Hostile Takeover of Washington is brewing

[drone]

A contrarian group that might just test/prove Nader's assertion that what the US really needs is billionaires with "social conscious" to solve America's problem with money in the political sphere:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0EZ05920140624

Why not just donate to Wolf PAC?

[Fisherking]

Illegal Immigration is a boon for the private prison system, and most of the corporations that absolutely deny a living wage! Every time I point out that your ideology is corrupted by big business, you say something like:



That's all fine and dandy, but the Tea Party is still a willing proxy for big business. Throughout this thread you've merely confirmed an ideological bias that I told you was there to begin with. How can your party be for the people, if the first steps towards improving conditions are antithetical to your party? C'mon, man. I don't expect you to come around to my view, but I do expect you to understand why the Tea Party will never appeal to most of us on "the left." And it would be nice if you understood why so many of us see them as almost a counter-popular force, a dangerous reactionary insurrection here to do the far right's bidding in the dumbest way possible.

Adopting a realistic view of the minimum wage will give a massive edge to whichever party fully endorses it first. The dems are tippy-toeing the issue because they still fear those of their own generation who believe in trickle-down, but they'll come around in less than a decade. If the Republicans (hah) or the Tea Party (double-hah!) were to come around first, forcing themselves to adopt a real economic stance instead of just parroting shallow reaganite garbage, they might actually avoid being an opposition party for eternity.

You are being silly. I am not Tea Party. Likely I am closer to Occupy people but I know both.

I know full well that there is a government corporate partnership. If someone thinks the ultra rich are in the game because they have a good heart they are fools.

I get the feeling you have only read about half of what I said and jumped to some wild conclusion.

Go back to the political compass and have a look. What does it say on the top and the bottom?

Tell me what the difference is between being ruled by a Stalinist or a Fascist. Have a look at the positions of Bush and Obama.

You are so worried about left and right and ignore up and down. From my read we have more in common with Milton Friedman than Obama. Hillary is closer to Romney than she is to you. But you would vote for her because she says she is from the left.

I fall left between Mandela and the Dalai Lama but over 5 points south. But you see me as a right winger.

Hopeless!

[ICantSpellDawg]

I would just like to say that indeed Fisherking's idea of tieing wages to company profit or similar measures (such as a measure for shareholder value) of company success is a better idea than a minimum wage.

With a minimum wage you create a temporary fix and will likely increase inflation instead of keeping it low enough so people won't have to care. Companies will see higher costs and adjust their prices to keep the profits and shareholder value they have now (or increase them even). Tieing wages to a measure that reliably represents company success means that if they increase their income they will also increase their labor costs at the same time, not by the same amount, but maybe a certain percentage so that gowth is still incentivized (although a certain upper cap may not hurt actually and could prevent monopole formation).

And no, without a cap it is not punishing success, it is just distributing the success to all who contribute to it. If you do include a cap where being more successful means you generate less profit/shareholder value, then this could be done per branch, so that a clothing company could still become more successful by venturing into the spaceship business. That would actually incentivize innovation, wouldn't it?

Profit sharing would be a better mandate than a minimum wage, although it would just create an outsourcing situation where the profit shows up in the umbrella company, but the bulk of the employees work for a contracting company that works on a shoestring. Laws would need to be passed to eliminate extensive strategy collusion between contractors and contractees, otherwise it is merely loophole.

The mantra is that those people take jobs no one else wants. The truth is that if no one took those jobs at the current pay levels than the employer would have to raise wages in order to find staff.

Sort of - most likely when it comes to low skilled employment the more likely outcome is that the jobs would move to a more "business friendly/human exploitative" international environment

Illegal Immigration is a boon for the private prison system, and most of the corporations that absolutely deny a living wage! Every time I point out that your ideology is corrupted by big business, you say something like:



That's all fine and dandy, but the Tea Party is still a willing proxy for big business. Throughout this thread you've merely confirmed an ideological bias that I told you was there to begin with. How can your party be for the people, if the first steps towards improving conditions are antithetical to your party? C'mon, man. I don't expect you to come around to my view, but I do expect you to understand why the Tea Party will never appeal to most of us on "the left." And it would be nice if you understood why so many of us see them as almost a counter-popular force, a dangerous reactionary insurrection here to do the far right's bidding in the dumbest way possible.

