I have an MIT grad degree and ya couldn’t pay me to vote Democrat. No price. The Left constantly and unfairly disparages the rural poor and middle class for their viewpoints, but many educated & rich people agree with them as well. The Left really needs to stop this tactic- not a persuasive way to win votes.
Columbia here - after some youthful confusion I will never vote Democrat again (not much of a fan of Republican either). Unfortunately the typical Ivy Plus tier students have been inculcated with a combination of self congratulatory arrogance and stunning ignorance as well. It would be nice to see more humility and grace from our "elites" but that requires a level of self awareness that's pretty rare.
Man! Did YOU ever "Peg it"! VAST majorities of "educated" people are FULLY unconscious of their INABILITIES, yet believe themselves to be quite the opposite. Stunning to witness with ever-opening, and aging eyes!
"VAST majorities of "educated" people are FULLY unconscious of their INABILITIES"
Agreed. The question in my mind is 'where did this come from?' It didn't exist to this degree in my youth and young adulthood decades ago; instead, noblesse oblige, though by no means universal, seemed to reign as a result of multi-generational, wisdom-born humility.
'Where?', indeed! The answer to that simple question is different for everyone and depends upon the depth and breadth of ones individual cosmology. From my perspective (a single point, looking out at the remainder of the universe), the short answer is that this is a fully natural process, that we can only partially understand. We see mankind make great strides, yet we see human frailties go the OPPOSITE way; from Gold, to Silver, to Iron (and 'through the ages' if you are a student of History). There's a much bigger story here, that has been going on for so long, that from an individual standpoint it is impossible to even BEGIN seeing, until one has established their own observations over an 'ever lengthening arc of time', and recognizable patterns in human behavior, THEN become noticeable to the individual. One thing is VERY interesting: The PEOPLE are the exact SAME as they have ever been. It is only their 'programming' that has changed.
In a world less fettered by the pursuit of material goals (self), there are fewer (selfish) distractions, MORE meaningful human interactions, SUBSTANTIALLY MORE introspective thought, and a much tighter social cohesion is the result. As the opportunity for (selfish) pursuits increases, TIME that would otherwise be spent on those virtuous 'PEOPLE' qualities, is DISPLACED by the pursuit of (selfish) 'THINGS'.
Here are four words: USE, LOVE, THINGS, PEOPLE. When the alignment is correct, life is harmonious. So back to your original (and hopefully NOT rhetorical) question of 'Where
did this come from?'. DECAY, as a result of MALIGNING those four simple words. It's NATURAL. It's happening as part of a larger saga that is so EXTENSIVE that it cannot possibly be understood in its entirety by a mere human being. And it is also meant to PROVE A POINT to mankind - that he is NOT GOD.
If the decay is natural, where are the moments it has it occurred in U.S. history? Arguably, at the turnings, yes? If so, my follow-on question is then, at each of these turnings, who had then then, and is now taking, over from the decayed (weakened) citizenry? Power abhors a vacuum.
"a larger saga that is so EXTENSIVE that it cannot possibly be understood in its entirety by a mere human being. " -- Then of what use is asserting it? Humans, and groups of humans, can only understand human-understandable things. Everything else is conjecture.
..”because Donald Trump didn’t. He just “gave [rural voters] a way to essentially give a big middle finger to Democrats, to people who live in cities and to the rest of the country.”
That resonates with me based on where I live in a very rural state. It’s just an anecdote but I see this not uncommonly. Two young men hunted with my husband recently. They are in their late 30s, own their own homes, drove up in new 80k pickups…and spent two days bemoaning how difficult and unfair life is for them. They both were public tech school educated men who had very good management positions in the tax payer subsidized oils fields kept open by non other than Biden. These men came from good working class homes where I know their parents would be shocked at how these two talked.
I left the Dems because they have forgotten the working class issues in many ways. I come from union mill workers. But the contempt and bitterness shown by some is just unfounded. And the GOP and Trump especially….offer what? There are a lot on the left who are far from elite class. I still think Dems put forth legislation that is more supportive of working class, esp in matters of taxation.
Can you answer a question "esp in matters of taxation" that I have never really gotten a satisfactory answer to? I assume by that you mean you are in favor of government taxing the rich more. But all that does is take money from individuals and put it in the hand of the government to allocate, and government is famously bad at allocating money efficiently. So why, in your view, is it better for the government to tax and spend money than the people who originally generated/earned it?
This is a genuine question, and I know I assume a lot about your views. But you seem like a reasonable person who happens to think differently than I do, so I figured I'd give it a shot.
Aaron, this is why the Taibbi comments section is more vibrant than the Bari Weiss (The Free Press) comments. You are sincerely asking a question to understand someone's perspective better. I wish this happened more often. I don't know if I can satisfactorily answer your questions, but I'll take a shot.
And I certainly don't speak for Ann, but I too was public university educated. I had a very successful career in large corporations, and made a lot of money, but never complained about my taxes. Because our taxes are pretty low, especially for rich people.
I'm glad you wrote "generated" in addition to "earned." My annual income when I retired was over $650,000 and I wasn't even a Senior VP, just a regular VP. A normal person can't spend that much in a year, which is why I was able to retire in my 50s. I certainly didn't "earn" that much, anymore than Tom Hanks "earns" $25 million plus a % on the back-end. To think I actually was worth that (i.e., earned it) would require me to think my job was 10 times more important or valuable to society than a firefighter, or a cop, or a teacher. And I'm not about to start thinking dumbass elite shit like that. Step 1 is rich people understanding that they don't really deserve all the money. So paying taxes isn't the same as giving away a child. Step 2 is rich people caring enough about our nation to want to contribute to reducing our debt. In other words, being willing to pay our share. Granted, steps 1 and 2 will be difficult. There are a lot of smug bros out there who think they earned and deserve every penny, and who likely think they are worth more to society than others. But there's always hope.
Very true, government spends very inefficiently and unproductively. Like a hundred billion for Ukraine and they need 60 more. And who even wants to think about what kind of deals Biden is cutting to get House support for his wars.
What we do NOT need is more tax cuts for rich people. As mentioned, our rates are already quite low compared to peer nations. And we sure as fuck don't need to be cutting taxes on corporations. Some rich people seem to try to spend all they can. The vast majority don't, and so tax cuts just sit in their investment accounts, doing nothing productive for the economy. At least government spends money in the economy.
As I noted up top, I don't know if that will be a complete enough answer for you. I believe in paying our fair share in taxes. Government has definitely broken our deal by not spending money fixing roads and bridges, etc., spending on wars and the security state in general instead.
Rich people complaining about taxes don't understand what truly high taxes are.
Some rich folks get it. Warren Buffet is famous for decrying the fact that he has a lower tax rate (due to capital gains and carried interest bullshit) than his secretary. There is a lot of that kind of nonsense in our tax code that could be cleaned up.
I'm also interested in a furtherance of your perspective.
Thank you for taking the time to write a reply, and I agree that I really enjoy the chance to actually share views with others in a respectful way. I have a couple points I'd like to make in response (publicly educated myself, for what it's worth. Finance undergrad and MBA at a decent state school):
1. To your point about not deserving all the money, I would ask, if the people who work for and earn the money don't deserve it, then why does the government? If you want to use it to give to charity, or invest in a friend's business, or whatever, shouldn't you make that decision rather than giving more to the government to spend with abandon and give to their crony friends?
2. As to the rates we pay being lower than our peers, what about the fact that the top 1% of earners pay something like 40% of total income tax? I don't remember the exact percentage but it is a huge disparity.
However, none of this really gets to the core of my question, which is why you trust the government more than yourself to know how best to spend the money you earn. There are countless examples of misspending and graft by the federal, state, and local governments, and so much of current regulation seems designed to funnel much of government spending to various lawyers or NGOs for opinions on regulatory matters or environmental reviews. Higher taxation in effect just ends up letting the most wasteful and corrupt among us allocate a huge proportion of our national output.
You mentioned the waste of financing the pointless killing of Ukrainians but not the industrial slaughter being committed by Israel, which murders more children in a month than have died in Ukraine in two years. They're both criminal enterprises which will, and should, haunt us for the rest of our lives. I do agree about Bari Weiss's outlet, where wading into the comments with a sane perspective is akin to wearing a fur coat at a PETA convention. I subscribed for a while because I'm fed up with wokism, but Weiss lost her mind completely after October 7th and I had to flee. And yes to taxing the rich. In 2024, amassing a fortune has never been more disconnected from the performance of actual, productive work.
Giving money to the federal government doesn't reduce our debt because they manage to spend $7 Trillion after taking in $4 Trillion;
Because we have a progressive tax, giving the lower income folks a tax cut gives the rich a tax cut, because tax rates increase with income, so we effectively cut taxes on the first $50k or so, including the rich people's first $50k. This situation is baked into our system;
Investment accounts are insanely productive, not to be analogized to Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool of money. It does not just "sit there" and do I need to go through George Bailey's justification for the savings & loan to prove that?;
At the time, Warren Buffet's secretary was making $350k/year, but he didn't mention that. And, of course, earned income is taxed, while unrealized profits are not. This is a no-brainer.;
We do not need "tax code reform" as that's just rearranging the deck chairs. We need a flat tax, or the Fair Tax, so people can spend their time productively, rather than investing days and treasure to make sure they don't end up in Biden's jails.
I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with education as much as or even your place on the socio-economic ladder, as it does with your place of institutional or private enterprise employment. If you’re employed in the academic bureaucratic world, chances are, especially if you’re employed by one of the many governmental alphabet extensions... Chances are that you’re insulated from anything that occurs in what most know as the real world. Even during the Covid pandemic those employed by one of the many governmental agencies you did not miss a beat... While the rest of the real world art f the nation, were locked in and frozen out of our jobs, business, and livelihood.
Taxhe rich means tax everyone who has more than me. Imagine the financial chaos if all US billionaires had 1 year to pay half their wealth to the government. Many would applaud this but the stock liquidation and panic sales of real estate holdings would drive the market into a tailspin which would cost the average investor dearly and result in a huge decrease in household wealth and taxes paid
Worse yet, two thousand billionaires paying a billion each would raise only a few months worth of deficit spending
It’s a political scam pushed by unscrupulous politicians trying to buy favor and endorsed by fools. ( talk about ignorant)
The question that begs is how does higher taxation, or more efficient taxation for that matter, help the people in the above situation? There is no evidence that higher revenues from taxes are one any real benefit except when they result in debt reduction
There is a dwindling cohort of Dems that aren’t captive to the coastal cultural activist left, mainly rust belt union supporting Ds. John Fetterman and Joe Manchin are cut from this cloth. However the media and cultural power centers on the coasts have diverged sharply in recent decades, veering to the left ever further to placate the activists
I worked in the oil field for 40+ years and I'm going have to see some proof to back up your "tax payer subsidized oils fields kept open by non other than Biden" declaration. I personally know three independent producers and can tell you that Biden sure as hell isn't helping them out. As for Krugman and the other elites that claim the metropolitan are subsidizing the rural areas, I call BS. In the first place increasing corporate and personal wealth by basically circulating money amongst themselves and adding a handling fee, as in broker fees, interest, service charges, etc., is doing nothing in terms of production. The only real new wealth is through agriculture, mining and oil production. These industries actually PRODUCE new and tangible wealth through commodities. Metropolitan areas in reality don't even come close to creating wealth. Moving money around and pushing paper survive and thrive on the backs of new created wealth.
Energy, agriculture and transportation are the three most heavily subsidized industries in the US. While alternative energy is subsidized, those subsidies are relatively recent and are scheduled to phase out in the future. Not so for oil, as US taxpayers send the industry about $20 billion a year; globally subsidies range into the trillions (https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/global-fossil-fuel-subsidies-rise-despite-calls-phase-out-2023-11-23). The US has subsidized oil since…the 20s? 30s?
I understand the pros and cons of subsidies. We all appreciate affordable gas and heating fuel, food and transportation. My comment about Biden was that these guys were griping about Biden, while US is pumping more oil now than ever, and more than any other country in the world. The reason we don’t hear about that is because Biden is, let’s just say, “upsetting” a big proportion of his base with environmental concerns (count me in this pod). I live in a rural state, big ag. Last I checked a few years ago, our states federal subsidy $ to Fed tax $ was 9:1. The Infrastructure bill also throws huge amounts of taxpayer money into roads, rails and air travel…to rebuild an aging and inadequate infrastructure. Think jobs. Just heard Phoenix is permitting a chip manufacturing plant. Think 10000 jobs. So yep, government has its ills and as you rightly point out, corporate and finance sectors circulate money, in a sense. And yes, Dems and Biden have their problems, but again what has the GOP or Trump done for the working class. Surely not his tax bill, that again sent most of the money into the pockets of the 1 percent.
I respectfully disagree with or maybe misunderstand your view of metro areas. Commodities are important. But are you saying manufacturing doesn’t create wealth? Metro areas host a a more diverse workforce than that of suit and tie financial sectors. Quickly found these tidbits in a Brookings Inst article:
“America’s metropolitan areas, particularly the large metros and central metro counties, are the nation’s manufacturing centers. Metros contained nearly 80 percent of all manufacturing jobs in 2010, and 95 percent of very high-technology manufacturing jobs. Nearly all metros specialize strongly in at least one manufacturing industry.
Manufacturing in most metros falls into one of six broad categories of industry clustering. These are anchored in high specialization in computers and electronics, transportation equipment, chemicals, machinery, food production, and low-wage manufacturing industries.”
It only makes sense. To manufacture you need labor and infrastructure, both live in metro areas. Personally I appreciate metro areas and all the millions who live there…because they aren’t living in my backyard ( ;
I think you misunderstand how FF energy subsidies (if they exist, and it’s mostly a definitional argument imo; ie, does expensing drawn down/produced reserves count as a subsidy). Companies compete against each other. In commodities the average return reverts to the cost of capital, due to competition. Thus, over time any subsidy would get passed on to the consumer. So any subsidy benefits consumers, not corporations. (Assuming a competitive market, which is usually but not aalways the case).
I know from bitter experience as a long time energy investor! Long term returns in energy are mediocre. You only make real money if you successfully time this highly cyclical industry.
Great comments Ann, and as you see, others joined in the highly respectful discussion. As much as I am upset about the Democrats all of a sudden loving stupid wars, censorship, and spying on our own citizens, their complete and total sellout of workers to the Wall Street overlords is the most shameful.
