debt limit being reached. The second was the onset of deep cuts to federal spending, known as sequestration, that were laid out in 2011 when House Republicans demanded an austerity package in exchange for extending the debt limit back then. Those automatic cuts were slated to kick in October 1. The final package eliminated the threat of sequestration for good. It also did not include so-called “poison pills,” policy riders on controversial issues like immigration, that could have blown up the process. Though Republicans and even some moderate Democrats in the House largely voted against the measure because of these provisions, most Democrats viewed their opposition as insincere—an easy way to exhibit so-called fiscal conservatism while reaping the political benefits from the extra spending that was passed. They also feared that Democrats had forfeited some negotiating leverage by not setting up another debt limit standoff during the end of Trump’s first term, as opposed to pushing it off to 2021. But that view was not shared widely in the party, where interest has gravitated more towards eliminating the debt limit entirely than in utilizing it politically. “At some point, we should probably, you know, get rid of this sort of permanent Sword of Damocles,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), but he added that “it doesn’t need to happen now in order to get my vote.”The Daily Beast asked a number of top Democratic 2020 candidates if they would refuse to negotiate over the debt limit should they win the White House. None responded, save Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who didn’t address that specific question but stated that the debt limit “has never made any sense.”“The United States of America should meet its lawfully incurred obligations,” she told The Daily Beast. “But two years is better than one. One year is better than half a year. So, it looks like two years is what we got.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

President Trump and congressional Republicans are expected to make the country’s infrastructure (think airports, bridges, cellphone towers, public schools and roads) one of their major legislative priorities this year. It’s a big opportunity for Republicans — particularly the president. But I’m pretty sure they’re not going to be able to take advantage of it.

Let me start by explaining the opportunity. Republicans’ two most important legislative proposals last year — taxes and health care — were opposed almost universally by congressional Democrats, disdained by policy experts, and disliked by most of the public. Polls suggest that even GOP voters were not very enthusiastic about the health care proposal. So Republicans basically spent all of 2017 on legislation that will do little to help them politically.

But infrastructure could be different — bipartisan, popular with the public and good politics for the GOP and Trump. Why?

First — on infrastructure policy, Trump and congressional Republicans aren’t as boxed in by existing GOP orthodoxy, so they have more freedom to write a bill that is popular with the public and sellable to Democrats. Republican members of Congress, particularly in the House, basically coalesced behind proposals on taxes and health care in the summer of 2016 — back when few people thought Trump had a chance of winning the White House. These proposals represented long-held views of top GOP lawmakers like House Speaker Paul Ryan and key interest groups in the party: that Obamacare should be repealed and corporate taxes cut.

Once Trump got into office, congressional Republicans stuck with those concepts, leaving the administration largely endorsing the GOP’s existing proposals, rather than shaping them.

But the congressional GOP agenda from the 2016 campaign did not include an infrastructure plan. That means Republicans can write a bill basically from scratch — one aimed at winning popular support. This is a particularly important opportunity for the president. Trump, who has largely governed like a traditional small-government and anti-regulation Republican, could use infrastructure to go back to the kind of populist conservatism he espoused during his campaign, with an FDR-style proposal to rebuild America.

More broadly, the two parties are not as entrenched in their views on infrastructure as they were on, say, health care, where Republicans were committed to repealing Obamacare and Democrats to defending it.

Second — for the bill to pass the Senate, it needs to get some Democratic votes, which means congressional Republicans and Trump can write a more moderate bill. Last year, on both taxes and health care, Republicans relied on budget reconciliation, a procedural move that allows some bills to pass with only 50 votes in the Senate, instead of the 60 usually required to ensure that a filibuster could be broken. By doing this, Republicans invested in passing these bills with only GOP votes, and they concentrated on wooing nearly every Republican member, even the most conservative, while basically ignoring congressional Democrats

But reconciliation can generally only be used for bills that make changes to long-term budgetary or fiscal policy. So an infrastructure bill, unless it was constructed in a very unusual way, could not be approved through reconciliation.

