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decolonize-the-left · 1 year

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I was wondering how accurate this was so I did some fun googling and yall.

So starting with the fact that police in the USA were formed when Dems had Congress and Senate and the same was true when the first organized police department was founded (in Boston, btw)....

1963. Dems had Senate and Congress.

While this allowed for huge strides in civil rights police brutality still continued to be largely unaddressed.

1966. Dems had Senate and Congress.

To point out further racial oppression James Meredith starts a 270 mile walk from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MI. He's shot by a sniper the second day which causes an influx in support from allies & prominent civil rights members (such as MLK) who fly out and walk in his stead.

Governor Johnson (d) of Mississippi, who ran on a segregationist platform but changed platforms when he saw that Black people were gaining more supporters, promises to protect marchers as they pass through his state. Police then tear gas them as they were setting up tents for the night in Canton, MI (pictured). 15k show up to Jackson. It's the biggest march in MI history and more successful than Meredith had planned.

No bills were introduced that year.

1956-1979 Dems had senate & Congress.

In 1961-69 they even had a governmental trifecta with Congress, Senate, and the presidency and again in 1977-79. The director of the FBI at the time was Republican J. Edgar Hoover. Head of Intelligence was Democrat William Sullivan. Attorney General & democrat Robert F. Kennedy authorized several programs for them such as wire-tapping MLK.

1968. Dems had Senate, Congress, and presidency.

President Lyndon Johnson (Democrat president while Dems had Congress & Senate) signs the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, birthing the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration & granting federal funds to local governments in order to obtain military resources to quell potential riots. A direct response to the protests and riots throughout the 50's & 60's. Protecting police from protesters.

Democrats do this instead of protecting the public from police and their prejudice.

1992. Dems have both Senate and Congress.

After the verdict of the 4 police who beat Rodney King on camera is announced & they are Not indicted the public starts rioting. The national guard, fire department, and several police departments are called in by then democratic mayor Tom Brady. After the riots a separate federal trial is held and finds 2 of the 4 officers guilty. All were fired from LAPD.

The Police Brutality Accountability Act of 1991 is introduced. Only introduced.

1994. House & Senate under dem control.

They pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act instead. It's drafted by democrat Joe Biden and sponsored by Texas Rep Brooks (D). It's an infamously harmful bill that results in the prejudiced mass incarceration of minorities, especially Black people. This bill funded police departments instead of holding them accountable aiding their further militarization as well.

2020. Dems have both Congress & Senate.

Which brings us to recent times. Where Democrats have again pretended to support and listen to the public demands to decrease/eliminate police brutality only to turn around and insist protests are the reason they keep funding the police instead of giving us rights.

"See? You're too dangerous to Not have a militarized police force."

As if we aren't protesting because the police are already too dangerous. Like that's not what started all this.

At this point a pattern like this can only be seen as intentional. A planned out excuse for funding police again and again and again instead of Stopping police brutality. Instead of enforcing or creating ACTUAL effective reform or regulations. They just keep throwing money at police departments and saying "hey here are billions of dollars that we want you to use to be less violent racists. It's also to help you be more safe when facing the people who are protesting your racist violence. Also we aren't gonna make sure you actually become less violent or less racist but we definitely hope you don't use this all this money to get worse."

Which has backfired across decades at this point. They keep doing investigations and making committees and for what?

We've done that. We know police are racist. We know they're violent. We know they're only spending enough to say they provide 6 months (if that) of sensitivity training and spending the bulk of that money on militarization gear. So what. We know that.

Now what.

What, after 100+ years could their excuse possibly be for STILL doing the same thing. For STILL not addressing it. For STILL not passing reform despite the MANY opportunities they've had? What could police departments Possibly be doing for them?? What excuse could be good enough?

I'm glad you asked.

There isn't one. There are answers of course. Greed, power, privilege, etc. The list goes on.

But are they good enough for you? They're not for me.

I have to beg on Tumblr just for my rent to get paid or for my kid to have dinner sometimes. The success of Democrats or my "country" doesn't mean shit to me, it does nothing for me. It only does things to me. Success enables police, it increases funding, it makes them More afraid of having their ideas of success taken from them, makes them more protective of their status quo. Their success hurts me. Fuck their success.

What matters is that time and time again Democrats have insisted they'd be there for minorities and then empowered the people oppressing, killing, and suppressing us and our rights.

What matters is that time and time again they've said they're powerless and their supporters insist they just don't have a majority to do anything with or that republicans keep blocking them or-

But passing bills to harm us? That's easy. And they don't Have to keep doing that. They just keep saying they do... To protect police. And they only keep "needing" more protection for police because they refuse to give us any. We continue to express our right to protest and they continue to try intimidating us out of it.

All the rights we have? They didn't give to us. Look at those posts. We fought for them while Democrats were in charge. They didn't give us those, they didn't stand with us. They still don't. They stand with the police as they always have.

August 2022.

For hundreds of years we've dealt with this. How much longer is it gonna be. How many more generations are going to have to put up with this government trying to insist that mediocrity is the best they can do indefinitely?

And if you still refuse to hold Democrats responsible, if you still find yourself compulsively trying to point out all the ways that Republicans are worse please know this: I know.

I know you're going to say "well Democrats are our best shot"

And to that I say if this is our best fucking shot....and they're *gestures vaguely at the post* like that.... Can we agree that it points to a much wider issue. If Democrats are our best shot and they're Only this effective and they're only making the most Minimal effort possible year after year. If we Know that their hands are tied by Republicans at best and at worst theyre fascists benefitting from the exploitation of BIPOC and other marginalized communities....

Can we admit that our systems are broken. That it goes further than Republicans or Democrats being bad. That it's Everything? That even if Democrats were actually perfect that everything would still be wrong and fucked up because the system itself holds them from making any effectual change?

That the checks and balances that the founding fathers put in place to make sure that our politicians are fair and just and give a shit about the people they serve aren't working.

Because if they were why would it take HUNDREDS of years for a community to get one thing. Just stop police brutality. That's all we asked. That's it. Stop hurting everyone who isn't a white cis man. Stop killing us in broad daylight for demanding you give us rights and respect the ones we Already have.

So why are we still starting 2023 with brutality making headlines?

If a government is effective and cares and listens and it's representives Truly represent it's constituents and fight for them and it's not just about profit or greed or winning elections or keeping minorities in line then why are we still here?

Why are we still asking for the same rights as our great-great-great-great grandparents?

If that progress? Is that success?

What the fuck are we doing. Like actually. How do we throw a wrench in this system. What will it take for Democrats and liberals and You to realize that all we are doing is driving the future into the hands of fascism.

What do we do? When do we finally do something?

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#idk what i thought i was gonna find but it wasn't a pattern of behavior stretching all the way back to the founding of police in the USA #democrats #liberals #progressives #protests #human rights #yeah this is about police brutality but also ableism and classism and poverty and everything else

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kineticpenguin · 11 months

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I've seen this notion repeated off and on over the last four years, and it's always struck me as an exceedingly goofy thing to say, especially because it's often used in the context of defending Democrat inaction, and centrist Democrats for being more like Republicans. Any frustration or anger with Democrats is misspent and should be directed entirely at the evil Republicans, because they're the bad guys and deserve it.

I mean, I can kinda see the logic: why are you mad at the people failing to protect your rights instead of the people actively robbing them from you? Go yell at them, they're the bad guys!

Except that nobody who is angry at Dems for dropping the ball isn't angry at Republicans. My entire adult life, people have been bitching about Bush and Cheney and Trump and Pence and McConnell and the whole goddamn rogue's gallery that is the Republican Party. We watched late night TV mocking them, got in online arguments and voted. And I mostly remember what got people actually out to vote was usually a candidate who didn't simply promise to not be Republican, they claimed to have something to offer. The right called Obama Hopey McChange for his marketing, but he was pitching some very exciting ideas as a candidate.

And then he didn't really do any of them, despite having the votes on paper. The excuse is that some of the dems wouldn't have gone for codifying Roe, but... when they have a majority, what party do you blame, here?

When the Clinton campaign deliberately boosted Trump as part of their "Pied Piper" strategy, gambling that he'd be the easiest candidate to beat and that exploded in their faces, I'm supposed to be angry at the Republicans? I mean yeah, they fell in line with that human septic tank and can all go fuck themselves. But still, why should I give money to a Democrat if there's a good chance they're going to turn around and use it to promote the worst asshole they can find? The Clinton campaign isn't the only one to use the Pied Piper strategy; it works. Except for when it doesn't, and then you have a disaster.

And then there's the bizarre way outrage works in politics in an age of the internet and mass media. Outrageous Republican antics only seem to fuel their base because it "triggers the libs" or "pisses off the deep state" or whatever. Non-Republicans yelling at Republicans seems to be counterproductive, unless it's done by big, loud groups in person, which the center finds unseemly.

Except Republicans are always doing something weird and gross, and nobody blames Democrats for failing to find a way to shut up Marjorie Taylor-Greene or keeping Cruz from fleeing to Cancun. This mentality that Democrats are blamed for everything Republicans do is absurd.

Interesting, because I'll never forget that within seconds of Biden taking office with control of the House and Senate, all these crazy terms for why he wasn't able to fulfill any of his promises started flying around. His hands were tied. It was what it was.

Funny, that.

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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seeing the maneuvers by Biden and his team in recent days/weeks really makes me appreciate the good that experience in legislating does for actually getting things done!

I mean... yeah. Dark Brandon really went OFF yesterday, and it was very satisfying to watch. Whether it was the White House official twitter account dragging (by name!) all the Republicans whining about student debt relief since they had their much larger PPP loans forgiven, or Biden repeatedly calling out the MAGA Republicans (protip, my man, there's nothing "semi" about their fascism, they're just fascists), or unveiling a fairly comprehensive student debt reform plan that represents the largest attempt to fix multiple aspects of this issue in literal DECADES, they've definitely put on their Get Shit Done underpants in recent weeks, and I'm all for it. Also, let us not forget that Biden flat-out promised that if Dems keep the House and expand their Senate majority, they will BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS. That is a) incredibly important, and b) incredibly strong, since Democrats have usually meekly tiptoed around the gun-control issue and ceded way too much ground to the loonies. The vast majority of America, as they should, wants assault weapons to be outlawed again, so actually saying that the Democrats will do it is Major.

