Anyone who cannot acknowledge that shutting down public discourse damages us all has my pity. You are correct, this isn't a left-right issue, it's an authoritarian-liberty issue. And probably the most significant issue of the past hundred years.
Anyone who cannot acknowledge that shutting down public discourse damages us all has my pity. You are correct, this isn't a left-right issue, it's an authoritarian-liberty issue. And probably the most significant issue of the past hundred years.
I am not persuaded. Pubic disclosure becomes a threat to Democracy when Misinformation goes too far. The Mueller report is an example on the left and attacks on the capital building are an attack is the example on the right.
Both sides have gone too far and the RESULT will either be we lose our Democracy or we reduce public discourse in the name of reducing Misinformation.
Misinformation (the attack on the capital) or Democracy. You can have one or the other you can't have both. I vote to "hold our democracy"
"Misinformation (the attack on the capital) or Democracy. You can have one or the other you can't have both. I vote to "hold our democracy"
Most people saw through both the Russia, Russia Russia scam and the Qanon and stop the steal bullshit. Hence the Democrats failed to remove a duly elected president from office on bullshit charges and a small, loud minority of Republicans failed to keep another duly elected president from being sworn in. We don't need to limit free speech and we certainly don't need to put corporate assholes in charge of information.
You are right there is misinformation on both sides. Mueller's report was NOT misinformation. The way the MSM covered it was distraction from the issues that the DNC did not want discussed in the media, specifically M4A. Did you read HateInc?
Trump's LIE, that he won the election was Misinformation that right wing media VALIDATED with Trumps base.
The issue is what people do with the Misinformation. Do the ignore candidates that are running on issues they support because they are distracted with hype and exaggeration or do they attack the CAPITAL based on a lie repeated and exaggerated by the media.
My point stands. The Misinformation has gone too far. At this point we either allow it to go on and lose our democracy or we reduce and keep our democracy.. We can't have both
"My point stands. The Misinformation has gone too far. At this point we either allow it to go on and lose our democracy or we reduce and keep our democracy.. We can't have both"
But look at how the misinformation is being battled: the party in power enlists powerful, monopolistic corporate interests to do its dirty work. I would argue that this will accomplish the opposite of preserving democracy. For one thing, what information do voters wind up with at the end of such a process?
We agree that both of these parties engage in misinformation. The Democrats spam us with Trumpalooza and Wokealooza 24/7 to distract us from seeing they have no intention of really changing the money and power dynamics in this country. The Republicans have for decades been the masters of stirring up culture war outrage to distract from their agenda of turning 80% of the country into peasants, if not serfs. Each will take power in turn, and each will censor the bits they don't like. What are the people left with? If democracy depends on an informed public, then ideally the public needs access to the broadest range of information sources. They're already not getting that from a tightly-controlled corporate media. What then are they left with in a future in which the screws are tightened even further in the name of stamping out misinformation -- all on behalf of conniving misinformers?
I hear you. I am not saying i have the answers to this other than that we cannot allow massive amounts of the voting public to have this level of misinformation swimming through their minds and driving them to personal and public destruction of the nation.
I will be listening to what Wu says and does and hope that this subject is robustly debated and acted on.... If it is not then we wont survive...
And yes, the Republicans Agenda is turning Americans, its supporters in particular, into surfs. That alone should be a reason to change the first amendment
Russiagate:тАЭMueller was almost held in Criminal Contempt of court for saying there was a connection between the Russian Government and election tampering. They had NO EVIDENCE and had to drop the charges : A HOAX!
U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Robert Mueller III violated court rules in public statements (Mueller Report) about a Russian firm accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, a federal judge in Washington has ruled, while stopping short of disciplining either Justice Department leader.
United States District Judge Dabney L. FriedrichтАЩs presiding Judge in Russian Interference,
"Mueller did not establish a Kremlin connection to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which the report claimed was the KremlinтАЩs tool social media campaigns seeking to influence the 2016 electionтАЭ.
This is a "Who will watch the watchers?" problem. Someone has to establish what misinformation is in order for anything to go "too far." That requires a Ministry of Truth, something completely incompatible with freedom of expression. Even if we are able to define misinformation (it cannot simply be information that is inaccurate, because something can easily be approximately right even if it is precisely wrong), we're still left with the problem of selective truth-telling. Big Tech did not deny the Hunter Biden laptop story, it merely blockaded it. In my view, lying about its veracity would have been less misleading than simply prohibiting raising the topic.
Good point. But doing NOTHING is not an option. I think there are lots of good alternatives and people that try to dismiss the issue all together with phrases like Ministry of Truth are either disingenuous or fools
I would argue, and have argued, that Huxley was closer to the truth. I think Brave New World Revisited is one of the most prescient political books of the 20th century. That aside, you were the one who wrote that people using phrases like тАЬMinistry of TruthтАЭ are тАЬdisingenuous or fools.тАЭ Hence my comment.
I think conventional wisdom is that Huxley nailed it. I would tend to agree
"Ministry of Truth" is of course foolish. But differentiating non factual news from fact based news is not "Ministry of Truth" it is closer to Nobel prize winning and libertarian inspired Nudge Economics allowing people to chose the media they consume while also having it easily identified and people can make their own choice
Is that your way of saying I say a lot and it is not as simplistic as a MEME so it goes over your head.
Complex problems require fact base thinking and can frequently have more than one solution.
Are you looking for a MEME based solution or are you just opposed to using FACTS and EVIDENCE to form your views, you would rather have Tucker Carlson tell you what to think?
Lucas My point is that doing nothing is not an option. Misinformation has caused misinformed people to attack the capitol and much more.
Solving the problems caused by Misinformation is not some simple problem that can be sumarized in a MEME which you seem to want
Tim Wu has been brought in by Biden to start the dialogue on what should be done.
Instead of thinking BEN SHAPIRO or Tucker Carlson are going to solve this in one episode i think you should start understanding what serious thinkers like Wu are proposing.
OR you could just go with the MEDIA attacks that will be coming on him and IGNORE him thus going for a MEME based solution to this complex problem.
Sort of like thinking a "TRADE WAR" with China was going Magically bring back middle class jobs. It of course failed as any serious thinker knew it would
NO i dont have a meme solution for this. But i am fairly sure you will as soon as Ben Shairo 'owns" Tim Wu. RIGHT?
What a laughable response. Go back to the beginning. Bill Heath wrote that тАЬshutting down public discourse damages us all.тАЭ YOU said you were тАЬnot persuaded.тАЭ So you were advocating for тАЬshutting down public discourse.тАЭ You specifically stated we need to тАЬreduce public discourseтАЭ lest we тАЬlose democracy.тАЭ Was that just bullshit? Contrarianism? Or are you actually promoting that we тАЬshut down public discourse?тАЭ If so, put up or shut up. What measures can we take to shut down public discourse? And how doesnтАЩt that evoke Ministry of Truth connotations?
"Misinformation has caused misinformed people to attack the capitol and much more." About that much more stuff . . .
To loot and burn Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, St Louis, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta - need I go on? To defund police leading to unprecedented violence committed against minority group members, just not by the systemically racist Nazi bigoted horrible police, but by their neighbors. To dismantle gun control units while virtue-signaling politicians prattle on about how guns are the problem, then are shocked - shocked! - that shootings and gun deaths explode. Letting convicted rapists and murderers out of jail because they're at risk from COVID (far less risk than their next victims are from them), abolishing bail so nobody has to be inconvenienced by going to jail for a little sexual assault (she wanted it, of course). Race-based prosecutions. Throwing National Guard troops out of their hotels because they were protecting the President whom everybody KNOWS is a horrible racist Nazi; then bringing in 26,000 National Guard troops to occupy our capital city because a partisan Speaker of the House wants to institute permanent one-party control?
The much more stuff is the real problem. Misinformation meant that the Resistance succeeded in preventing Trump from governing. That's OK, maybe, until there's a global pandemic, and the misinformation goes on, allowing authoritarians to shut down the country, and preclude the only President we had from dealing with the pandemic. It meant that people were bad-mouthing the vaccines for political gain and were shocked, again, when people started refusing safe vaccines. I think I can make a case for mass murder there - except that the virus wasn't really a big deal. More people did from government reactions and lies than from the disease.
The trade war, as any serious thinker knows, finally put attention on China and the West's failure to do what any manufacturer knows to do, which is ensure alternative sources of supply. It put attention on China's theft of IP, which we discovered was an equal-opportunity game in which our "allies" were expropriating our pharmaceuticals research to turn out doses costing pennies in ingredients, but billions in
R&D.
Biden brings in people to control the dialog, not start it. The hallmark of your posts is fact-free proclamations, relying on "everybody knows." In more than seventy years, I've learned little, but I do know one thing absolutely: When the justification is "everybody knows," start checking your pockets for other people's hands.
How come when Trump told the FBI to release Russian hoax documents they didnt? Isnt the President supposed to be the boss? Would you not want to see all the documents? How come secret police can ignore POTUS? Who is in charge? When Mr. Smith went to Washington and put his feet on Nancy's desk It was '' Insurrection" How about " Intelligence community'' ignoring duly elected President. Oh! I forgot, Putin stole it from Hilary and gave it to Trump.
Mr. Trump is correct that since he took office, the United States has added more than 10,000 new manufacturing establishments, as measured by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. They are mostly small businesses. Nearly all of those establishments тАФ more than 9,000 тАФ employ zero to five workers, the statistics show.
Middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 since Donald Trump
became president in January 2017. Median household income has now reached $65,976 тАУ an all-time high and up more than 8% in 2019 dollars under the Trump presidency.
But the corporate media, along with big tech information manipulators, has become the ministry of truth. Any attempt to limit misinformation must start there. CNN & MSNBC et al have abandoned journalism in favor of political activism
If the "corporate media" is the ministry of truth then why do so many Americans have so many different truths on issues as one sided as Who won the 2019 Presidential Election.
The REALITY is that the media is paid by advertisers who wont sponsor reporting, even if it is true, on issues that hurt their business interests.
If we want a more informed electorate we are going to have start changing the business model for most media and either BREAKING up or REGULATING the big platforms
Regulatory CAPTURE is considered by most Economists the biggest problem with our economy. So it is no wonder that Facebook is BEGGING congress to Regulate them. That way they can then CAPTURE the people that write the laws and the people that enforce them.