That may sound like a problem, but it could be a blessing in disguise for Trump and Republicans. There are 51 GOP senators, so the Republicans must write a bill that would appeal to at least nine Senate Democrats (to get to the required 60). Or, they must write one that is popular enough with the public that at least nine Senate Democrats would feel pressured to support it. GOP leaders and Trump could then explain away a bill that is not as conservative as some party activists and the party’s most conservative members would like by saying that it had to be bipartisan (and have some Democratic ideas) in order to pass.

So imagine that Republicans come up with a bipartisan infrastructure bill that is popular with the public and it passes. That could lift Trump’s job approval ratings, particularly with voters who describe themselves as independents, and therefore improve Republican chances of keeping control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. And a bipartisan success on infrastructure could position Trump for other moves that would recast him as a centrist, deal-making president not completely wedded to the GOP — in short, a return to his brand from the 2016 campaign.

OK, yes, I admit: The scenario I laid out above sounds like I slept through 2017 and missed how Trump governed from the right and the two parties disagreed on everything. Don’t worry — I was there.

Here’s what is more likely to happen: Republicans will come up with an infrastructure proposal opposed by nearly all Democrats and some very conservative House Republicans, and it will struggle to pass. Why?

For one, the GOP appears to have settled on an infrastructure vision that Democrats probably won’t like. Last year, Senate Democrats proposed sending $1 trillion to states and cities over 10 years for projects like road building and improvements, funded by increasing taxes on both wealthy people and corporations.

Republicans say they have a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, too. But they are coalescing around a plan that would provide $200 billion to localities over 10 years — much less than the Democratic proposal. White House officials are hoping that those federal dollars inspire public-private partnerships and that eventually cities, states and businesses put up about $800 billion. Democrats say that states and cities don’t have enough money for that kind of spending.

Why would Republicans be headed in this direction? It’s hard to tell whether 1. Trump is more of a traditional conservative than his 2016 campaign suggested; 2. His advisers write his proposals, and they don’t really care about his populist rhetoric from the campaign trail; or 3. Trump and GOP leaders know they will eventually need Democratic votes but want to get congressional Republicans on board first, and a smaller, private sector-driven infrastructure bill is the best way to do that.

No. 3 is probably what is driving Republicans on infrastructure: the need to maintain party unity. But I think that Trump, even with this relatively conservative vision of infrastructure, will have trouble getting Republicans behind the proposal, particularly in the House. The promise of infrastructure legislation is that it will create jobs. But conservative House Republicans generally oppose more government spending and intervention to help the economy. Moreover, unemployment is very low right now, something that Republicans, including the president, are constantly touting. And Republicans just passed a big bill, the tax legislation, that they say will create even more jobs. So I expect many congressional Republicans, seeing no reason to vote for this infrastructure bill, will be looking for a way to kill it while not irritating Trump.

Second, the political environment is so toxic that it’s not clear that Democrats will work with the GOP and Trump even if Republicans write a bill that has some liberal ideas. The Democratic base is unified against Trump, and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill — even those from more conservative-leaning states — were frustrated that the president and Republicans did not include them in governing for much of 2017. So it is difficult to see Democrats joining Trump and congressional Republicans to pass anything now.

Indeed, Democrats have strong incentives, in an election year, to block any Republican achievements and cast the GOP as a party that had total control of Washington for two years but did little beyond passing a tax cut that disproportionately benefited the wealthy. Also, Trump is so unpopular with voters that his backing a bill (on any issue) may decrease its chances of gaining popular support — no matter what is in the legislation.

One of the great questions of Trump’s tenure is what would have happened if he had started his administration with a bipartisan, populist infrastructure proposal instead of restrictions on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, Obamacare repeal and other policies that galvanized liberal activists. But he didn’t, and I think Washington is now trapped in a dynamic in which Democrats are looking to oppose Trump’s initiatives and Trump and Republicans are writing proposals that reflect conservative views, rather than attempting to make bipartisan deals.

To reset this dynamic would take a major shift in strategy by Trump. Infrastructure reform seems like an opportunity for that kind of shift. But that would require a process in which members from both parties were collaborating on a bill that would truly have bipartisan support. Based on how Trump governed in 2017 and his current ideas on infrastructure, it’s very difficult to see that happening now.