Eh - you confuse the TEA party with Low Tax/Pro Business types. In my experience the TEA party positions are much more populist than that and I think that you are doing yourself a dis-service in equating the two. The reality is that, while the TEA party may be co-opted by the mainstream Republican causes, it is much more blue collar and populist in outlook and the GOP knows this - hence their concerns

You are so worried about left and right and ignore up and down. From my read we have more in common with Milton Friedman than Obama. Hillary is closer to Romney than she is to you. But you would vote for her because she says she is from the left.

Yep

[ICantSpellDawg]

As Federal government is not here for me (not a rich person), I can only view the government in one dimension, the view that they are spending my money on stuff that isn't for me. So for my money, Bill Clinton set the standard as best president. By that same standard Obama and Bush are the worst presidents of my lifetime, and Bush Sr. stands a distant third.

No takeover of Washing is brewing. However, there seems to be glimpses of hope that someday localities (states) will be recovering some of their authority.

Hey, that would be a start

[Ironside]

Look, I am not saying there should be no laws regarding fair compaction. I don’t favor a total free market.

I am skeptical of large moneyed interests intervening to get their way. But stronger government is not necessary to prevent the abuses. Stronger government only infringe upon personal liberties.

It depends very much on how the goverment is formed and how it acts. A goverment can be formed for its people or against its people. The Swedish goverment are stronger than the US goverment. Yet it is towards the lower left in the political compass. It's more free.

Take taxes, that form of slavery (that all are legally forced to be in) you mention. Does paying taxes for free higher education increase or decrease your freedom? Increase, since the financial situation of your parents affect you less.
Paying for social security? Increase, since you don't have to take care of your parents if they've never been able to have very good finances.
Paying for public healthcare and sick leave? Increase, since you don't have to worry for financial ruin when getting sick.

That's the paradox of freedom, reducing a selective few freedoms increases it more in others.

Are the US goverment too much in the pockets of the big companies? Yes. But less goverment is by itself far from a solution. It could very well make the problem worse. Those companies and their money doesn't disappear. And that cooperating oligarcic structure will remain.

If you have studied the histories of government interventions you would know that they have never favored fair competition. They have been used as price supports for favored industries or individual companies or corporations. They favor the rich and not the people.

Goverment intervation is a mixed bag. What they always have is an agenda. Even when the agenda is free market. That's very obvious when breaking up monopolies for the sake if it, the results be damned (sometimes it works, sometimes you end up with worse service for higher prices).

The problem in the US is that the companies set or have heavy influence on the agenda. That can easily happen, but it's not a default situation.

I don’t necessarily favor less government regulation I just favor it at lower levels in government. I favor a more decentralized government where it is easier for the people to have a voice over one all powerful central government ignoring the will of the people to favor their rich benefactors.

It's a tricky odd one. Generally people seem to care less about their local goverment, than the national one. Bobby Jindal would probably not be elected if people really cared. It's a good one, but as always, you'll need an upper structure to take care of the things that can't be properly solved on the local level.

[Papewaio]

http://mobile.businessweek.com/artic...y-in-the-world
Costco wants the minimum wage increased. They pay on average $20/hr which is $8/hr more then Walmart.

The Costco CEO is on $325k per year.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I've always believed that government is merely a balance of powerful interests. That Western governments have become more "Democratic" over the past 300 years is a fashion rather than a long term trend, related to the elevation of "human beings" generally as a powerful interest group - unique to the modern era.

Concepts of voting and self government are merely mechanisms that powerful interests have to convince people that government is already theirs, so they don't need continue to fight it with arms or widespread civil unrest. I argue that the only protection of the rights of people is through real power; superlative education, combined strategic efforts, economic growth in assets and property, and stockpiling of civilian held arms. Thee agenda of pre-extant powers is to relieve us of these things in order to return to a world where we are once again chaff and chattle. They are succeeding again, and all of the digital technology and progress in the world shouldn't conceal this.

We need interests groups that are powerful advocates and we need to train our minds and bodies for the everlasting power struggle. Don't let them convince you that they will protect you anymore than the cows are fattened for slaughter. Our rights were enshrined for this age and this fight, they are not relics but transcendent principles reflecting man's abusive nature.

Marx has always been spot-on in his diagnosis - but dead wrong in his therapeutic prescription.

[Fisherking]

GC I am not dismissing your point of view, you are dismissing everything else.

I suggest building coalitions of key interests. You say no one else is like you so there are no grounds to do that. That only leaves marginalization, which means that nothing changes.

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/10_Pr...s_of_Economics

There are several schools of thought in economics. You can call them right or left if it suits you but they are more about liberal and control.