At this particular moment, I think the administration is doing a genuinely great job, and this comes after I was considerably critical of them, and Biden personally, for the initial response to Dobbs and the pacing of the DOJ investigation into Trump. They got the IRA passed by completely faceplanting Mitch McConnell, they slipped in that provision that once more allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, they are actually going on the offensive, widely publicizing their accomplishments, and calling out the danger of the Republicans. It also does seem that this strategy is working; Democrat Pat Ryan just won a special House election for NY-19, which is a rural, upstate, swing NY district where his Republican opponent was supposedly ahead by eight points on the day of the election. He also did so by focusing almost entirely on the issues of safeguarding the right to abortion and protecting democracy from Trump. If that message can win in red rural NY, it can win nationwide, and hopefully other Democrats in competitive races are taking notes.

Back in May, when Biden's approval rating was in the mid-30s and gas was above $5 a gallon, it did feel more like we might have been heading for a red wave, which would have obviously been calamitous. But there's been a major shift in the political winds in the last few weeks, Biden's approval rating is picking up steam, and all the actual elections we have had have shown Democrats drastically overperforming for the expected disadvantages of a new president's first midterm year. This definitely is not a normal election cycle, and if we keep up the pressure, we can get a more favorable Congress and do even MORE on all this stuff. But they've made at least a start on pretty much every important left-wing issue, and I'm absolutely willing to give them kudos for that, considering the incredibly difficult political environment and the ungodly mess that they inherited. So yes: it's almost like electing people who have a lot of experience and know how to do the job, instead of acting like kooky "Outsider Mavericks!!" who have no clue what they're doing and are only there to fundraise and posture on social media, is a GOOD thing. Who knew.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #this country would be in such a better state if we elected people who wanted to do the job #and not idiots who want to be famous and treat it like entertainment #so yes

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 1 year

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Holy shit, I think it's gonna come down to a Georgia runoff again.

Dems had 36 seats not up for election

They won all their safe seats, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland [brings them up to 44]

Scahtz is almost certainly gonna win in Hawaii, another safe seat that just hasn't been called yet [45]

Bennett won in Colorado, which was right on the cusp between safe and competitive, so that's a good sign [46]

Mark Kelly is winning handily in Arizona, an unexpected 60-40 landslide so far, a major blow for Republicans in what was a deep red state for decades under McCain and Goldwater before him [47]

Fetterman is ahead of Oz in Pennsylvania, not by a huge margin but enough that a recount probably wouldn't change things [48]

Against the odds, Hassan held onto New Hampshire despite her opponent being endorsed by the very popular Republican governor Sununu who also won his own race; this is an even better sign than Colorado considering Republicans have made up a ton of ground in New Hampshire these last few cycles [49]

Nevada is anybody's game, no results at time of writing (little past midnight eastern), not even preliminarily. Zero votes reported on any news sites yet; possible repeat of 2020, could be days before we know the results. Cortez Masto was about as likely to win as Hassan in New Hampshire, so maybe just maybe she can eke by

Georgia is neck and neck. I fully expected Herschel Walker to win in a 55-45 landslide because Georgia is like Florida and can't be trusted to do anything right, but Raphael Warnock is holding his own and has even pulled ahead by a fraction of a percent. It'll be recounted, but I don't think either of them will limp to 50%, so it'll go to another runoff in January for all the marbles!

If either Warnock or Cortez Masto can hold their seats, the Senate will stay deadlocked 50-50, status quo antebellum, not ideal, but workable. If they both hold, that gives Democrats the tiniest ounce of wiggle room because then they'd only have to wrangle Manchin OR Sinema instead of both. This is nowhere near the bloodbath I feared it would be, but it's not the refutation of right-wing extremism I hoped for either.

God, please let things be clearer in the morning. Please don't let Mitch McConnell become majority leader again. We can afford to lose the House, but losing the Senate would be game over for decades, no more judges, none, zilch, nada. The worst a Republican led House can do is impeach Biden, but that's meaningless now after Trump's twofer, and any select committees they create would be toothless with the Dems in control of the DOJ. They would have bargaining power to shut down the government and fuck with the budget, but what else is new? We're not gonna default on our debts; they can only cry wolf so many times before we get wise and ignore them.

#midterms #tentative results #preliminary results #elections #2022 #2022 elections #senate #senate elections #senate races #news #oh please oh please #god please

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odinsblog · 2 years

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Pelosi trying to save a Dem in a red state isn't an attack on abortion rights. A) the Republican taking his place will be anti choice B) controlling the house is more important than one Democrat's abortion stance C) the house doesn't approve supreme court justices the Senate does so this Democrats position is meaningless in the scheme of things and probably only holds that stance to get elected in a red state. D) these both party posts are dishonest and harmful to the cause of women's rights because it excuses Republicans from blame. Turning off comments is an admission you know the post is weak.

[I’m honestly unsure which post this ask is referring to, but just search my blog for “Nancy Pelosi” or “Joe Biden” or “neoliberalism” and it’s probably one of those]

Okay, for no particular reason, let’s do this in reverse order:

“these both party posts are dishonest and harmful to the cause of women's rights because it excuses Republicans from blame. Turning off comments is an admission you know the post is weak.”

I am not an elected official. Furthermore, I am not an elected official who has backed anti-abortion legislation. The fact that you can even fix your mouth to blame me and hold me to a higher standard than an anti-abortion, conservative “Democrat” who literally makes laws says everything about blue MAGA cultists that I so thoroughly hate. My tumblr posts aren’t stopping anyone from receiving an abortion. Henry Cuellar and Nancy Pelosi are. You are a coward, a sheep and a cultist who is more devoted to protecting your problematic faves - hardly different from Trump cultists; they root for the red team regardless of harmful policy, and you root for team blue regardless of harmful policies. You have much much more in common with Trumpers than you think.

Please learn the meaning of words. “Dishonest” implies that I said something untrue or misleading. I did not. If I say that Nancy Pelosi is supporting an anti-abortionist, it is not “dishonest” just because it hurts your feelings or upsets you. Grow tf up. If it can be killed by the truth, then so be it.

Republicans are absolutely to blame, but so are the conservative Democrats who aided and abetted them along the way. They are complicit.

I block and turn off comments because, contrary to popular belief, I am not required to respond to every sycophant with a keyboard and internet access. Idgaf what your momma told you, you are not a ✨special boy✨ and everyone isn’t required to respond to your every foolhardy, ridiculous utterance.

“the house doesn't approve supreme court justices the Senate does so this Democrats position is meaningless in the scheme of things and probably only holds that stance to get elected in a red state.”

Are you familiar with something called micro-aggressions? It’s kind of like death by a thousand cuts—on its own, one single cut (or micro-aggression) might not be that damaging. But the effects are cumulative. It’s the same with structural racism, or structural patriarchy. You might be able to escape one individual system, but when you put them all together, they can be insurmountable. If that’s too obtuse, think of chopping down a tree with an axe. No one single swing of the axe will fell a giant tree, but add up dozens and dozens of them, and… well, hopefully you get my point.

So, now consider all of the various anti-abortion laws, all around the country, enacted from Roe to now. They also have cumulative impacts, and at the end of the day, the only measure that matters on MY scorecard is, did it help the pro-choice movement, or did it hurt the pro-choice movement? Did Biden endorsing the Hyde amendment all the way up until June of 2019 help, or did it hurt? Does adding more anti-abortion politicians to Congress help the pro-choice movement, or hurt the pro-choice movement?

And remember, I’m not talking about laws that have momentary impacts—as we are about to find out, these trap laws and seemingly “unimportant” little changes of language and definitions? They have long lasting, generational results. And some people in the Democratic leadership have been helping chip away at Roe since almost before I was born. And I’m 37.

If Cuellar’s anti-abortion stance is so “meaningless” then why not support the pro-choice woman, Jessica Cisneros?

And something I find simultaneously funny and deeply offensive is how neoliberals switched from, “Roe is the most important thing in the universe,” to, “Hey, you don’t understand politics. The Democrats just have to nominate this anti-abortionist because if they nominate the pro-choice Democrat, that’s going to hurt Roe.” The amount of mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance going on here is impressive. Do you guys even listen to yourselves before you spout this utter bullshit??

Finally, you’ve gone through a lot of trouble to frame this as a do or die situation, where if the anti-abortion “Democratic” candidate loses, then a Republican will absolutely positively win. The only problem with that intentionally deceptive lie is, it’s a relatively safe blue district:

Despite what corporate Dems would have you believe, it’s been a Democratic district for a good long minute now. Cuellar has won by healthy margins in the past, and I refuse to believe that any capable, passionate Democrat couldn’t do the same, IF they had the full backing and support of the DNC and the DCCC. Unfortunately, the DNC is bound and determined not to see another AOC type politician be successful.

“the Republican taking his place will be anti choice”

LMAO. I saved the stupidest argument for last. Y’all is really arguing that if we don’t elect OUR homophobic anti-abortionist, then Republicans will elect their homophobic anti-abortionist!! WTF?

At first it was “protect Roe,” but now it’s “protect Democrats”

This is why more and more people are beginning to see the Democratic Party as a fucking joke, only sometimes distinguishable from Republicans. I mean, bloody hell, what’s the fucking use of having a “Democrat” who mostly votes with Republicans??? Do the words “pyrrhic victory” mean anything at all to you blue MAGA sycophants??

If Republicans really do flip the house and the Senate, they’re going to flip the switch on the filibuster in a nanosecond. Democrats need to stop prioritizing “civility,” “bipartisanship” and “compromise” with the goddamn Christofascist Republican Party. Democrats need to fight conservatives every bit as hard as they fight progressives on the left. JFC. If not now, then when the fucking fuck???

I mean, yeah, obviously fuck Republicans and their Libertarian accomplices, but also: FUCK ANY AND EVERY DEMOCRAT WHO ISN’T GONNA GO DOWN FIGHTING TO PROTECT ROE V. WADE.

#bmsfloyd-blog #ask #answered #politics #blue maga #nancy pelosi #bidenism #clintonism #centrism #neoliberalism #abortion #reproductive rights #reproductive justice #womens rights #healthcare

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 2 years

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The press is almost trying to “will” a recession into being to discredit Biden. All the leading economists are saying we are not heading into one, or only a very light one if at all. Employment is on the rise and unionization is spreading. The economy is still booming and unemployment is very low. Yet the so called “mainstream media” or liberal media is driving a false narrative of impending doom. Why? Two reasons. 1. Ratings. They want tension for ratings and miss the ratings Trump gave them. 2. None of them backed Biden in the primaries and all wanted someone other than an old white male, even though he was the sidekick of President Obama. The fact that Biden won the primaries based solely of the African-American community left them dumbfounded, not too mention the aforementioned community were a main reason he won the general election to boot. The media believes they know better than African-Americans who are extremely loyal to people who have proven themselves allies.