[andrewromanoyahoo]

The lessons Trump's 'Red Team' needs to learn about passing tax reform

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin leave the Rose Garden, July 25, 2017. (Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Remember the Republican Party’s crusade to repeal Obamacare? You know, the one that featured prominently in pretty much every GOP campaign ad between 2010 and 2016 — and then consumed the whole of President Trump’s legislative agenda for first seven months of the year before collapsing in chaos right before lawmakers left town for August recess?

Never mind all that. Next month, Republicans plan to move on to tax reform—and they swear that this time, everything will be different.

As Bloomberg Politics reported Wednesday, the White House is now seeking to advance Trump’s signature tax code overhaul and “avoid the missteps that doomed the effort to repeal Obamacare” by toning down president’s “improvisational approach” in favor of a more “tightly orchestrated process.”

The centerpiece of this strategy, according to the four anonymous White House officials who spoke to Bloomberg, is a weekly meeting of aides and advisors who have taken to calling themselves “The Red Team.” The name — an homage to the similar groups that formed during George W. Bush’s big legislative battles — is meant to convey “urgency and close coordination,” officials said.

“There is a concentration of the mind,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “They in the White House have done much more focused job of messaging this issue than earlier issues.”

But as Trump’s so-called Red Team schemes about messaging, its members would be wise to remember how rarely tax reform has succeeded in the past — and try to learn some lessons from the few times it has.

The last time Congress reformed the federal tax code was more than three decades ago. The story of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 is long and convoluted. But the one thing everyone seems to agree on — the key to the bill’s eventual success — is that it was a bipartisan effort.

Tax reform typically involves two related tweaks designed to simplify and stabilize the tax code: Cutting rates to provide relief to individuals and corporations, and broadening the base — i.e. taxing income that is currently untaxed (which is usually accomplished by eliminating various deductions and shelters). The reason tax reform is rarely enacted is that pretty much everyone — whether you’re an ordinary taxpayer or a powerful special interest — has a deduction they’d rather not lose: mortgage interest, charitable giving, etc. Taking away stuff that people like is generally considered bad politics.

The way Republicans and Democrats typically avoid shouldering the blame for the less popular aspects of tax reform is simple: They hold hands and jump together. In his 1984 State of the Union address, President Ronald Reagan announced that he had directed his treasury secretary to develop a plan “to simplify the entire tax code so all taxpayers, big and small, are treated more fairly.” Democratic Sens. Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Dick Gephardt of Missouri were already touting their own proposal to reduce rates and eliminate preferences. When the Treasury finally unveiled its framework in late November, Democrats didn’t bolt; instead, two pivotal House leaders — Speaker Tip O’Neill and Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, quickly decided that “they should join [Reagan] and try to win some credit for the Democratic Party,” as the New York Times later put it.

What followed was one of the all-time-great demonstrations of across-the-aisle sausage-making. Rostenkowski declared tax reform his “mission in 1985,” then endorsed the principles of Reagan’s proposal in a primetime speech. Reagan undertook an extraordinary trip to Capitol Hill to personally lobby reluctant Republicans, flipping 35 GOP votes in the process. Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon, chairman of the Finance Committee, assembled a team of seven senators — four Republicans and three Democrats — to secretly craft an 11th-hour tax package, then convinced them to band together against any changes to the proposal.

The Senate eventually approved Packwood’s bill by a staggering 97-to-3 margin; to hammer out a final version, Packwood and Rostenkowski engaged in five days of nonstop man-to-man negotiations. In the end, Reagan signed the bill into law on the South Lawn of the White House as rows of instrumental Republicans and Democrats beamed behind him.

Lawmakers look on as President Ronald Reagan signs into law a landmark tax overhaul on the South Lawn of the White House, Oct. 22, 1986. (Photo: AP)

But that, of course, was then. In 1986, Republicans controlled only the White House and the Senate; the House was firmly in Democratic hands. Today, the GOP has total control in Washington — and as a result, its leaders don’t seem to think bipartisanship is necessary anymore.