In the eyes of the people running FB and GOOGLE breaking them up is worse than Regulation (they dont fear regulation when they know they can CAPTURE the Regulators). But they do fear COMPETITION what comes with breaking them up
Doing nothing is indeed an option, and is so in all cases. Often, getting out of the way of truth is all that's necessary. When people were allowed to know about the Hunter Biden laptop story, they were able to make up their own minds. Which resulted in eight percent of Joe Biden's voters asking if they could change their votes. Which was more than enough to reverse the results of the election.
We've had genius Presidents apply the finest minds in the world to managing our economy - Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover come to mind. None did good and the final two really fouled things up. The three regular guys with the sense to do nothing about the economy, and just get out of its way - Reagan, Clinton and Trump - produced the best results for the country.
Doing nothing, is not only an option, it is often the best option.
The reason why Reagan and Clinton presided over good economies is that both were elected after a problematic economic period and proceeded to deregulate markets - which causes an immediate bump but also causes bubbles. Both Carter and Bush Sr were incumbents who struggled making effective policy to combat inflation and or the consequences of Reaganism.
Bill, Reagan ushered in the period of large national debts, massive defense spending, and neoliberal monetary/de-regulatory policies which led to the S&L Crisis directly and eventually into the bloat of the federal spending (all while saying we could not afford social spending and that Americans who had relied upon the social contract -- were about to get cut off).
What makes this remarkable is that we now know that debts and deficits are not that problematic since we have the world's reserve currency - this means we could pay off our debt at any time ($28 Trillion at the moment) with a government issued coin if we wanted to.
However, the central issue is that we can spend money on most anything we decide (whether it is 800 US military bases around the world or healthcare or replenishing social security). Its a shell game and Reagan started this manipulation, not being honest about taking us from the greatest creditor in the world to the greatest debtor (all while High Finance rose to eventually be 40% of GDP and the poor fell into their sacrifice zone communities -- often labeled as lazy, poor and needing to pull themselves up by the bootstraps --- loosely translated this meant the US would allow minorities to benefit if they towed the empire line by spewing neoliberal propaganda.
Clinton is by far and away the worst. First, he and his administration were responsible for the financial crisis in 2008 by allowing the final cuts to Glass Steagall (which was an Act which provided a firewall between commercial and investment banking). They created a culture referred to as a Gresham's dynamic where bad actors drove out good standing people in business (Rating agencies, insurance, real estate appraisers, and small/local commercial banks). There are some other gems in terms of policy I will not bore you with as well (Telecom, Leverage, CFTC)...
Second, he rode the wave of financial consolidation. Prior to Clinton the banking industry was in its second or third wave of consolidation -- Clinton (Rubin & Summers) accelerated this process along with the rise of technology companies, "internet mania" (companies that would eventually be monopolies). Clinton deserves no credit for the economy in any analysis, as the main factor of the decade was the DJIA went from 2000 to 10000 by 1999 money doubled 2.5 times in the decade (this was due to the internet bull market, indebted consumer spending, and the rise of financialized institutions creating profits but not productive capital). This was an unprecedented period -- one in which I am particularly attuned to since I was a financial advisor for the entire decade at a TBTF investment firm. Clinton is a figurehead, and to your point had little to do with fixing problems --- which were apparent and needed and discussed at the time. Doing nothing to stop the Financiers of the boom and bust cycle created massive problems for us later on.
He sold out his own party and took the remaining people on drive to the right side of his party --- staking out a political position but tailoring the future of the DNC to be the courtiers of Wall Street (Hillary becoming senator in NY) and tech/pharma billionaires.
While I agree with your premise, about doing nothing until the opportunity presents itself to act, these examples totally whitewashes the final vestiges of the loss of the social safety and new deal policies ushered in by neoliberals from both parties. Reagan and Clinton have to be two of the worst Presidents in our nations history largely for the same reasons - highly militaristic, de-regulated and privatized markets, and screwed over the middle and lower classes in terms of policing social cuts, and culture wars.
Bill Heath - If you have the patience to read what McelroyJ wrote you can start learning about what has TRUTHFULLY happened to our economy over the past 40yrs. You notice he hangs the blame squarly on both Democratic and Republican Presidents. This is not some partisan narrative
The Empirical evidence on things like deficits vs growth and shifting of GDP from the poor and middle class to top 1% is now irrefutable.
Losing reserve currency status will bring this nation down, not borrowing more money at 0% interest.
What really matters is HOW we spend the money. At the end of WW2 the US was in debt this much and proceeded to have the fastest wealth creation in the history of man kind.
In 2021 it is ALL ABOUT pushing higher consumption (wages, infrastructure, health care, quality education, skills training etc...) to the poor and middle class. Accomplishing that will return this nation to rapid growth by way of growth in our middle class. The 40yrs of policy changes that need to be reversed will include things that both the GOP and Most in the Dem party oppose because it is easier for them to still think like you or because it makes their donor happy... The FIGHT for this country's economy is going to start from the bottom and it is going to be waged against the billionaires. Either you are in this with us or you are against us. But the battle has started
I would suggest you read a book on economics written after 2008. Today we have the Empirical Evidence to refute pretty much everythig you just uttered.
l would pick off your mistakes but i am fairly certain you don't let TRUTH get in the way when you have formed an opinion.
Lets just say you are making the CASE for why a MISINFORMED public will ultimately be our downfall before the surveillance state or platforms companies ruin us... God bless the simple minded
If you want to play in the big leagues you need to bring the heat. Mcelroyj... has clearly read the current literature on the economic issues you note. Look i used to believe the fantasy;s you believe and at some point, if you are going to make public statements like the one you made above, then you need to realize stating fantasy's is going to be called out... Apologies for the ad hominem attack... NO excuse on my side. My sincere appology
You appear willing to engage so long as you get to define what all terms, including mine, mean. Mcelroyj has clearly read a single school's current literature on economic issues, and you clearly have done the same. Since any failure to agree on every conclusion in that literature can only be based on ignorance, incompetence or malice - because that school of thought is the "right" and "just" one - then should I make statements that do not concur I'm spinning fantasies. If I don't believe you, I should ask you.
Your call for increased censorship is consistent. You want censorship as well in discussion of economics, declaring others' views as "fantasies" and admiring someone who limits his sources of information in the same way you limit yours. My own reading is not on economics, but on two fields that form a part of the economics spectrum - business issues, and complex systems.
I welcome having my errors called out because that way I can learn. Simply declaring that I haven't read anything on economics since 2008 and that my statements are fantasies, does not constitute calling out. It constitutes opinion as fact, something I lack the hubris to use. If you're going to call out my errors, please don't wave your hands in the air and declare that I haven't read current literature because I don't quote (nor subscribe to) the school that is in the ascendant in government today. Don't declare my beliefs fantasies and leave it at that.
I am pro-growth, which is impeded by crony capitalism, the mode du jour. Examine closely the positions of the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party, and you will find them two sides of a single coin, objecting to the results of crony capitalism. The use of government authority to tilt the playing field, which has been used to favor the large over the small, and which simply extends central planning to more of the economy, is incorrectly labeled capitalism. I would far prefer a socialist regime whose policies and their results can be measured and honestly confronted, than a crony capitalism system that insists it is capitalist, and points to its own failures as failures of capitalism.
Your first sentence is condescending. Please stop that. All it tells me is that you're likely in over your head, preferring ideology to measurement. You're free to adopt whatever authoritarian ideology best suits you; please grant me the courtesy to adopt whatever liberal ideology best suits me.
So youтАЩre essentially arguing that whichever party is in control should decide what constitutes misinformation and ban it (who else has the power to do so?)
By that logic, if Trump returns to office in 2024, youтАЩd be totally cool with him deciding what you can or cannot say, yes?
Power is concentrated in too few companies and spheres of influence. This means misinformation and information dissemination is in the hands of too few people. This also means that the establishment powers of media are just as responsible for their actions as consumers. Russiagate hysteria, censoring unpopular speech, and the history of the intelligence community with Operation Mockingbird should help you understand the problems with your post.
Hate Inc. is about NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox changing their formatting from fact-driven more neutral stance (even though that can be debated) to having a real point of view now and projecting it to divide people versus informing them.
Historically, US Media has been successful in dividing people, but now their business model is to keep people emotionally addicted to that point of view, "a side" often by attacking an opponent and "creating" disinformation or allowing it on their air waves via intelligence officials or one-sided experts from academe who covet careerism. Misinformation? Who decides what the facts are now? Trust has been lost and for good reason.
Lastly, we have not been a democracy in OUR country from a long time --- you should know this already Mr. Piketty (if this is really you, the famed French economist) as Gilens and Page in 2014 did a study on Oligarchy here in the US and the public's ability to shape policy. There are places one could look if they were interested.
The battle between capital and labor in this country was lost by the end of the Clinton administration, and has led to such massive consolidation of the rich (socializing losses on the public dime, and privatizing gains for wealthy via tax policy, economic bubbles, education/healthcare inflation embedded in the data, and massive wealth extractions after major market crashes.)
Democracy, at this point, is a fiction -- with a thin veneer allowing people to go about their business in fantasyland while the oligarchy consumes more and more people. See CoVid responses, Hurricane Katrina and other climate catastrophes as well as the fact we live on Bullshit mountain where the stock market (an indicator of rich people's feelings - Krystal Ball, 2020) has been an inflatable doll of whoredom during the pandemic being fellated by executive buyback programs, CARES Act money, and the Federal Reserves long policy of ZIRP. We have been on this anti-democracy path for decades - which is the intentional design of neoliberalism (the co-opting of the state to elevate the private business interest to a position of monopoly power).
Mcelroyj - All very well said. No, of course i am not Thomas...
As you I am sure know Gilens and Page's core thesis from 2014 has come under fair scrutiny and the election of Trump in 2016 further validated that the RICH do not control the Republican voters who in electing Trump as their candidate showed the Middle Class still have power, if only when they unite at the ballot box.
The electoral success of Sanders and others, subsequent to the 2014 publishing of their work also shed just criticism on it as has the growing acceptance that things like deficits don't actually cause inflation (they can but it is not a guarantee) and that higher wages for poor and middle class Americans is actually good for the economy all bode well for POLICY changes that the 2014 elites may have opposed but the 2021 elites are increasingly starting to accept.
In other words, all is not lost we can still fight, organize and win...