But because of my disdain for almost all Republican domestic ideas (tax cuts for rich and corporations, benefits cuts for everyone else), I'm left without a home. Looks like a good year for a protest vote.
"Sudden?" The Democratic Party became a piece of shit way back when Bill Clinton abandoned its values and sold it to the highest donors. It's been a bad joke ever since, a long, long time now.
Well, the Dems' love of spying on our own citizens has only been around since Obama, and the love of censorship has really taken off in the past 7 years. But yeah, the desertion of workers started under Clinton and his DLC.
Taxes are the eternal political currency. I support business friendly tax policy but I also understand that income taxes are political currency and always a point of negotiation. I’m not knee jerk anti-tax, I’m knee jerk anti-government waste, corruption, and gross inefficiency-and the only way to stop this-at any level-is to not fund it. It’s the same logic as the “don’t feed the animals” sign at the zoo-but corporatist big government types realize they need to throw as ostensible social welfare bone to cover their political behinds.
I agree craazyman. But I would add one more stage to the evolution of the political and social mind. If a person isn't a realist by the time they're 50, they haven't been paying attention to the benefits and failures of BOTH philosophies. I no longer adhere to any dogma. There's good and bad in every framework.
Yup - born & raised in Massachusetts so I was indoctrinated as a Democrat from the get-go (‘youthful capture’!) - but had an epiphany in my 40’s that made me realize I was never a Democrat 😂😂😂
Most people align their views with what works for them. I imagine things would be easier for you if you just went along with your contemporaries. Not quite as top tier as you guys but I get it
I'm afraid you might be the exception, my friend. The MITers I know are uniformly Democrat/Leftist, arrogant and certain of their own superiority over pretty much everyone else.
Oh Jenny Jenny Jenny... true, we "have no idea what left means in the US" if by "left" you mean Stalinist/Maoist/Castroite... and thank God for that. Hopefully, we never will have "left" parties like that in the US...but you never know.
And "fascist"--we don't have that either, given that the template for "fascist" is Mussolini's Italy. No, we don't have that. And I thank God for that, too.
One good thing: talking to you does make me feel more hopeful about my country. We have, thus far, successfully avoided the dual catastrophes of Left and Right extremes. Though, truth be told, what the Dems are currently pushing does feel disturbingly similar to Mao's Cultural Revolution. If you doubt that, ask some of the survivors of that nightmare who are currently living here.
So, pardon me for asking, but how did the Democratic party wander into the Mao cultural revolution without first trespassing on fascist ground? I'm a Libertarian/AnArcho capitalist. I understand dictators gonna dictate! Does it really matter if Biden is more of a Mao style dictator or a Mussolini style authoritarian?
To briefly respond to your query LiveFree: while today's Dems definitely have an authoritarian streak, the similarity to the Maoist Cultural Rev is seen in their relentless attack on what was known in China as "the four olds"--old ideas, old customs, old habits, old culture. We see this (to cite just one case) in the notion of "Gender Identity Theory" replacing the "binary" of man/woman. Before the revolutionary "new" can be born, the "old" must be replaced, no matter how bizarre and unfounded the "new" may be. They demand that you accept without question men pretending to be women, use the desired pronouns, or face the consequences. The tearing down of statues is also a prime example of the American Cultural Revolution in action.
Another disturbing similarity to the barbarism of the Chinese CR is the prevalence of Leftist mobs (usually but not always online) to shame, humiliate, and cancel those who dare disagree with the new revolutionary ideology. And while we in the US have, for the most part, not seen this "revolution" inflict violence on dissenters like the one in China, that may be coming.
It's been awhile since I've run into any "survivors" of Mao's cultural revolution, let alone discussed their nightmares, so if I'm to better understand the nuts and bolts of this argument a few names and contact information for these people would be appreciated. Thank you.
Ah, Feldspar, my favorite spook... In response to your query about survivors of the Cultural Revolution and the parallels to today's America (you know, the one in which government informants lurk on comment pages, heh heh), I refer you to Xi Van Fleet. She has been recently interviewed by Tucker, and has spoken widely about her fears that we are re-living the Maoist nightmare here in Biden's America. Google some of her stuff and report back to me.
The author of Mao American (a book for sale now on Amazon) was on a recent Tucker’s show. She said this “the infiltration of Communism is complete in this country.” The entire interview is worth the watch.
I don’t think the Democrats are pushing Maoist type stuff. Some of their loudest supporters are but they think they have that tiger by the tail. Don’t think they are right
The two major US parties are more like long term coalitions of factions which would be separate parties elsewhere. The loony left has far too much influence with the Democrats.
I think she got it close. I don't know what she means by "right wing" (Capitalist? Libertarian? Anti-woke? Against genital mutilation of minors? Anti-welfare?) Seems to mean different things to different people. But the US "left wing" is quickly growing full-on intolerant fascist. They are way more about Identitarian-Climate Crazy-Hate Israel/Jews than about any traditional lefty social policies.
"You have 2 parties: One is right wing and the other is fascist."
Pretty sure you are talking about their ringleaders and the operatives in their party structures. There are no truly fascist rank-and-file members, whether you look at Democratic Party voters or Republican Party voters.
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Traditionally in the West (about two centuries, anyway), there have been Right and Left. The common threads are that the Right prioritizes the individual, the Left prioritizes the social. The two complements are necessary for a healthy society.
That's why in a system like that in the U.S. that has forced just two parties, these rough groupings stay perpetual, the only games in town, even if they switch buckets occasionally. When a citizen changes his/her mind about the preferred priority at a point in time in either their own or the society's history, in the two-party U.S. he/she switches from from one side to the other. Recently in the U.S., the vessels claiming Rightist principals are Republicans and Leftist ones are Democrats, with the emphasis on "claiming".
Identifying the predominant motives of power-center pied-pipers and their propaganda, on what issues to pay attention to and what positions to hold from time to time, is a completely different thing, and it varies with the wind. On a large scale, though, maybe they vary once in a turning (c. 80 years, e.g. a full life).
Thanks for that clarification. Yes, should have added U.S. to first paragraph.
"Democrats have never been 'leftist!"
They were in the Great Depression, and at least for about four decades afterward. But instead of regrouping by 1970 and during the 1970s and 80s recognizing what was failure (the unquestionable, unjustified, and thus unregulated forms of socialism that led to the Reagan backlash) and what was correct, they instead transitioned by stealth to complete two-faced corporatists. Clinton was the first of three Trojan horse presidents.
I really don't think they'll get away with it again, but that just means they'll transform into some other monster with tricks, maybe just a new Trojan-horse nominally "Leftist" party claiming a restoration. It won't change until the people actually hold them accountable, as they did in the 1900s and 1930s. But given the unprecedented sophistication of today's propaganda (and technology of all other kinds), it will be much harder than before.
There are a lot of Libertarians at MIT. Koch Bros were grads. Thomas Massie. A couple of candidates running as Republicans here in MA every now and again.
The question is how many are not engaged in the latest thing and are simply going about their studies and ignoring the BS. Which kinda describes me 40 years ago.
Approximately 13% of the population is rural/white, yet approximately 50% support Trump. I think that means the vast majority of Trump supporters are not rural whites. The narrative is false
Agreed Philip. Matt and Thomas Frank have written about this subject. The Dem's have abandoned most Americans, and THAT'S why Trump rose to prominence.
"win" votes has proven to be too difficult for the socialist left. Since they now control the printing of money, it's much easier to simply buy votes. What remains in the way of needed votes (happens once-in-a-while) can be produced via the Magical Mail-in Machine.
No kidding - Obama handed out goodies like Santa Claus as has Biden 👉🏼 $428 Billion of student loan refunds on the back of the American taxpayers but in effect a vote buying scheme for the Biden Campaign. Obama did the same thing. I recall my cousins jumping for glee after they received a letter ‘from Obama’ saying that he was either giving them better terms and/or loan forgiveness. Neither Obama nor Biden addressed the root of the problem of high college cost nor did anything to ameliorate the situation- they just had their monkey print more money.
"... but many educated & rich people agree with [rural poor and middle class] as well."
They don't have to agree. They are people, and people (all minimally-competent adults, at least) should have equal rights. Period. Democracy trumps ideology. And the silver lining is that the less-capable will often follow the more-capable *when they are treated right*. Trump happens because they're not.
"The Left really needs to stop this tactic- not a persuasive way to win votes."
Those in control of the levers, i.e. those intelligent sociopaths above the classists we're talking about here, don't care about that. If they get majority support, great, it helps the cover-up, but they will ram through their goals "by any means necessary" -- not just through pushed-visible Woke pretentions, but all manner of carefully-hidden Machiavellian maneuvers.
Sorry, but the Democrats are not the Left. They have never been the Left my entire life. There is a Left that the Democrats hate, and will never even acknowledge. I know, I've tried in every state I ever lived in. The Democrats are much more right, center-right, at best. Please don't confuse the elites with being Left.
I've often said since moving to the land where there are more cows than churches and more churches than people that if I was rolling along I-95 and saw a black man broken down on the side of the road wearing a dress, I'd expect the guy in the Ford Diesel Pickup Truck with the Confederate Flag on the back window and the gun rack to stop and help him/her fix their car before I'd ever expect the soccer mom or office worker in their Mercedes to do so.
For the umpteenth time, they are not the Left. The idea that the Democrats are even a centimetre to the actual left is risible. Do you think a party of the Left would sell out the workers and society via NAFTA? When they're not bombing, of course.
Kind of odd to call a very diverse group of people living in locations all over the country “ ignorant “ when it’s obvious you know nothing about them? Isn’t that pretty much a perfect example of ignorance?
Politeness towards the electorate, along with engaging with them to get to know them has been the winning combination for politicians for decades. Disparaging citizens because of one’s assumptions about them is the loser’s path in politics. Looking at voters and calling them names they have never been called from the podium? Take the favored candidate off the ballot? Destroy your chances and democracy in one fell swoop. Your political life is over.
Yes, all over Europe. I have been following the protests in Germany, Netherlands, France, Poland, and now the Canadian government is going after Canadian farmers. Pretty sure that won’t end well … for the government.
The French farmers have a century of tradition of fighting back - hard. I hope that their latest humiliation of Macron’s poncy government will be an inspiration to other european farmers.
Trudeau’s government has already been found to have acted unconstitutionally when they invoked the Emergency Act against the truckers. They clearly are now just looking for other authoritarian hammers to use against the farmers.
It feels like the world is moving towards a tipping point; but we’ve also seen the wild lengths elitist governments will go to crush dissent - including in the US. I hope you’re right about how it ends.
No argument there at all. I just honestly love seeing the "angry peasants" rise up against the elites. The deal with the devil argument goes both ways in that particular instance - the government also thought they were buying off the serfs... I mean the farmers. Oops... I hope they inspire some other folks who have been abandoned by the left to do something similar.
Oh, the legend of ol' Farmer Amos! He's back! Back in the news and never really out of the news---the Taylor Swift of Lancaster County Dairyin.'
"Attorney General Michelle Henry filed the suit against Miller and his related businesses Tuesday in Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas."
“For years, this business has brushed off efforts to bring its commercial farm operation into compliance with the law — as all commercial farms are required to do,” [Attorney General Michelle] Henry said. Henry accuses [Amos] Miller of failing to obtain licenses and permits, selling illegal raw milk products, and selling raw milk and raw milk products outside of Pennsylvania."
"Ag Department officials raided the Miller farm in Upper Leacock Township on Jan. 4 after New York and Michigan suspected E. coli illnesses in children originated in raw dairy products from the farm....Samples from Miller’s farm taken earlier this month by Pennsylvania officials tested positive for listeria, the attorney general’s office said."
And:
"Amos Miller makes his first state court appearance tomorrow since the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture searched his farm under a court-issued warrant.
Miller, who claimed so-called “Sovereign Citizen” status as a defense in federal court, must appear at 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 29 before Judge Thomas B. Sponaugle in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania.
"The civil action, brought by Attorney General Michelle Henry, is for Miller to sell raw and raw milk products outside the State of Pennsylvania, all without acquiring the necessary licenses and permits."
"Miller’s long run in federal court, dating back to 2016, resulted in him and his attorney signing a lengthy Consent Decree, promising to complete food safety regulations governed by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service."
"Miller’s supporters depicted the Jan. 4 search of Miller’s Organic Farm as a “raid.” It brought Miller even more celebrity than his long tiff with USDA. Since Jan. 4, he has raised about $245,000 in web-based fundraising."
This is old nonsense from a dyspeptic, mendacious crank seeking publicity and to deflect from the fact that his criminal enterprise was poisoning people, specifically children. Naturally, (a la Donald Trump) he was able to fleece other mendacious anti-government hysterics of a quarter-million bucks to further his "cause." An embarrassment to the Amish and honest farmers alike.
And the right-wing propaganda goon squad radar picked up the “Sovereign Citizen” moniker and were off to the races.
Ol' farmer Amos ought to be dragged out behind the milkin' barn and defenestrated with Shaker Boom handles affixed with rusty nails---in my opinion.
Ironically, the hicks in the sticks are too smart to vote for Democrats. Who's going to tell Democrats that the slobbering cretins, living in the wilderness that is not LA or NYC, are laughing at them?
As I've told my Democrat friends.... you can hate Trump as much as you'd like, but he didn't turn our state into the dumpster fire it is. The Democrats did that. They love hearing this. Goes over like a pregnant pole vaulter.
Small state university in Appalachia in the late 60s here. Majored in music and Spanish (yawn). Worked my way up to running a half billion dollar sector of a Fortune 500 corporation. Tutored MBA students at several universities. I was inspired by JFK to become a liberal Democrat in 1960, and by Nancy Pelosi to become a liberal independent in 2009.
A lifelong liberal, I find Democrats to be the least liberal group in the country.
But here in lies the problem. They've trained 2 generations now of young people that simply don't know how to think for themselves and are real life Wil Huntings. They've read every book and know everything about everything even if they've never left the shithole city they live in. When they do travel, they go to other large cities, and of course the experience is exactly the same. So.. again, they're fully educated, have a college degree (in what, who knows), and are perfectly ok not knowing it's an authoritarian rule that has made them who and what they are.
These people fully believe the system will always take care of them, and yes, when all of the farmers are driven from this planet they will still be able to get their soy late and their unburger! Clueless to the end.