The economics practiced in America are very close to those practiced in Germany of the 1930s and 40s. You may buy private property but government tells you what you can do with it. I don’t see this as freedom.

Now, I didn’t disagree in principal that the minim wage was bad. What I said was that it doesn’t work. It is an inflationary process that robs you of the benefits you are trying to get if the company passes those cost along rather than taking it out of profit. They may or may not have to profit to allow them to absorb that cost. If they don’t they have only a few choices, pass it on, reduce workers, or go out of business. The only way around that is to have a totally managed economy where everything has set prices. Of course you can’t manage the price of imported commodities so if their cost goes up then products needing them will stop being made. Also every time it has been tried it has failed.

Minimum Wage was not an economic decision, it was a political one and they knew it wouldn’t work when they started it. But it made people feel good and it looked like politicians cared. Then there was the bale out. Who did that help? Did it fix the economy? It was bipartisan.

And do pray tell me what is right wing about a guaranteed minimum income and wages tied to profit vs. minim wage, food stamps and welfare?

@Ironside the US Constitution was founded on limited government. It is now unlimited government and we need to hit the reset button. It has very limited powers granted by the constitution but has gained massive overreach. That has to be addressed at a fundamental level.

The history of it would fill books but instead of a party for small weak government and a party of strong central government and the elite, we not have two parties of the elite and strong government.

The problem to be overcome is to get people to see what they do and not just listen to what they say.

Now, there are grassroots movements who identify with left and right who want a change. They have more in common with each other than they do with the power structure of the government. The power structure is doing all it can to co-opt them or demonize them and keep them apart.

People succoring to the propaganda.

[HoreTore]

Marx has always been spot-on in his diagnosis - but dead wrong in his therapeutic prescription.

Out of curiosity:

What was Marx' diagnosis, and what was his prescription?

[ICantSpellDawg]

Out of curiosity:

What was Marx' diagnosis, and what was his prescription?

Power struggle leading to worker exploitation to benefit of the few

Communism where human dignity maintained through respect for the needs of workers through active suppression of those who would wield power over them

[Beskar]

I fall left between Mandela and the Dalai Lama but over 5 points south. But you see me as a right winger

I think Political Compass is rather inaccurate, take a look at this.



edit: Put Fisher in the wrong position, missed 5 points south part, doh.

[ICantSpellDawg]

What the heck.
I'm to the extreme left of Dave Miliband? I just spent 45 minutes giving tribute to my passionate hatred of American poor in another thread.

[Beskar]

Did you dig up old political compass posts for that? Lol

Yes.

Except for Fisher, put him in between Llama and Ghandi, he is as south as you.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Notice how far to the left we all are from Obama. What's important to remember about the political compass is that even though it adds another axis, its still trying to arbitrarily graph something that's not very easily graphed. It goes out of its way to only use the actions* of politicians, without guessing at their inner beliefs.. while trying to match your inner beliefs without forcing to concede to reality, like the politicians its comparing you to have had to do. It is very hard to actually compare two peoples' politics. See myself and @Fisherking, for example. The only real difference is that I believe any "New Deal" that doesn't immediately lift the mass of impoverished Americans out of their misery is not only not to be accepted, but is actually a total waste of the opportunity being presented. He takes a longer view, but I would argue my view is more just. That's hard to graph.

*(or particularly outspoken speech that remains consistent throughout time, which you'll never get from modern politicians anyway)

I am a rather "conservative" Roman Catholic who rejects a robust legal system and supports small and localized minarchist government, while believing in international structural poverty relief (and loathing the American poor), encouraging military aid to overthrow nearly every non-western, human rights abusing government. I also want to legalize nearly everything, especially guns, prostitution, drugs, and "Tiger Selfies". Personally, I have no idea where I am on that chart.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Out of curiosity:

What was Marx' diagnosis, and what was his prescription?

You never criticized my failure to understand the basics of Marxism. What's the deal? Are you feeling well?

[a completely inoffensive name]

The US Constitution can be for very limited government or it can be for very large government, just depends on your interpretation. What it specifies clearly is that whatever size we interpret it to be, the power is not collected among one position or organization but that there is a separation of powers to balance out various factions. When we defend the Constitution and invoke our allegiance to it, we are not declaring ourselves beholden to the personal views of a select few US citizens in the 1780s but to the rule of law which seeks to satisfy the citizens needs whether they be big or small in a way that protects as many as possible from abuse.

[Ironside]

@Ironside the US Constitution was founded on limited government. It is now unlimited government and we need to hit the reset button. It has very limited powers granted by the constitution but has gained massive overreach. That has to be addressed at a fundamental level.