Don't fall for the pessimism that causes one to give up hope and stop voting. As Rickety points out in Capital and Ideology the declining rates of voters actually voting from the poor and middle class give power to the rich as they do VOTE.
That said, you did not refute my core point.
Misinformation is at the heart of swaying public opinion, whether it is used to divid us or to get us to literally attack the capital. Modern platforms have reduced the cost of being told what you want to hear and filtering out the other side thus materially increasing the power of misinformation.
Neal Postman's insight on TV News, that it allows us to medicate ourselves into bliss thereby sacrificing our rights, can be updated for 2021 and show that today we can believe what ever we want to believe and find others that will validate our FEELINGS including attacking the Capitol thinking the US population is cheering you as you pillage Nancy Pelosi's office and spit on AOC's door.
It is 2021 and we have the internet, big data and AI and personalization and targeting.
No, the TRUTH police is not what we need to fix the problem. But we do need to fix the problem because we have seen nations from Germany to Ukraine fall in large part due to misinformation.
Doing nothing should not be an option. I am going to listen to Wu with an open mind. How about you?
First, Gilens and Page 2014 concluding America an oligopoly is a remarkable finding, in that, there are about a hundred different indicators for this in the economy (and I'd be willing to list many of them if this conversation sticks on this "scrutiny" defense that things appear better than they are you present) but an infinitesimal number of scholars in the PMC are willing to say this out loud let alone make it a career trajectory. Class politics and democracy-building are anathema to the monied elite. So, for this to be in the public's consciousness along with another 100 different data points is remarkable and must be paid attention to, when we discuss the future.
Nonetheless, I think the narrowness of squeezing out a few 'hopeful' scenarios diminishes what is happening locally, regionally and statewide. This country has been co-opted a long time ago, and the people who have power now are: Financial companies, Big Pharma, Intelligence communities, war contractors, lobbyists, neoliberal globalist academics (Yale, Harvard, Stanford etc.), Neoliberal thinktanks, NGO's, and billionaires. These institutions affect more than just Presidential politics or who the face of empire is --- they create the mechanisms by which (rent seeking, artificially inflating real estate and stock markets, front-running, and federal monetary policy, and allowing for "a Greshman's dynamic" with stock buybacks (see William Lazonick's work) and chasing the ever-rising mantra of "growth".
Additionally, the elites are quite sweet pappy happy to let us talk about one aspect of the political theatre (Presidential politics and Congress) while they divide and conquer in other areas all across the globe -- it has worked with American public at least since 1970. Hope is a false narrative, it is better to be factual and accurate than to help people, feel good for a moment.
The real question is -- does pessimism accelerate the fight? I am a contrarian who thinks that pessimism and anger are cousins, and the American public's history of being mollified by propaganda, consumerism, careerism, keeping up with the jones, and sanctimonious sloth mean we need more people with less hope and more anger. More action. We need to be reminded that we are consistently losing, and will continue to lose until we make changes to our own individual and collective behaviors. Some may not be able to tolerate the journey nor the fight, addicted to the effects of Neoliberal capitalism, elevating things, money and ego above the public's ongoing fight for democracy.
How does this relate to your post? Well, all of us need a better understanding of what we are up against (not painting it as some redeemable project where democracy is waiting for the best salesperson who ultimately wins out because "it is a good idea". The people running the show, eat people like that for breakfast.
1. We need responses to the surveillance state.
2. We need a response to Pharma jacking up prices/private patents
3. We need to solve soon how much shit we consume (climate/health)
4. We need to confront power directly, loudly, and consistently
As far as the "open mind" thing, I think it swings too far, aligning with power. Most Americans have either a poor memory or a poor understanding of economic history and policy in this country. They do not understand, that we have world's reserve currency, which means that are country does not run like a household, that we can run deficits and even do most anything we want to do --- the CARES Act showed this bluntly. Open to power?
I think we have enough evidence for many of our leaders to make judgments. For Wu to think we need to reduce the importance of the 1st amendment, and then to broadcast that idea in way to persuade me, he's going to have offer substance (real substance) and not try to institute an authoritarian style policy without regard for how it may be used in the future --- precedent is huge. Open mind?
I'd rather have my mind, synthesizing the historical implications and real meanings of policy agendas versus cheerleading neoliberal influencers who are going through a transformation in their careers trying to align with power.
We need institutional analysis - this means anti-trust reform, repealing Citizen's United (money speech issues), and prevent politicians from becoming political ATMs.
Red, in the Shawshank Redemption, said "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and is reminded by his friend in the movie Andy Dufresne that "no good thing ever dies". Well, I love the movie and its a nice sentiment between male friends and all --- but American empire has killing people off one way or another for hundreds of years --- Hope?
People need to read their William Blum before they watch Shawshank -- but that has not happened in this country.
Again well said, strongly rationalized and rich with convincing evidence. None the less the nihilism is ultimately misplaced in my view...
Perhaps the violent protestor in the street who was not mollified by propaganda, consumerism and careerism ads something of value to the revolution but organizers and thoughtful followers who cross class lines as well as picket lines add far more value to the revolution than the angry nihilist happy to crack skulls and throw bricks through windows.
Perhaps we need both?
Gompers and MLK were not pessimists and they were not mollified with middle class comforts. And their power came as much from the upper middleclass as from the angry lower classes.
Any movement needs momentum and just like getting a project moving in the right direction it almost always starts with small wins not long shot reform... (In basket ball you hit a few lay ups and then start bombing from the outside)
M4A has a leader in Sanders, 100 votes (and growing) in Congress and support (and growing) from the majority of Americans. Insurance companies keep throwing money/ lobbyists and propaganda at the problem and keep losing the battle, though they are still winning the war.
When we get a Bernie Sanders and 100 votes in congress and the majority of citizens oppose the growing surveillance state then let me know... I'm right there with you.
But in 2021 M4A has the momentum to win in my lifetime and your's (I hope) and that should be the opening of the flood gates because like with Republicans and Trump winning in 2016 once there is blood in the water the sharks are on their way. Trump was by all measures a failed leader but retains fervent popularity with his base of Misinformed voters because he fought the enemy. And they got him there with their VOTES.
He proved VOTERS still have the power (poorly used though it may be thanks to misinformation).
I think your view on Wu is open minded and fair.
The policy ideas you call for, though i agree with them, would require an authoritarianism that would almost certainly result in outcomes different than you would want...
The nation has lasted 250yrs, Civil Wars, poverty and plague and it has done it with incremental change because getting CITIZENS support does not happen with LOGIC and Data it comes one step at a time and by proving itself out with the most simple minded of us to the most intellectual of us.
Sorry, not a huge movie buff so the Red reference goes over my head...
But hope is critical. However hope alone does not prevail. Grit, organizing and action lead to one success and then one more and then one more.
Rather than cinema i will look to history. The Robber Barrons of the Gilded age wielded just as much power as the Billionaire class in 2021... We did not defeat them by lopping off their head like in the French Revolution, which led to long term decline, instead we simply put them under duress and then cut a deal with them...
It can be done today and in my view that starts with M4A...
I am gonna let this sift in for a little while before I respond mostly.
Only two things for now after a brief read. First, I do not consider myself a nihilist or someone who views change needs to be violent. I think it is important to have resistance in all the various places under siege - and we do not have enough in any one single area nor do we have enough overall. This is a losing position. So, the question is how do we want to lose (short term)? We have to be honest about this, not sugarcoat with the Obama rhetoric.
Two, I think Trump's win in 2016 proved a different phenomena. His election confirmed what should have been the end of Neoliberal post financial crisis - with the left looking shattered, embarrassed and desperate to shift the attention to Russia. In concert, we see this in the number of people who did not vote in 2016 or 2020.
Capturing this population, the people who lost faith in our democracy (and rightly so) is the single biggest political issue not being discussed in our so-called democracy. A majority of people did not vote in 2016 - which brought up Trump.
So, while I admire your position of using hope to create change, I think it is a worn adage, easily manipulated by both party apparatuses with their neoliberal playbooks. We need different tactics for different times. I am not saying it shouldn't be a part of our toolbox at some point --- but at the present - no. We need the crucible of no hope for real change to challenge power. And best efforts must be made to keep people aboard - still fighting without using a slogan -- instead we need to say "this is what an opposition does".... We may never get M4A, but we keep fighting.
Which does not fit the nihilistic or violent playbook.
Looks like this guy has no one else who will listen to his pontifications of the obvious. God bless anyone who has time to read this irrelevant drivel.
This may seem like an immoderately idealistic comment, but it could be the case that "Democracy" has never existed. What happened on Jan 6 likely had an Intelligence Agency backbone that was well-disguised by a "misinformed" mob of Wal-Mart shoppers. The backlash has certainly played well into the hands of the Security State and its Big Media cheerleaders, so if the shoe fits...Do you believe the USA is in fact a "Democracy"? Aspirationally, I would say indeed it is; existentially, I think that we're not even close. I'm not sure how this thread thing works, so if you deem these comments reply-able, I can be reached at bartlebydick@yahoo.com. Thank you.
Sarcasm duely noted. I would start by breaking up the platforms so no one platform can "control" the message...
Fact Checking is not a Ministry of Truth.... It is just FACT CHECKING and every university in the top 100 could do that if paid properly and given a standard methodology
I understand your points and I think we would value the same outcome though i disagree to great extent. It's a larger discussion but IMO: Free expression puts the onus on THE PEOPLE to do the work to identify what each individual believes. The whole purpose of journalists was to inform as 1A was written at a time when most of the citizenry was uneducated. I would argue that the citizenry has become LESS educated. For all of the available sources of information we are collectively more ignorant than at any time in our history as a nation, arguably as a species.
I would also argue that it is no longer possible (if ever it was) to gain anything close to consensus of what is best for the nation. 350mil (that we know of), open borders, culture wars and a centralized media make it impossible.
There have always been gatekeepers to information but a local press reflected the views and ideals of people who were largely like minded and therefore a mandate for the elected. It's why representative government USED TO work (for the most part).
To me it seems the issue is NOT disclosure but the control of WHAT is exposed by those with the most access to and power over disclosure. IT's not the individual who posts on one of the social media 'rags' that the entire 'deadly pandemic' is a hoax created as one element of a conspiracy "hypothesis" (not a theory). It's not the individual expert in philosophy or history. It's the spoon feeding of opinions by clicks and algorithms created by mass media corporations for the purpose of getting everyone into lock step and silencing dissent OF ANY KIND whether opinion or 'misinformation' or even 'dis-information," ( lack of information masquerading as information).