What was true at the dawn of software development is still true today: GIGO, that is, garbage in, garbage out. One false premise fed to AI and all of Krugman's BS comes spilling out.
Plus, as cartoonist Sidney Harris had one of his scientists looking at a screen say, "We have artificial intelligence, so we've also got artificial stupidity." Published in ~1980.
Doesn't Krugman write for a company whose headquarters is on "stolen land"? Perhaps he could wax poetic on that particular subject. The class of people I find myself aligned with does not care one iota for the class of people he aligns with.
I remember an ESPN interview with Kobe Bryant where they asked Kobe would he rather have Obama’s mind, or would Obama rather have his basketball skills…
Kobe responded, “well, I already have his mind, so…” (something along those lines).
These twats think enduring secondary education makes them “smarter” than the rest of us…
Having inferior humans (on many metrics) talk down to you becomes exhausting after so many outings. I could fuck Krugman against his will and lay a Hayek-worthy beat down on him in economic theory and I’m an amateur only educated by my desire to understand…
That twat needs to debate Bob Murphy (for charity - what a legit pussy Krugman is). Id be happy to demonstrate how big of one he is - dude better hope we’re never on an elevator together.
It's still going on for about two hours. Some places I can make posts. Some I can't and to get to the "Reply" box I actually have to hit the "like" button.
Jenny, I'd be more concerned about the "genocide of the Palestinian people" if the Palestinian people showed me that they were concerned about the genocide of the Jewish people. And we both know that they are not--if we are honest (big "if").
Oh, come now - the Palestinian people are deeply and profoundly concerned about the genocide of the Jewish people - it's what they live and die to accomplish.
C'mon Jenny, it is no secret that large numbers of Palestinians would kill every Jew in Israel if they could. And that was true long before the events of recent months.
Hmmm... guess I did say being fully honest about this is a big "if."
You cannot separate the Israelis and their apologists from their victimhood narrative. Without that and an accusation of “anti-Semitism” every 12 seconds, they’d have to face their long record of homicidal psychopathy (and, you know, their record of selling weapons to vicious Guatemalan dictators and the South African Apartheid regime, among many others). No. When you have a foolproof excuse for the most heinous behavior imaginable you milk it all the way.
Just guessing here, but I believe the answer to your question, "why China?", is cause Krugman is an object of ire, and China is both out of country (further away), and also a main supplier of solar panels.
My turn. Why would you even mention Palestinian people here? Of course to you overly emotional types, anyone not directing all topics toward the latest moral crises are to be shamed, BUT most people are capable of understanding a moral tragedy and still refrain from virtue signaling. (teasing)
"Why would you even mention Palestinian people here? "
Because she is a burka wearing transplant to France where she can hide out with fellow islamists. Don't waste you time with her. She doesn't have the IQ to have rational thought.
Really? I like to imagine Ms. Stokes as a sort of updated George Sand-like flaneur in Carharrt overalls and mud-caked boots smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes and nursing a Pabst Blue Ribbon at an old oak kitchen table with a dirty oil-cloth covering. But then that's just me.
Jerry, the US supports the genocide of the Hamas terrorists. The Hamas terrorists street thugs murder Palestinians at a more alarming rate then you know. Im not teasing, if you're going to virtue signal about the issues in Gaza at least look at the real reasons.
Lady, I think you're on the wrong forum if you want to make sophomoric generalizations about the so-called uncaring, average American. You think we pay a Taibbi subscription because we *don't* care about the goings on of our government and country?!
As much as I hope this is parody, and quite curious what "standing up to government" looks like form your eyes, I gotta bail, lest I waste anymore time talking to a self-righteousness wall.
Decades ago in college, I took a class taught by (the book's co-author) Paul Waldman . Looks like he's still an unrepentant if less quietly raging partisan ideologue.
He managed to convince a class of sheltered, impressionable 20-year-olds to accept the same two-sided canard: that rural areas owe their lives to urban ones; that red states are takers while blue states are givers. Then I became slightly more sophisticated and realized most of the 'taking' in red states happens in Democrat-led cities.
As a principled vegan living in a city dominated by depraved woke politics, I'm infinitely aware of the hypocrisy, ignorance, stupidity and very real fragility of almost all so-called liberals. Of course, in practice, that goes for libertarians and just about everyone else, too.
For example, libertarians are fine with some of the most totalitarian systems and practices imaginable, so long as the victims aren't human. Conservatives, for another example, had in recent history been fine with limiting speech—until they were the ones being silenced. Liberals, for another, can't help destroying the environment while pretending with such great self-satisfaction to save it—from using metal straws (instead of infinitely less intensive plastic straws discarded into landfill) to endorsing the sham of recycling to opposing nuclear power for 60 years.
As a principled vegan, presumably you place a premium on the welfare and lives of animals. How then do you tolerate the death of billions of insects in order to bring plants and vegetables to your table? Unless you grow everything you consume in a fully organic way, with no pesticides or insecticides, then every bite you take has a cost of lives much higher than my carnivore way of eating. With one death of a cow, I can eat for roughly 8 months. Monocrop agriculture as a matter of course kills billions of insects, rodents, birds, and other small life forms. As a matter of principle, at what level of sophistication do you think it's acceptable to kill an animal? Presumably you're ok with killing aphids, weevils, locusts, and other pests. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to eat.
A bit of friendly advice: If you actually have a good-faith question, simply ask the question. Don't follow it with a gish gallop.
The answer to your question is that each of us has a right to do what we must to survive; none of us can survive without causing harm to others; and yet we have an obligation to reduce that harm as much as we reasonably can.
Humans eating animals that ate plants requires far more plant farming than humans eating plants directly. Whatever harm is done by plant farming, vegans are causing far less of it than those who eat other animals.
Which is why we could reclaim 75% of the world's farmland—"an area equivalent to the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined"—for wildlife, not to mention put an end to the greatest source of suffering ever devised, if we stopped eating animals and started doing the right thing:
I don't know why I'm in this rabbit hole, but to be fair I have to point out that not all animal husbandry entails huge monocrops for feed. The farmers I purchase animal products from rely almost solely on pasture, which isn't "farmed" the way a field of corn is - it's much closer to a wild ecology with some light management.
Additionally, I think that 75% reclamation idea is a bit optimistic, because humans will just grow to fill it eventually. We would end up just removing a layer from the current plants -> animals -> humans food chain and end up with a larger monocrop humans in a plants -> humans system.
There is certainly something more fatuous, starting with your extremely foolish comment.
If you’re offended by a lifestyle that affords basic respect to other animals, it’s because you’re a petulant child who can’t handle even implicit criticism of your own behavior—even while you attack and dismiss others for theirs.
Are you a scientist, perhaps have a degree in Ag? Know much about sustaining the world as given to us by its Creator. How about how the exchanges between all life forms of CO2 maintains the proper balance.
You're engaging in meretricious gaslighting by not even addressing the topic being discussed, questioning the expertise of another commenter on a topic not being discussed, and providing a link to a piece that you misrepresent and which also does not address the topic being discussed.
But you get irony points for questioning another commenters' scientific bona fides, then introducing GOD as the ultimate expert on the topic at hand, and then, finally, the piece de resistance, linking to The American Spectator to buttress the argument you don't have addressing the subject that doesn't exist. Well played, madame. R. Emmett, wherever he may be, surely is smiling.
How do your ethics grapple with the fact that plants have sophisticated chemical communications systems, even sentience? How can you sleep at night after hearing the cry of the watercress or the shrieking of the mutilated celery stalk, the silent scream of the asparagus sliced off its Mother Earth?
Well, you clearly don’t know what “fact” means. Plants aren’t sentient, despite so many spurious attempts to blur the lines—such as calling chemical reactions “communications.”
Seems like a lot of assholes are in the comments lately. I can’t help wonder if that’s the intelligence agencies trying to turn this into old Twitter (toxic) or just that time of the month for twats. (Sorry, I can be unpc sometimes). I appreciate your comment and appreciate your ability to live congruently with your ideals. Rock on!
The best reaction to veganism is always the one that comes from someone finding out that you're a vegan without you actually saying that you are. Nobody has a problem if you don't want to eat meat or wear leather and fur. That said, they don't want to hear you talk about it either.
Libertarians are totally for individual freedoms, there are no borders, no work licenses required, no interference with abortions. People are free to do whatever they like whenever they like. So babies born with addictions, children die is house fires from explosions during drug making . . . They say you are responsible and accountable for your actions in a society where only the selected activist are not accountable for anything.
Could very well be APriori. I was reading their party policies on their website just the other day. A friend ask if I knew what they stood for. Had to take a peak because even though I have been getting CATO monthlies in the mail for over two decade and Mises emails for some years, outside of economics I had know idea what the Libertarian party stood for.
A few years ago when Trump tried to make pharma products the same price here as elsewhere, CATO sent out a scathing article that twisted and turned on its head trying to explain why this was a 'bad' thing for Americans. Every think tanks needs funding to exist. Wonder where CATO might get some of its.
The addicted baby's health is the responsibility of its mother and father.
So is the child who dies in a house fire caused by clandestine drug making.
Libertarianism lays the blame squarely on the actor, not on the edifice of the welfare state that is supposed to act in our stead.
Isn't it convenient to place the responsibility of your and your family's well being on the state? Nobody is morally accountable when you can outsource your actions to the state.
This is what causes your "lack of accountability," the assumption that providing for your needs and well-being is the responsibility of an abstract system of laws and regulations and not the duty of you as an individual.
I agree with everything you wrote. What I do not agree with is a system that allows people to put others in jeopardy because of their poor choices in life. But, you know, it’s okay for people to make and take whatever drug they want regardless of outcome to others – individual freedom to do as you choose should have its limits.
"A system that allows people to put others in jeopardy because of their poor choices in life"?
That's called "living among other people." Too bad not everyone can live alone, isolated from others so as not to put oneself or others in danger from these choices.
Someone who takes drug X and fucks over a neighbor because of its effects is still responsible for his actions. That's the limit, and I believe I expressed it--do as thou wilt as long as that does not harm another or steal/damage his property.
I hope that my fellow "Blue State" dwellers realize that they "didn't build that." Krugman has informed my investing strategy for decades as I usually just do the opposite of whatever his rant of the day is suggesting, successfully so, lol!
As your chart helps demonstrate, if you really want to try to draw even remotely compelling conclusions about the macro effects of red or blue governance, you actually have to get as granular as possible. These per capita figures are far more informative than broad state-level figures, though they aren't nearly enough. There are 100 factors in play, including many that don't stem from local governance at all.
Waldman should know this. Instead, at least in my class, he relied on broad state-level figures, which at the time appeared to support—again, in a very specious way—his conclusion.
I was intrigued by the spider graph on tax receipts and benefits by state. Then, I looked down at the other output from this site. UN funding being dominated by the US - cool cool. Then, a plot showing the gender pay gap was real and with only passing dismissive reference to factors other than gender which may be at play. That earns a misinformation label from me and puts the site on my naughty list.
We do have the best roads in the country in VA. They’re constantly repairing and redesigning infrastructure that is already perfectly fine here so that they can keep their enormous budget. As I selfish driver I don’t really mind…
Good insight on the Blue cities being the takers in Red states. A few months ago when the canard was Red states have more violent crime than Blue states, I spent a good 20 minutes looking into that to look for the truth.
Take a state like LA or AL. It's true, they have high murder rates. However, cities like New Orleans, Mobile and Birmingham have murder rates 10x the rural areas. Remove those murders and the state's murder rates drop by 35% give or take.
Corresponding statistics demonstrate that the high murder rate in southern cities is in fact a function of mountain hillbillies and low plains dirt farmers comin' into town to drink some whisky and kick some ass.
Amazing how these folks think it’s totally appropriate, and indeed laudable, to use one’s position of authority as an educator to unrepentantly and zealously indoctrinate students. They don’t even pretend to be even-handed, and even scoff at the idea that they should be. While it’s fine to have opinions, I really resent all the teachers and professors I’ve had throughout my life who presented their opinions as facts and never presented alternative viewpoints, other than in straw man form. These assholes, and there are tons of them, bear quite a bit of responsibility for the dismal state of the country.
The reason the Blue States should have to support the Red States financially, is because the people from the Red States defend the people in the Blue States militarily.
My favorite part is that Krugman wrote his column from St Croix. He's been there for a while because a previous column had him buying Scotch in a grocery store. Now, online anyway, he adds a restaurant receipt showing he's in a place with no sales tax.
He's literally at his Caribbean island, 2nd or 3rd home rambling on about why poor people are dumb...
Nothin' like him looking down his nose at us poor, unwashed rubes from his comfortable ivory tower to help us be even more sure he is just another uppity pompous a$$ lusting over running other people's lives for them.
Krugman's has a new tweet today about flying back into Newark. He says it shows how nice New York (?) is nowadays. Though, apparently not so nice you want to actually stay there for the month of February, I guess.
My 42 year old realtor son disagrees. He was doing fairly well until COVID hit NYC. He finally gave up 6 months ago and is changing careers. NYC is a shit hole, not quite as bad as San Francisco, but close. I could give you some really gross examples, but I’ll leave it at just gross. And if the realtors are truthful with prospective clients, they lose the majority. Again, Krugman has not a clue to the real world, so please spare us the pep talks!!
During the 2020 election I said that Democrats were slowly starting to realize they're the party of Wall Street, endless wars, censorship via media (including social media), Big Pharma, and "lockdown"-sized corporations.
The media, as usual, is a few years behind the times. (And also lying their asses off.)
Which is why I believe if RFK Jr was remotely treated fairly, he could win the Democratic nomination. To recirculate an overused word… compared to all these DINOs, Kennedy has “gravitas.”
I agree. I have voted for Trump twice and am solidly conservative, but I agree so strongly with RFK's stance on agencies like the FDA, NIH, CIA, etc that I'm considering voting for him instead. Not that it will matter in SC, but I think RFK is uniquely situated to fix many of the most important ills facing our country.
Me too. If he were to win, I think he would actually work to “ heal the divide.” If Trump wins I would not be surprised to see Trump offering him a cabinet position. HHS.. clean out the CDC, NIH, FDA .. I really would like the liberal media to give the guy a chance as opposed to protecting Biden. Walter Reed Doctors giving Biden a pass on his mental decline is just so very wrong.
Perhaps but he did have RFK Jr into the WH before and during COVID to discuss the vaccines and other controversial RFK has addressed… Trump now knows that the CDC and the FDA are corrupt…. Wishful thinking on my part.
