The two-party system presents the illusion of choice.
That's all that matters, really.
Oh there is a choice. It's just between two devoutly capitalist parties.
And what bearing does that have on the contradiction between the United States of America being founded on Government Of, By and For the People and it taking half a century to establish even universal white male suffrage?
But, to address your points: I'm no fan of Stalin, Molotov or Mao; and although, no, Lenin and Trotsky weren't exemplars of kindness, they never raped their slaves.
My response is to the slamming of the character of the US Founding Fathers. It struck me as "pot meet kettle". Very few 'great people' are exemplars of humanity - most are very much people of their time. To expect both is naive.
The two-party system presents the illusion of choice.
That's all that matters, really.
Prez #1 forewarned against permitting this to happen.
It is up to the sheeple to get their snouts out of the grass long enough to push/click a button other than Donkey or Elephant.
The two-party system presents the illusion of choice.
That's all that matters, really.Prez #1 forewarned against permitting this to happen.
It is up to the sheeple to get their snouts out of the grass long enough to push/click a button other than Donkey or Elephant.
Forewarned, but did nothing to prevent. And the problem was well established even in his day.
It's all well and good to rail against the sheeple, but a two-party system is built into the basics of any simple first past the post electoral system. There are ways to avoid it, but they have their own issues and require changes in the mechanics, not just complaints.
wholeheartedly agree.
My response is to the slamming of the character of the US Founding Fathers. It struck me as "pot meet kettle". Very few 'great people' are exemplars of humanity - most are very much people of their time. To expect both is naive.And what bearing does that have on the contradiction between the United States of America being founded on Government Of, By and For the People and it taking half a century to establish even universal white male suffrage?
But, to address your points: I'm no fan of Stalin, Molotov or Mao; and although, no, Lenin and Trotsky weren't exemplars of kindness, they never raped their slaves.
Well, don't get me wrong, the Founding Fathers, as far as slave-raping 18th-century plutocrats go, were pretty cool. I even actually kind of like a couple of them, although my favorite, as you can probably guess, was Tom Paine. Vive le Galt!
However, my "slamming" of the FFs was more than a petulant outburst brought on by Citizen X's affectation that I don't exist and that I was arguing for corporate control of the country.
To counterpose America was founded on the idea of "Government Of, By and For" etc., to the idea that America was founded on the idea of "Don't trust the government" is stupid. Federalists didn't trust the Democrats; Democrats didn't trust the Federalists; neither trusted "the people", and a wide range of "the people" didn't trust them.
Here's something I didn't know, though: Link
Some places that, before universal male white suffage, allowed property-owning women and free blacks to vote actually took away their franchise when property requirements were repealed.
Pretty f~@!ed up, you ask me.
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My response is to the slamming of the character of the US Founding Fathers. It struck me as "pot meet kettle". Very few 'great people' are exemplars of humanity - most are very much people of their time. To expect both is naive.And what bearing does that have on the contradiction between the United States of America being founded on Government Of, By and For the People and it taking half a century to establish even universal white male suffrage?
But, to address your points: I'm no fan of Stalin, Molotov or Mao; and although, no, Lenin and Trotsky weren't exemplars of kindness, they never raped their slaves.
Well, don't get me wrong, the Founding Fathers, as far as slave-raping 18th-century plutocrats go, were pretty cool. I even actually kind of like a couple of them, although my favorite, as you can probably guess, was Tom Paine. Vive le Galt!
However, my "slamming" of the FFs was more than a petulant outburst brought on by Citizen X's affectation that I don't exist and that I was arguing for corporate control of the country.
To counterpose America was founded on the idea of "Government Of, By and For" etc., to the idea that America was founded on the idea of "Don't trust the government" is stupid. Federalists didn't trust the Democrats; Democrats didn't trust the Federalists; neither trusted "the people", and a wide range of "the people" didn't trust them.
Not the coolest in your opinion, though, right? /ingratiatingsmile
So that's what you're up to in the goblin kennels!!!