The history of it would fill books but instead of a party for small weak government and a party of strong central government and the elite, we not have two parties of the elite and strong government.

The problem to be overcome is to get people to see what they do and not just listen to what they say.

The US and the world is different than it was 1787. Looking back on it as a reset button is the wrong way to look at it. What it is good to looking back on is that it's supposed to prevent power abuse from the goverment. A modern extension is to also protect its citizens. That's still controversial for some Americans, but the thing is that the society is built on that now, and that removing this would be disastrous.

So a natural extended mission for the state is to protect its citizen from power abuse, both from the state itself and from other sources. Agreed?

Both you and GC wants to reduce the power abuse. But you disagree on the methods. And yours about gutting out most of the power in the goverment (because having no power means that you can't abuse power) is fairly radical.
One problem with a radical method is that it won't normally get a general support. Thus creating strife, but changing nothing (outside revolutions and similar). A second common problem is that it's not a solution, but a gamble. Do this radical action, causing major changes and the problem will dissolve by itself and no new problems will arise. Sounds probable...

As you said, both left and right can agree on some issues. But both need to identify the problem properly and accept that the solution to that will most likely not the their solution.

[ICantSpellDawg]

The US and the world is different than it was 1787. Looking back on it as a reset button is the wrong way to look at it. What it is good to looking back on is that it's supposed to prevent power abuse from the goverment. A modern extension is to also protect its citizens. That's still controversial for some Americans, but the thing is that the society is built on that now, and that removing this would be disastrous.

So a natural extended mission for the state is to protect its citizen from power abuse, both from the state itself and from other sources. Agreed?

Both you and GC wants to reduce the power abuse. But you disagree on the methods. And yours about gutting out most of the power in the goverment (because having no power means that you can't abuse power) is fairly radical.
One problem with a radical method is that it won't normally get a general support. Thus creating strife, but changing nothing (outside revolutions and similar). A second common problem is that it's not a solution, but a gamble. Do this radical action, causing major changes and the problem will dissolve by itself and no new problems will arise. Sounds probable...

As you said, both left and right can agree on some issues. But both need to identify the problem properly and accept that the solution to that will most likely not the their solution.

We are not all politicians. Let politicians moderate our views, but pull them in a certain direction. If a big man were to push a car, the car may seem to be moving slowly and cautiously, but the man pushing is probably about to blow a gasket and get a hernia. Such should be the relationship between a representative and his constituents.

[Papewaio]

Some recent historical context of how the world has changed.

"In 1776, the average life expectancy at birth for a U.S. citizen was 35 years. By 1900, life expectancy grew to 47.3 years. By 2002, it climbed to 77.4 years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. "

World has changed so has the infrastructue and government that supports it.

[Kadagar_AV]

May I address the question weather a hostile takeover is even plausible?

I honestly don't think so.

People are to rooted into being USAnian to agree to having militias controlling Washington. The army would deal with it quickly.

And even if some states wanted to opt out, I am sure they would do that by voting, not by arming up...

Amendments all aside (and I am all for guns), isn't it somewhat of a stupid belief that a hostile takeover of Washington would even be possible in the near future?

[HoreTore]

Some recent historical context of how the world has changed.

"In 1776, the average life expectancy at birth for a U.S. citizen was 35 years. By 1900, life expectancy grew to 47.3 years. By 2002, it climbed to 77.4 years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. "

World has changed so has the infrastructue and government that supports it.

Much of that is due to infant mortality, though.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Much of that is due to infant mortality, though.

It blew my mind when I saw the stats about this last year. Life expectancy at the point where you are past infancy has budged.

[ICantSpellDawg]

May I address the question weather a hostile takeover is even plausible?

I honestly don't think so.

People are to rooted into being USAnian to agree to having militias controlling Washington. The army would deal with it quickly.

And even if some states wanted to opt out, I am sure they would do that by voting, not by arming up...

Amendments all aside (and I am all for guns), isn't it somewhat of a stupid belief that a hostile takeover of Washington would even be possible in the near future?

I believe that it is. I don't believe that it is likely in the near future, but anything Is possible with enough people on board and a weakened and disreputable enough system.

I would still prefer to be governed by someone like Obama over some of the nuts who detest him. But if things were to get worse on the government side, the opposition would likely gain talent at government's expense.

There is just something that we all find detestable about government. You know the feeling acutely when you are living under those who don't respect you and who you didn't vote for. But especially when you did vote for them.