We agree to disagree. The media has only begun with their hatchet job. And his family members that are critical of his run are on the dole from the DNC. Parasites.
Totally agree. I also believe Sanders would have beaten Trump but the Democrats are too clueless to choose the most popular client. Had they allowed RFK to have a legit chance to win the nomination he'd likely win and beat Trump. But they never learn. It's their own arrogance, self-interest and ignorance that is their undoing.
Knowing and caring are two very different things. Democrats are cultists who lack the ability to process paradigm shifts within the Party. The get a Democrat to care about anything requires a Democrat to tell them to care about it, and who's going to give the game away? If Bernie Sanders can easily shill for Democrats then what hope is there?
" Some Conservative thoughts about Democrats in general, albeit not every individual:
They don’t care about illegal immigration because they plan to gain votes from these people.
They don’t care about election integrity because they intend to win every election whatever it takes.
They don’t care about the Electoral College because eliminating it allows them to govern the whole country.
They don’t care about bipartisanship because it will be irrelevant when they become the only party.
They don’t care about congressional gridlock because they want the country run by executive orders.
They don’t care about packing our courts because states would have no hope of stopping executive orders.
They don’t care about censorship because they are confident, they will be the censors.
They don’t care about the cancel culture because they plan to do the cancellations.
They don’t care about hypocrisy because each talking point stands calculated to advance the party.
They don’t care about China becoming a supreme world power because they intend to emulate the CCP.
They don’t care about destructive riots in the cities because they don’t believe in private property. " (There was more but apparently Ii have reached a limit.)
"They don’t care about the Citizens United Supreme Court decision because now the money flows to them.
They don’t care about people getting shot because every shooting helps justify gun control.
They don’t care about a politicized military because when force becomes the only way to rule they intend to be the only force.
Democrats apparently don’t care about anybody or anything except gaining complete political power. Traditional America be damned! Rousseau and social scientists win."
They don't think about the consequences of their actions, because they are too stupid to see that they might be on the receiving end of their norm-breaking idiocy. Thanks for dying, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Harry Reid fucked your party bigly, thanks to the "nuclear option."
Ending the war on drugs isn't Portland's problem - it's allowing people to get high in public without consequence. We don't want to arrest people who are getting high at home, but that doesn't mean we need to accept homeless drug addicts overtaking our public spaces.
Unfortunately, that doesn't work either as San Francisco has found out. Homeless people, are for the most part, mentally ill which leads to drug addiction and inability to work and then homelessness. San Fransisco built apartments for the homeless in areas close to where they could get drugs and live for free with no responsibility to get sober or get a job. It's a disaster and blowing up financially. The truth is you either re-institutionalize (with hopefully having learned what not to do) or you disperse forcing them to spread out. Neither of these are particularly politically possible at the time.
Half-assed measures like "safe injection sites" and needle exchanges by which used outfits all end up in the gutter, only exacerbate the problem. Junkies from around the country gravitate to these liberal cities where they can buy their fentanyl openly, shoot it in the street, run naked displaying their scabby bodies, shit on the sidewalk, and generally make everyone's life a living hell.
This will not change until all drugs are made legally available to 21+, with prohibited advertising and marketing and severe penalties for illegal trafficking and public intoxication, death for the former, the latter requiring prison time of 5-10 years with no parole.
The War on Drugs is a comically stupid name for some comically stupid criminal policies.
That said, stigmatizing solipsistic antisocial behaviors, like recreational drug use (and prostitution, and gambling, and other supposed "victimless" crimes), has tremendous societal benefits.
Allowing the government to assume the role of the Tattaglias, Barzinis and Corleones isn't good for anyone. While the idea of interdicting every drug deal is like watching a dog chasing its tail, the concept that people shouldn't look down on drug users and their pushers and enablers is stupid.
Shame was a great tool in managing human behavior for millennia. Somehow it's out of vogue right now, except for the climate cultists. There is nothing wrong with thinking that certain activities which depend on human frailty (and those who promote said activities) should be looked down upon, and society should try to end such activities as much as possible.
Not to worry AI will rescue their lame asses and drone us ignorant flyover deplorables with the bankers and cia at the joystick. And all will be right in their democracy. Until they too are no longer needed.
Yeah, I'm wondering if they will get theirs as a result of the new Fascism dropping humanitarian pretense once it secures power, or by persecuting rural America until the agricultural system collapses.
Dems have always been the party of the NY financiers. Since the Civil War and likely before. Slavery was financed, and slaves were transported and insured by northern interests-holders. My understanding is that no reconstruction was performed to dispossess those fine folks of their ill-gotten gains. 150+ years is a long time to be suckered.
The Democrats have gone with the full Rwandan radio strategy for a while now. The only reason books like this exist is to justify violence and oppression against large groups of people. This is really sickening, vile stuff. I’m actually surprised they showed their faces on TV. Usually when someone publicly spews this kind of hateful language they try to hide behind the protection of some kind of Klan hood or balaclava or something. I guess they know they have all the weapons of the regime on their side so they aren’t afraid of anything. Hopefully that will change soon.
Yes. Their new movie about civil war pretends to be worried about the prospect while jacking off furiously to the hope it will happen. Stupid rubes killing each other fap fap! Why can’t they hurry up and get in the coliseum we have so lovingly built for them?
The stupidity of these people is staggering. The problem with telling people you hate them, their families, their communities, their culture, and their history is that eventually they believe you. One need only the slightest understanding of any number of civil wars in the past century to understand how profoundly dangerous this is.
I believe these idiots are too consumed with their resentment, contempt and self righteous ego masturbation to consider what happens when they catch that car. If they give it any thought at all, they believe others will do violence on their behalf and they will watch it unfold on TV. They should probably ponder what The Troubles 2.0 would look like in an American context and then shut the fuck up.
...also, everyone they know thinks like they do, no dissent allowed. Within the safety of this echo chamber they feel free to parade themselves around.
The good news is this kind of behavior by these types ensures their downfall. Only a matter of time, and accelerating fast, it seems to me.
Rural America doesn’t need urban America to survive, only to thrive. Urban America starves to death without power without rural America within the month. Also, it’s not really rural vs urban but blue collar vs white collar. And in the end too many ppl in white collar America take for granted that blue collar America delivers them their food, electricity, and housing. White collar America believes men and women are interchangeable, blue collar America knows better.
“Schaller and White Rural Rage co-author Paul Waldman make the same point, that “cities produce far more of the nation’s wealth,” and rural citizens are increasingly “subsidized by the taxes paid by higher-income metropolitans.” What gives? Why won’t they shut the fuck up?”
Urban cities produce wealth like Facebook and rural areas produce wealth like food.
As for the genius of the professional managerial class, an academic paper demonstrating that current university students have an average IQ of 102 has pissed off the establishment and is being held up in review. They’re all above average in Lake Woebegone.
It is interesting how those of the high-minded intelligentsia class are missing the many cues that "the university," as they know it, is on a trajectory to obsolescence.
People who live and move and have their being in virtual reality (and are more likely to be urban and white collar) are also more likely to believe all sorts of nonsense, so long as it is widely approved by their peers in digital-land. People whose livelihood depends on understanding and accepting the unyielding realities of conception, birth, death, the hardness of wood, the sharpness of steel, the heat of the sun, are less easily snookered.
Haha Lynne! I was made aware of an Oberlin student (they had some kind of queer agenda that I don’t recall) anyway they needed a plumber to come in for the toilets in the dorms and she/he complained that a “toxic” male made her feel stressed and uncomfortable.
I think about rural Americans savng cities during natural disasters like floods or hurricanes. Men in boats rescuing other men who probably can't change a tire or jump start a car.
For a group that endlessly lectures us about "othering" different groups the liberals at the NY times seem to have no problem "othering" the people they perceive as political opponents. This is weapons grade hypocrisy (and stupidity) on display.
It's the same with the whole "diversity" agenda. They approve of a diversity of races and genders, but not a diversity of thought. Look how they ostracize minorities who do not comply with their narratives: Coleman Hughes, John McWhorter, heck, even Caitlin Jenner
Oh my gosh. I AM one of these "rural Americans." I have advanced degrees in math and science. I've owned multiple businesses and lecturered at a small state university. The Democrats did everything they could to label myself and my kind as hayseeds, buffoons, racists and violent xenophobes because we valued our way of life and refused to volunteer to give up our voice through things like the electoral college. I'm in Idaho, but over in Oregon and Washington, the coastal Democratic areas run the rest of the states. What the left really doesn't like is anyone with the moxy, and especially the gravitas, to push back on their bullshit - which goes back decades. I don't love Trump either, but it's far from clear to me who's worse.
Moved from east coast to Texas five years ago. Wish we could have done it earlier but family. Went back for a funeral, I hope to never have to go east again.
Oregon coastal elites are rude, pride themselves on high IQ, yet cannot survive without blue collar workers and farmers that grow all their “ organic” food.
The Left understands that dividing people by stocking class resentment is the most effective way to foment the unrest and turmoil needed to destabilize our culture, which then provides the perfect entrê for their plans to refashion society in accordance with their "progressive" vision.
Not just class resentment but a vast array of microscopic gradations of resentment. Whole lists of reasons to hate--that's the magic of intersectionality!
One important lesson is trying to understand perspectives you do not understand. I can assure you Paul K has NO understanding of anyone outside his hermetically sealed circle. His observations are wrong on all counts. Yes, the real danger are my neighbors, not the sociopaths in Washington...mk.
Back to calling out “the basket of deplorables”… They should just have issued their own “New Yorker’s view of the world” poster showing nothing between themselves and California.
tyranny = democracy. The pork council can only bill the serfs for "democracy". If they submitted a budget notice for public appropriations as 'tyranny' - no one would pay it. So it's all coded as 'democracy' so the tyrants can get their free public money. See how that works?
"Why won't you vote for us Democrats, you ignorant vile mouth-breathing subhuman hicks!!?"
I have an MIT grad degree and ya couldn’t pay me to vote Democrat. No price. The Left constantly and unfairly disparages the rural poor and middle class for their viewpoints, but many educated & rich people agree with them as well. The Left really needs to stop this tactic- not a persuasive way to win votes.
Columbia here - after some youthful confusion I will never vote Democrat again (not much of a fan of Republican either). Unfortunately the typical Ivy Plus tier students have been inculcated with a combination of self congratulatory arrogance and stunning ignorance as well. It would be nice to see more humility and grace from our "elites" but that requires a level of self awareness that's pretty rare.
Man! Did YOU ever "Peg it"! VAST majorities of "educated" people are FULLY unconscious of their INABILITIES, yet believe themselves to be quite the opposite. Stunning to witness with ever-opening, and aging eyes!
The word is "smugnorant." "High on their own farts" works, too.
South Park episode “Smug Alert” is a classic. Definitely worth watching if you’re unfamiliar.
Thaaaaannnkks!!!
Dunning-Krugerocracy.
"VAST majorities of "educated" people are FULLY unconscious of their INABILITIES"
Agreed. The question in my mind is 'where did this come from?' It didn't exist to this degree in my youth and young adulthood decades ago; instead, noblesse oblige, though by no means universal, seemed to reign as a result of multi-generational, wisdom-born humility.
'Where?', indeed! The answer to that simple question is different for everyone and depends upon the depth and breadth of ones individual cosmology. From my perspective (a single point, looking out at the remainder of the universe), the short answer is that this is a fully natural process, that we can only partially understand. We see mankind make great strides, yet we see human frailties go the OPPOSITE way; from Gold, to Silver, to Iron (and 'through the ages' if you are a student of History). There's a much bigger story here, that has been going on for so long, that from an individual standpoint it is impossible to even BEGIN seeing, until one has established their own observations over an 'ever lengthening arc of time', and recognizable patterns in human behavior, THEN become noticeable to the individual. One thing is VERY interesting: The PEOPLE are the exact SAME as they have ever been. It is only their 'programming' that has changed.
In a world less fettered by the pursuit of material goals (self), there are fewer (selfish) distractions, MORE meaningful human interactions, SUBSTANTIALLY MORE introspective thought, and a much tighter social cohesion is the result. As the opportunity for (selfish) pursuits increases, TIME that would otherwise be spent on those virtuous 'PEOPLE' qualities, is DISPLACED by the pursuit of (selfish) 'THINGS'.
Here are four words: USE, LOVE, THINGS, PEOPLE. When the alignment is correct, life is harmonious. So back to your original (and hopefully NOT rhetorical) question of 'Where
did this come from?'. DECAY, as a result of MALIGNING those four simple words. It's NATURAL. It's happening as part of a larger saga that is so EXTENSIVE that it cannot possibly be understood in its entirety by a mere human being. And it is also meant to PROVE A POINT to mankind - that he is NOT GOD.
If the decay is natural, where are the moments it has it occurred in U.S. history? Arguably, at the turnings, yes? If so, my follow-on question is then, at each of these turnings, who had then then, and is now taking, over from the decayed (weakened) citizenry? Power abhors a vacuum.
"a larger saga that is so EXTENSIVE that it cannot possibly be understood in its entirety by a mere human being. " -- Then of what use is asserting it? Humans, and groups of humans, can only understand human-understandable things. Everything else is conjecture.
Lowly State Universities here.
..”because Donald Trump didn’t. He just “gave [rural voters] a way to essentially give a big middle finger to Democrats, to people who live in cities and to the rest of the country.”
That resonates with me based on where I live in a very rural state. It’s just an anecdote but I see this not uncommonly. Two young men hunted with my husband recently. They are in their late 30s, own their own homes, drove up in new 80k pickups…and spent two days bemoaning how difficult and unfair life is for them. They both were public tech school educated men who had very good management positions in the tax payer subsidized oils fields kept open by non other than Biden. These men came from good working class homes where I know their parents would be shocked at how these two talked.
I left the Dems because they have forgotten the working class issues in many ways. I come from union mill workers. But the contempt and bitterness shown by some is just unfounded. And the GOP and Trump especially….offer what? There are a lot on the left who are far from elite class. I still think Dems put forth legislation that is more supportive of working class, esp in matters of taxation.
Can you answer a question "esp in matters of taxation" that I have never really gotten a satisfactory answer to? I assume by that you mean you are in favor of government taxing the rich more. But all that does is take money from individuals and put it in the hand of the government to allocate, and government is famously bad at allocating money efficiently. So why, in your view, is it better for the government to tax and spend money than the people who originally generated/earned it?