“I don’t think this is going to be 1986, when you had a bipartisan effort to scrub the code,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters earlier this month.

The president appears to be equally unenthusiastic about pulling a Reagan.

“One of the worst ideas in recent history,” Trump wrote about the bipartisan, broadening-the-base aspects of the 1986 reform law.

Instead, the Senate GOP’s current scheme is to use the 51-vote budget reconciliation process to pass a tax bill along partisan lines—just like they tried to do with their Obamacare repeal plan.

The problem with this, as New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has pointed out, is that reducing the universe of possible votes to the 52 Republican senators gives any three of them the power to kill the bill — which means that “eliminating deductions … is going to be virtually impossible,” because “almost every Republican senator is going to have at least one current preference in the tax code they want to keep.” In this scenario, the likeliest outcome is that Republicans skip the hard stuff and stick to what they can all agree on — and high-minded tax reform morphs into another big, unpaid-for, Bush-style tax cut.

There is, however, another path. Tax reform has occasionally succeeded without a divided government to necessitate bipartisanship — at least on the state level. Utah is probably the best recent example. In 2006, recently elected Republican Gov. John Huntsman Jr., — now Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Russia — took up the mantle of tax reform. (The push started with his predecessor.) By 2008, Utah had eliminated its old income tax structure — six brackets with increasing marginal tax rates — in favor of a single, flat, personal income tax of 5 percent; the state also replaced many deductions with a credit system that phased out as income rose. At the time, roughly three-quarters of Utah’s state legislators were Republicans.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. at a governors’ conference in Washington, Feb. 24, 2008. (Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP)

So how did Huntsman & Co. do it?

In a certain sense, it’s impossible to compare Utah and Washington. The former, a stronghold of Western conservatism and Mormon tradition, is relatively homogenous, both ideologically and culturally; the latter isn’t. Also, state tax issues tend to be lower stakes than federal tax issues, so the politics are rarely as perilous.

Even so, the movers and shakers behind Utah’s tax reform effort did manage (in a 2008 journal article) to distill their experience into a few simple lessons. The striking thing is how many of these lessons align with what federal lawmakers learned in 1986, and how few of them seem to have gotten through to today’s Republicans.

The first is that tax reform takes time. From the moment Reagan announced that simplifying the tax code was a top priority to the moment he signed the bill into law was a nearly three-year process. Same for Utah: Huntsman’s predecessor, Olene Walker, may have gotten the ball rolling in 2003, but a final bill didn’t pass for another four years. Trump wants a reform bill on his desk by October; Senate Republicans have said they’ll get the job done by the end of the year. Even that longer timeline is probably too optimistic, at least for real tax reform.

The second lesson from Utah is that principles matter, and that pursuing comprehensive reform may be the best way to preserve them. Walker and Huntsman — as well as Reagan and Rostenkowski — were committed to both cutting rates and broadening the base. That’s how they were able to pass reforms that might not have been popular in isolation but were designed to make the system more streamlined and equitable overall. As the Utah reformers have written, “true tax reform undoubtedly creates winners and losers,” so “attempting reform one proposal at a time” invites “opponents [to] selectively attack individually unappealing changes” and encourages “legislators to do the easy things first.”

It’s true that House Speaker Paul Ryan has been compiling his tax reform wish list for years. But right now there’s no actual legislation on the table and no one can even agree on what such legislation should include. McConnell, for example, has said that reform must be revenue-neutral; Trump, meanwhile, has said that he doesn’t care about raising the deficit. That’s a huge disagreement.

The final lesson from Utah is that tax reform needs a champion — “a political leader,” as the reformers explained in their article, “who understands fiscal issues but also understands the importance of the political process.” In Utah, Huntsman was that champion. He campaigned on tax reform in 2004; he called it his No. 1 priority upon taking office; and he fought through three regular legislative sessions — and called an additional special session — to make it a reality. Reagan acted similarly, introducing his plan in a primetime televised address, stumping for it in Oshkosh, Wis., and elsewhere during the spring of 1985, and personally lobbying for its passage on Capitol Hill.