The mainstream media are no strangers to brutalizing Democratic Presidents. Carter took a beating from them. Clinton, also popular with African-Americans, was absolutely crucified by them. Obama was dubbed “no drama Obama” and raked over the coals for being hogtied by Mitch McConnell. Now Biden is being raked over the coals unmercifully, worse than they dragged Drumpf in many instances. Reagan was a hero to the mainstream media. Bush 1 was treated with kid gloves. Bush 2 caused more damage than Trump but was always shown courtesy. Trump did get dragged over his outlandish personality but in my humble opinion not so critically as Biden who in reality is doing a decent job of cleaning up the Trump mess.

Remember the Democrats have only a razor thin majority in the House of Representatives and with Manchin and Sinema openly siding with the Republikkkans on virtually everything they in fact have no majority at all in the Senate. Not all votes in Congress require a simple majority and the Dems just don’t have the numbers to run the show. We are being held hostage by a weaponization of the Electoral College which is allowing a Republikkkan numerical minority to control the Congress.

The Koch political network openly brags about how they own Manchin and Sinema. Koch, along with the Waltons, Mercer, DeVos, Prince, Regnery, and other billionaire families control this nation and are leading us into fascism or civil war to ensure their profits. Hillary was mocked years ago for speaking of a vast right wing conspiracy trying to control the government. Now their are books, innumerable articles, and college courses on what is now out in the open. They are so close to controlling America they aren’t even hiding it any more.

The bigotry, racism, militias, and Christian theocrats are all tools to control what is mainly a southern and rural top-down organized movement. Yes some of the billionaires and their Republikkkan henchmen believe in the bigotry but at its core it is a method to control the deplorables. They had better be careful because the Trump’s and Greene’s could grow out of control. Remember how quickly they took Cawthorn out for running his mouth, not so easy with Trump who can finance himself if need be.

If you want real news without spin you need to read the trusted and established print media, or their websites. CNN which is slanted a bit, while still remaining mostly fact based, has an online presence which is rated as nearly non-biased. Trust the “papers of record” if in doubt. Use google to see what sources are biased left, right, or mainly centrist.

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jaspersboy · 1 year

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It was the early hours of November 5, 1998, well past my bedtime on a school night. Sister Sledge blared over the house speakers in a nondescript ballroom in a south Denver suburb. I was dancing giddily on stage looking out at a pack of my fellow awkward whites: donor types in their formal wear for the occasion, campaign hacks in our garish purple tees, inspired by our candidate’s love for the town’s new baseball team.

All of us were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Bill Owens, the man who had just been declared the winner in the gubernatorial election reversing a nearly three-decade streak of Democratic victories in Colorado.

From that stage, my barely postpubescent expectation was that there were only greens ahead for the Grand Ole Party in my home state. Republicans won up and down the ballot that night. When the counting was through, the state’s senior senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, would celebrate his first victory as a member of the GOP, his party switch in 1995 having presaged the state’s political shift. Republicans would control all the statewide constitutional offices except attorney general and four of the six congressional seats, most notably first term Representative Tom Tancredo, a racist gadfly who won easily in the suburban 6th Congressional District where I grew up. Two years later, the state, which Clinton had won in 1992 by a comfortable margin, went to George W. Bush by 8 points. Two years after that, Owens would go on to a landslide re-elect, be named the “Best Governor in America” by National Review, and be whispered about as a possible presidential hopeful. His top strategist, Dick Wadhams, was seen as a potential national star, set to run a top-tier 2008 presidential campaign before it got all macacaed up.

The political world was at our fingertips; the growing, dynamic Mountain West was primed to be the engine for a free-market, libertarian-streaked party that was perfectly suited to lead in the twenty-first century. Colorado could be the center of it all. It seemed as if I was timing my entrance into Republican political life perfectly to be along for the ride.

That was then.

Not even a quarter century on, Colorado can’t even be described as a swing state anymore. The last gasp of that status came in last year’s midterm, when the GOP nominees for governor and the Senate got crushed by umpteen points in what should have been a good year for the party. In that midterm, Democrats did better in Colorado than even in such liberal strongholds as New York and Illinois, according to analysis of the statewide popular vote by Split Ticket. Today, Dems control every major statewide office and five of the eight congressional seats—and they came just 500 votes short of taking out Lauren Boebert on the Western Slope and making it six. 2023 marks the party’s highest level of dominance in state politics since 1936.

You would think that such a dramatic fall might lead the Republican party poobahs to do some self-reflection on how it all went wrong. Maybe brainstorm on what they can do to reinvigorate the GOP’s heyday or come up with new strategies to bring back the voters who have swung so hard against them.

Nah. Instead, the GOP’s most wild-eyed members are determined to run things even further into the ground. This weekend they handed the keys to the party to a tiny cloister of extremists more interested in owning the libs than fixing their losing brand.

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partisan-by-default · 1 year

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Since OP turned off reblogs for losing the argument...

atherishispida (OP) Mar 28, 2023

i want to know what the liberal definition of fascism is because y'all keep saying we have to vote for anyone in the democrat party to prevent fascism but we've had a democrat president for three years and currently we are at:

-schools banning mentions of slavery, segregation, lgbt existence, and possibly even periods.

-a massive attack on internet freedom and online freedom of speech.

-rampant anti-intellectualism with an art teacher being fired for teaching about the statue of david.

-increased funding to police, many more police shootings, murdering of anti-police protestors and falsified domestic terrorist charges against land defenders.

-a push for an increase in manpower and funding at the border, and ongoing horrific treatment of immigrants and refugees.

-multiple laws across the country banning transgender healthcare, gnc or transgender expression, and transgender existence on sports teams and in bathrooms.

-multiple attacks on marriage equality, which the supreme court has stated their intention to aid, and attacks on the icwa.

and i'd like to know what part of this isn't fascism to y'all and why biden can't seem to prevent any of this but he can give money to banks and cops.

thebreakfastgenie Mar 28, 2023

-schools banning mentions of slavery, segregation, lgbt existence, and possibly even periods.

-rampant anti-intellectualism with an art teacher being fired for teaching about the statue of david.

-multiple laws across the country banning transgender healthcare, gnc or transgender expression, and transgender existence on sports teams and in bathrooms.

These are all happening at the state and local level. None of these things are being done by Democrats. These are all Republican policies. Democratic state governments are ending right to work and providing universal free meals to schoolchildren. The reason "Biden can't seem to prevent any of this" is the Constitution does not grant the president authority over these issues. Democrats in state and local governments are working to prevent these things from happening.

If Republicans take control of the Senate and White House, they will attempt to implement these policies at the federal level as well.

-multiple attacks on marriage equality, which the supreme court has stated their intention to aid, and attacks on the icwa.

Once justices are appointed to the Supreme Court, the president has no control over them. Biden cannot prevent the Supreme Court from making decisions on marriage equality and the ICWA. What could have prevented these things, as well as the Dobbs decision, is Hillary Clinton being elected in 2016 and appointing two or three justices to the Supreme Court. This is why liberals were so concerned about the Supreme Court in 2016.

Police funding, border policies, and internet regulation are all issues you can have a variety of positions on, including legitimate criticisms of the Democratic Party. The Republican Party is still worse. There is no scenario where either Republicans or Democrats do not win.

When we say vote for any Democrat, we mean on the entire ballot. Fill state legislatures with Democrats. Fill Congress with Democrats. Keep fascist Republicans out of power at every level.

I usually don't bother to engage with these posts, but I'm genuinely concerned at the misunderstanding of how the government works that is demonstrated here.

only-book-lovers-left-alive 15h ago

-first bullet; republicans, florida being a good example

-second bullet; both parties via the RESTRICT act

-republican parent complaining to a republican school district

-both parties are funneling money to cops, dem BIPOC leadership in Atlanta being a good example, but most on the left are in favor of better gun control that would actively limit public shootings

-both parties have been guilty of this

-ONLY republican legislation. Dem leadership in my state of Michigan are the reason trans kids aren't actively being detransitioned currently.

-ONLY republican legislation

Biden can't wave a magical wand and just. Make shit go away. There's a lot he can do, but even when he does small things, like recent efforts to cancel some student loan debts, have been met with active resistance from republicans. I'm going to be actively supporting peopling running that are far more left than he is at my local level, but we're talking a party that's actively SUPPORTING trans people, and one that supports queer genocide. There's a foot in the door that we can work with when it comes to democrats; there's nothing on the right. Nothing.

0 notes

cockerspaniel90 · 1 year

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COLORADO & SLOW MOVING MAGA SUICIDE

The Colorado GOP’s Slow-Rolling MAGA Suicide A MAGA lunatic who tried to legally add “Let’s Go Brandon” to his name now leads a decaying state party.by

TIM MILLER

MARCH 13, 2023 5:30 AM

Kim McGahey wears a MAGA hat during the Western Conservative Summit on Friday, July 12, 2019. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

PODCAST · MARCH 13 2023

Will Saletan: Pence’s Profile in Half-Courage

Mike Pence is trying win over the DC press corps but still refuses to do…

That was then.

When it comes to leading the GOP back to victory, this MAGA cohort is set to take a page from Trump, as well as Denver’s $296 million dud.

In other words: Colorado GOP, Let’s Ride (Brandon).

On Saturday, a group of around 400 Republican party leaders and grassroots activists met to choose their new chair.

The race kicked off last December with an event that is already legendary in local political lore: a Shooters shoutfest outside Boot Barn Total Landscaping in Greenwood Village, a suburban enclave home to family-friendly neighborhood parks, chain restaurants, and the Denver Tech Center—not exactly a hotbed of nationalist extremism.

In a parking lot outside the downmarket cowboy boot retailer, a group of radicalized grayhairs dubbing themselves the “Save Colorado Project” held a press conference declaring they would overthrow the current GOP leadership in the state because they are a “bunch of whores” and “asswipes” and were not enthusiastic enough about chasing down their hallucinations about the stolen election and the deep state.

Among the group’s demands was further cloistering the party by ensuring only Republicans can participate in primary elections and opposing mail-in balloting—as well as any “electronic voting” (modern!).

This weekend, the Boot Barn Mafia got their first scalp, successfully replacing the old (Trump-friendly) leadership with a new chair so ensconced in the MAGA cult that he went to court to have “Let’s Go Brandon” formally added to his name.

I wish that were a joke.

State Rep. Dave “LGB” Williams won on the third ballot over a buffet of other election-denying freaks, most notably Tina Peters, whose collaboration with QAnon leaders to tamper with voting machines in order to “prove” the Democrats did the fraud (brilliant!) I reported on back in 2021.

Peters went on to a failed bid for the secretary of state nomination and ran her chair’s race while simultaneously being a defendant in an ongoing criminal trial. She was charged with six election-related felonies, and found guilty on the count of “obstruction of government operations.” She is set to be sentenced on April 10.