This is a genuine question, and I know I assume a lot about your views. But you seem like a reasonable person who happens to think differently than I do, so I figured I'd give it a shot.
Aaron, this is why the Taibbi comments section is more vibrant than the Bari Weiss (The Free Press) comments. You are sincerely asking a question to understand someone's perspective better. I wish this happened more often. I don't know if I can satisfactorily answer your questions, but I'll take a shot.
And I certainly don't speak for Ann, but I too was public university educated. I had a very successful career in large corporations, and made a lot of money, but never complained about my taxes. Because our taxes are pretty low, especially for rich people.
I'm glad you wrote "generated" in addition to "earned." My annual income when I retired was over $650,000 and I wasn't even a Senior VP, just a regular VP. A normal person can't spend that much in a year, which is why I was able to retire in my 50s. I certainly didn't "earn" that much, anymore than Tom Hanks "earns" $25 million plus a % on the back-end. To think I actually was worth that (i.e., earned it) would require me to think my job was 10 times more important or valuable to society than a firefighter, or a cop, or a teacher. And I'm not about to start thinking dumbass elite shit like that. Step 1 is rich people understanding that they don't really deserve all the money. So paying taxes isn't the same as giving away a child. Step 2 is rich people caring enough about our nation to want to contribute to reducing our debt. In other words, being willing to pay our share. Granted, steps 1 and 2 will be difficult. There are a lot of smug bros out there who think they earned and deserve every penny, and who likely think they are worth more to society than others. But there's always hope.
Very true, government spends very inefficiently and unproductively. Like a hundred billion for Ukraine and they need 60 more. And who even wants to think about what kind of deals Biden is cutting to get House support for his wars.
What we do NOT need is more tax cuts for rich people. As mentioned, our rates are already quite low compared to peer nations. And we sure as fuck don't need to be cutting taxes on corporations. Some rich people seem to try to spend all they can. The vast majority don't, and so tax cuts just sit in their investment accounts, doing nothing productive for the economy. At least government spends money in the economy.
As I noted up top, I don't know if that will be a complete enough answer for you. I believe in paying our fair share in taxes. Government has definitely broken our deal by not spending money fixing roads and bridges, etc., spending on wars and the security state in general instead.
Rich people complaining about taxes don't understand what truly high taxes are.
Some rich folks get it. Warren Buffet is famous for decrying the fact that he has a lower tax rate (due to capital gains and carried interest bullshit) than his secretary. There is a lot of that kind of nonsense in our tax code that could be cleaned up.
I'm also interested in a furtherance of your perspective.
Thank you for taking the time to write a reply, and I agree that I really enjoy the chance to actually share views with others in a respectful way. I have a couple points I'd like to make in response (publicly educated myself, for what it's worth. Finance undergrad and MBA at a decent state school):
1. To your point about not deserving all the money, I would ask, if the people who work for and earn the money don't deserve it, then why does the government? If you want to use it to give to charity, or invest in a friend's business, or whatever, shouldn't you make that decision rather than giving more to the government to spend with abandon and give to their crony friends?
2. As to the rates we pay being lower than our peers, what about the fact that the top 1% of earners pay something like 40% of total income tax? I don't remember the exact percentage but it is a huge disparity.
However, none of this really gets to the core of my question, which is why you trust the government more than yourself to know how best to spend the money you earn. There are countless examples of misspending and graft by the federal, state, and local governments, and so much of current regulation seems designed to funnel much of government spending to various lawyers or NGOs for opinions on regulatory matters or environmental reviews. Higher taxation in effect just ends up letting the most wasteful and corrupt among us allocate a huge proportion of our national output.
You mentioned the waste of financing the pointless killing of Ukrainians but not the industrial slaughter being committed by Israel, which murders more children in a month than have died in Ukraine in two years. They're both criminal enterprises which will, and should, haunt us for the rest of our lives. I do agree about Bari Weiss's outlet, where wading into the comments with a sane perspective is akin to wearing a fur coat at a PETA convention. I subscribed for a while because I'm fed up with wokism, but Weiss lost her mind completely after October 7th and I had to flee. And yes to taxing the rich. In 2024, amassing a fortune has never been more disconnected from the performance of actual, productive work.
Good post, a few points:
Giving money to the federal government doesn't reduce our debt because they manage to spend $7 Trillion after taking in $4 Trillion;
Because we have a progressive tax, giving the lower income folks a tax cut gives the rich a tax cut, because tax rates increase with income, so we effectively cut taxes on the first $50k or so, including the rich people's first $50k. This situation is baked into our system;
Investment accounts are insanely productive, not to be analogized to Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool of money. It does not just "sit there" and do I need to go through George Bailey's justification for the savings & loan to prove that?;
At the time, Warren Buffet's secretary was making $350k/year, but he didn't mention that. And, of course, earned income is taxed, while unrealized profits are not. This is a no-brainer.;
We do not need "tax code reform" as that's just rearranging the deck chairs. We need a flat tax, or the Fair Tax, so people can spend their time productively, rather than investing days and treasure to make sure they don't end up in Biden's jails.
I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with education as much as or even your place on the socio-economic ladder, as it does with your place of institutional or private enterprise employment. If you’re employed in the academic bureaucratic world, chances are, especially if you’re employed by one of the many governmental alphabet extensions... Chances are that you’re insulated from anything that occurs in what most know as the real world. Even during the Covid pandemic those employed by one of the many governmental agencies you did not miss a beat... While the rest of the real world art f the nation, were locked in and frozen out of our jobs, business, and livelihood.
Well said. Brilliant!
I will patiently wait for a reply to your query as well. I would sincerely like to hear one too!
Taxhe rich means tax everyone who has more than me. Imagine the financial chaos if all US billionaires had 1 year to pay half their wealth to the government. Many would applaud this but the stock liquidation and panic sales of real estate holdings would drive the market into a tailspin which would cost the average investor dearly and result in a huge decrease in household wealth and taxes paid
Worse yet, two thousand billionaires paying a billion each would raise only a few months worth of deficit spending
It’s a political scam pushed by unscrupulous politicians trying to buy favor and endorsed by fools. ( talk about ignorant)
Is anyone here proposing they give up half thier wealth?
To add a little fuel to the fire and perhaps broaden a perspective
consider a read of "Limitarianism, The Case Against Extreme
Wealth" by Ingrid Robeyns, published 24.01.16. Tom Piketty gives
it a must read endorsement. Robeyns credentials are pretty impressive.
The question that begs is how does higher taxation, or more efficient taxation for that matter, help the people in the above situation? There is no evidence that higher revenues from taxes are one any real benefit except when they result in debt reduction
There is a dwindling cohort of Dems that aren’t captive to the coastal cultural activist left, mainly rust belt union supporting Ds. John Fetterman and Joe Manchin are cut from this cloth. However the media and cultural power centers on the coasts have diverged sharply in recent decades, veering to the left ever further to placate the activists
I worked in the oil field for 40+ years and I'm going have to see some proof to back up your "tax payer subsidized oils fields kept open by non other than Biden" declaration. I personally know three independent producers and can tell you that Biden sure as hell isn't helping them out. As for Krugman and the other elites that claim the metropolitan are subsidizing the rural areas, I call BS. In the first place increasing corporate and personal wealth by basically circulating money amongst themselves and adding a handling fee, as in broker fees, interest, service charges, etc., is doing nothing in terms of production. The only real new wealth is through agriculture, mining and oil production. These industries actually PRODUCE new and tangible wealth through commodities. Metropolitan areas in reality don't even come close to creating wealth. Moving money around and pushing paper survive and thrive on the backs of new created wealth.
Energy, agriculture and transportation are the three most heavily subsidized industries in the US. While alternative energy is subsidized, those subsidies are relatively recent and are scheduled to phase out in the future. Not so for oil, as US taxpayers send the industry about $20 billion a year; globally subsidies range into the trillions (https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/global-fossil-fuel-subsidies-rise-despite-calls-phase-out-2023-11-23). The US has subsidized oil since…the 20s? 30s?
I understand the pros and cons of subsidies. We all appreciate affordable gas and heating fuel, food and transportation. My comment about Biden was that these guys were griping about Biden, while US is pumping more oil now than ever, and more than any other country in the world. The reason we don’t hear about that is because Biden is, let’s just say, “upsetting” a big proportion of his base with environmental concerns (count me in this pod). I live in a rural state, big ag. Last I checked a few years ago, our states federal subsidy $ to Fed tax $ was 9:1. The Infrastructure bill also throws huge amounts of taxpayer money into roads, rails and air travel…to rebuild an aging and inadequate infrastructure. Think jobs. Just heard Phoenix is permitting a chip manufacturing plant. Think 10000 jobs. So yep, government has its ills and as you rightly point out, corporate and finance sectors circulate money, in a sense. And yes, Dems and Biden have their problems, but again what has the GOP or Trump done for the working class. Surely not his tax bill, that again sent most of the money into the pockets of the 1 percent.
I respectfully disagree with or maybe misunderstand your view of metro areas. Commodities are important. But are you saying manufacturing doesn’t create wealth? Metro areas host a a more diverse workforce than that of suit and tie financial sectors. Quickly found these tidbits in a Brookings Inst article:
“America’s metropolitan areas, particularly the large metros and central metro counties, are the nation’s manufacturing centers. Metros contained nearly 80 percent of all manufacturing jobs in 2010, and 95 percent of very high-technology manufacturing jobs. Nearly all metros specialize strongly in at least one manufacturing industry.
Manufacturing in most metros falls into one of six broad categories of industry clustering. These are anchored in high specialization in computers and electronics, transportation equipment, chemicals, machinery, food production, and low-wage manufacturing industries.”
It only makes sense. To manufacture you need labor and infrastructure, both live in metro areas. Personally I appreciate metro areas and all the millions who live there…because they aren’t living in my backyard ( ;
You know those aren't actually subsidies, right?
Ann,
I think you misunderstand how FF energy subsidies (if they exist, and it’s mostly a definitional argument imo; ie, does expensing drawn down/produced reserves count as a subsidy). Companies compete against each other. In commodities the average return reverts to the cost of capital, due to competition. Thus, over time any subsidy would get passed on to the consumer. So any subsidy benefits consumers, not corporations. (Assuming a competitive market, which is usually but not aalways the case).
I know from bitter experience as a long time energy investor! Long term returns in energy are mediocre. You only make real money if you successfully time this highly cyclical industry.
Great comments Ann, and as you see, others joined in the highly respectful discussion. As much as I am upset about the Democrats all of a sudden loving stupid wars, censorship, and spying on our own citizens, their complete and total sellout of workers to the Wall Street overlords is the most shameful.
But because of my disdain for almost all Republican domestic ideas (tax cuts for rich and corporations, benefits cuts for everyone else), I'm left without a home. Looks like a good year for a protest vote.
"Sudden?" The Democratic Party became a piece of shit way back when Bill Clinton abandoned its values and sold it to the highest donors. It's been a bad joke ever since, a long, long time now.
Well, the Dems' love of spying on our own citizens has only been around since Obama, and the love of censorship has really taken off in the past 7 years. But yeah, the desertion of workers started under Clinton and his DLC.
Taxes are the eternal political currency. I support business friendly tax policy but I also understand that income taxes are political currency and always a point of negotiation. I’m not knee jerk anti-tax, I’m knee jerk anti-government waste, corruption, and gross inefficiency-and the only way to stop this-at any level-is to not fund it. It’s the same logic as the “don’t feed the animals” sign at the zoo-but corporatist big government types realize they need to throw as ostensible social welfare bone to cover their political behinds.
"taxpayer subsidized oils fields" Really? you know that for sure? please provide evidence.
Yes. It’s common knowledge? Google it.
What’s the old saw
“If a man’s not a liberal at age 20 he has no heart. If he’s still a liberal at age 40, he has no head.”
Oft quoted and tweaked over centuries by many famous people.
It took me a little longer than 40, but I was never political and barely cared enough to pay cursory attention. Now I get it.
I agree craazyman. But I would add one more stage to the evolution of the political and social mind. If a person isn't a realist by the time they're 50, they haven't been paying attention to the benefits and failures of BOTH philosophies. I no longer adhere to any dogma. There's good and bad in every framework.
Yep. Agree completely.
We are the world.........
That was Churchill. It was, has no heart, has no brain.
He was one of many. Google it.
It's been attributed in various forms to several historical figures, each of whom tweaked it to their purpose evidently.
Yup - born & raised in Massachusetts so I was indoctrinated as a Democrat from the get-go (‘youthful capture’!) - but had an epiphany in my 40’s that made me realize I was never a Democrat 😂😂😂
I get tired of calling these people "elites". Elite what? Idiots?
Well said.
Most people align their views with what works for them. I imagine things would be easier for you if you just went along with your contemporaries. Not quite as top tier as you guys but I get it
I'm afraid you might be the exception, my friend. The MITers I know are uniformly Democrat/Leftist, arrogant and certain of their own superiority over pretty much everyone else.
You have no idea what "left' means in the US.
You have 2 parties: One is right wing and the other is facist.
Oh Jenny Jenny Jenny... true, we "have no idea what left means in the US" if by "left" you mean Stalinist/Maoist/Castroite... and thank God for that. Hopefully, we never will have "left" parties like that in the US...but you never know.
And "fascist"--we don't have that either, given that the template for "fascist" is Mussolini's Italy. No, we don't have that. And I thank God for that, too.
One good thing: talking to you does make me feel more hopeful about my country. We have, thus far, successfully avoided the dual catastrophes of Left and Right extremes. Though, truth be told, what the Dems are currently pushing does feel disturbingly similar to Mao's Cultural Revolution. If you doubt that, ask some of the survivors of that nightmare who are currently living here.
And a good day to you, lassie!
So, pardon me for asking, but how did the Democratic party wander into the Mao cultural revolution without first trespassing on fascist ground? I'm a Libertarian/AnArcho capitalist. I understand dictators gonna dictate! Does it really matter if Biden is more of a Mao style dictator or a Mussolini style authoritarian?
To briefly respond to your query LiveFree: while today's Dems definitely have an authoritarian streak, the similarity to the Maoist Cultural Rev is seen in their relentless attack on what was known in China as "the four olds"--old ideas, old customs, old habits, old culture. We see this (to cite just one case) in the notion of "Gender Identity Theory" replacing the "binary" of man/woman. Before the revolutionary "new" can be born, the "old" must be replaced, no matter how bizarre and unfounded the "new" may be. They demand that you accept without question men pretending to be women, use the desired pronouns, or face the consequences. The tearing down of statues is also a prime example of the American Cultural Revolution in action.