My hypothesis? It's part of the move toward creating the Corporate States of North America (for starters). Government of, by and for the people is and will continue to be replaced by the combined synchronized efforts of the powerful who will benefit from that outcome.
The Mueller Report was TOTALLY LEFT misinformation. Russiagate:тАЭMueller was almost held in Criminal Contempt of court for saying there was a connection between the Russian Government and election tampering. They had NO EVIDENCE and had to drop the charges : A HOAX!
U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Robert Mueller III violated court rules in public statements about a Russian firm accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, a federal judge in Washington has ruled, while stopping short of disciplining either Justice Department leader.
Concord Management LLC, 12 Trolls v USA
United States District Judge Dabney L. FriedrichтАЩs presiding Judge in Russian Interference,
"Mueller did not establish a Kremlin connection to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which the report claimed was the KremlinтАЩs tool social media campaigns seeking to influence the 2016 electionтАЭ.
No, I didn't. It was so obviously a diversion from Hillary's and the establishment's embarrassing loss to Trump, plus a diversion from Podesta's leaked emails. I also read Consortium News which called it out as not fact based from the get go.
Until someone can explain to me how bankrupting every hospital in the country and reducing the amount of time practitioners deal with patients in order to increase their time doing government paperwork, I will fight against it. Please don't construe that to mean that I oppose a single-payer option. Disagreeing with your solution does not constitute disagreeing with your goal. Unless your goal is to complete the destruction of US health care.
None Sense... The Green party has no power and as such is simply reducing the number of votes in favor of M4A... Every pro M4A Democrat that loses a race against the Corporate Democrat is harmed by votes for the Green party. You may think you are superior, you are being played by the corporatists
About hacking DNC. How come you worry more about hacking DNC then about the dirt on Hilary that it revealed ? It most likely was inside job but if not, well I am a registered Democrat and I expect to get the dirt on a politician from CNN, NY times NPR. If the only one that will inform me is Russian spies then I want Putin to get Pulitcer Price.
You will only get dirt on Republicans from CNN, NY times NPR.
I also think it was an inside job. I even have a name, Seth Rich, shot twice in the back! The Dems will NEVER investigate any of it. They only investigate Republicans. Republicans aren't allowed to INVESTIGATE.
There were far more likely explanations ready at-hand. Did any Trump people ever meet with any Russians? Probably. Trump's campaign was amateurish and not in compliance with the accepted sophisticated ways of conducting skulduggery, such as use of cut-outs. Was there collusion? If there was any - and there might have been - it would have been because the campaign foolishly saw other campaigns past and present colluding with foreign powers, and failed to recognize that they did so only when obeying irrelevant rules such as "Only after Simon Says."
As for the Russians hacking the DNC, I didn't find that relevant. They didn't plant the e-mails, the DNC did that all on its own. Interfere with the election? They tried to influence voters, just as Canada, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel and most other major nations did. If they hadn't tried to influence US voters, they were incompetent.
Russian Collusion: It Was Hillary Clinton All Along
Memos, emails and texts now in Congress' possession show that the Justice Department and the FBI worked together both before and after the election with Fusion GPS and their main link to the scandal, former British spy and longtime FBI informant Chris Steele.
As a former British spook in Moscow, Steele had extensive ties to Russia. That's why he was picked as the primary researcher to compile the "unverified and salacious" Trump dossier, as former FBI Director James Comey once described it.
Steele's dossier, for which Fusion reportedly received $1 million, was largely based on interviews with Russian officials. And who paid that $1 million? As we and others have reported, it was Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, then under Hillary's control.
Why is a French economist concerned about a posting response from Taibbi's article comments? And why are using disingenuous arguments, like no one else in listening? It is beneath you.
I am not a French economist and your rant was right out of Rush Limbaugh.... No one listens to that shit but DITTO HEADS explicitly beause it is so disingenuous
Your NARRATIVE is Misinformation. You cherry pick the data to imply that ".. it was Hillary all along" Hillary funded the Dossier. So what. That is no secrete at this point. You IGNORE all f the other things that were brought out about Trump and his campaign and how corrupt it was.
DId he collude with RUssia. NO. Was it "Hillary all along" as you imply. HELL NO. So you are pushing Misifnormation with Cherry picked data points and ignoring data that refutes your claim
Classic misinformation technique. Not even nuanced or persuasive other than to the CULT of Trump memebers. Are you one or are you just in the cult of HATE LIBERALS? it is one or the other. right?
Tired of reading about collusion. Collusion is meaningless. Politics is the art of colluding. Foreign policy is collusion. The state dept colludes with foreign governments. JFC
You missed the point. He wasn't questioning whether the report was "misinformation." He was pointing out that it came from corporate Dem interests, not the actual political "left," which is outside of power in the duopoly.
He said the Mueller Report was totally left misinformation. It wasnтАЩt left misinformation. It was Democratic Party misinformation. The Dems are not the left. Read it again.
I agree. I have agreed all along. I was agreeing with you, and disagreeing with Piketty and postimpressionist. My comment literally states тАЬit came from corporate Dem interests, not the actual political тАШleft.тАЩ
So you never believed that the Russians influenced the 2016 election nor did they hack the DNC server?
You never believed the DOSSIER and you never believed Trump conspired with the Russians?
The Right is always responsible for their "Trouble Making Outliers" and the Left isn't because they are not CORPORATE? Corporate is where the LEFT money comes from.
Sorry but you are one in the same because that's who you voted for:
Multiple media personalities, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have suggested that The New York Times and The Washington Post should return the Pulitzer prizes they received for their "deeply sourced" and "relentlessly reported coverage" of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign allegedly colluding with Russia.
New York Times Writer Apologizes To Trump For Russia Hoax
Post - You are deep, deep in the world of propaganda aren't you. The Federalist Papers, WesternJournal, The Milinium Report....
That would be like me quoting Rachel Maddow to justify something.
Let me ask you. Do you ever wonder why the ONLY people on earth that believe your CONCLUSIONS in these narratives are the same people that think TRUMP did not LIE about winning the election?
I am sorry but you need to read HATE INC... you are so deeply misinformed it is not worth debate, right?
I was agreeing with you, peacelady thought I was disagreeing with you. I donтАЩt know how much more clear I can make it. I was saying the Mueller report was centrist Dem misinformation not тАЬleftтАЭ misinformation. I was disagreeing with Piketty and postimpressionist.
The Republicans don't need to masquerade in the Democratic party. They're going down all by themselves.
"Private Finance" you mean "Capitalism". In that case they used to be Capitalistic till they went Communistic/Socialistic, that's their downfall. They simply ran out of money! Humans are very expensive to keep when all they have to contribute is more humans. And Biden likes it that way!
I think you are still missing the point. Zucker was paid to make money and Trump made his network more profitable. But whether it was Mueller or Evangelicals organizing to ban abortion CNN's sponsors were not going to advertise if the Network did serious reporting on Campaign Issues like M4A or Lobbyists or Regulatory Capture or Bailing out Banks and not Home Owners in 2009.
Zucker runs CNN because he knows not to harm his revenue base and make more money for also increasing ratings.
The DEEP state did not do in Trump. Trump did in Trump and MSM distracted us all with idiotic and wild exaggeration
Anyone who cannot acknowledge that shutting down public discourse damages us all has my pity. You are correct, this isn't a left-right issue, it's an authoritarian-liberty issue. And probably the most significant issue of the past hundred years.
I am not persuaded. Pubic disclosure becomes a threat to Democracy when Misinformation goes too far. The Mueller report is an example on the left and attacks on the capital building are an attack is the example on the right.
Both sides have gone too far and the RESULT will either be we lose our Democracy or we reduce public discourse in the name of reducing Misinformation.
Misinformation (the attack on the capital) or Democracy. You can have one or the other you can't have both. I vote to "hold our democracy"
"Misinformation (the attack on the capital) or Democracy. You can have one or the other you can't have both. I vote to "hold our democracy"
Most people saw through both the Russia, Russia Russia scam and the Qanon and stop the steal bullshit. Hence the Democrats failed to remove a duly elected president from office on bullshit charges and a small, loud minority of Republicans failed to keep another duly elected president from being sworn in. We don't need to limit free speech and we certainly don't need to put corporate assholes in charge of information.
You are right there is misinformation on both sides. Mueller's report was NOT misinformation. The way the MSM covered it was distraction from the issues that the DNC did not want discussed in the media, specifically M4A. Did you read HateInc?
Trump's LIE, that he won the election was Misinformation that right wing media VALIDATED with Trumps base.
The issue is what people do with the Misinformation. Do the ignore candidates that are running on issues they support because they are distracted with hype and exaggeration or do they attack the CAPITAL based on a lie repeated and exaggerated by the media.
My point stands. The Misinformation has gone too far. At this point we either allow it to go on and lose our democracy or we reduce and keep our democracy.. We can't have both
"My point stands. The Misinformation has gone too far. At this point we either allow it to go on and lose our democracy or we reduce and keep our democracy.. We can't have both"
But look at how the misinformation is being battled: the party in power enlists powerful, monopolistic corporate interests to do its dirty work. I would argue that this will accomplish the opposite of preserving democracy. For one thing, what information do voters wind up with at the end of such a process?
We agree that both of these parties engage in misinformation. The Democrats spam us with Trumpalooza and Wokealooza 24/7 to distract us from seeing they have no intention of really changing the money and power dynamics in this country. The Republicans have for decades been the masters of stirring up culture war outrage to distract from their agenda of turning 80% of the country into peasants, if not serfs. Each will take power in turn, and each will censor the bits they don't like. What are the people left with? If democracy depends on an informed public, then ideally the public needs access to the broadest range of information sources. They're already not getting that from a tightly-controlled corporate media. What then are they left with in a future in which the screws are tightened even further in the name of stamping out misinformation -- all on behalf of conniving misinformers?
I hear you. I am not saying i have the answers to this other than that we cannot allow massive amounts of the voting public to have this level of misinformation swimming through their minds and driving them to personal and public destruction of the nation.
I will be listening to what Wu says and does and hope that this subject is robustly debated and acted on.... If it is not then we wont survive...