For a sense of who wields the power in the Colorado GOP, it was this felonious conspiracy theorist’s decision to buck party bylaws and give a pro-Williams endorsement speech between the second and third ballot that gave the new chair the votes he needed to win.

For his part, Williams might not have the criminal rap sheet of Peters, but he is no less whacked out. His court-rejected attempt to formally don a moniker calling for the sitting president to get fucked was part of a failed primary campaign against sitting far-right congressman Doug Lamborn last summer. This faceplant wasn’t Williams’s first foray into the realm of epic failure. As student body president at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Williams was impeached for a series of actions targeting gay students, including a McCarthyite campaign to out college Republicans and block funds for national coming-out day. In the state legislature, his most notable “accomplishment” is sponsoring a slate of anti-LGBTQ legislation that had no chance of passing.

He is also an anti-vaxxer. Of course.

In his speech accepting the new role Williams said, “We are the party that elected Donald J. Trump, and we are not going to apologize for that anymore.” (Minor fact check: Donald Trump lost Colorado twice, most recently by 13 points).

Pro-Trump, anti-gay, anti-vax. Determined to change the party rules to prevent independents from participating. This doesn’t seem like a path to success in a blue state. But maybe Mr. Let’s Go Brandon sees something I don’t.

With all hope of electoral victory in the near term dashed, the big question facing the Colorado GOP is an introspective one. How did the party go from rising stars to red dwarfs so fast?

I called some of the people who got me into politics and engineered the 1998 victory to see what they thought.

The top-line explanations provided are uncomplicated and maybe a tad too convenient: the state’s changing demographics, the takeover by Mr. Trump, and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

These excuses seem so obvious that rather than engage in a back and forth on the party’s downward trajectory, one strategist just replied cheekily to my query with an answer provided by ChatGPT. Our robot overlords cited a “combination of demographic and political factors,” specifically Colorado’s population becoming more diverse, “with an influx of younger and more highly educated residents who tend to lean left” as the reason the state has gone blue.

The humans who offered explanations from their own frontal cortex put a finer point on it.

In a lengthy chat late last year during halftime of a Broncos clunker, former Governor Owens reminded me that this trajectory was a long time coming. “We have long had an immigration into Colorado, from California . . . it started way back when. Remember joking about Gail Schoettler [his 1998 opponent] being from California?”

On top of the gradual population shift Owens cited, there was Donald Trump. “Over the last eight years, Trump has been a disaster for the Colorado Republican party. No bright side to what Trump has done here. Highly educated, suburban voters were turned off from the party. . . . Until we change the GOP brand away from Donald Trump, we’ll never be competitive in Colorado,” he said, pointing out that Colorado is the second most-educated state in the country.

I agree on all counts. But in some ways, pegging the entire problem to Trump seems like a bit of a cop-out. The Colorado GOP was already meandering down the road of decline when Donald was still determining whether he should fire David Cassidy (Rest in Power) or José Canseco for failing to sell the requisite amount of pizzas on Trump’s game show.

When I spoke this week to Dick Wadhams, Owens’s former strategist, he pointed to the 2009 Tea Party revolution as the origin of the morass. “I liked a lot of the activists frankly, but many of them were just out of their minds,” he said.

It was during the 2010 midterm that emboldened Tea Party activists reversed a decade of mainstream nominees for statewide office by vaulting one of their own, Dan Maes, to the gubernatorial nomination over Rep. Scott McInnis who became embroiled in a plagiarism scandal. (Macabre aside: McInnis, who at the time was seen as a moderate, environmentally friendly Western Slope Republican, reemerged in recent years as a MAGA county commissioner who endorsed Lauren Boebert.)

Maes’s primary triumph was short lived. The Tea Party favorite turned out to be a charlatan whose general election campaign was so weak that the Republican grassroots dumped him in favor of someone they thought was more electable and was running on a third-party ticket. Who was Mr. Electability, you might ask? Tom Tancredo. You won’t be shocked to find out how this story ended. Democrat John Hickenlooper won 51 to 36 to 11 in a GOP wave year before going on to one more term in the governor’s mansion and then a victory in the Senate. Ouch.

The response to this shellacking was not to assess how Republicans might offer a broader appeal in a diversifying state. Instead, the party became even more beholden to radical power brokers who wanted to push things further to the cultural right. For instance: In spring 2012, in the final days of the state legislative session, House Speaker Frank McNulty, a classic establishment Republican, reneged on an apparent deal with then Gov. Hickenlooper and refused to bring up a civil unions bill for a vote that was likely to pass. The result was hundreds of devastated gay couples protesting at the state capitol, weeks of withering media scrutiny, and then personal recriminations from within his own caucus. That fall, Republicans were swamped at the ballot box and McNulty was replaced as speaker by Mark Ferrandino, a Democrat and the first openly gay man in the history of the Colorado legislature.

In the years that followed, the beatings continued and morale did not improve. In 2013 and 2014, Eli Stokols wrote a series of profiles about Dudley Brown, the grassroots kingmaker behind the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a group that was “aiming to remake Colorado politics using hyper-aggressive and confrontational political strategies.” (Congrats on your success, Dudley. Colorado has indeed been remade!)

[Brown] built RMGO and the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) into a double-barreled fund-raising machine that bullies anyone who compromises Brown’s pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda. (A favorite showy tactic is driving around in a Pinzgauer, a boxy, big-wheeled Cold War–era Austrian troop truck that Brown calls his “political pain delivery vehicle.”)

Dudley used that pain to “take out moderates” in primaries, eviscerating what might’ve been a bench of electable Republicans in favor of a bunch of conspiracist gun nuts all across Colorado’s Front Range, where the electorate wanted the opposite: government action to address a string of high–profile mass shootings that had terrorized their once-safe suburban communities. Wadhams said he could cite a litany of races in the Denver burbs where more moderate or mainstream candidates were defeated in primaries handing over winnable seats to the Democrats.

The strategy put forth on the other side was different. While the Republicans tacked hard to the right, Democrats in the state put forward a literal blueprint for winning elections and advancing progressive causes: fund campaigns, campaign on popular issues, and elevate statewide politicians who have independent political brands that appeal to Colorado as it is, not as they wish it were. The fruit of their spoils has been two decades of nearly uninterrupted rule.

This past midterm was the first time it seemed as if the state GOP might be learning a lesson from all this losing. In primaries that featured both Republicans who presented as somewhat normal and Trump-endorsed, election-denying loons, Colorado was a rare place where the former triumphed.

In the Senate race, Joe O’Dea, a pro-choice business guy who has been on the receiving end of a few Trump bleats for his lack of subservience to the cult, emerged from the primary victorious. And in the governor’s race, a seemingly sane member of the Colorado Board of Regents, Heidi Ganahl, defeated a homophobic election-denier who wanted to eliminate “one vote, one person” and create a Colorado electoral college.

But, as it turns out, one good primary does not a healthy party make.

O’Dea and Ganahl both faced a decade’s worth of headwinds from the GOP’s toxic brand allegiance with Trump, but on the practical level, they got sucked into the crazy themselves.

One Colorado Republican strategist who has since left the party highlighted the pitfalls of running normie candidates amidst all the madness:

“How do you win Republican voters and be in the crazy rooms without dealing with the fallout of being in the crazy rooms?” she asked. “You remember, Owens ran on education and transportation.” You can’t do that now.

It’s not just the physical Republican events that become problematic for nominees, but the financial incentives, too. “Unfortunately the rhetoric from the left and the right is what raises money. Running on nonpartisan messaging doesn’t . . . so you basically have to have a self-funder.”

The result of swimming in this contaminated pool means you end up with even the more electable candidates sabotaging themselves through the process.

O’Dea felt compelled to oppose the compromise gun reform legislation that passed last year as being too liberal, despite it having the support of such known commies as Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn. And Ganahl ended up so deep in the Facebook fever swamps that she found herself not just believing, but vowing to address the imaginary scourge of classroom litterboxes she thought were being provided to address the needs of children identifying as felines.

So if O’Dea and Ganahl couldn’t make it a race, what might be the path forward for a party that is now led by a walking Pepe meme?

Wadhams is hoping demographic trends might start to work in Republicans’ favor, but he wasn’t exactly counting on it.

“Huge influx of new people has come to a grinding halt. Colorado is growing at a glacial pace right now. Millennials moved here and they are getting sour. Cost of living, crime, homelessness. . . . Maybe if that continues you can start seeing improvement at the margins. . . . But no, I don’t really have a lot of optimism. We’re going to take another hit when an election denier is elected chairman. Anyone who sees this is going to say it’s a nut house.”

Owens had on some rosier shades, leaning into the optimism that got him elected in the first place.

“The way to change that brand is to defeat Trump in the primary. It’s up to my party to stop being the Trump party by defeating Trump. It’s up to us,” he said.

If the party could do that and signal to Coloradans that they were able to clean their own house, then maybe, come 2026, voters might be willing to listen.

I was, naturally, suspicious. But Owens reminded me of his baseball fandom: “Hope springs eternal.”

Wadhams’s kicker seemed a little more likely.

“Think of it this way,” he told me. “You might’ve worked for the only Republican Colorado governor in your lifetime.”

0 notes

masterofd1saster · 1 year

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CJ current events 22nov22

What’s the worst that could happen?

Washington, D.C., wants to lower the maximum sentences for criminals and make life easier for criminals who illegally own guns.

The D.C. Council unanimously approved changes to the city’s criminal code, which would reduce maximum sentences for burglaries, carjackings, and robberies. It would also reduce penalties for illegal gun possession, including for carrying a pistol without a license and for being a felon in possession of a firearm.***

Meanwhile, as of September, there were 330 reported carjackings in the city, up 23% compared to last year. D.C. residents risk having their car stolen simply by loading or unloading groceries. Carjackings have been rising in the city since 2019, and it isn’t just their cars that are at risk. Washington Commanders rookie running back Brian Robinson was shot twice in an attempted carjacking in August, and a Pakistani immigrant was killed in 2021 when two carjackers flipped his vehicle.

The lower penalties for illegal possession also come as the city has failed to get its homicide issue under control. In 2021, the city hit 200 homicides in November, the most in the city since 2003. This year, the city hit 100 homicides in June, the fastest it had hit that mark since 2003. Homicides have increased every year in Washington, D.C., since 2017.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/dc-wants-to-lower-sentences-for-carjackers-and-felons

***

The Pennsylvania GOP-controlled House impeached Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner on Wednesday over allegations that his policies led to a spike in the city's violent crime.

Pennsylvania Republicans filed articles of impeachment against Krasner on Oct. 27 for "negligence of duty." Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff said that, under Krasner, there have been almost 1,000 homicides in Philadelphia in the last 22 months, as well as "over 1,000 carjackings since the beginning of the year," according to the Philadelphia Tribune.