Another disturbing similarity to the barbarism of the Chinese CR is the prevalence of Leftist mobs (usually but not always online) to shame, humiliate, and cancel those who dare disagree with the new revolutionary ideology. And while we in the US have, for the most part, not seen this "revolution" inflict violence on dissenters like the one in China, that may be coming.
It's been awhile since I've run into any "survivors" of Mao's cultural revolution, let alone discussed their nightmares, so if I'm to better understand the nuts and bolts of this argument a few names and contact information for these people would be appreciated. Thank you.
Ah, Feldspar, my favorite spook... In response to your query about survivors of the Cultural Revolution and the parallels to today's America (you know, the one in which government informants lurk on comment pages, heh heh), I refer you to Xi Van Fleet. She has been recently interviewed by Tucker, and has spoken widely about her fears that we are re-living the Maoist nightmare here in Biden's America. Google some of her stuff and report back to me.
I dunno. My kid interviewed one for a school project. They are out there if your curiosity was honest. I don't think we need to google them for you.
The author of Mao American (a book for sale now on Amazon) was on a recent Tucker’s show. She said this “the infiltration of Communism is complete in this country.” The entire interview is worth the watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIay3uL17Jg
reporting on them might lead to retribution to their families still in the homeland!
One of the main points is: The uneducated populace of the US is now finally talking about politics. Not 'shop till you drop!'
It's all a bit late.
I don’t think the Democrats are pushing Maoist type stuff. Some of their loudest supporters are but they think they have that tiger by the tail. Don’t think they are right
The two major US parties are more like long term coalitions of factions which would be separate parties elsewhere. The loony left has far too much influence with the Democrats.
Did you mean faceist?
We sherr err dum.
Jenny is wildly ignorant about the US, ignore her.
I think she got it close. I don't know what she means by "right wing" (Capitalist? Libertarian? Anti-woke? Against genital mutilation of minors? Anti-welfare?) Seems to mean different things to different people. But the US "left wing" is quickly growing full-on intolerant fascist. They are way more about Identitarian-Climate Crazy-Hate Israel/Jews than about any traditional lefty social policies.
Perhaps, but she got that one right. Raised in Indiana in a Republican household.
maybe she meant "fatuous"?
kant youo spelt anyting wright?!
"You have 2 parties: One is right wing and the other is fascist."
Pretty sure you are talking about their ringleaders and the operatives in their party structures. There are no truly fascist rank-and-file members, whether you look at Democratic Party voters or Republican Party voters.
------------------
Traditionally in the West (about two centuries, anyway), there have been Right and Left. The common threads are that the Right prioritizes the individual, the Left prioritizes the social. The two complements are necessary for a healthy society.
That's why in a system like that in the U.S. that has forced just two parties, these rough groupings stay perpetual, the only games in town, even if they switch buckets occasionally. When a citizen changes his/her mind about the preferred priority at a point in time in either their own or the society's history, in the two-party U.S. he/she switches from from one side to the other. Recently in the U.S., the vessels claiming Rightist principals are Republicans and Leftist ones are Democrats, with the emphasis on "claiming".
Identifying the predominant motives of power-center pied-pipers and their propaganda, on what issues to pay attention to and what positions to hold from time to time, is a completely different thing, and it varies with the wind. On a large scale, though, maybe they vary once in a turning (c. 80 years, e.g. a full life).
I would like to say one thing.
I am in Europe and we have maybe 6 parties +
We have a Socialist party.......pretty much defunct at the moment.
We have a Communist Part gaining strength.
The we have the 'middle of the road/Macron parties.
Now we have more facist parties.
At least we have a choice!
Democrats have never been 'leftist!"
Thanks for that clarification. Yes, should have added U.S. to first paragraph.
"Democrats have never been 'leftist!"
They were in the Great Depression, and at least for about four decades afterward. But instead of regrouping by 1970 and during the 1970s and 80s recognizing what was failure (the unquestionable, unjustified, and thus unregulated forms of socialism that led to the Reagan backlash) and what was correct, they instead transitioned by stealth to complete two-faced corporatists. Clinton was the first of three Trojan horse presidents.
I really don't think they'll get away with it again, but that just means they'll transform into some other monster with tricks, maybe just a new Trojan-horse nominally "Leftist" party claiming a restoration. It won't change until the people actually hold them accountable, as they did in the 1900s and 1930s. But given the unprecedented sophistication of today's propaganda (and technology of all other kinds), it will be much harder than before.
Jenny Jenny who do I turn to?
There are a lot of Libertarians at MIT. Koch Bros were grads. Thomas Massie. A couple of candidates running as Republicans here in MA every now and again.
The question is how many are not engaged in the latest thing and are simply going about their studies and ignoring the BS. Which kinda describes me 40 years ago.
…every now and then 😂
Except my dad....may he rest in peace.
Please keep us updated on your unentitled progress. We're proud of your ongoing everymanishness.
Too many people are trying to be what they are not…
KaBIllions of us have degrees and would never vote for a Democrat. They are not very bright. No common sense. Follow any herd kinda people.
Approximately 13% of the population is rural/white, yet approximately 50% support Trump. I think that means the vast majority of Trump supporters are not rural whites. The narrative is false
Agreed Philip. Matt and Thomas Frank have written about this subject. The Dem's have abandoned most Americans, and THAT'S why Trump rose to prominence.
Nice point. The inflection point now looks like college educated versus HS or less. (This is not a comment on intelligence)
"win" votes has proven to be too difficult for the socialist left. Since they now control the printing of money, it's much easier to simply buy votes. What remains in the way of needed votes (happens once-in-a-while) can be produced via the Magical Mail-in Machine.
No kidding - Obama handed out goodies like Santa Claus as has Biden 👉🏼 $428 Billion of student loan refunds on the back of the American taxpayers but in effect a vote buying scheme for the Biden Campaign. Obama did the same thing. I recall my cousins jumping for glee after they received a letter ‘from Obama’ saying that he was either giving them better terms and/or loan forgiveness. Neither Obama nor Biden addressed the root of the problem of high college cost nor did anything to ameliorate the situation- they just had their monkey print more money.
Lowly Community School no degree, but tech worker of 20+ years. I am the keyboard warrior you are looking for. LOL
Grew up in a union house after being born on a military base. Voted Democrat right up until the Obama Turn. No more.
"... but many educated & rich people agree with [rural poor and middle class] as well."
They don't have to agree. They are people, and people (all minimally-competent adults, at least) should have equal rights. Period. Democracy trumps ideology. And the silver lining is that the less-capable will often follow the more-capable *when they are treated right*. Trump happens because they're not.
"The Left really needs to stop this tactic- not a persuasive way to win votes."
Those in control of the levers, i.e. those intelligent sociopaths above the classists we're talking about here, don't care about that. If they get majority support, great, it helps the cover-up, but they will ram through their goals "by any means necessary" -- not just through pushed-visible Woke pretentions, but all manner of carefully-hidden Machiavellian maneuvers.
Sorry, but the Democrats are not the Left. They have never been the Left my entire life. There is a Left that the Democrats hate, and will never even acknowledge. I know, I've tried in every state I ever lived in. The Democrats are much more right, center-right, at best. Please don't confuse the elites with being Left.
MIT also (1980). Retired. Travel the country. Non urban people are awesome. So refreshing.
I've often said since moving to the land where there are more cows than churches and more churches than people that if I was rolling along I-95 and saw a black man broken down on the side of the road wearing a dress, I'd expect the guy in the Ford Diesel Pickup Truck with the Confederate Flag on the back window and the gun rack to stop and help him/her fix their car before I'd ever expect the soccer mom or office worker in their Mercedes to do so.
For the umpteenth time, they are not the Left. The idea that the Democrats are even a centimetre to the actual left is risible. Do you think a party of the Left would sell out the workers and society via NAFTA? When they're not bombing, of course.
Yes, it's true that liberal elitists are terrified of farmers, ranchers, miners, and other men, women, and children who work with their hands.
And work, for that matter. These people are the worst. (Expletive deleted, because "I'M EDUCATED") Ah, fuck it. Fuck you, Joe and Mika!. ; )
Yep
Kind of odd to call a very diverse group of people living in locations all over the country “ ignorant “ when it’s obvious you know nothing about them? Isn’t that pretty much a perfect example of ignorance?
Politeness towards the electorate, along with engaging with them to get to know them has been the winning combination for politicians for decades. Disparaging citizens because of one’s assumptions about them is the loser’s path in politics. Looking at voters and calling them names they have never been called from the podium? Take the favored candidate off the ballot? Destroy your chances and democracy in one fell swoop. Your political life is over.
Election denier Clinton comes to mind
And produce real physical wealth, not BS pseudo wealth.
Right. We produce new wealth, not recycled wealth.
Jeff Keener have you seen this?
https://dailynewsfromaolf.substack.com/p/amish-warning-about-growing-food
They are going for farmers worldwide.
In France, at least, the farmers are fighting back - amazingly effectively...
Yes, all over Europe. I have been following the protests in Germany, Netherlands, France, Poland, and now the Canadian government is going after Canadian farmers. Pretty sure that won’t end well … for the government.
I deeply hope you are right.
The French farmers have a century of tradition of fighting back - hard. I hope that their latest humiliation of Macron’s poncy government will be an inspiration to other european farmers.
Trudeau’s government has already been found to have acted unconstitutionally when they invoked the Emergency Act against the truckers. They clearly are now just looking for other authoritarian hammers to use against the farmers.
It feels like the world is moving towards a tipping point; but we’ve also seen the wild lengths elitist governments will go to crush dissent - including in the US. I hope you’re right about how it ends.
I have to interject. Some of the most heavily subsidized farmers ever. I have some sympathy but when you make a deal with the devil…..
No argument there at all. I just honestly love seeing the "angry peasants" rise up against the elites. The deal with the devil argument goes both ways in that particular instance - the government also thought they were buying off the serfs... I mean the farmers. Oops... I hope they inspire some other folks who have been abandoned by the left to do something similar.
OMG!!! 😱🤬
Super annoying there is no article to read. Just YouTube video and prompts to be a paid subscriber. You lose me when it’s just videos.
Oh, the legend of ol' Farmer Amos! He's back! Back in the news and never really out of the news---the Taylor Swift of Lancaster County Dairyin.'
"Attorney General Michelle Henry filed the suit against Miller and his related businesses Tuesday in Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas."
“For years, this business has brushed off efforts to bring its commercial farm operation into compliance with the law — as all commercial farms are required to do,” [Attorney General Michelle] Henry said. Henry accuses [Amos] Miller of failing to obtain licenses and permits, selling illegal raw milk products, and selling raw milk and raw milk products outside of Pennsylvania."
"Ag Department officials raided the Miller farm in Upper Leacock Township on Jan. 4 after New York and Michigan suspected E. coli illnesses in children originated in raw dairy products from the farm....Samples from Miller’s farm taken earlier this month by Pennsylvania officials tested positive for listeria, the attorney general’s office said."
And:
"Amos Miller makes his first state court appearance tomorrow since the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture searched his farm under a court-issued warrant.
Miller, who claimed so-called “Sovereign Citizen” status as a defense in federal court, must appear at 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 29 before Judge Thomas B. Sponaugle in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania.
"The civil action, brought by Attorney General Michelle Henry, is for Miller to sell raw and raw milk products outside the State of Pennsylvania, all without acquiring the necessary licenses and permits."
"Miller’s long run in federal court, dating back to 2016, resulted in him and his attorney signing a lengthy Consent Decree, promising to complete food safety regulations governed by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service."
"Miller’s supporters depicted the Jan. 4 search of Miller’s Organic Farm as a “raid.” It brought Miller even more celebrity than his long tiff with USDA. Since Jan. 4, he has raised about $245,000 in web-based fundraising."
This is old nonsense from a dyspeptic, mendacious crank seeking publicity and to deflect from the fact that his criminal enterprise was poisoning people, specifically children. Naturally, (a la Donald Trump) he was able to fleece other mendacious anti-government hysterics of a quarter-million bucks to further his "cause." An embarrassment to the Amish and honest farmers alike.
And the right-wing propaganda goon squad radar picked up the “Sovereign Citizen” moniker and were off to the races.
Ol' farmer Amos ought to be dragged out behind the milkin' barn and defenestrated with Shaker Boom handles affixed with rusty nails---in my opinion.
https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/dairy/pennsylvania-sues-farmer-amos-miller-alleging-illegal-raw-milk-sales/article_5f6fd156-bb80-11ee-8a4a-eb10e43a4ddc.html
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2024/02/amos-millers-state-court-date-about-raw-milk-issues-is-tomorrow/
Thanks, Carl. Outrageous travesty of justice.
That's a state that sounds almost as unpleasant as Pacificus' Mao's Cultural Revolution nightmare. There's nowhere to hide, apparently.
Ironically, the hicks in the sticks are too smart to vote for Democrats. Who's going to tell Democrats that the slobbering cretins, living in the wilderness that is not LA or NYC, are laughing at them?
Yes... what, about 5-10% of the acres in urban areas are paradisiacal and 90% are no-go zones? Those city folk really have it all figured out!
We COMMAND you to like us!
As I've told my Democrat friends.... you can hate Trump as much as you'd like, but he didn't turn our state into the dumpster fire it is. The Democrats did that. They love hearing this. Goes over like a pregnant pole vaulter.
Ok. That’s a new one!
Projection is confession, remember.
Small state university in Appalachia in the late 60s here. Majored in music and Spanish (yawn). Worked my way up to running a half billion dollar sector of a Fortune 500 corporation. Tutored MBA students at several universities. I was inspired by JFK to become a liberal Democrat in 1960, and by Nancy Pelosi to become a liberal independent in 2009.
A lifelong liberal, I find Democrats to be the least liberal group in the country.
Interesting point......
That’s it! It’s exactly what they are saying.
But here in lies the problem. They've trained 2 generations now of young people that simply don't know how to think for themselves and are real life Wil Huntings. They've read every book and know everything about everything even if they've never left the shithole city they live in. When they do travel, they go to other large cities, and of course the experience is exactly the same. So.. again, they're fully educated, have a college degree (in what, who knows), and are perfectly ok not knowing it's an authoritarian rule that has made them who and what they are.