[Yawns]
"Detroit not alone under mountain of long term debt"
http://www.freep.com/article/20130721/NEWS06/307210073/
"For years, watchdog groups and public-sector analysts have warned of the threat posed by unfunded liabilities. Much like the legacy pension costs that weighed on Detroit’s automakers before the Chrysler and General Motors restructurings of 2009, the worry is that revenues can’t keep up with growing debt and that rosy predictions for market returns downplay the actual financial risk."
What a mess. And governement officials, public sector unions, banks, corporations, and an "I don't care, someone else will pay for it" mentality ALL had a role to play. There's plenty of blame to go around.
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Well, don't get me wrong, the Founding Fathers, as far as slave-raping 18th-century plutocrats go,
At the risk of being flamed and/or flagged:
You can't rape your own slave. Rape is sex against one's consent, and as their legal owner it was left to him to provide consent.
Which, for the record, is an indictment of the evils of slavery not a defense of rape.
I'm convinced that you do exist... in the same way that Stephen Colbert and Rush Limbaugh do, in your style of writing. But I'm also convinced that you're as much a poltical rebel as Jon Stewart is a real news anchor.
However, my "slamming" of the FFs was more than a petulant outburst brought on by Citizen X's affectation that I don't exist and that I was arguing for corporate control of the country.
No the Goblin is to well read and knows the left too well to be a parody.
Its sad but both Jon Stewart and Colbert appear to be the most accurate news and current affairs reporters in the US...
Paul Krugman's opinion on the matter.
Ha. Krugman's idea of fantasy role-playing is his economic theories. The guy's incorrect, staggeringly so, more often than a broken clock.
I don't know enough about Krugman, but Detroit's decline has nothing to do with the creative destruction of markets and the decline of auto?
And for fun: Finally Got the News, a documentary on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
Well, don't get me wrong, the Founding Fathers, as far as slave-raping 18th-century plutocrats go,At the risk of being flamed and/or flagged:
You can't rape your own slave. Rape is sex against one's consent, and as their legal owner it was left to him to provide consent.
Which, for the record, is an indictment of the evils of slavery not a defense of rape.
Woooo, I love the sheer political incorrectness of this post. It is, I assume, factually correct, but having the sheer nerve to write this? Priceless.
Well, I didn't want to get into it because it's, um, slightly off-topic, but of course it's factually correct. I'm not changing my wordage, however.
Black Women's Narratives of Slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction
I don't know enough about Krugman, but Detroit's decline has nothing to do with the creative destruction of markets and the decline of auto?
This.
Again, Krugman cops to the gross mismanagement of the city. The thing is, after the infamous white flight, the city was left a mere skeleton of its former glory. Which means it has about 90% of the infrastructure needs (sewers, roads, fire/rescue services, etc.) while the tax base had been decimated.Nonetheless it limped along for a while, but especially during the 80s, with people like (former GM CEO) Roger Smith, the auto industry began to seriously turn on its workers and implode.
Detroit has long been in serious problems, and no amount of fiscal austerity or legislation short of declaring the entire city condemned and GTFO would have stopped its decline or the market forces that lead to it.
As thejeff points out, the bankruptcy of Detroit was forced by an appointee of Michigan's dbag governor, and is more political theater than anything. There are plenty of municipalities with a higher debt load than Detroit, but Detroit is a Democratic stronghold and, let's not forget, a chocolate city.
No the Goblin is to well read and knows the left too well to be a parody.
Well, not an intentional parody, anyway.
From Darwin to Detroit, workers revolution is the only answer!!!
Vive le Galt!
Indeed, white flight was/is no joke.
They didn't like it, so they moved.
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Can't speak for Detroit, but in Boston they moved because they didn't like sending their children to school with black children.
Which is well within their rights, but so am I when I despise them for it.
I think the economic reasons were more compelling, in Detroit's case.
I think the economic reasons were more compelling, in Detroit's case.