The House voted to impeach Krasner 107-85. The vote will now go to the Senate, where critics need a two-thirds majority to convict Krasner. However, Republicans hold only a slight majority, so it is unclear whether they will be able to get the votes needed to oust the Philadelphia district attorney.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/pennsylvania-house-impeaches-philadelphia-da-larry-krasner

***

Nellie Bowles makes a good point about political privilege

→ Can Dems handle investigating FTX? The crypto wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried seems like he’d be in a lot of trouble right now. It sure looks like he was running one of the largest financial scams in history, with his cryptocurrency “bank” at one point valued at $32 billion and Bankman-Fried on his way to being “the world’s first trillionaire,” according to the investment firm Sequoia Capital. But Bankman-Fried was also one of the largest donors to the Democratic party, second only to George Soros this past cycle. And so the touch from media and regulatory bodies has been extraordinarily, hilariously soft. SEC chair Gary Gensler, a former campaign finance chair for Hillary Clinton, has long been cozy with Bankman-Fried, helping his business grow (when you give that much money, it’s only fair to get a little something back). From Fortune magazine: “Cop-on-the-beat Gensler not only failed to spot the crime—he appeared set to go along with a legislative strategy that would have given SBF a regulatory moat and made him king of the U.S. crypto market.”

It’s a family operation. Bankman-Fried’s parents are Stanford Law School professors and deeply involved with Democratic party leadership. His mother, Barbara Fried, has helped raise tens of millions for Democrats through her PAC, Mind the Gap. His father, Joseph Bankman, helped draft tax legislation for Elizabeth Warren.

So the media has decided for now that the young Bankman-Fried was just a goofy overextended do-gooder. As the NYT put it this week: “His ambitions exceeded his grasp” and he was just super “overextended.” Same thing happens when I make too many work commitments—I end up in the Bahamas with a billion dollars. SBF is still on the line-up to speak at an upcoming NYT event with Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury.

The man who cleaned up Enron—John Ray III—has been dragged back in now to clean up FTX. And here’s what he said in bankruptcy filings: “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”

(Enron lost its shareholders $74 billion.)

For his part, Bankman-Fried is being pretty honest about who he is, which is a con artist. A Vox reporter had this exchange with the crypto mogul:

Never trust a grown man who writes “hehe.”

You’d think after saying something like that, the gloves would come off. Nope! The Vox reporter goes with the same old line that Bankman-Fried was just in over his head: “Why didn’t Bankman-Fried realize what was happening until it was too late?” she asks. That’s a question I’m sure his defense lawyer will use a lot. The poor child had no idea what was happening, your honor. This gentle, credulous treatment is 100% unrelated to the fact that Bankman-Fried has funded that very Vox vertical, a collaboration the company says is “on pause.” Ok.

Just in case, though, Vox is being sure to distance Democrats from Bankman-Fried with another article, headlined: “The impact of Sam Bankman-Fried’s support for Democrats is massively overstated.” See, it’s not such a big deal to be the party’s second largest donor who just spent $36 million supporting Dems in the midterms.

Last note on this is to point out that his mom, Barbara, is a major ethicist at Stanford who doesn’t believe in free will, personal responsibility, or blame, which is very much the mom you want in this situation. “The philosophy of personal responsibility has ruined criminal justice and economic policy. It’s time to move past blame,” Barbara wrote in the Boston Review.

Anyway, once you know this man is a complete scammer, this video interview is so much funnier: https://youtu.be/HPM6rf0-e6M

***

Couldn’t resist

***

Why isn’t this an ACLU case?

WILMINGTON, Del.—A lawsuit against Wilmington, Delaware’s abusive towing scheme will move forward after a federal district court ruled against the city’s attempt to dismiss the case. In September 2021, two victims of Wilmington’s tow-and-impound racket, Ameera Shaheed and Earl Dickerson, represented by the Institute for Justice (IJ), filed a lawsuit seeking to bring an end to Wilmington’s unconstitutional impound system.

“This is a great decision, and we can’t wait to get the city and the towing companies under oath at deposition,” said IJ Attorney Will Aronin. “Wilmington empowered these companies to keep and scrap thousands of cars in exchange for running the city’s impound program. That’s unconstitutional and today’s victory brings us one huge step closer to shutting the system down for good.”

Wilmington contracts out its municipal impound system to private towing companies and funds the whole system by letting these companies wrongfully take and keep people’s cars. The city pays these companies nothing for their services, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The price of Wilmington’s “cost-free” impound services falls squarely on vehicle owners in Wilmington, who are at risk of losing their cars to an impound system that profits off scrapping the cars they tow.

U.S. District Judge Colm F. Connolly determined that “Wilmington can’t have it both ways.” Either the victims have an argument that taking the whole value of their car for simple parking tickets is an excessive fine, or the owners have a claim that the city is taking property from them without compensation since their tickets don’t rise to the value of the cars. While the city recently announced reforms to make the towing program less abusive, these fundamental problems remain.

The city ticketed Ameera’s legally parked car six times in nine days. While her appeal of the wrongly issued tickets was pending, the city towed her car and demanded payment in full. When Ameera, a disabled grandmother of three, could not afford to pay the more than $300 in tickets within 30 days, First State Towing scrapped her car. Though Ameera’s lost car was worth over $4,000, Wilmington still demands payment and has actually increased what she owes with added penalties to $580. *** https://ij.org/press-release/wilmington-residents-win-first-round-of-lawsuit-challenging-citys-unconstitutional-impound-racket/

Would you tow her car?

***

PD’s specifically mentioned

Colorado’s Rules of Professional Conduct (the Rules or Colo. RPCs) impose the duties of competence, diligence, communication, and appropriate supervision. These duties affirmatively require lawyers to manage their workload to ensure proper client representation. Lawyers who manage or supervise lawyers – whether in a private law firm or other comparable setting1 – are also obligated to make reasonable efforts to ensure that subordinates’ workloads are suitably controlled*** https://www.cobar.org/Portals/COBAR/11.07.22/FINAL Opinion 146 - duty of workload opinion(7184264.1).pdf

***

BJS publishes Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2020

***

California eliminates jaywalking tickets unless it would make a collision likely.

California joins Virginia, Massachusetts, Nevada, Philadelphia, and Kansas City, Missouri, which have also recently reformed their jaywalking laws and enforcement practices.***

So, why is there a push to relax jaywalking laws now? One of the main motivations driving changes to these laws is the desire to reduce racial profiling. For example, Black people make up about 9% of the population in Los Angeles, yet they receive about one-third of all jaywalking tickets in the city over the past decade.*** https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/personal-injury/will-jaywalking-reforms-make-you-safer/

***

Sam Bankman-Fraud sniffs, “amateur!”

An Ohio man was arrested today on criminal charges related to his alleged involvement in a cryptocurrency investment fraud scheme that raised at least $10 million from investors.

According to court documents, Rathnakishore Giri, 27, of New Albany, allegedly misled investors by fraudulently promoting himself as an expert cryptocurrency trader, with a specialty in trading Bitcoin derivatives. As alleged in the indictment, Giri falsely promised investors that he would generate lucrative returns with no risk to their principal investment amount, which he guaranteed to return. In reality, Giri often allegedly used money provided by new investors to repay old investors – a hallmark of a Ponzi scheme. In addition, Giri allegedly had a record of investment failures, including a long history of losing investors’ principal investments, and misled investors about reasons for delays when they sought to cash out their investments or otherwise obtain the return of their “guaranteed” principal.*** https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/investment-manager-arrested-10-million-cryptocurrency-ponzi-scheme

***

America’s crime problem & the opportunity theory

Was Linwood Scott a motivated offender?

Was Margaret Mills Smith a suitable victim?

Was there a capable guardian?

*** On March 18, 1994, a stranger broke into then-19-year-old Margaret Mills Smith’s home on Stockton Road in the middle of the night and sexually assaulted her. The rapist entered the home via Smith’s two-year-old daughter’s bedroom window. Smith says her little girl saw the rapist.***

Evidence showed the suspect cut telephone lines and unscrewed porch and living room lightbulbs.

He surveyed the kitchen, picked up a butcher knife, and approached the 19-year-old who was awakened when the suspect put the knife’s blade on her neck.

After the attack, Smith says the rapist offered a cruel gesture and haunting comments.

The last thing he said to me before he left that night, he put me back in bed and pulled the blanket up to my neck as if he were tucking me in. He put the butcher knife up to my throat and said ‘You owe me your life.‘

Year after year the case remained unsolved. In 2019, after seeing news reports about untested rape kits, Smith called on Norfolk police to reopen her case.

In a matter of weeks, the decades-old cold case was solved, leading to the arrest of Linwood Scott as he was about to be released from prison on an unrelated conviction. Scott was incarcerated outside Richmond — just days away from finishing a 15-year sentence for burglary.*** https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/norfolk/man-convicted-in-1994-norfolk-rape-case-awaits-sentencing/

***

$18k

Prosecutors have dismissed charges against four Marines who were accused of rocking a gondola at the San Diego Zoo, causing the ride to fail and stranding more than 100 passengers in the air for two-plus hours.

The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the case “in the interest of justice,” Tanya Sierra, a spokeswoman for the office, told Marine Corps Times.

“After a negotiated agreement, we agreed to dismiss the case after 6 months of no new violations of the law and full payment of restitution,” Sierra wrote in a statement to Marine Corps Times.

She noted that the defendants have paid $18,260 in restitution to the San Diego Zoo.

The Marines had faced up to three years in prison on felony vandalism charges.

Sgt. Jacob Dean Bauer, Cpl. Brandon Gregory Cook, Lance Cpl. Brayden Stone Posey and Lance Cpl. Marquette Alexander Williams were arrested on Jan. 29 for allegedly stalling the San Diego Zoo’s Skyfari Aerial Tram.*** https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2022/11/16/charges-dropped-against-marines-arrested-for-san-diego-zoo-ride-halt/

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Melroy Cort case

Charges against an Etna area Marine veteran in a wheelchair were dropped this week after a social media video of his encounter with policer went viral.

Originally posted on Monday by a Virginia man via TikTok, U.S. Marine Cpl. Melroy Cort is shown being detained by Licking County Sheriff's Office Deputy Alexander Caldwell after he was accused of assaulting police officers, who were called to the scene for a dispute over a damaged fence. Pataskala Division of Police Officers Johnnessa Justice and Zack Sarver were also on site for the incident that occurred on Oct. 21.

Cort lost both his legs and suffered permanent damage to his right hand, as well as a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress, four months into his deployment to Iraq in 2005.

Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said their administrative team reviewed over three hours of body camera footage from the call and subsequent arrest.***

A court entry filed by Assistant Law Director Amy Davison on Wednesday moved to dismiss the charges filed against Cort, citing "conflicting surveys done since the filing of this charge and has led to a property line dispute." Davison said the issue is now a civil matter. Licking County Municipal Court Judge David Stansbury subsequently dismissed the charges. *** https://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/news/local/2022/11/18/charges-dismissed-against-etna-area-marine-veteran-from-viral-video/69653599007/

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Tragedy of violent crime

Family members are mourning the ambush-shooting death of a man killed just nine months after his brother was also slain.

Brandon Carpenter, a 28-year-old father of four, died Tuesday just after he left his longtime barber shop. Police say more than 20 shots were unleashed on him from at least two shooters.

His brother, 26-year-old Joshua Carpenter, was shot to death Feb. 21 near an apartment building in the 1700 block of 33rd Street North.***

Family members are mourning the ambush-shooting death of a man killed just nine months after his brother was also slain.

Brandon Carpenter, a 28-year-old father of four, died Tuesday just after he left his longtime barber shop. Police say more than 20 shots were unleashed on him from at least two shooters.

His brother, 26-year-old Joshua Carpenter, was shot to death Feb. 21 near an apartment building in the 1700 block of 33rd Street North.

“We miss our brothers,’’ said Demitri Carpenter, the oldest of the three brothers. They also have three sisters.***

Brandon was disabled, in part from a shooting in 2016 in which he was struck multiple times.

“He couldn’t work because he couldn’t stand on his feet for long periods of time,’’ Demitri said.*** https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2022/11/2-brothers-both-fatally-shot-in-9-months-birmingham-is-plagued-by-a-dark-cloud.html

***

Pretty good George Will column

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/18/democracy-needs-east-cleveland-gadfly/

***

Shooter is in custody

Five people were killed and more than a dozen others were injured in a shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado, officials said.

The venue, Club Q, in Colorado Springs, described the shooting as a "hate attack," saying it was "devastated by the senseless attack on our community." At least 18 people were injured, officials said.*** https://abcnews.go.com/US/dead-18-injured-shooting-colorado-club-officials/story

If you want to know about the dirtbag

Anderson Lee Aldrich is the 22-year-old shooter. Arrested for bomb threat June 2021? His dad is a Trumpkin? https://heavy.com/news/anderson-lee-aldrich/

***

Some big money names

A federal judge has ordered documents related to deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his associates to be unsealed.

In a decision on Friday, Judge Loretta Preska ruled several documents filed in a defamation case against ex-Epstein handler and lover Ghislaine Maxwell to be released amid objections they would harm the reputations of the people named in the documents.

Preska determined public interest outweighed the privacy rights of the eight "John Does" named in the documents, referred to as Does 12, 28, 97, 107, 144, 147, 171 and 183.*** https://www.foxnews.com/world/jeffrey-epstein-documents-unsealed-jugde-orders

*** Tues

Good

***On December 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will hear arguments about whether this arrangement is constitutional. In Consumers’ Research v. FCC , petitioners argue that Section 254 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which establishes the modern universal service program, is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority to the FCC. They also argue that the agency’s decision to outsource management of the program to the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) is an unconstitutional delegation of power to a private entity. If successful, the suit will rein in an increasingly unstable program and prompt Congress to put its universal service initiatives on firmer legal ground with more accountability.

The petitioners’ argument is quite simple. Article I of the U.S. Constitution provides that “all legislative Powers herein shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,” including the “Power To lay and collect Taxes . . . to pay the Debts . . . of the United States.” But with regard to the USF, Section 254 delegates that power instead to the executive branch. The FCC, not Congress, makes important policy judgments about what programs should be established under universal service and, more importantly, how to raise revenue to fund those programs. As a result, Congress has unconstitutionally delegated the legislative power to the FCC in violation of the separation of powers.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/fifth-circuit-hear-long-overdue-constitutional-challenge-universal-service-fund

***

Maybe if you cut back on virtue signaling you could cut down on crime....

司法部長梅裏克·加蘭發佈一份備忘錄以改善英语能力有限人士獲得服務的機會11/21/2022 12:00 AM EST 司法部今天發佈一份備忘錄，要求聯邦機構審查其提供的語言支援��作和政策，以便加強聯邦政府與英語能力有限人士的接觸。Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Issues Memorandum to Improve Access to Services for People with Limited Proficiency in English11/21/2022 12:00 AM EST The Justice Department issued a memorandum today requesting that federal agencies review their language access practices and policies to strengthen the federal government’s engagement with individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP).Tổng Chưởng Lý Merrick Garland đưa ra bản ghi nhớ nhằm cải thiện việc tiếp cận các dịch vụ cho những người có trình độ Anh ngữ hạn chế11/21/2022 12:00 AM EST Bộ Tư pháp hôm nay đã đưa ra một bản ghi nhớ yêu cầu các cơ quan liên bang xem lại việc thực hành và các chính sách tiếp cận ngôn ngữ của họ để tăng cường sự tương tác của chính phủ liên bang với những người có trình độ Anh ngữ hạn chế (LEP).***

I think I also saw some Tagalog, some Hongul, and maybe some Arabic?

***

FLINT, Mich. (WJRT) - A Flint man made a surprise discovery of military grade explosives concealed in a car door over the weekend.

Flint Police Chief Terence Green said a homeowner who lives on the city's north side found C4 explosives stashed in the door almost by accident on Saturday.

The man, who was not identified, traveled about 40 miles to a salvage yard in Capac to purchase a vehicle door. He was attempting to install the door Saturday, when he found the explosives hidden inside.*** https://www.abc12.com/news/local/flint-man-discovers-military-grade-explosives-concealed-in-a-car-door/article_68f410b6-69f1-11ed-97db-ebf763b55e4d.html

***

Good

One year after gangs of thieves looted Western Pacific trains leaving Los Angeles, a police task force has brought down two cartels that stole $18 million in high-priced goods and sold them through online marketplaces.

It was a familiar sight to see tracks leaving the Port of Los Angeles littered with boxes and debris during late 2021, the result of burglars who rifled through slow-moving trains loaded with goods. The items were destined for stores across the nation that had been decimated by the pandemic and awaited new goods.***

The Train Burglary Task Force, headed by the Los Angeles Police Department, has arrested 91 people and served 49 search warrants over the past several months, bringing the number of thefts down to almost zero. Six more arrest warrants are going out this week, said LAPD Detective Joe Chavez, who heads the task force.“

We’ve had probably 100 calls reporting thefts per day [last year], and now it’s down to nothing,” he said. “Now they are seeing thefts in other areas but not Los Angeles. They don’t come here.”*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/police-bust-los-angeles-train-cargo-theft-rings

***

Good 2

A federal task force has brought down the largest fentanyl drug lab in history by using undercover agents who ferreted out the operator selling on the dark web from his home in Los Angeles, authorities said Monday.

The Drug Enforcement Agency, FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office, and others described in a press conference how they worked to bring down dark web kingpin Christopher Hampton, 36, who created his own manufacturing and distribution business selling more than a million fentanyl and methamphetamine pills.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/federal-task-force-indicts-dark-web-fentanyl-kingpin

0 notes

qqueenofhades · 1 year

Note

I'm watching the races remaining to be called and I feel like I can hardly breathe.

Do you think the Dems are going to lose the house? I feel like things are going to get unpleasant (more so) if they do and I'm sick about it.

Thank you in advance for your reply. (if you have time)

Take a deep breath, first of all. We will be okay.

Second, yes, it's more likely that Republicans take the House than it is that Dems keep it. We don't know yet, but still. In any case, yes, they will do stupid things, because they are Republicans and performative dumbassery and cosplay fascism is the only thing they know how to do. They will hold garbage investigations of Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci and whoever else. I'm not going to lie, it will be very, very annoying and time-wasting and it will help no one.

However, if they do win it, it will be very, very narrowly, and that means they can't just waltz in there and do all the endless bullshit that they please. They, again, will try, but Qevin McCarthy is no Nancy Pelosi. He is a spineless sack of piss whose one and only talent is licking Trump's bloated orange backside and staying silent like a little bitch boy when his caucus is being all Nazi again. He will have a tiny majority that, if the Democrats hold the Senate, can't really accomplish anything other than making a nuisance of themselves and bloviating a lot. Half of his own members hate him. The American public, goldfish-brained though they are, can get a load of them doing a big fat lot of nothing. So. There is that.

Obviously, we don't want this to happen, but if it does, it is still not the end of the world. Keep an eye on the Senate races in NV, AZ, and GA; we need to win two of three of those to retain control, which will stop the nutcase GOPers from actually being able to pass anything apart from said time-wasting bullshit. If looking constantly at the numbers is stressing you out, try to take a break (although I know that is easier said than done as I can't put down my phone either). But yes: we have already averted the worst case scenario by a sizeable margin, and we can still work with what we have at the moment, even if that's a holding pattern to 2024. Because that was not all assured, and averting that outcome is definitely big.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

Eviction is over (if we want it)

Now that the illegitimate, undemocratic Supremes have voided the CDC eviction ban, and now that the cowardly Dems who control House, Senate and Oval Office have declined to pass an eviction ban bill, millions of Americans teeter on the brink of homelessness.

As we look at this looming crisis, which will increase the spread of covid, kill more Americans, and put a generations-long stamp of trauma on the people who lose their homes, we’re asked to side with either renters or landlords.

But that’s a false dichotomy. Americans owe $12–14b to their landlords, and Congress has authorized $46.5b in rental assistance that could make all of those landlords whole several times over. But the states have only distributed 11% of the money!

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/04/eighty-sixed/#helicopter-not-foundhttps://pluralistic.net/2021/08/04/eighty-sixed/#helicopter-not-found

Why are the states having so much trouble handing out money? Bureaucracy. You know, the thing whose supposed absence was cited as the source of America’s moral and economic superiority to the USSR.

What’s the source of this bureaucracy? Means-testing. The endless red-tape, so beloved of conservatives, that is meant to ensure that the “undeserving poor” don’t get any of the money earmarked for “hardworking poor people.”

(The irony, of course, is that conservatives are completely unconcerned with trillions in no-bid contracts for the beltway bandits who were supposed to be nation-building in Afghanistan)

https://defensesystems.com/articles/2021/08/19/afghanistan-sigar-contracts-pullout.aspx

(Nor do they care about Trump’s billions for crooks who were supposed to supply PPE at the start of the lockdown, but simply placed orders from China, got in line, and marked up the shipments to Uncle Sucker)

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/12/postal-petard/#prolongz

When it comes to delivering aid to the wealthy, conservatives hate red-tape. When it comes to preventing working people from starving or becoming homeless, conservatives put on a paperwork parade that outshine the pettiest Soviet commissar.