Can Trump be an active, engaged champion for tax reform? So far, there’s little reason to believe he will try (given that he was largely absent from the recent wrangling over Obamacare) or that he would be effective if he did (given that his approval rating is a historically low 37 percent).

Still, the president’s Red Team, which is headed up by legislative director Marc Short and includes representatives from Jared Kushner’s Office of American Innovation, Steven Mnuchin’s Treasury Department, Gary Cohn’s National Economic Council and Vice President Mike Pence’s office, should probably look to the past as they plot the future of the U.S. tax system.

And they might want to give Trump’s new ambassador to Russia a call as well.

Read more from Yahoo News:

Democrats try to co-opt populist rage. Hilarity ensues.

Photos capture Trump playing golf during ‘working vacation’

The @nti-Trump: Rep. Ted Lieu hits the president where he lives

Trump endorsement puts new spin on fierce Alabama Senate race

Photos: Inside the North Korean military: A look at the rogue nation’s armed services

[pat78701]

Montana Republicans Spending Taxpayer Money To Avoid A Defeat

Montana Republicans are demanding the state spend $750,000 it didn’t budget to avoid what the GOP sees as a potential political catastrophe: high voter turnout in an upcoming special election.

The state didn’t plan for spending on federal elections in 2017, and for good reason. Neither senator is running until 2018, and its lone House member, Ryan Zinke, seemed entrenched unless Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell taps him to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

President Donald Trump, however, named Zinke interior secretary, setting the stage for a May 25 special election to fill the House seat. The race has received national attention, particularly from Democrats, who hope anti-Trump sentiment and increased Democratic Party activism since November’s election will boost their candidate Rob Quist to a surprise victory.

State lawmakers concluded that the special election would cost an unbudgeted $750,000, so they set about figuring a way to do it more cheaply.

A Republican lawmaker proposed a one-time mail ballot system. At the time, nobody in their right mind thought the election would be seriously contested ― Democrats haven’t won a House seat in Montana since 1994, after all ― and the state Senate approved the cost-saving measure.

But then something strange happened: The election got real. And Republicans who often boast of fiscal conservatism had a change of heart.

The GOP-controlled state House effectively killed the mail-in ballot bill on March 31, after the state GOP chair, state Rep. Jeff Essmann, wrote a letter to party members warning that a mail system would favor Democrats and hurt the GOP’s chances of holding onto the seat.

“Unless we have protections for ballot security in mail ballots, I think people should have the option to vote the way they want to,” Essmann told The Associated Press last month.

Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock revived debate over the matter on Friday, after he used his veto power to amend an unrelated piece of legislation to allow counties to conduct mail-in voting. Republicans, however, are seeking to delay those changes from being debated to prevent the bill from being brought to the floor, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Bullock’s last-minute move to force a vote on mail-in balloting in the legislature may be too late, however. Election officials face a Monday deadline to present their plans to the secretary of state’s office, and some counties are already planning to print ballots and arrange polling sites.

Quist will face Republican Greg Gianforte in the May 25 special election.

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from DIYS http://ift.tt/2omS9QM

[tridentine2013]

Winning the hearts and minds of the Twopenny Tories ...

If any statement ever made by Sun Tzu could be said to contain the essence of his philosophy of battle, it is this; “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

It is all too easy to stereotype the working class/lower middle class rump on whom the modern Conservative Party rely. As a group they appear persuaded that not only (conveniently) their own best interests, but also broader societal advancement, is best served by the modern Conservative Party. They perceive an authority in matters of the management of state and in fiscal competence, and display a deference to class and privilege, as if such advantages naturally imbued those so endowed with an unquestionable superiority. These are ideas which, whilst in no way borne out be historical facts, are none the less stubbornly embedded in the psyche of the Tory supporting 'middle and lower orders'.