And yes, the Republicans Agenda is turning Americans, its supporters in particular, into surfs. That alone should be a reason to change the first amendment
Russiagate:тАЭMueller was almost held in Criminal Contempt of court for saying there was a connection between the Russian Government and election tampering. They had NO EVIDENCE and had to drop the charges : A HOAX!
U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Robert Mueller III violated court rules in public statements (Mueller Report) about a Russian firm accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, a federal judge in Washington has ruled, while stopping short of disciplining either Justice Department leader.
https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2019/07/08/judge-warns-prosecutors-about-public-statements-in-case-against-russian-firm/?slreturn=20201020210308
Concord Management LLC, 12 Trolls v USA
United States District Judge Dabney L. FriedrichтАЩs presiding Judge in Russian Interference,
"Mueller did not establish a Kremlin connection to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which the report claimed was the KremlinтАЩs tool social media campaigns seeking to influence the 2016 electionтАЭ.
https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-chides-us-over-statements-tied-to-mueller-prosecution/
This is a "Who will watch the watchers?" problem. Someone has to establish what misinformation is in order for anything to go "too far." That requires a Ministry of Truth, something completely incompatible with freedom of expression. Even if we are able to define misinformation (it cannot simply be information that is inaccurate, because something can easily be approximately right even if it is precisely wrong), we're still left with the problem of selective truth-telling. Big Tech did not deny the Hunter Biden laptop story, it merely blockaded it. In my view, lying about its veracity would have been less misleading than simply prohibiting raising the topic.
Good point. But doing NOTHING is not an option. I think there are lots of good alternatives and people that try to dismiss the issue all together with phrases like Ministry of Truth are either disingenuous or fools
So Orwell was a fool? How about Huxley? ЁЯШЖ
I certainly was not!
one could argue Huxley was closer to the truth. I dont think anyone is saying Orwell was a fool.
I would argue, and have argued, that Huxley was closer to the truth. I think Brave New World Revisited is one of the most prescient political books of the 20th century. That aside, you were the one who wrote that people using phrases like тАЬMinistry of TruthтАЭ are тАЬdisingenuous or fools.тАЭ Hence my comment.
I think conventional wisdom is that Huxley nailed it. I would tend to agree
"Ministry of Truth" is of course foolish. But differentiating non factual news from fact based news is not "Ministry of Truth" it is closer to Nobel prize winning and libertarian inspired Nudge Economics allowing people to chose the media they consume while also having it easily identified and people can make their own choice
Okay. So what are you proposing? "Doing nothing is not an option." Okay. What is your genius idea?
You're wasting your time. He says a lot without actually saying anything.
Exactly.
Indecisive
Is that your way of saying I say a lot and it is not as simplistic as a MEME so it goes over your head.
Complex problems require fact base thinking and can frequently have more than one solution.
Are you looking for a MEME based solution or are you just opposed to using FACTS and EVIDENCE to form your views, you would rather have Tucker Carlson tell you what to think?
Lucas My point is that doing nothing is not an option. Misinformation has caused misinformed people to attack the capitol and much more.
Solving the problems caused by Misinformation is not some simple problem that can be sumarized in a MEME which you seem to want
Tim Wu has been brought in by Biden to start the dialogue on what should be done.
Instead of thinking BEN SHAPIRO or Tucker Carlson are going to solve this in one episode i think you should start understanding what serious thinkers like Wu are proposing.
OR you could just go with the MEDIA attacks that will be coming on him and IGNORE him thus going for a MEME based solution to this complex problem.
Sort of like thinking a "TRADE WAR" with China was going Magically bring back middle class jobs. It of course failed as any serious thinker knew it would
NO i dont have a meme solution for this. But i am fairly sure you will as soon as Ben Shairo 'owns" Tim Wu. RIGHT?
What a laughable response. Go back to the beginning. Bill Heath wrote that тАЬshutting down public discourse damages us all.тАЭ YOU said you were тАЬnot persuaded.тАЭ So you were advocating for тАЬshutting down public discourse.тАЭ You specifically stated we need to тАЬreduce public discourseтАЭ lest we тАЬlose democracy.тАЭ Was that just bullshit? Contrarianism? Or are you actually promoting that we тАЬshut down public discourse?тАЭ If so, put up or shut up. What measures can we take to shut down public discourse? And how doesnтАЩt that evoke Ministry of Truth connotations?
"Misinformation has caused misinformed people to attack the capitol and much more." About that much more stuff . . .
To loot and burn Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, St Louis, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta - need I go on? To defund police leading to unprecedented violence committed against minority group members, just not by the systemically racist Nazi bigoted horrible police, but by their neighbors. To dismantle gun control units while virtue-signaling politicians prattle on about how guns are the problem, then are shocked - shocked! - that shootings and gun deaths explode. Letting convicted rapists and murderers out of jail because they're at risk from COVID (far less risk than their next victims are from them), abolishing bail so nobody has to be inconvenienced by going to jail for a little sexual assault (she wanted it, of course). Race-based prosecutions. Throwing National Guard troops out of their hotels because they were protecting the President whom everybody KNOWS is a horrible racist Nazi; then bringing in 26,000 National Guard troops to occupy our capital city because a partisan Speaker of the House wants to institute permanent one-party control?
The much more stuff is the real problem. Misinformation meant that the Resistance succeeded in preventing Trump from governing. That's OK, maybe, until there's a global pandemic, and the misinformation goes on, allowing authoritarians to shut down the country, and preclude the only President we had from dealing with the pandemic. It meant that people were bad-mouthing the vaccines for political gain and were shocked, again, when people started refusing safe vaccines. I think I can make a case for mass murder there - except that the virus wasn't really a big deal. More people did from government reactions and lies than from the disease.
The trade war, as any serious thinker knows, finally put attention on China and the West's failure to do what any manufacturer knows to do, which is ensure alternative sources of supply. It put attention on China's theft of IP, which we discovered was an equal-opportunity game in which our "allies" were expropriating our pharmaceuticals research to turn out doses costing pennies in ingredients, but billions in
R&D.
Biden brings in people to control the dialog, not start it. The hallmark of your posts is fact-free proclamations, relying on "everybody knows." In more than seventy years, I've learned little, but I do know one thing absolutely: When the justification is "everybody knows," start checking your pockets for other people's hands.
How come when Trump told the FBI to release Russian hoax documents they didnt? Isnt the President supposed to be the boss? Would you not want to see all the documents? How come secret police can ignore POTUS? Who is in charge? When Mr. Smith went to Washington and put his feet on Nancy's desk It was '' Insurrection" How about " Intelligence community'' ignoring duly elected President. Oh! I forgot, Putin stole it from Hilary and gave it to Trump.
It didn't FAIL:
US Manufacturing Soars to 15-Month High: ISM August 3, 2020 Updated: August 3, 2020
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-manufacturing-soars-to-15-month-high-ism_3448101.html?ref=brief_News&utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb&__sta=vhg.uosvpxfbhatvsaq%7CJUT&__stm_medium=email&__stm_source=smartec
The Trump Manufacturing Jobs Boom: 10 Times Obama's Over 21 Months
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/10/16/the-trump-manufacturing-jobs-boom-10-times-obamas-over-21-months/?sh=91aece258508
Manufacturers Added 6 Times More Jobs Under Trump Than Under Obama's Last 2 Years
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/01/manufacturers-added-6-times-more-jobs-under-trump-than-under-obamas-last-2-years/#7e304efe5635
Wages, Obama Economy's Weakest Link, Now Surging Under Trump
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/wages-obama-economys-weakest-link-now-surging-under-trump/
Manufacturing sector lost 575,000 jobs during the Obama
https://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/manufacturing-sector-lost-575-000-jobs-during-the-obama-administration/article_4ba56b00-2e33-5ab4-a797-fa8e6b358e94.html
Mr. Trump is correct that since he took office, the United States has added more than 10,000 new manufacturing establishments, as measured by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. They are mostly small businesses. Nearly all of those establishments тАФ more than 9,000 тАФ employ zero to five workers, the statistics show.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/politics/fact-check-trump-economy.html
Trump lowered interest rates - US housing starts soared nearly 17% in December to a 13-year high, according to a Friday release from the Census
https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/news/us-housing-starts-reach-highest-level-in-13-years-after-spectacular-december-surge/articleshow/73337174.cms
Middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 since Donald Trump
became president in January 2017. Median household income has now reached $65,976 тАУ an all-time high and up more than 8% in 2019 dollars under the Trump presidency.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/467328-its-joe-biden-versus-the-trump-economy
But the corporate media, along with big tech information manipulators, has become the ministry of truth. Any attempt to limit misinformation must start there. CNN & MSNBC et al have abandoned journalism in favor of political activism
Collectively they're
PRAVDA DNC
Party narrative truth
Irate
If the "corporate media" is the ministry of truth then why do so many Americans have so many different truths on issues as one sided as Who won the 2019 Presidential Election.
The REALITY is that the media is paid by advertisers who wont sponsor reporting, even if it is true, on issues that hurt their business interests.
If we want a more informed electorate we are going to have start changing the business model for most media and either BREAKING up or REGULATING the big platforms
Regulatory CAPTURE is considered by most Economists the biggest problem with our economy. So it is no wonder that Facebook is BEGGING congress to Regulate them. That way they can then CAPTURE the people that write the laws and the people that enforce them.
In the eyes of the people running FB and GOOGLE breaking them up is worse than Regulation (they dont fear regulation when they know they can CAPTURE the Regulators). But they do fear COMPETITION what comes with breaking them up
Doing nothing is indeed an option, and is so in all cases. Often, getting out of the way of truth is all that's necessary. When people were allowed to know about the Hunter Biden laptop story, they were able to make up their own minds. Which resulted in eight percent of Joe Biden's voters asking if they could change their votes. Which was more than enough to reverse the results of the election.
We've had genius Presidents apply the finest minds in the world to managing our economy - Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover come to mind. None did good and the final two really fouled things up. The three regular guys with the sense to do nothing about the economy, and just get out of its way - Reagan, Clinton and Trump - produced the best results for the country.
Doing nothing, is not only an option, it is often the best option.
The reason why Reagan and Clinton presided over good economies is that both were elected after a problematic economic period and proceeded to deregulate markets - which causes an immediate bump but also causes bubbles. Both Carter and Bush Sr were incumbents who struggled making effective policy to combat inflation and or the consequences of Reaganism.