This contradiction arises from a cornerstone of conservative ideology — the idea of “learned helplessness.” Learned helplessness is a real thing that psychologists can induce in lab animals, discouraging them to the point of fatal listlessness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

But that’s not what conservatives mean by learned helplessness. For them, learned helplessness is the evidence-free conviction that if you give a person a “handout,” they will lose interest in “hard work.”

Think of all the fast-food “entrepreneurs” whose signage proclaims “no one wants to work anymore” because of “government handouts,” conspicuously failing to mention sub-starvation wages, irregular shifts, and abusive working conditions.

In conservativism, wealth is providential. Markets reward virtue, so the wealthy are inherently virtuous. They know the value of “hard work” and aren’t at risk of “learned helplessness” so they can get “bailouts” (not “handouts”) without risk of “perverse incentives.”

But conservativism contains a contradiction: because capital — by definition — earns its returns from someone else’s labor, any bailout is also a potential handout. If you save a locked down “heroic small business” with payroll support, you also “pay workers to stay home.”

And if you bail out landlords by making up their tenants’ missed rental payments, you also let the tenants “live for free” (ignoring for the moment that landlords whose mortgages and living expenses derive from tenant payments are literally “living for free”).

So here we are, about to endure a gaping, generations-long self-inflicted wound. We’re about to cost millions of renters their homes and potentially put their landlords in default because evicting a tenant doesn’t get you a nickel in back-rent.

You couldn’t ask for a neater demonstration of the extent to which “conservative business acumen” is a LARP — a set of culture-war performances rather than any kind of meaningful attention to profit and loss.

Because saving millions of your fellow Americans from destitution and homelessness isn’t merely the right (and, you know, Christian) thing to do — it’s also the smart business move. Homelessness is infinitely more expensive than rental assistance.

State conservatives are refusing to hand out $41.3b in order to create a decades-long cycle of public liabilities that will easily cost a hundred times that amount, and they’re not just hurting poor people — they’re euthanizing a whole shit-ton of rentiers!

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, it’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a party with “two primary core talents: selling quack supplements and lowering taxes.”

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/americas-acute-governance-problem/

After all, if you campaign on eliminating government due to its incompetence, then governing incompetently is a feature, not a bug. But for the nation (and the world) which needs its government to manage climate, pandemic, etc, this is a serious bug.

Meanwhile, Dayen has a great suggestion for how to dispense with all the red tape and save landlords and tenants.

Just station a federal official with a “big bag of money” in every eviction court. Every time a judge hears evidence that a tenant is behind in the rent, the official makes them whole out of the big bag of money, and the eviction is cancelled.

This is literally the worst way of doing it, a monumental waste of court resources and an inhumane way to treat tenants (and landlords, too). The only thing worse would be to allow that wave of looming evictions to wash millions of our neighbors onto the streets.

Oh, and note the Repubs aren’t the only ones who have a problem with learned helplessness. The Dems have the House, Senate and Oval Office and they can’t even pass the For the People Act, which will force all those red states to stop thumbing the scales for GOP candidates.

Because the Dems can’t figure out how to whip Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, they can’t nuke the filibuster and pass a wildly popular law that will stop the GOP from rigging every election to come with voter suppression and gerrymandering.

When the party with the triple-lock on power watches as Texas passes a law that disenfranchises Black and brown people as well as people in major cities, guaranteeing the midterms, the 2024 Congress and eternal rule, what is it but learned helplessness?

Image: Emojione (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emojione_BW_1F4B0.svg

CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Pbjamesphoto (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inyo_County_Courthouse,_California_by_dusk.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

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tanadrin · 3 years

Note

Honest question: how do you expect anyone to build a life that will be just fine irrespective of politics?Everything in my life which I’ve used to try and deal with shit has been destroyed by this pandemic, and the country is about to reelect the demagogue whose policy has been making that worse. This isn’t catastrophizing - the situation is a catastrophe. Is the solution just “move to a different country lol?” Because I imagine you know that’s actually rather hard.

if you’re American, and by “reelect the demagogue whose policy has been making that worse” you mean Trump

(if you’re not, and are referring to some other demagogue-led country, ignore this bit)

then I have to point out that 538 is giving Trump about a 12% chance right now, and he’s behind in both national and swing-state polls, and while 12% is not nothing, it is also only a 12% chance. multiply all pessimism contingent on a Trump victory by 12%, and all potential optimism contingent on a Biden victory by 88%. Remember that even a 2016-sized polling error does not give Trump a greater than 50% probability of winning; a Trump victory would require a Dewey-beats-Truman sized polling error, and while that’s happened before (when Truman beat Dewey, natch), it’s happened once before in the era of modern Presidential election polling. The odds right now of Democrats winning the Presidency, holding the House, and having a slim majority in the Senate are at about 70% (again, per recent 538 reporting), so catastrophism about the outcome of the American election is... well, catastrophism! Because the situation the US is facing is not actually catastrophe.

I know dirtbag left doomerism is popular on Twitter these days, but it’s, pardon my uncharitability, fucking stupid and just as divorced from reality as Fox News-poisoned right-wing conspiracism. On balance the likely outcome of this election is Democratic control of the legislative and executive branches, and--though this would be contingent on a strong Dem majority in the Senate, and popular appetite for it--there’s a nonzero chance of Dems packing SCOTUS and having control of all three branches of government. Small chance, to be sure, but far, far larger than it’s ever been in my lifetime.

(and if you think ACB being confirmed means a 99% chance that SCOTUS will steal the election... that is also stupid. the supreme court is only relevant in a handful of very specific circumstances where the election is nearly a tie, and those are not very likely circumstances! it would be very bad if we got Bush v Gore 2.0, yes; and being concerned about SCOTUS picks to avoid that kind of thing is reasonable; but letting fear of that scenario dominate your predictions for how the election will turn out would be extremely fucking stupid. I would put more money on the Dems packing the court in 2021 than I would on the court deciding the 2020 election. Not a lot, you understand; but I’d much sooner bet 50 euro on the former than the latter.)

(again, if you’re not American, ignore all the above; but AFAIK other likely demagogue led-countries you might be from, like Brazil, Poland, Hungary, Russia, the Philippines, and the UK, do not have upcoming elections.)

You build a life with meaning outside of politics the same way you build a life with meaning in general. Dan Savage (yeah yeah I know) talks about this w/r/t people who are lonely and have no short-term, or even long-term, prospects of a romantic relationship. You read, you have hobbies, you make friends, you refuse to let bitterness and rage consume you--and in this day and age, you get off social media, if that’s where your bitterness and rage is coming from--and you develop yourself as a well-rounded person so that if you do stumble into a scenario where a romantic relationship seems possible, you are an interesting and fun person to be in a relationship with, because you have a full and complete life outside that relationship.

So too with any other sphere of life. If thoughts of politics and anger against politicians is consuming your life, fucking stop consuming news about politics. It’s not doing you any good. By all means, vote in elections, even volunteer for political organizations, but also read, cultivate hobbies, make friends, get out of the house, get in shape, learn to bake--find out who you are in all areas of life besides the one making you miserable, in short. Yeah, coronavirus makes all this harder. It doesn’t make any of it impossible. I know it’s driving us all a little crazy--me included, and I’m a married Extremely Online homebody--but it won’t last forever. And you get to choose what to do with yourself in the meantime. You get to choose how consumed with resentment and frustration at the world you’re gonna be. You get to choose every day whether you’re going to let the fear that nothing is possible for you govern your behavior, or whether you’re going to try to accomplish something (however difficult, however small) despite the circumstances around you.

If you write 300 words a day--a short newspaper column--then in six or seven months you’ll have a novel. If you do 20 minutes of exercise a day, in six months you could be in the best shape of your life. If you spend an hour a day playing with Python, in six months you could be a fairly competent programmer. And so on and so forth. Mutatis mutandis, as far as the things you’re actually interested in, but the underlying point holds: just because the world feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket doesn’t mean you can’t build up your life in other areas. The ‘rona doesn’t stop you from having an online or socially-distanced book club, or from hanging out with friends outdoors, or from getting drunk on raid night with your WoW guild (A++ can recommend, btw).

And if you really can’t, if the anxiety or the anger or the worry or the sheer overwhelming weight of it all means you can’t even manage modest effort in the things you care about, you should assign a much greater likelihood to the possibility that your brain is broken, that your thoughts are lying to you (they do that sometimes!) and that your life might be greatly improved by some combination of anti-anxiety medication/antidepressants and talk therapy. Because God is dead, depressive realism is horseshit, and we have to make our own meaning in the world; and the human brain is, in fact, usually very good at that when it’s firing on all cylinders.

#Anonymous

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radicalurbanista · 4 years

Photo

there is one possible good outcome of this year that I’ve been thinking about a lot

It requires a lot of action before and after the election and a focused political strategy for the next few election cycles. It will have to meet certain conditions at critical times, but if it does, it could mean the end of the republican party the passage of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, and a labor party. Basically, it depends on splitting the Democratic party after ensuring Democrat control of Congress and the White House, DSA expansion, and eliminating the electoral college.

1) Circa the 2020 election

Biden wins the electoral college

This is almost completely dependent on white moderates in swing states voting for Biden and on massive protests during what will likely be a highly contested legal battle for the presidency. The protests are to show leaders that we reject any legitimacy of another trump term. Protests against trump will face even more violence at the hands of police and their conspiring with white nationalists. There is still the possibility of a coup. But voting alone will not ensure trump’s removal from office, everyone needs to be out in the streets and organizing strikes and protests. It will be a lot easier than stopping trump after he’s secured a second term. If this fails, protesting conditions will become even more hostile, and Americans will see no relief from the economic depression or pandemic. The U.S. may end as a dictatorship, but I have no idea when.

Democrats take majority control of the senate

This is essential as well. There are many senate seats this year where Republicans could be replaced by Dems. Here is a more thorough guide on who could be unseated. This will help with passing bills that Dems agree on. The more the better. Without this, splitting the party won’t be possible yet.

Democrats expand control of the House

This will make splitting the Dem party easier.

DSA (Democratic Socialists) expand control at the local and state level

The emergence of DSA to a national party requires many more wins at the local level. This will give them the chance to become the left-wing national party. 50% of Democrat voters support socialism, and that’s pre-pandemic and pre-depression. It is these voters who will be attracted to the DSA as they grow.

Democrats expand control in state legislatures

Once the census results are in and states have to redistrict, Democrat-controlled state legislatures will likely produce less gerrymandered conservative districts. This will secure more representational elections for the next decade.