These people fully believe the system will always take care of them, and yes, when all of the farmers are driven from this planet they will still be able to get their soy late and their unburger! Clueless to the end.
Because we’re all sick of the mouth breathing subhuman in the White House.
Exactly
I think this is cynicism?
Don’t worry, after AI gets better at writing economics editorials than Paul, he can just retrain at computer coding.
Ha, yes. And Krugman's editorials are so predictable, AI could write them now.
If AI were honest, his byline picture would be a jackass.
Presumably a black jackass..,
What was true at the dawn of software development is still true today: GIGO, that is, garbage in, garbage out. One false premise fed to AI and all of Krugman's BS comes spilling out.
Plus, as cartoonist Sidney Harris had one of his scientists looking at a screen say, "We have artificial intelligence, so we've also got artificial stupidity." Published in ~1980.
This is true, but artificial stupidity can’t compete with natural stupidity.
I accept your correction.
Krugman is such a reliable contra indicator one can confidently take the opposite side of any of his opinions and know it will be correct.
As often as Krugman gets things horribly wrong, Google Gemini could replace him yesterday.
...and probably with a different complexion.
Paul Krugman was born a poor black child.
Therefore he knows:
1. Lord loves a working man
2. Difference in shit and shinola
3. Don’t never trust whitey
Actually, so far Krugman could take lessons in accuracy from Google Gemini.
Like Krugman, AI is unhindered by reality and truth, so this could happen quite soon.
Which by the way would not be too terribly difficult. Krugman is unhinged.
Doesn't Krugman write for a company whose headquarters is on "stolen land"? Perhaps he could wax poetic on that particular subject. The class of people I find myself aligned with does not care one iota for the class of people he aligns with.
What’s hard for me is…
I remember an ESPN interview with Kobe Bryant where they asked Kobe would he rather have Obama’s mind, or would Obama rather have his basketball skills…
Kobe responded, “well, I already have his mind, so…” (something along those lines).
These twats think enduring secondary education makes them “smarter” than the rest of us…
Having inferior humans (on many metrics) talk down to you becomes exhausting after so many outings. I could fuck Krugman against his will and lay a Hayek-worthy beat down on him in economic theory and I’m an amateur only educated by my desire to understand…
That twat needs to debate Bob Murphy (for charity - what a legit pussy Krugman is). Id be happy to demonstrate how big of one he is - dude better hope we’re never on an elevator together.
test post. I'm having problems making comments on Substack sites.
Hello Bill.
Sometimes this is a problem on substack.
I think this is because so many people are commenting at the same time.
Wait a few minutes and try again.
It's still going on for about two hours. Some places I can make posts. Some I can't and to get to the "Reply" box I actually have to hit the "like" button.
Just hit reply and wait.
Ive found hitting the keys harder works.............>Ok not
Had the same problems for a couple hours.
You’re killing the game, Bill!
Or on an assembly line in a solar panel factory.
…in China.
Why would you even mention China here?
OF course to you Americans China is the evil Empire with Russia BUT the US aids and abets genocide of the Palestinian people.
Jenny, I'd be more concerned about the "genocide of the Palestinian people" if the Palestinian people showed me that they were concerned about the genocide of the Jewish people. And we both know that they are not--if we are honest (big "if").
Oh, come now - the Palestinian people are deeply and profoundly concerned about the genocide of the Jewish people - it's what they live and die to accomplish.
Regrettably, Ellen, you are correct--my bad.
Genocide of the Israeli people???????????????????????????????????????????????/
C'mon Jenny, it is no secret that large numbers of Palestinians would kill every Jew in Israel if they could. And that was true long before the events of recent months.
Hmmm... guess I did say being fully honest about this is a big "if."
You cannot separate the Israelis and their apologists from their victimhood narrative. Without that and an accusation of “anti-Semitism” every 12 seconds, they’d have to face their long record of homicidal psychopathy (and, you know, their record of selling weapons to vicious Guatemalan dictators and the South African Apartheid regime, among many others). No. When you have a foolproof excuse for the most heinous behavior imaginable you milk it all the way.
Just guessing here, but I believe the answer to your question, "why China?", is cause Krugman is an object of ire, and China is both out of country (further away), and also a main supplier of solar panels.
My turn. Why would you even mention Palestinian people here? Of course to you overly emotional types, anyone not directing all topics toward the latest moral crises are to be shamed, BUT most people are capable of understanding a moral tragedy and still refrain from virtue signaling. (teasing)
"Why would you even mention Palestinian people here? "
Because she is a burka wearing transplant to France where she can hide out with fellow islamists. Don't waste you time with her. She doesn't have the IQ to have rational thought.
Really? I like to imagine Ms. Stokes as a sort of updated George Sand-like flaneur in Carharrt overalls and mud-caked boots smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes and nursing a Pabst Blue Ribbon at an old oak kitchen table with a dirty oil-cloth covering. But then that's just me.
IQ is sadly lacking in the US.
Jerry, the US supports the genocide of the Hamas terrorists. The Hamas terrorists street thugs murder Palestinians at a more alarming rate then you know. Im not teasing, if you're going to virtue signal about the issues in Gaza at least look at the real reasons.
That's quite possibly true - and still no excuse for the indiscriminate killing taking place now.
Read more news.
DO you know that Israel has used Hamas at least twice before.......stop making a noise until you read something worthwhile!
"overly emotional types." Yes that's me.
WHY do I care because instead of standing up to YOUR government you sit watching shit on your TeeVees and blame everything on China/Russia.
Lady, I think you're on the wrong forum if you want to make sophomoric generalizations about the so-called uncaring, average American. You think we pay a Taibbi subscription because we *don't* care about the goings on of our government and country?!
As much as I hope this is parody, and quite curious what "standing up to government" looks like form your eyes, I gotta bail, lest I waste anymore time talking to a self-righteousness wall.
Don't be an idiot. We blame MUCH more on the uniparty in DC.
So what the fuck are you doing about it besides sperging here?
You used the Google Gemini definition of Genocide, I see.
Do you not have 'assembly lines' in the US?
Preferably, IMO.
How wrong can one be repeatedly before the moniker “expert” is removed.
As long as your mistakes are in service of Teh Narrative™, you're fine.
Decades ago in college, I took a class taught by (the book's co-author) Paul Waldman . Looks like he's still an unrepentant if less quietly raging partisan ideologue.
He managed to convince a class of sheltered, impressionable 20-year-olds to accept the same two-sided canard: that rural areas owe their lives to urban ones; that red states are takers while blue states are givers. Then I became slightly more sophisticated and realized most of the 'taking' in red states happens in Democrat-led cities.
Wonder how he and those 20-year-olds would live if their steaks and chickens don't arrive in pre-sliced packages in their nearest Whole Foods.
As a principled vegan living in a city dominated by depraved woke politics, I'm infinitely aware of the hypocrisy, ignorance, stupidity and very real fragility of almost all so-called liberals. Of course, in practice, that goes for libertarians and just about everyone else, too.
For example, libertarians are fine with some of the most totalitarian systems and practices imaginable, so long as the victims aren't human. Conservatives, for another example, had in recent history been fine with limiting speech—until they were the ones being silenced. Liberals, for another, can't help destroying the environment while pretending with such great self-satisfaction to save it—from using metal straws (instead of infinitely less intensive plastic straws discarded into landfill) to endorsing the sham of recycling to opposing nuclear power for 60 years.
As a principled vegan, presumably you place a premium on the welfare and lives of animals. How then do you tolerate the death of billions of insects in order to bring plants and vegetables to your table? Unless you grow everything you consume in a fully organic way, with no pesticides or insecticides, then every bite you take has a cost of lives much higher than my carnivore way of eating. With one death of a cow, I can eat for roughly 8 months. Monocrop agriculture as a matter of course kills billions of insects, rodents, birds, and other small life forms. As a matter of principle, at what level of sophistication do you think it's acceptable to kill an animal? Presumably you're ok with killing aphids, weevils, locusts, and other pests. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to eat.
A bit of friendly advice: If you actually have a good-faith question, simply ask the question. Don't follow it with a gish gallop.
The answer to your question is that each of us has a right to do what we must to survive; none of us can survive without causing harm to others; and yet we have an obligation to reduce that harm as much as we reasonably can.
Humans eating animals that ate plants requires far more plant farming than humans eating plants directly. Whatever harm is done by plant farming, vegans are causing far less of it than those who eat other animals.
Which is why we could reclaim 75% of the world's farmland—"an area equivalent to the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined"—for wildlife, not to mention put an end to the greatest source of suffering ever devised, if we stopped eating animals and started doing the right thing:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/veganism-environmental-impact-planet-reduced-plant-based-diet-humans-study-a8378631.html
I don't know why I'm in this rabbit hole, but to be fair I have to point out that not all animal husbandry entails huge monocrops for feed. The farmers I purchase animal products from rely almost solely on pasture, which isn't "farmed" the way a field of corn is - it's much closer to a wild ecology with some light management.
I grew up on a cattle ranch in an ag family, and the amount of ignorance about our food supply is, I'm afraid, an impenetrable barrier.
And I say this not yet having read the rest of these comments.
Additionally, I think that 75% reclamation idea is a bit optimistic, because humans will just grow to fill it eventually. We would end up just removing a layer from the current plants -> animals -> humans food chain and end up with a larger monocrop humans in a plants -> humans system.
Jesus. Shut up, eat your kale and leave us out of your food fetish.
Is there anything quite so fatuous as a statement opening with "as a principled vegan"?
There is certainly something more fatuous, starting with your extremely foolish comment.
If you’re offended by a lifestyle that affords basic respect to other animals, it’s because you’re a petulant child who can’t handle even implicit criticism of your own behavior—even while you attack and dismiss others for theirs.
A grown man showing up to work with a foldable bicycle and wearing a padded helmet is damn close.
Grazing happens.
Are you a scientist, perhaps have a degree in Ag? Know much about sustaining the world as given to us by its Creator. How about how the exchanges between all life forms of CO2 maintains the proper balance.
https://spectator.org/more-cows-needed-to-reverse-climate-change-experts-say/
You're engaging in meretricious gaslighting by not even addressing the topic being discussed, questioning the expertise of another commenter on a topic not being discussed, and providing a link to a piece that you misrepresent and which also does not address the topic being discussed.
But you get irony points for questioning another commenters' scientific bona fides, then introducing GOD as the ultimate expert on the topic at hand, and then, finally, the piece de resistance, linking to The American Spectator to buttress the argument you don't have addressing the subject that doesn't exist. Well played, madame. R. Emmett, wherever he may be, surely is smiling.
It’s true. I treat animals differently than humans.
What a stinging indictment. 😂
You treat every human differently than every other human.
But, presumably, you don't torture, murder or eat some of them.
How do your ethics grapple with the fact that plants have sophisticated chemical communications systems, even sentience? How can you sleep at night after hearing the cry of the watercress or the shrieking of the mutilated celery stalk, the silent scream of the asparagus sliced off its Mother Earth?
Well, you clearly don’t know what “fact” means. Plants aren’t sentient, despite so many spurious attempts to blur the lines—such as calling chemical reactions “communications.”
You too can be Soylent Green!
Me too........they have far more empathy
Seems like a lot of assholes are in the comments lately. I can’t help wonder if that’s the intelligence agencies trying to turn this into old Twitter (toxic) or just that time of the month for twats. (Sorry, I can be unpc sometimes). I appreciate your comment and appreciate your ability to live congruently with your ideals. Rock on!
Thank you! But this is actually one of the least toxic reactions to veganism I've ever encountered.
The best reaction to veganism is always the one that comes from someone finding out that you're a vegan without you actually saying that you are. Nobody has a problem if you don't want to eat meat or wear leather and fur. That said, they don't want to hear you talk about it either.
Why an't people talk about Veganism?
I am not a vegan but I don't eat meat because I can't stand the smell when it is cooked. Smells like humans burning!
How do I know what humans smell like when they are burning.......I have been in wars.
But it’s cool for the guy to bring up murdered animals as if there’s no moral issue there, right?
Why are you more offended by someone stating their refusal to participate in an evil practice than you are by the evil practice itself?
Libertarians are totally for individual freedoms, there are no borders, no work licenses required, no interference with abortions. People are free to do whatever they like whenever they like. So babies born with addictions, children die is house fires from explosions during drug making . . . They say you are responsible and accountable for your actions in a society where only the selected activist are not accountable for anything.
I'm not getting what you're saying. I think there may be some confusion about what a libertarian is in both theory and practice.
Could very well be APriori. I was reading their party policies on their website just the other day. A friend ask if I knew what they stood for. Had to take a peak because even though I have been getting CATO monthlies in the mail for over two decade and Mises emails for some years, outside of economics I had know idea what the Libertarian party stood for.
A few years ago when Trump tried to make pharma products the same price here as elsewhere, CATO sent out a scathing article that twisted and turned on its head trying to explain why this was a 'bad' thing for Americans. Every think tanks needs funding to exist. Wonder where CATO might get some of its.
The addicted baby's health is the responsibility of its mother and father.
So is the child who dies in a house fire caused by clandestine drug making.
Libertarianism lays the blame squarely on the actor, not on the edifice of the welfare state that is supposed to act in our stead.
Isn't it convenient to place the responsibility of your and your family's well being on the state? Nobody is morally accountable when you can outsource your actions to the state.
This is what causes your "lack of accountability," the assumption that providing for your needs and well-being is the responsibility of an abstract system of laws and regulations and not the duty of you as an individual.
I'm glad that you've reformed. I have to wonder what you were like prior...
I agree with everything you wrote. What I do not agree with is a system that allows people to put others in jeopardy because of their poor choices in life. But, you know, it’s okay for people to make and take whatever drug they want regardless of outcome to others – individual freedom to do as you choose should have its limits.
"A system that allows people to put others in jeopardy because of their poor choices in life"?
That's called "living among other people." Too bad not everyone can live alone, isolated from others so as not to put oneself or others in danger from these choices.
Someone who takes drug X and fucks over a neighbor because of its effects is still responsible for his actions. That's the limit, and I believe I expressed it--do as thou wilt as long as that does not harm another or steal/damage his property.
Why does nobody ever point out that straws are completely unnecessary?