Two centuries ago, it was exclusively the landed and titled few who dominated the politics of the day. Whether they were Whigs or Tories, it mattered little; they exercised a social hegemony which appeared impervious. The ruling elite was a simple matter of fact. Working people did not have a vote, and any attempt to create mass movements for social change was met with savage opposition. Jeremy Corbyn is known to often quote the last verse of Shelley's 'Masque of Anarchy', which was written in response to the 'Peterloo Massacre', when protestors in Manchester, seeking parliamentary representation,  were cavalry charged,  killing or injuring hundreds of men, women and children. At the time, working people had for over 450 years been statutorily denied representation, collective bargaining, or union membership by the 'Ordinance of Labourers', enacted in the mid 14th century. Trade Unions themselves were only decriminalised in 1867. The Second Reform Act, and the right to legally become a member of a trade union, led directly to the necessary idea of 'One Nation Conservatism'.

From Disraeli on, Tory administrations were bound to at least pretend that they were prepared to serve the interests of those to whom the franchise had been extended. It is a matter of historical fact that only such social groups as could influence parliamentary outcomes interested the thoughts of the now 'Conservative Party'.  If workers deaths were too expensive to prevent, they would likely continue. As one of countless examples, white phosphorous, used for matches, was much cheaper than red phosphorus, but also much less safe. Consequently, the cost saving saw generations of working class women and girls in the East End of London suffer horrific health problems. The Bryant and May match factory workers who became of the 'Union of Women Matchworkers', thirty years before the Suffragettes, were fundamentally significant in the early development of both trades unions, and the Labour movement as a whole.

Women only became truly relevant to the Conservative Party once the Suffragettes finally achieved their aims. So around 100 years ago, after many centuries of struggle, and the sacrifices of both life and liberty, most men, and women over 30, finally had an effective voice in their own circumstances and futures. Yet at this seminal moment in British social history, also arose the hivemind of the 'Twopenny Tories'. Working people, men and women, persuaded that it was the natural order for 'the state' (which for hundreds of years had been Tories (Conservatives) or Whigs (Liberals), to govern, were if not suspicious of the motives of the Labour Party, at least unconvinced of their abilities, absent any track record. They felt that the 'aspirational' rhetoric of the Conservative Party best suited their personal desire to stop being poor, and start being rich, blind to, or regardless of, the degree to which the deck was stacked against them. Several generations on now, and particularly amongst the lower middle classes, there is a belief that there is a historical vindication; that indeed the Tories create more employment, more wealth, and are more competent in government. These claims are of course endlessly repeated by Conservative politicians, usually without challenge. Which sadly tends to reinforce the belief that they are incontestable fact.

So we arrive today, at a situation where perhaps 1% of the electorate represent the interests of those who for many hundreds of years dominated the politics of the UK, but a far larger cohort believe that the Labour movement is one of the politics of envy, and which seeks, through the demon 'socialism', to see that indolence is rewarded, and that we are all equally poor.  It is these Twopenny Tories who are the enemies of socialism today. The 1% traditionally relied on power and inherited position, and are not sufficiently numerous to retain power in our modern democracy, except by the consent of a supportive, if misinformed rump.

The real challenge for socialists is to at every opportunity dispel the myths which inform the decision to lend support to an elite which they (Twopenny Tories) genuinely believe seek to perpetuate a 'trickle down' system that benefits them to a greater degree than would a Labour Government. They will cite the extent to which their personal circumstances are so much better than those into which they were born, believing this to be a direct result of the various periods of Tory Government in their lifetimes. Quite whether they would have achieved their own ambitions without the many key social advancements under Labour Governments; The NHS, The networks established by nationalised transport infrastructures, the many broad improvements to working conditions and rights negotiated by once strong unions, sick pay, maternity pay, working hours, training, equality acts, health and safety, social housing and many other factors were not Tory initiatives. But there is an even greater misunderstanding when we analyse specifically the relative wealth of the lower middle classes and for example large business owners. In 1918 the richest 1% in the UK received over 20% of all UK generated wealth. The period from the end of the first world war through to 1979 saw this figure fall to around 6%. Just 6%, not 20%, or 1/5th of created wealth, was accumulated by the top 1%. This was a period of growing strength in both trade unions and the wider labour movement. (The influence of the Labour Party on the figures, even when in opposition during this time, should not be underestimated.)