I'm not so certain.
"In 1971, in the case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation busing of poor black students to suburban white schools, and suburban white students to the city to try to integrate student populations. In the case of Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the dissenting Justice William Douglas observed that "the inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black; and the blacks, we know, in many instances are likely to be poorer..." Likewise, in 1977, the Federal decision in Penick v. The Columbus Board of Education (1977) accelerated white flight from Columbus, Ohio. Although the racial desegregation of schools affected only public school districts, the most vehement opponents of racial desegregation have sometimes been whites whose children attended private schools."
In a venue without identity or consequences, nerve is fairly cheap.Woooo, I love the sheer political incorrectness of this post. It is, I assume, factually correct, but having the sheer nerve to write this? Priceless.
Well, don't get me wrong, the Founding Fathers, as far as slave-raping 18th-century plutocrats go,At the risk of being flamed and/or flagged:
You can't rape your own slave. Rape is sex against one's consent, and as their legal owner it was left to him to provide consent.
Which, for the record, is an indictment of the evils of slavery not a defense of rape.
Emphasis added.
Comrade Meatrace is correct, in a narrow and legalistic way.
Can't speak for Detroit, but in Boston they moved because they didn't like sending their children to school with black children.
Which is well within their rights, but so am I when I despise them for it.
indeed. Detroit was a lot quieter about the racial reasons behind a lot of the flight, although the economic ones were certainly pepper in the stew.
There are plenty of municipalities with a higher debt load than Detroit, but Detroit is a Democratic stronghold and, let's not forget, a chocolate city.
Can't believe I missed the chance for a Musical Interlude!
I think the economic reasons were more compelling, in Detroit's case.
It's hard to decouple these "economic" issues from "racist a~~~+@!" issues though.
For example, more affluence white families fled inner-city Detroit to the suburbs. This was aided by things like redlining, mortgage discrimination, or "blockbusting" (where whites would collectively buy up entire blocks of housing to keep blacks out) which kept even the more affluent of the black families in the city.
"They didn't like it" in Detroit because Detroit had elected its first black mayor, and had recently desegregated its schools.
I'm not really sure what economic reasons there were anyway, since the economic decline of Detroit was precipitated BY not the cause OF the white flight.
The way I see it, we had a bunch of white people living in a city that was almost 30% black, but they were willing to tolerate it because their kids didn't have to go to school with black kids and the blacks provided cheap labor for the auto industry. The moment a black guy got into town hall and started talking about making things equal (some of which, agreed, had to do with implementing a more progressive tax policy) the white people picked up their toys and left.
But that's just my impression from the people, both white and black, that I've known from there. Remember, the white flight left behind all the poor whites as well.
I live in Nebraska, where we were not hit anywhere near as bad economicly as the rest of the country. The only thing that's really effected us are the interest rates, becasue they're federaly decided.
We have probably higher than normal property taxes, but other than that, it's very conservative fiscally. I believe this is why we weren't hit hard.
Now I make a decent middle class wage, enough to support myself and my fiance. Cost of living here is low compared to other cities our size (Omaha metro area) or larger.
If the city of Omaha started making bad decisions with public unions, or any other general fiscal malfiesance that causes taxes to go up, cost of living to go up, but salaries not to, and jobs to disappear, I would leave and try to find another place like what Omaha was, where I got more bang for my buck, and could maintain the same level of life I had before.
It would have nothing to do with race.
I have family in Michigan that used to live in suburbs of Detroit as children/teens, but moved 'up state' as adults to get away from it's decay. It doesn't matter the race or color of the folks that caused the decay, becasue it's ultimately all of the voter's fault. But noticing it coming and leaving isn't to get away from the non-white people. It's to get away from the decay, loss of income, and general malfiesance of the local gov't.
Obviously there are some people who probably left for race reasons. But probably way less did not than did.
According to the Wikipedia article, though, white flight began in Detroit all the way back in the '50s-'60s.