Bill, Reagan ushered in the period of large national debts, massive defense spending, and neoliberal monetary/de-regulatory policies which led to the S&L Crisis directly and eventually into the bloat of the federal spending (all while saying we could not afford social spending and that Americans who had relied upon the social contract -- were about to get cut off).
What makes this remarkable is that we now know that debts and deficits are not that problematic since we have the world's reserve currency - this means we could pay off our debt at any time ($28 Trillion at the moment) with a government issued coin if we wanted to.
However, the central issue is that we can spend money on most anything we decide (whether it is 800 US military bases around the world or healthcare or replenishing social security). Its a shell game and Reagan started this manipulation, not being honest about taking us from the greatest creditor in the world to the greatest debtor (all while High Finance rose to eventually be 40% of GDP and the poor fell into their sacrifice zone communities -- often labeled as lazy, poor and needing to pull themselves up by the bootstraps --- loosely translated this meant the US would allow minorities to benefit if they towed the empire line by spewing neoliberal propaganda.
Clinton is by far and away the worst. First, he and his administration were responsible for the financial crisis in 2008 by allowing the final cuts to Glass Steagall (which was an Act which provided a firewall between commercial and investment banking). They created a culture referred to as a Gresham's dynamic where bad actors drove out good standing people in business (Rating agencies, insurance, real estate appraisers, and small/local commercial banks). There are some other gems in terms of policy I will not bore you with as well (Telecom, Leverage, CFTC)...
Second, he rode the wave of financial consolidation. Prior to Clinton the banking industry was in its second or third wave of consolidation -- Clinton (Rubin & Summers) accelerated this process along with the rise of technology companies, "internet mania" (companies that would eventually be monopolies). Clinton deserves no credit for the economy in any analysis, as the main factor of the decade was the DJIA went from 2000 to 10000 by 1999 money doubled 2.5 times in the decade (this was due to the internet bull market, indebted consumer spending, and the rise of financialized institutions creating profits but not productive capital). This was an unprecedented period -- one in which I am particularly attuned to since I was a financial advisor for the entire decade at a TBTF investment firm. Clinton is a figurehead, and to your point had little to do with fixing problems --- which were apparent and needed and discussed at the time. Doing nothing to stop the Financiers of the boom and bust cycle created massive problems for us later on.
He sold out his own party and took the remaining people on drive to the right side of his party --- staking out a political position but tailoring the future of the DNC to be the courtiers of Wall Street (Hillary becoming senator in NY) and tech/pharma billionaires.
While I agree with your premise, about doing nothing until the opportunity presents itself to act, these examples totally whitewashes the final vestiges of the loss of the social safety and new deal policies ushered in by neoliberals from both parties. Reagan and Clinton have to be two of the worst Presidents in our nations history largely for the same reasons - highly militaristic, de-regulated and privatized markets, and screwed over the middle and lower classes in terms of policing social cuts, and culture wars.
Bill Heath - If you have the patience to read what McelroyJ wrote you can start learning about what has TRUTHFULLY happened to our economy over the past 40yrs. You notice he hangs the blame squarly on both Democratic and Republican Presidents. This is not some partisan narrative
The Empirical evidence on things like deficits vs growth and shifting of GDP from the poor and middle class to top 1% is now irrefutable.
Losing reserve currency status will bring this nation down, not borrowing more money at 0% interest.
What really matters is HOW we spend the money. At the end of WW2 the US was in debt this much and proceeded to have the fastest wealth creation in the history of man kind.
In 2021 it is ALL ABOUT pushing higher consumption (wages, infrastructure, health care, quality education, skills training etc...) to the poor and middle class. Accomplishing that will return this nation to rapid growth by way of growth in our middle class. The 40yrs of policy changes that need to be reversed will include things that both the GOP and Most in the Dem party oppose because it is easier for them to still think like you or because it makes their donor happy... The FIGHT for this country's economy is going to start from the bottom and it is going to be waged against the billionaires. Either you are in this with us or you are against us. But the battle has started
I would suggest you read a book on economics written after 2008. Today we have the Empirical Evidence to refute pretty much everythig you just uttered.
l would pick off your mistakes but i am fairly certain you don't let TRUTH get in the way when you have formed an opinion.
Lets just say you are making the CASE for why a MISINFORMED public will ultimately be our downfall before the surveillance state or platforms companies ruin us... God bless the simple minded
Piketty, you're free to use ad hominem attacks; please understand that they rarely contribute to credibility.
If you want to play in the big leagues you need to bring the heat. Mcelroyj... has clearly read the current literature on the economic issues you note. Look i used to believe the fantasy;s you believe and at some point, if you are going to make public statements like the one you made above, then you need to realize stating fantasy's is going to be called out... Apologies for the ad hominem attack... NO excuse on my side. My sincere appology
You appear willing to engage so long as you get to define what all terms, including mine, mean. Mcelroyj has clearly read a single school's current literature on economic issues, and you clearly have done the same. Since any failure to agree on every conclusion in that literature can only be based on ignorance, incompetence or malice - because that school of thought is the "right" and "just" one - then should I make statements that do not concur I'm spinning fantasies. If I don't believe you, I should ask you.
Your call for increased censorship is consistent. You want censorship as well in discussion of economics, declaring others' views as "fantasies" and admiring someone who limits his sources of information in the same way you limit yours. My own reading is not on economics, but on two fields that form a part of the economics spectrum - business issues, and complex systems.
I welcome having my errors called out because that way I can learn. Simply declaring that I haven't read anything on economics since 2008 and that my statements are fantasies, does not constitute calling out. It constitutes opinion as fact, something I lack the hubris to use. If you're going to call out my errors, please don't wave your hands in the air and declare that I haven't read current literature because I don't quote (nor subscribe to) the school that is in the ascendant in government today. Don't declare my beliefs fantasies and leave it at that.
I am pro-growth, which is impeded by crony capitalism, the mode du jour. Examine closely the positions of the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party, and you will find them two sides of a single coin, objecting to the results of crony capitalism. The use of government authority to tilt the playing field, which has been used to favor the large over the small, and which simply extends central planning to more of the economy, is incorrectly labeled capitalism. I would far prefer a socialist regime whose policies and their results can be measured and honestly confronted, than a crony capitalism system that insists it is capitalist, and points to its own failures as failures of capitalism.
Your first sentence is condescending. Please stop that. All it tells me is that you're likely in over your head, preferring ideology to measurement. You're free to adopt whatever authoritarian ideology best suits you; please grant me the courtesy to adopt whatever liberal ideology best suits me.
So youтАЩre essentially arguing that whichever party is in control should decide what constitutes misinformation and ban it (who else has the power to do so?)
By that logic, if Trump returns to office in 2024, youтАЩd be totally cool with him deciding what you can or cannot say, yes?
No that is not the logic... Want to try again?
Trump was too busy saying what he was saying to decided what someone else could say.
Power is concentrated in too few companies and spheres of influence. This means misinformation and information dissemination is in the hands of too few people. This also means that the establishment powers of media are just as responsible for their actions as consumers. Russiagate hysteria, censoring unpopular speech, and the history of the intelligence community with Operation Mockingbird should help you understand the problems with your post.
Hate Inc. is about NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox changing their formatting from fact-driven more neutral stance (even though that can be debated) to having a real point of view now and projecting it to divide people versus informing them.
Historically, US Media has been successful in dividing people, but now their business model is to keep people emotionally addicted to that point of view, "a side" often by attacking an opponent and "creating" disinformation or allowing it on their air waves via intelligence officials or one-sided experts from academe who covet careerism. Misinformation? Who decides what the facts are now? Trust has been lost and for good reason.
Lastly, we have not been a democracy in OUR country from a long time --- you should know this already Mr. Piketty (if this is really you, the famed French economist) as Gilens and Page in 2014 did a study on Oligarchy here in the US and the public's ability to shape policy. There are places one could look if they were interested.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
The battle between capital and labor in this country was lost by the end of the Clinton administration, and has led to such massive consolidation of the rich (socializing losses on the public dime, and privatizing gains for wealthy via tax policy, economic bubbles, education/healthcare inflation embedded in the data, and massive wealth extractions after major market crashes.)
Democracy, at this point, is a fiction -- with a thin veneer allowing people to go about their business in fantasyland while the oligarchy consumes more and more people. See CoVid responses, Hurricane Katrina and other climate catastrophes as well as the fact we live on Bullshit mountain where the stock market (an indicator of rich people's feelings - Krystal Ball, 2020) has been an inflatable doll of whoredom during the pandemic being fellated by executive buyback programs, CARES Act money, and the Federal Reserves long policy of ZIRP. We have been on this anti-democracy path for decades - which is the intentional design of neoliberalism (the co-opting of the state to elevate the private business interest to a position of monopoly power).
Have a croissant, and a rethink here Thomas.
Mcelroyj - All very well said. No, of course i am not Thomas...
As you I am sure know Gilens and Page's core thesis from 2014 has come under fair scrutiny and the election of Trump in 2016 further validated that the RICH do not control the Republican voters who in electing Trump as their candidate showed the Middle Class still have power, if only when they unite at the ballot box.
The electoral success of Sanders and others, subsequent to the 2014 publishing of their work also shed just criticism on it as has the growing acceptance that things like deficits don't actually cause inflation (they can but it is not a guarantee) and that higher wages for poor and middle class Americans is actually good for the economy all bode well for POLICY changes that the 2014 elites may have opposed but the 2021 elites are increasingly starting to accept.
In other words, all is not lost we can still fight, organize and win...
Don't fall for the pessimism that causes one to give up hope and stop voting. As Rickety points out in Capital and Ideology the declining rates of voters actually voting from the poor and middle class give power to the rich as they do VOTE.
That said, you did not refute my core point.
Misinformation is at the heart of swaying public opinion, whether it is used to divid us or to get us to literally attack the capital. Modern platforms have reduced the cost of being told what you want to hear and filtering out the other side thus materially increasing the power of misinformation.
Neal Postman's insight on TV News, that it allows us to medicate ourselves into bliss thereby sacrificing our rights, can be updated for 2021 and show that today we can believe what ever we want to believe and find others that will validate our FEELINGS including attacking the Capitol thinking the US population is cheering you as you pillage Nancy Pelosi's office and spit on AOC's door.
It is 2021 and we have the internet, big data and AI and personalization and targeting.
No, the TRUTH police is not what we need to fix the problem. But we do need to fix the problem because we have seen nations from Germany to Ukraine fall in large part due to misinformation.