The great catastrophe of the 20th century however, was the government lead by Margaret Thatcher. The much lauded first female Prime Minister presided over an administration which demonised and all but destroyed Trade Union power, Privatised many state industries, and sold off (without replacing) social housing stock. These policies reinforced the mistaken belief that the Conservative Party best catalysed the aspirations of the middle earners, many of whom by the 1980s were happily ensconced in 'their own homes'. But for considerably more than 95% of the UK population, from the 1980s onwards, even in a period of relative affluence (which in large part was fuelled by lending secured against the new assets of ex council house occupants, now ‘homeowners’) things reversed trajectory. Now once again the top 1% appropriate around 20% of all earned wealth, average real wages in 2017 are lower than they were in 2000, and for the foreseeable future, Conservative policies offer nothing to suggest a general above inflation wages trend. But we still have the persistent idea that such a situation is a necessary outcome of the required and delivered, Conservative 'fiscal responsibility'; and a consequence of the dire situation inherited in 2010. The extent to which the so called 'Labour' governments of Blair and Brown were responsible for the state of the UK economy in 2010 is in itself overstated. In fact what is often overlooked is the real progress made in 2009/2010 towards producing a trajectory of growing the economy out of recession, quickly replaced by Tory austerity, which led to a double dip recession in all but technical definition.

The Conservatives tend not to seek to offer any evidence for their claims of fiscal acumen. It is usually presented as a truism, and sadly, usually left unchallenged. Tory Governments borrow more than Labour administrations, and have done so at a rate of 15-20% more over the last 70 years. Labour Governments pay down more debt than Conservative Governments, and have done so consistently over the last 70 years. There are many measures by which Labour Governments outperform the Conservatives, both in broad and specific areas. Labour averagely increase defence budgets, Tories averagely reduce them. It is generally accepted however that Labour are more supportive of the NHS, but even this fact is usually broached as some kind of inefficient profligacy. I cannot of course expect the preceding assertions to simply pass without supporting evidence, so please feel free to analyse, even deconstruct the data from the following sources;

http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/taq30tk04ljnvpyfos059pp0w7gnpe

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/03/14/labour-have-borrowed-less-and-repaid-more-than-the-conservatives-since-1979/

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/03/13/the-conservatives-have-been-the-biggest-borrowers-over-the-last-70-years/

So it is possible to confirm that indeed the Twopenny Tories are misguided. And it would be easy to simply bathe in the self indulgent 'warm waters' of a superior knowledge and understanding of our political economy. But this achieves little or nothing. The real challenge is to earn their vote. It takes two 'new voters', or previous 'non voters', to achieve the same result as converting a single Tory voter to the Labour cause. The only way that Labour will achieve this objective to a meaningful extent, will be to enthuse these inadvertent and unwitting facilitators of Tory dispensed misery and social breakdown, that the Labour Party is their natural ally, not simply the champion of the oppressed, or feckless, or disabled. The relatively affluent but more statistically 'average earning' Tory voter must believe that the Labour  Party stands for their aspirations, as well as a more general equality. The next manifesto needs all the positive and well received content of the last, but in addition, policies and objectives which speak to the needs and desires of the Twopenny Tories. The reversal of the Tory acceleration to the pension age changes would be a useful starting point. The re-emphasis that Labour taxation plans protect the current contribution of all but 95% of the population is also desirable and necessary. These and other initiatives will greatly help the cause. But returning to Sun Tzu, perhaps the more 'moderate' wing of the party could have a real role to play … many of the target Tory voters were persuaded by Blair and Brown. We need real dialogue between the various factions of our 'broad church', focussed not on in fighting, but on winning the next election, whenever it comes. There are sections of the electorate which are better understood by the Yvette Cooper's, the Chuka Amunna's, the Hilary Benn's and the Stephen Kinnock’s of the Labour Party. The Labour Party in opposition should not be a party riven with disharmony, deselection and division. If it can achieve this one thing, unity, it can at last be a truly transformative force.