2) Before the 2022 election

Eliminate the electoral college

This is another very difficult part. Conservative Dems (like Biden) oppose eliminating the electoral college. His current views may not matter once the DNC tells him to do otherwise. It will likely be moderate and left Dems who push this agenda forward, as it is within the best interest of the Dem party to make the popular vote chose the presidency. National support for it may also be higher than ever after the election, meaning more pressure on Dems to act while they can. If the electoral college is eliminated, Republicans will lose their chance at winning the presidency again, meaning trump 2024 won’t be possible

Begin major canvassing for M4A, GND, police defunding, and abolishing ICE

Once Dems control Congress and the White House, the left can be more on the political offense rather than defense. The DNC opposes Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, but support for them will only likely increase as more people die from COVID-19, suffer under medical debt, face record breaking unemployment and evictions, and climate crises continue to destroy areas. These bills are popular, and the DSA supports them, which will give them leverage in winning more elections and even in poaching Democrat representatives like Bernie and AOC. Support for abolishing ICE and the police are only likely to grow thanks to continued BLM organizing.

Counter Republican campaigns at the state and local levels

Republicans are unified, backed by money, and think long-term, but this election is different because their only platform is supporting trump. Should they lose the White House and Congress, and lose the electoral college, they will have to create a whole new base and platform goals to win a national election ever again. Local organizers will have to counter republican strategies at the local and state levels in hopes of killing the party. Republicans might be able to find a way to attract half of the voter base again, but they might also be clinging too tightly to racism, which, although strong, is no longer enough to win the presidency through popular vote. They could also lose southern state control as cities like Atlanta and Houston grow and their voters flip the state blue.

3) Circa the 2024 election

Enter the DSA into national elections

If the electoral college is gone and the DSA was won more local and state seats in 2020 and 2022, the DSA has a chance to enter national elections. As a popular left-wing party and with the decline of the republican party, the DSA can now attract left-wing previously “captured” by Dems. They may likely not win the presidency, but the DSA will force Dems to be the nation’s right-wing party and become the left-wing party in doing so. Formerly republican voters will likely switch to Dems as the Democratic party becomes more conservative and if republicans no longer have a chance at winning national elections.

Center campaigns around major bills not yet passed (M4A, GND, police defunding, and/or abolishing ICE)

This keeps important issues relevant and keeps Dems on the defense as to why they won’t pass the bills.

4) After

Continue building revolutionary potential now that the two national parties are welfare capitalism/socialism-lite and neoliberalism.

The DSA will likely capture much of the working-class vote, Millennials and Gen Z, and POC. If republicans are still around, their goal will be to find a new way to split the working class vote, likely requiring collaborating with Dems. However, their old strategy of splitting by rural/urban may no longer work. Businesses will do everything they can to stop a party from representing workers: it’s why the parties realigned after the New Deal.

This is all possible and will offer actual harm reduction to the working class for the first time since the 70s. None of it will be possible without massive organizing and protest efforts on the ground. None of it will be possible without strong interracial ties and community building. Voting is essential, but it’s the bare minimum and inadequate alone. During this period, BLM and new leftist movements could grow, we could see a militant left party to further curb U.S. domestic authoritarianism. We could see national policy that interferes less in the Global South. We would likely see increased protections for workers, a redistribution of wealth, and new public infrastructure. We could even see the end of the U.S. by the close of the decade, or at least how it would finally happen.

I’m happy to explain any point further, but I thought I’d put my degree to use and share a possible political strategy for the next decade that could use protest and direct action with electoral politics to end U.S. dominance and global capitalism while making the conditions for final stages of revolution less hostile. The next decade will be turbulent regardless, but would this ^^^ is the best way for that turbulence to lead to liberation.

#essay #politics #strategy #social policy #text #US #biden #green new deal #medicare for all #DSA #defund police #blm #party realignment #DNC #long post #revolution

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

Link

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 5, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security. Haugen noted that Facebook co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg controls about 58% of Facebook’s voting shares, meaning he sets the terms of the company’s behavior. Her documents, illustrating that Facebook addressed only about 1% of hate violent speech and that its own algorithms pushed disinformation, supported her general observations about the need for government regulation of the social media giant.

While Haugen was testifying, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone reinforced that message when he texted the ranking Republican on the committee, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, to note that Haugen had not worked directly on issues of child safety or Instagram at Facebook, facts Haugen had already established.

Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch issued a statement attacking Haugen as untrustworthy but saying, “we agree…it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet…. [I]t is time for Congress to act.”

Tonight Zuckerberg responded in a Facebook post of his own. He echoed Pietsch’s call for government regulation.He called the recent coverage of the company a “false picture,” with claims that “don’t make any sense” because the company has “established an industry-leading standard for transparency.” He wrote that “[w]e care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health.” He says it is “just not true” that “we prioritize profit over safety and well-being,” and that it is “deeply illogical” that they “deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit.” “It’s very important” to him, he says, “that everything we build is safe and good for kids.”

While information about Facebook has demonstrated the dangers the social media giant poses for our democracy, the congressional fight over the debt ceiling has brought into relief a different struggle for the same cause.

The Republican Party has now swung almost entirely behind former president Trump—one heck of a gamble as his legal jeopardy continues to mount. Today, a New York state court said Trump must give a deposition in the defamation case brought against him by Summer Zervos, the former "Apprentice" contestant who said he sexually assaulted her and sued him for defamation after he called her a liar. And as the January 6 committee continues to take evidence, bipartisan groups of lawyers have asked legal organizations to investigate and possibly disbar the lawyers who backed Trump’s attempted coup, John Eastman and Jeffrey Bossert Clark.

Nonetheless, right-wing insurgents are tripping over each other to move to extreme positions behind the positions of the former president.

In Idaho today, for example, as soon as the state’s governor, Republican Brad Little, left the state for Texas to meet with nine other Republican governors about President Biden’s approach to securing the border, Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin, who is challenging Little for governor next year, flexed her muscles over the state. She issued an executive order declaring she had “fixed” Little’s executive order prohibiting the government from requiring proof of vaccines to access services by extending the prohibition to schools, saying “I will continue to fight for your individual Liberty!” Then she enquired about activating the Idaho National Guard to go to the southern border.

Little promptly responded to her declarations with his own statement calling her actions “political grandstanding,” noting that he had not authorized her to act on his behalf, and saying he would be “rescinding and reversing any actions taken by the Lt. Governor when I return.” In the midst of all this posturing, Idaho is suffering a spike in coronavirus cases, with death rates at nearly three times the national average.

But while Republican leaders have encouraged the rush to the right because it fires up the party’s base voters, it may now have painted them into a corner from which they’re hoping the Democrats will rescue them.

The fight over the debt ceiling suggests that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is no longer in control of his caucus.

The debt ceiling is a cap on how much the Treasury can borrow to meet its obligations. We are now in trouble because under former president Trump, Congress created $7.8 trillion of debt, and now the Treasury cannot borrow to pay back that money. Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, have said they want the ceiling lifted, but they want Democrats to do it on their own.

But Republicans do not want the ceiling lifted by a simple vote, which the Democrats tried and the Republicans filibustered. They want to force the Democrats to raise the ceiling under the process of reconciliation, which cannot be filibustered. This would prevent the Democrats from using the reconciliation process for their infrastructure package that would support human infrastructure like child care and elder care, and address climate change.

Yesterday, Democrats called Republicans out on this manipulation, and today, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) set up a vote on the debt ceiling for Wednesday. Democrats today suggested that McConnell and the Republicans are not simply trying to stop the Democrats’ infrastructure plans, but want to sow chaos by crashing the economy. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wondered on Twitter whether the billionaires “who prop up McConnell actually want a default” so “out of ashes they can build their new oligarchy.”

But tonight Adam Jentleson, an expert on the Senate whose knowledge of the institution is unparalleled among scholars, pointed out that McConnell seems unable to agree to let the Democrats save the country by a simple vote because five or six Republican senators will refuse. So, unable to control them, he seems to be forcing Democrats into a position in which they have no choice but to break the filibuster. Jentleson suggests McConnell knows that his own caucus might obstruct even reconciliation, so he is trying to open a door to make sure Democrats can keep the nation from defaulting and crashing the U.S. economy.

The fall of the Republican Party into the hands of extremists who are willing to destroy it recently prompted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to declare, “I'm astonished that more people don’t see, or can’t face, America’s existential crisis.”

Restoring sanity to the country will require free and fair elections, which, after years of Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, will require federal legislation. The time for that to be most effective is running out, as Republican-dominated states are currently in the process of redistricting, which will determine their congressional districts for the next decade.

Today, in the Senate, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This measure would restore the parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court gutted in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder and the 2021 Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee decisions. Of the three voting acts currently in play, the John Lewis Act seems like the easiest to pass, since Congress has repeatedly reauthorized the 1965 Voting Rights Act, most recently in 2006 by a vote of 98–0 in the Senate and 390–33 in the House of Representatives.

And yet, even this measure will be a hard sell for today’s extremist Republicans. When House Democrats brought the John Lewis bill up for a vote in August, not a single Republican voted for it.

—

Notes:

https://apnews.com/article/facebook-frances-haugen-congress-testimony-af86188337d25b179153b973754b71a4

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2021/10/protecting%20kids%20online:%20testimony%20from%20a%20facebook%20whistleblower

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-set-to-appear-before-senate-panel-11633426201

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/04/biden-mcconnell-debt-limit-filibuster/

https://politicalwire.com/2021/10/05/schumer-sets-vote-to-lift-debt-ceiling/

Andy Stone @andymstoneFacebook Statement on today's Senate Subcommittee Hearing.

86 Retweets199 Likes

October 5th 2021

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WPOaPE6MyWMdMV9f218nsSjGGrmSjnkw/view

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-deposition-summer-zervos-lawsuit-expected-before-christmas-2021-10

Adam Jentleson 🎈 @AJentlesonThis is your tell. McConnell is forcing Dems into a position where filibuster reform is clearly their best and perhaps only option. Why? Because he can’t control his conference. Reconciliation presents multiple chances for obstruction and he can’t guarantee Rs won’t exploit them. GOP Sen @RoyBlunt tells us he and probably 44 GOP colleagues would be willing to give consent to waive debt limit filibuster but other 5-6 senator would not give UC

Erik Wasson @elwasson

172 Retweets502 Likes

October 6th 2021

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/john-eastment-jeffrey-clark-coup-consequences.html

https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/politics/idaho-lt-gov-janice-mcgeachin-vaccine-passport-order-covid-19/277-38c2fcb5-814b-4d33-ac7a-d9c6575cfe64

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/05/idaho-governor-guard-border-vaccines-515194

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #political #reconciliation #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP #facebook

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