I'm speaking of my aunts and uncles, they were born in the late 40's, 50's and 60's. They grew up around and with black folks. That wasn't the problem, not for them.
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I obviously don't know your aunts and uncles, so I'm not passing judgment on them, just as I am not going to pass judgment on every single white Bostonian who moved to New Hampshire in the seventies.
However, the wikipedia article actually mentions Detroit quite often and it would appear that Detroit white flight was as much based on race as in Boston.
Funny snippet:
"However, some historians have challenged the phrase 'white flight' as a misnomer whose use should be reconsidered. In her study of Chicago's West Side during the post-war era, historian Amanda Seligman argues that the phrase misleadingly suggests that whites immediately departed when blacks moved into the neighborhood, when in fact, many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics."
I mean, you know, funny if you're a black-hearted cynic like myself.
Ignorance is hard to counter...
Anyway my penultimate post above wasn't aimed at your family members, it was aimed at the idea that white flight started because of deteriorating economic conditions.
From the articles that have been linked so far, I have gotten the impression that Detroit's decline didn't start until the late sixties...after white flight had been going on, according to the wikipedia article, for about a decadeish.
I obviously don't know your aunts and uncles, so I'm not passing judgment on them, just as I am not going to pass judgment on every single white Bostonian who moved to New Hampshire in the seventies.
I will, however, pass judgment on this book.
It's good.
I think Ontario will go bankrupt in less than 2 years time, due to the Liberals and NDP taxing and spending money like no tomorrow.
If the city of Omaha started making bad decisions with public unions, or any other general fiscal malfiesance that causes taxes to go up, cost of living to go up, but salaries not to, and jobs to disappear, I would leave and try to find another place like what Omaha was, where I got more bang for my buck, and could maintain the same level of life I had before.
That's all well and good, but what I'm saying is that's NOT what happened in Detroit. Or rather that's not solely or primarily what happened in Detroit.
Economics is a bugger (I should know, it's my major) and complex, and to lay the blame on the victims of this whole affair, the public sector workers who worked for years paying into their pensions to have the city turn around and tell them to eff off, is unfair.
The one thing I took away from the Krugman column is that this is what the market has brought. And that those that promote the concept of creative destruction don't think it's a good thing when they're creatively destroyed. Yes, there was mismanagement and malfeasance, but it was largely well-intentioned efforts to patch up problems that arose due to the movement of the free market. Efforts, might I add, that may well have worked were it not for the institutional racism of banks during the era of white flight.
There are winners and losers in the free market, and Detroit was a loser.
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The two-party system presents the illusion of choice.
That's all that matters, really.Prez #1 forewarned against permitting this to happen.
It is up to the sheeple to get their snouts out of the grass long enough to push/click a button other than Donkey or Elephant.
Forewarned, but did nothing to prevent. And the problem was well established even in his day.
It's all well and good to rail against the sheeple, but a two-party system is built into the basics of any simple first past the post electoral system. There are ways to avoid it, but they have their own issues and require changes in the mechanics, not just complaints.
The only way to ever break the two party system is to change the voting laws so that you can vote for as many people as you want, and the one w/ the most votes wins (this also almost certainly requires destroying the electoral college so the electors don't just disregard the will of the voters and elect an R or a D anyway). Suddenly, it's no longer a question of picking the lesser or two evils, you can give your vote to the 3rd party guy you actually like and still vote for the one you can sort of tolerate that "actually has a chance to win." The system would cause the most moderate candidates to float to the top over time, as they would be able to garner the most amount of voters who could stomach them... Though I suppose misinformation in the media and voter apathy could keep that from happening, considering how much of it there is now.
Forcing candidates to public financing or a set limit on campaign funds so they're all on an even footing (and getting rid of Citizen-United enabled Super PACs, if not all PACs) also wouldn't hurt.
And back on topic, this was a great essay about Detroit's problems.
If you liked NAFTA, you'll love the TPP!