Doing nothing should not be an option. I am going to listen to Wu with an open mind. How about you?
Fair enough. A couple responses.
First, Gilens and Page 2014 concluding America an oligopoly is a remarkable finding, in that, there are about a hundred different indicators for this in the economy (and I'd be willing to list many of them if this conversation sticks on this "scrutiny" defense that things appear better than they are you present) but an infinitesimal number of scholars in the PMC are willing to say this out loud let alone make it a career trajectory. Class politics and democracy-building are anathema to the monied elite. So, for this to be in the public's consciousness along with another 100 different data points is remarkable and must be paid attention to, when we discuss the future.
Nonetheless, I think the narrowness of squeezing out a few 'hopeful' scenarios diminishes what is happening locally, regionally and statewide. This country has been co-opted a long time ago, and the people who have power now are: Financial companies, Big Pharma, Intelligence communities, war contractors, lobbyists, neoliberal globalist academics (Yale, Harvard, Stanford etc.), Neoliberal thinktanks, NGO's, and billionaires. These institutions affect more than just Presidential politics or who the face of empire is --- they create the mechanisms by which (rent seeking, artificially inflating real estate and stock markets, front-running, and federal monetary policy, and allowing for "a Greshman's dynamic" with stock buybacks (see William Lazonick's work) and chasing the ever-rising mantra of "growth".
Additionally, the elites are quite sweet pappy happy to let us talk about one aspect of the political theatre (Presidential politics and Congress) while they divide and conquer in other areas all across the globe -- it has worked with American public at least since 1970. Hope is a false narrative, it is better to be factual and accurate than to help people, feel good for a moment.
The real question is -- does pessimism accelerate the fight? I am a contrarian who thinks that pessimism and anger are cousins, and the American public's history of being mollified by propaganda, consumerism, careerism, keeping up with the jones, and sanctimonious sloth mean we need more people with less hope and more anger. More action. We need to be reminded that we are consistently losing, and will continue to lose until we make changes to our own individual and collective behaviors. Some may not be able to tolerate the journey nor the fight, addicted to the effects of Neoliberal capitalism, elevating things, money and ego above the public's ongoing fight for democracy.
How does this relate to your post? Well, all of us need a better understanding of what we are up against (not painting it as some redeemable project where democracy is waiting for the best salesperson who ultimately wins out because "it is a good idea". The people running the show, eat people like that for breakfast.
1. We need responses to the surveillance state.
2. We need a response to Pharma jacking up prices/private patents
3. We need to solve soon how much shit we consume (climate/health)
4. We need to confront power directly, loudly, and consistently
As far as the "open mind" thing, I think it swings too far, aligning with power. Most Americans have either a poor memory or a poor understanding of economic history and policy in this country. They do not understand, that we have world's reserve currency, which means that are country does not run like a household, that we can run deficits and even do most anything we want to do --- the CARES Act showed this bluntly. Open to power?
I think we have enough evidence for many of our leaders to make judgments. For Wu to think we need to reduce the importance of the 1st amendment, and then to broadcast that idea in way to persuade me, he's going to have offer substance (real substance) and not try to institute an authoritarian style policy without regard for how it may be used in the future --- precedent is huge. Open mind?
I'd rather have my mind, synthesizing the historical implications and real meanings of policy agendas versus cheerleading neoliberal influencers who are going through a transformation in their careers trying to align with power.
We need institutional analysis - this means anti-trust reform, repealing Citizen's United (money speech issues), and prevent politicians from becoming political ATMs.
Red, in the Shawshank Redemption, said "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and is reminded by his friend in the movie Andy Dufresne that "no good thing ever dies". Well, I love the movie and its a nice sentiment between male friends and all --- but American empire has killing people off one way or another for hundreds of years --- Hope?
People need to read their William Blum before they watch Shawshank -- but that has not happened in this country.
Again well said, strongly rationalized and rich with convincing evidence. None the less the nihilism is ultimately misplaced in my view...
Perhaps the violent protestor in the street who was not mollified by propaganda, consumerism and careerism ads something of value to the revolution but organizers and thoughtful followers who cross class lines as well as picket lines add far more value to the revolution than the angry nihilist happy to crack skulls and throw bricks through windows.
Perhaps we need both?
Gompers and MLK were not pessimists and they were not mollified with middle class comforts. And their power came as much from the upper middleclass as from the angry lower classes.
Any movement needs momentum and just like getting a project moving in the right direction it almost always starts with small wins not long shot reform... (In basket ball you hit a few lay ups and then start bombing from the outside)
M4A has a leader in Sanders, 100 votes (and growing) in Congress and support (and growing) from the majority of Americans. Insurance companies keep throwing money/ lobbyists and propaganda at the problem and keep losing the battle, though they are still winning the war.
When we get a Bernie Sanders and 100 votes in congress and the majority of citizens oppose the growing surveillance state then let me know... I'm right there with you.
But in 2021 M4A has the momentum to win in my lifetime and your's (I hope) and that should be the opening of the flood gates because like with Republicans and Trump winning in 2016 once there is blood in the water the sharks are on their way. Trump was by all measures a failed leader but retains fervent popularity with his base of Misinformed voters because he fought the enemy. And they got him there with their VOTES.
He proved VOTERS still have the power (poorly used though it may be thanks to misinformation).
I think your view on Wu is open minded and fair.
The policy ideas you call for, though i agree with them, would require an authoritarianism that would almost certainly result in outcomes different than you would want...
The nation has lasted 250yrs, Civil Wars, poverty and plague and it has done it with incremental change because getting CITIZENS support does not happen with LOGIC and Data it comes one step at a time and by proving itself out with the most simple minded of us to the most intellectual of us.
Sorry, not a huge movie buff so the Red reference goes over my head...
But hope is critical. However hope alone does not prevail. Grit, organizing and action lead to one success and then one more and then one more.
Rather than cinema i will look to history. The Robber Barrons of the Gilded age wielded just as much power as the Billionaire class in 2021... We did not defeat them by lopping off their head like in the French Revolution, which led to long term decline, instead we simply put them under duress and then cut a deal with them...
It can be done today and in my view that starts with M4A...
Likewise. Deep and rich content to consider.
I am gonna let this sift in for a little while before I respond mostly.
Only two things for now after a brief read. First, I do not consider myself a nihilist or someone who views change needs to be violent. I think it is important to have resistance in all the various places under siege - and we do not have enough in any one single area nor do we have enough overall. This is a losing position. So, the question is how do we want to lose (short term)? We have to be honest about this, not sugarcoat with the Obama rhetoric.
Two, I think Trump's win in 2016 proved a different phenomena. His election confirmed what should have been the end of Neoliberal post financial crisis - with the left looking shattered, embarrassed and desperate to shift the attention to Russia. In concert, we see this in the number of people who did not vote in 2016 or 2020.
Capturing this population, the people who lost faith in our democracy (and rightly so) is the single biggest political issue not being discussed in our so-called democracy. A majority of people did not vote in 2016 - which brought up Trump.
So, while I admire your position of using hope to create change, I think it is a worn adage, easily manipulated by both party apparatuses with their neoliberal playbooks. We need different tactics for different times. I am not saying it shouldn't be a part of our toolbox at some point --- but at the present - no. We need the crucible of no hope for real change to challenge power. And best efforts must be made to keep people aboard - still fighting without using a slogan -- instead we need to say "this is what an opposition does".... We may never get M4A, but we keep fighting.
Which does not fit the nihilistic or violent playbook.
Cheers Pick.
Looks like this guy has no one else who will listen to his pontifications of the obvious. God bless anyone who has time to read this irrelevant drivel.
Or its three days later and most people have read the thread.
Radrave, what an entire douche you are!
Andy said that, but I meant Red was reading it (I hate no edit function).
CNN too.
This may seem like an immoderately idealistic comment, but it could be the case that "Democracy" has never existed. What happened on Jan 6 likely had an Intelligence Agency backbone that was well-disguised by a "misinformed" mob of Wal-Mart shoppers. The backlash has certainly played well into the hands of the Security State and its Big Media cheerleaders, so if the shoe fits...Do you believe the USA is in fact a "Democracy"? Aspirationally, I would say indeed it is; existentially, I think that we're not even close. I'm not sure how this thread thing works, so if you deem these comments reply-able, I can be reached at bartlebydick@yahoo.com. Thank you.
Democracy can only be saved by The Ministry of Truth!
Sarcasm duely noted. I would start by breaking up the platforms so no one platform can "control" the message...
Fact Checking is not a Ministry of Truth.... It is just FACT CHECKING and every university in the top 100 could do that if paid properly and given a standard methodology
Fact checking isnтАЩt always тАЬjust fact checking.тАЭ https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-83-the-unchecked-conservative-ideology-of-us-medias-fact-check-verticals-7d441f4e649b
I understand your points and I think we would value the same outcome though i disagree to great extent. It's a larger discussion but IMO: Free expression puts the onus on THE PEOPLE to do the work to identify what each individual believes. The whole purpose of journalists was to inform as 1A was written at a time when most of the citizenry was uneducated. I would argue that the citizenry has become LESS educated. For all of the available sources of information we are collectively more ignorant than at any time in our history as a nation, arguably as a species.
I would also argue that it is no longer possible (if ever it was) to gain anything close to consensus of what is best for the nation. 350mil (that we know of), open borders, culture wars and a centralized media make it impossible.
There have always been gatekeepers to information but a local press reflected the views and ideals of people who were largely like minded and therefore a mandate for the elected. It's why representative government USED TO work (for the most part).
To me it seems the issue is NOT disclosure but the control of WHAT is exposed by those with the most access to and power over disclosure. IT's not the individual who posts on one of the social media 'rags' that the entire 'deadly pandemic' is a hoax created as one element of a conspiracy "hypothesis" (not a theory). It's not the individual expert in philosophy or history. It's the spoon feeding of opinions by clicks and algorithms created by mass media corporations for the purpose of getting everyone into lock step and silencing dissent OF ANY KIND whether opinion or 'misinformation' or even 'dis-information," ( lack of information masquerading as information).
My hypothesis? It's part of the move toward creating the Corporate States of North America (for starters). Government of, by and for the people is and will continue to be replaced by the combined synchronized efforts of the powerful who will benefit from that outcome.
You are right and I volunteer to be the censor. It will be a thankless job but I will make sure that you will get the information you need.
And who decides what is "misinformation"?
If it's me, then I'm willing to go along with your plan. If not, I'm out.
I think you got a notification because you also commented to his comment. It's pretty wonky.
The Mueller Report was TOTALLY LEFT misinformation. Russiagate:тАЭMueller was almost held in Criminal Contempt of court for saying there was a connection between the Russian Government and election tampering. They had NO EVIDENCE and had to drop the charges : A HOAX!
U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Robert Mueller III violated court rules in public statements about a Russian firm accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, a federal judge in Washington has ruled, while stopping short of disciplining either Justice Department leader.
Concord Management LLC, 12 Trolls v USA
United States District Judge Dabney L. FriedrichтАЩs presiding Judge in Russian Interference,
"Mueller did not establish a Kremlin connection to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which the report claimed was the KremlinтАЩs tool social media campaigns seeking to influence the 2016 electionтАЭ.
https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-chides-us-over-statements-tied-to-mueller-prosecution/
12 Trolls were dropped
https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2019/07/08/judge-warns-prosecutors-about-public-statements-in-case-against-russian-firm/?slreturn=20201020210308
Please donтАЩt conflate Democrats with the left. I resent it as someone on the left.
So you never believed the Mueller Report and you never thought the Russians hacked the DNC or interfered with the election?
No, I didn't. It was so obviously a diversion from Hillary's and the establishment's embarrassing loss to Trump, plus a diversion from Podesta's leaked emails. I also read Consortium News which called it out as not fact based from the get go.
https://thehill.com/homenews/the-memo/546828-the-memo-politics-upended-as-top-republicans-slam-corporate-america
But you voted for the corporations anyway? That's where all the misinformation and censorship lives with the Democrats who are not now LEFT?
Why do you automatically assume people on the left vote Democrat? Because those are the only two options according to the establishment media?
If you don't want M4A you are not on the left. If you don't vote in Democratic Primaries you can't vote for a supporter of M4A...
If you are not fighting for M4A you are consciously or not fighting against it.
Until someone can explain to me how bankrupting every hospital in the country and reducing the amount of time practitioners deal with patients in order to increase their time doing government paperwork, I will fight against it. Please don't construe that to mean that I oppose a single-payer option. Disagreeing with your solution does not constitute disagreeing with your goal. Unless your goal is to complete the destruction of US health care.
No! I always vote Green. That's where the left votes if they haven't sold out.
None Sense... The Green party has no power and as such is simply reducing the number of votes in favor of M4A... Every pro M4A Democrat that loses a race against the Corporate Democrat is harmed by votes for the Green party. You may think you are superior, you are being played by the corporatists
Voting for Dems does not move us toward M4A. In my 40 plus years of voting weтАЩve moved further right. Nixon was to the left of Obama.
Right. If you vote Democrat, you suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.
About hacking DNC. How come you worry more about hacking DNC then about the dirt on Hilary that it revealed ? It most likely was inside job but if not, well I am a registered Democrat and I expect to get the dirt on a politician from CNN, NY times NPR. If the only one that will inform me is Russian spies then I want Putin to get Pulitcer Price.
You will only get dirt on Republicans from CNN, NY times NPR.
I also think it was an inside job. I even have a name, Seth Rich, shot twice in the back! The Dems will NEVER investigate any of it. They only investigate Republicans. Republicans aren't allowed to INVESTIGATE.
There were far more likely explanations ready at-hand. Did any Trump people ever meet with any Russians? Probably. Trump's campaign was amateurish and not in compliance with the accepted sophisticated ways of conducting skulduggery, such as use of cut-outs. Was there collusion? If there was any - and there might have been - it would have been because the campaign foolishly saw other campaigns past and present colluding with foreign powers, and failed to recognize that they did so only when obeying irrelevant rules such as "Only after Simon Says."
As for the Russians hacking the DNC, I didn't find that relevant. They didn't plant the e-mails, the DNC did that all on its own. Interfere with the election? They tried to influence voters, just as Canada, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel and most other major nations did. If they hadn't tried to influence US voters, they were incompetent.
Russian Collusion: It Was Hillary Clinton All Along
Memos, emails and texts now in Congress' possession show that the Justice Department and the FBI worked together both before and after the election with Fusion GPS and their main link to the scandal, former British spy and longtime FBI informant Chris Steele.
As a former British spook in Moscow, Steele had extensive ties to Russia. That's why he was picked as the primary researcher to compile the "unverified and salacious" Trump dossier, as former FBI Director James Comey once described it.
Steele's dossier, for which Fusion reportedly received $1 million, was largely based on interviews with Russian officials. And who paid that $1 million? As we and others have reported, it was Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, then under Hillary's control.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/russian-collusion-hillary-clinton/
Post- Are you like some russian troll. Regurgitating right wing misinformation is you talking to yourself no one else is listening
Ad hominems are the least effective attacks. You should try a different approach.
Why is a French economist concerned about a posting response from Taibbi's article comments? And why are using disingenuous arguments, like no one else in listening? It is beneath you.
Thanks Piketty for clearing up you are not the famed French Economist who wrote Capital.
I am not a French economist and your rant was right out of Rush Limbaugh.... No one listens to that shit but DITTO HEADS explicitly beause it is so disingenuous
What is "Misinformation, in my post?
I'm Italian/Polish. EUROPEAN 100%.
Are you a spy for the Chinese Communist Party?
Your NARRATIVE is Misinformation. You cherry pick the data to imply that ".. it was Hillary all along" Hillary funded the Dossier. So what. That is no secrete at this point. You IGNORE all f the other things that were brought out about Trump and his campaign and how corrupt it was.
DId he collude with RUssia. NO. Was it "Hillary all along" as you imply. HELL NO. So you are pushing Misifnormation with Cherry picked data points and ignoring data that refutes your claim
Classic misinformation technique. Not even nuanced or persuasive other than to the CULT of Trump memebers. Are you one or are you just in the cult of HATE LIBERALS? it is one or the other. right?
Tired of reading about collusion. Collusion is meaningless. Politics is the art of colluding. Foreign policy is collusion. The state dept colludes with foreign governments. JFC
You missed the point. He wasn't questioning whether the report was "misinformation." He was pointing out that it came from corporate Dem interests, not the actual political "left," which is outside of power in the duopoly.
He said the Mueller Report was totally left misinformation. It wasnтАЩt left misinformation. It was Democratic Party misinformation. The Dems are not the left. Read it again.
I was referring to fun police's comment, not piketty's. That is what I think caused confusion.
I agree. I have agreed all along. I was agreeing with you, and disagreeing with Piketty and postimpressionist. My comment literally states тАЬit came from corporate Dem interests, not the actual political тАШleft.тАЩ
So you never believed that the Russians influenced the 2016 election nor did they hack the DNC server?
You never believed the DOSSIER and you never believed Trump conspired with the Russians?
The Right is always responsible for their "Trouble Making Outliers" and the Left isn't because they are not CORPORATE? Corporate is where the LEFT money comes from.
Sorry but you are one in the same because that's who you voted for:
https://howmuch.net/articles/the-30-biggest-political-donors-on-the-fortune-500
No. I never believed any of that. Who do you think I voted for?
With the amount of people saying they voted for the
"Green Party", it should have won.
I didnтАЩt say anything about the Green Party.
Judge tosses Trump campaign's defamation suit vs. New York Times (REALLY)
Search domain nypost.com/2021/03/09/judge-tosses-trump-campaigns-defamation-suit-vs-new-york-
Several Urging Times and Post To Give Back Pulitzers for ...
Search domain www.westernjournal.com/several-urging-times-post-give-back-pulitzers-false-reporting-russia-collusion/https://www.westernjournal.com/several-urging-times-post-give-back-pulitzers-false-reporting-russia-collusion/
Multiple media personalities, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have suggested that The New York Times and The Washington Post should return the Pulitzer prizes they received for their "deeply sourced" and "relentlessly reported coverage" of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign allegedly colluding with Russia.
New York Times Writer Apologizes To Trump For Russia Hoax
Search domain thefederalistpapers.org/opinion/new-york-times-writer-apologizes-trump-russia-hoaxhttps://thefederalistpapers.org/opinion/new-york-times-writer-apologizes-trump-russia-
Here's the Evidence Russia Hacked the Democrats | Time
Search domain time.com/4600177/election-hack-russia-hillary-clinton-donald-trump/https://time.com/4600177/election-hack-russia-hillary-clinton-donald-trump/
CONFIRMED: DNC paid the 'Russian' founder of CrowdStrike ...
Search domain themillenniumreport.com/2017/06/dnc-hackers-finally-identified/themillenniumreport.com/2017/06/dnc-hackers-finally-identified/
Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-opposition-research-on-trump/2016/06/14/cf006cb4-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html
Trump and the Russians - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/trump-russia
Almost NO NYT stories left on the internet about Trump/Russian collusion written by the NYT. ALL REMOVED.
Post - You are deep, deep in the world of propaganda aren't you. The Federalist Papers, WesternJournal, The Milinium Report....
That would be like me quoting Rachel Maddow to justify something.
Let me ask you. Do you ever wonder why the ONLY people on earth that believe your CONCLUSIONS in these narratives are the same people that think TRUMP did not LIE about winning the election?
I am sorry but you need to read HATE INC... you are so deeply misinformed it is not worth debate, right?
I was agreeing with you, peacelady thought I was disagreeing with you. I donтАЩt know how much more clear I can make it. I was saying the Mueller report was centrist Dem misinformation not тАЬleftтАЭ misinformation. I was disagreeing with Piketty and postimpressionist.
The Republicans don't need to masquerade in the Democratic party. They're going down all by themselves.
"Private Finance" you mean "Capitalism". In that case they used to be Capitalistic till they went Communistic/Socialistic, that's their downfall. They simply ran out of money! Humans are very expensive to keep when all they have to contribute is more humans. And Biden likes it that way!
I think you are still missing the point. Zucker was paid to make money and Trump made his network more profitable. But whether it was Mueller or Evangelicals organizing to ban abortion CNN's sponsors were not going to advertise if the Network did serious reporting on Campaign Issues like M4A or Lobbyists or Regulatory Capture or Bailing out Banks and not Home Owners in 2009.
Zucker runs CNN because he knows not to harm his revenue base and make more money for also increasing ratings.
The DEEP state did not do in Trump. Trump did in Trump and MSM distracted us all with idiotic and wild exaggeration