I hope that my fellow "Blue State" dwellers realize that they "didn't build that." Krugman has informed my investing strategy for decades as I usually just do the opposite of whatever his rant of the day is suggesting, successfully so, lol!
"Didn't build that" reminded me of the grumpy uncle at a Christmas party swarming with spoiled brats. "You didn't earn that, you little shit."
Direct President Obama Big Nanny Government Quote!
That things will never recover under Trump comment did not age well. He is a total dick.
As of calendar year 2022, the states pocketing the most in federal tax receipts are Virginia (#1) and Maryland (#3). Net of taxed paid they are the largest takers in America. How could that be?! https://howmuch.net/articles/federal-budget-receipts-and-expenditures-across-the-united-states
So areas close to DC get the most? Whodathunk.
🎯
As your chart helps demonstrate, if you really want to try to draw even remotely compelling conclusions about the macro effects of red or blue governance, you actually have to get as granular as possible. These per capita figures are far more informative than broad state-level figures, though they aren't nearly enough. There are 100 factors in play, including many that don't stem from local governance at all.
Waldman should know this. Instead, at least in my class, he relied on broad state-level figures, which at the time appeared to support—again, in a very specious way—his conclusion.
I was intrigued by the spider graph on tax receipts and benefits by state. Then, I looked down at the other output from this site. UN funding being dominated by the US - cool cool. Then, a plot showing the gender pay gap was real and with only passing dismissive reference to factors other than gender which may be at play. That earns a misinformation label from me and puts the site on my naughty list.
We do have the best roads in the country in VA. They’re constantly repairing and redesigning infrastructure that is already perfectly fine here so that they can keep their enormous budget. As I selfish driver I don’t really mind…
But I’m the first to admit that it’s ridiculous.
Good insight on the Blue cities being the takers in Red states. A few months ago when the canard was Red states have more violent crime than Blue states, I spent a good 20 minutes looking into that to look for the truth.
Take a state like LA or AL. It's true, they have high murder rates. However, cities like New Orleans, Mobile and Birmingham have murder rates 10x the rural areas. Remove those murders and the state's murder rates drop by 35% give or take.
Corresponding statistics demonstrate that the high murder rate in southern cities is in fact a function of mountain hillbillies and low plains dirt farmers comin' into town to drink some whisky and kick some ass.
Amazing how these folks think it’s totally appropriate, and indeed laudable, to use one’s position of authority as an educator to unrepentantly and zealously indoctrinate students. They don’t even pretend to be even-handed, and even scoff at the idea that they should be. While it’s fine to have opinions, I really resent all the teachers and professors I’ve had throughout my life who presented their opinions as facts and never presented alternative viewpoints, other than in straw man form. These assholes, and there are tons of them, bear quite a bit of responsibility for the dismal state of the country.
These assholes are the rear guard of the "long march through the institutions." We will be decades trying to undo the damage, if it's possible at all.
How many Americans are neither urban nor rural? I have a hunch it's a lot. Demographers?
Rural 45M, Urban 98M, Suburban 175M...............
All of the blue votes happen in the Dem-led cities and college/university counties.
The reason the Blue States should have to support the Red States financially, is because the people from the Red States defend the people in the Blue States militarily.
Where does this conclusion come from?
And retired SS receipients from blue states.
by democrat voters.
My favorite part is that Krugman wrote his column from St Croix. He's been there for a while because a previous column had him buying Scotch in a grocery store. Now, online anyway, he adds a restaurant receipt showing he's in a place with no sales tax.
He's literally at his Caribbean island, 2nd or 3rd home rambling on about why poor people are dumb...
At least he didn't reproduce. Good for the climate.
Nothin' like him looking down his nose at us poor, unwashed rubes from his comfortable ivory tower to help us be even more sure he is just another uppity pompous a$$ lusting over running other people's lives for them.
He’s just another ass hat with a big mouth
That’s just too rich…..
Krugman's has a new tweet today about flying back into Newark. He says it shows how nice New York (?) is nowadays. Though, apparently not so nice you want to actually stay there for the month of February, I guess.
My 42 year old realtor son disagrees. He was doing fairly well until COVID hit NYC. He finally gave up 6 months ago and is changing careers. NYC is a shit hole, not quite as bad as San Francisco, but close. I could give you some really gross examples, but I’ll leave it at just gross. And if the realtors are truthful with prospective clients, they lose the majority. Again, Krugman has not a clue to the real world, so please spare us the pep talks!!
During the 2020 election I said that Democrats were slowly starting to realize they're the party of Wall Street, endless wars, censorship via media (including social media), Big Pharma, and "lockdown"-sized corporations.
The media, as usual, is a few years behind the times. (And also lying their asses off.)
Which is why I believe if RFK Jr was remotely treated fairly, he could win the Democratic nomination. To recirculate an overused word… compared to all these DINOs, Kennedy has “gravitas.”
I agree. I have voted for Trump twice and am solidly conservative, but I agree so strongly with RFK's stance on agencies like the FDA, NIH, CIA, etc that I'm considering voting for him instead. Not that it will matter in SC, but I think RFK is uniquely situated to fix many of the most important ills facing our country.
Me too. If he were to win, I think he would actually work to “ heal the divide.” If Trump wins I would not be surprised to see Trump offering him a cabinet position. HHS.. clean out the CDC, NIH, FDA .. I really would like the liberal media to give the guy a chance as opposed to protecting Biden. Walter Reed Doctors giving Biden a pass on his mental decline is just so very wrong.
Yes it has to be one of the most embarrassing position for American
voters to have ever been in. Herman Munster or Willy Wonka. Can you imagine Willy and Herman on a stage with RFK jr debating him? Yes RFK jr
has some interesting positions on various issues but i never have yet got the
impression he could not have his mind changed. However his position on Israel
is one that is hurting him and he may wish to incorporate some form of an
olive branch in that position if possible. I don't know if he has ever had a chin
wag with Finkelstein.
Trump would never give RFK anything. He can't tolerate anyone with a mind of their own and greater popular appeal.
Perhaps but he did have RFK Jr into the WH before and during COVID to discuss the vaccines and other controversial RFK has addressed… Trump now knows that the CDC and the FDA are corrupt…. Wishful thinking on my part.
Agreed. I believe he's the ONLY one who can.
Maybe in 2028, when he's running against Ramaswamy. (That's a hopeful projection.)
I’m actually getting to the point where I think that a R/D a or D/R ticket might be constructive
Kennedy's a nut. Full stop.
We agree to disagree. The media has only begun with their hatchet job. And his family members that are critical of his run are on the dole from the DNC. Parasites.
You're buying into exactly the narrative they want you to.
I don't buy narratives, I rent them.
Save the hatchet job---a glancing blow to either kneecap with a dull ball peen hammer will suffice for Vaccine Bob.
Totally agree. I also believe Sanders would have beaten Trump but the Democrats are too clueless to choose the most popular client. Had they allowed RFK to have a legit chance to win the nomination he'd likely win and beat Trump. But they never learn. It's their own arrogance, self-interest and ignorance that is their undoing.
Knowing and caring are two very different things. Democrats are cultists who lack the ability to process paradigm shifts within the Party. The get a Democrat to care about anything requires a Democrat to tell them to care about it, and who's going to give the game away? If Bernie Sanders can easily shill for Democrats then what hope is there?
" Some Conservative thoughts about Democrats in general, albeit not every individual:
They don’t care about illegal immigration because they plan to gain votes from these people.
They don’t care about election integrity because they intend to win every election whatever it takes.
They don’t care about the Electoral College because eliminating it allows them to govern the whole country.
They don’t care about bipartisanship because it will be irrelevant when they become the only party.
They don’t care about congressional gridlock because they want the country run by executive orders.
They don’t care about packing our courts because states would have no hope of stopping executive orders.
They don’t care about censorship because they are confident, they will be the censors.
They don’t care about the cancel culture because they plan to do the cancellations.
They don’t care about hypocrisy because each talking point stands calculated to advance the party.
They don’t care about China becoming a supreme world power because they intend to emulate the CCP.
They don’t care about destructive riots in the cities because they don’t believe in private property. " (There was more but apparently Ii have reached a limit.)
OK, so here's the rest:
"They don’t care about the Citizens United Supreme Court decision because now the money flows to them.
They don’t care about people getting shot because every shooting helps justify gun control.
They don’t care about a politicized military because when force becomes the only way to rule they intend to be the only force.
Democrats apparently don’t care about anybody or anything except gaining complete political power. Traditional America be damned! Rousseau and social scientists win."
They don't think about the consequences of their actions, because they are too stupid to see that they might be on the receiving end of their norm-breaking idiocy. Thanks for dying, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Harry Reid fucked your party bigly, thanks to the "nuclear option."
They don't think about the consequences of their actions because they believe they won't ever have to face the other side being in power.
How well did that work out for Merrick Garland's party?
That equates to nazism
During 2020? That switch took place ~30 yrs earlier!!
Well, it took us 50 years to realize the War on Drugs was a bad idea, so in those terms we're ahead of the game!
Ask Portland if ending the War on Drugs is as smart as people think it is.
Ending the war on drugs isn't Portland's problem - it's allowing people to get high in public without consequence. We don't want to arrest people who are getting high at home, but that doesn't mean we need to accept homeless drug addicts overtaking our public spaces.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/rethinking-how-we-rethink-the-war
And if you want something Portland-specific:
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/portland-takes-a-step-back-with-ngo
Perhaps if we made an effort at finding homeless drug addicts homes eventually the homeless drug addicts might be neither homeless nor drug addicts.
Unfortunately, that doesn't work either as San Francisco has found out. Homeless people, are for the most part, mentally ill which leads to drug addiction and inability to work and then homelessness. San Fransisco built apartments for the homeless in areas close to where they could get drugs and live for free with no responsibility to get sober or get a job. It's a disaster and blowing up financially. The truth is you either re-institutionalize (with hopefully having learned what not to do) or you disperse forcing them to spread out. Neither of these are particularly politically possible at the time.
Portland spends millions a year ostensibly to do just that, but every year the problem gets worse.
100%
Half-assed measures like "safe injection sites" and needle exchanges by which used outfits all end up in the gutter, only exacerbate the problem. Junkies from around the country gravitate to these liberal cities where they can buy their fentanyl openly, shoot it in the street, run naked displaying their scabby bodies, shit on the sidewalk, and generally make everyone's life a living hell.
This will not change until all drugs are made legally available to 21+, with prohibited advertising and marketing and severe penalties for illegal trafficking and public intoxication, death for the former, the latter requiring prison time of 5-10 years with no parole.
That's some hard cheese there.
Will the last person who believes in the War on Drugs please turn out the lights? Let us know if you need help locating the light switch, publius_x.
The War on Drugs is a comically stupid name for some comically stupid criminal policies.
That said, stigmatizing solipsistic antisocial behaviors, like recreational drug use (and prostitution, and gambling, and other supposed "victimless" crimes), has tremendous societal benefits.
Allowing the government to assume the role of the Tattaglias, Barzinis and Corleones isn't good for anyone. While the idea of interdicting every drug deal is like watching a dog chasing its tail, the concept that people shouldn't look down on drug users and their pushers and enablers is stupid.
Shame was a great tool in managing human behavior for millennia. Somehow it's out of vogue right now, except for the climate cultists. There is nothing wrong with thinking that certain activities which depend on human frailty (and those who promote said activities) should be looked down upon, and society should try to end such activities as much as possible.
Ask anyone else in the USA if the "War on Drugs" is working.
Not to worry AI will rescue their lame asses and drone us ignorant flyover deplorables with the bankers and cia at the joystick. And all will be right in their democracy. Until they too are no longer needed.
Yeah, I'm wondering if they will get theirs as a result of the new Fascism dropping humanitarian pretense once it secures power, or by persecuting rural America until the agricultural system collapses.
Dems have always been the party of the NY financiers. Since the Civil War and likely before. Slavery was financed, and slaves were transported and insured by northern interests-holders. My understanding is that no reconstruction was performed to dispossess those fine folks of their ill-gotten gains. 150+ years is a long time to be suckered.
I'm glad there are independent news media options.
Your first paragraph reads like it could have been written by Glen Greenwald.
That's possibly the greatest compliment I've ever gotten.
The Democrats have gone with the full Rwandan radio strategy for a while now. The only reason books like this exist is to justify violence and oppression against large groups of people. This is really sickening, vile stuff. I’m actually surprised they showed their faces on TV. Usually when someone publicly spews this kind of hateful language they try to hide behind the protection of some kind of Klan hood or balaclava or something. I guess they know they have all the weapons of the regime on their side so they aren’t afraid of anything. Hopefully that will change soon.
Yes. Their new movie about civil war pretends to be worried about the prospect while jacking off furiously to the hope it will happen. Stupid rubes killing each other fap fap! Why can’t they hurry up and get in the coliseum we have so lovingly built for them?
F'in' nailed it.
The stupidity of these people is staggering. The problem with telling people you hate them, their families, their communities, their culture, and their history is that eventually they believe you. One need only the slightest understanding of any number of civil wars in the past century to understand how profoundly dangerous this is.
I believe these idiots are too consumed with their resentment, contempt and self righteous ego masturbation to consider what happens when they catch that car. If they give it any thought at all, they believe others will do violence on their behalf and they will watch it unfold on TV. They should probably ponder what The Troubles 2.0 would look like in an American context and then shut the fuck up.
Guy, that's so well said, I quoted it in a note. Might be the first time I've done that with a comment.
...also, everyone they know thinks like they do, no dissent allowed. Within the safety of this echo chamber they feel free to parade themselves around.
The good news is this kind of behavior by these types ensures their downfall. Only a matter of time, and accelerating fast, it seems to me.
It is sickening and vile stuff. It's also dangerous stuff. That's why he wrote a book about it, to document and explain just how vile it all is.
I think I found the Grand Wizard
Wish someone on camera would ask them how they want their bugs prepared. Fresh or roasted?
I just took a quick look outside my front door. Surprisingly there is no rage (If you don’t count two squirrels chasing each other).
Me too.. in my case chickadees and woodpeckers duking it out over the suet cake.
They may be some of those MAGA woodpeckers trying to make wood pecking great again.
😂
My chickens are pretty angry, but they get that way if they don't feel they're getting enough treats.
Rural America doesn’t need urban America to survive, only to thrive. Urban America starves to death without power without rural America within the month. Also, it’s not really rural vs urban but blue collar vs white collar. And in the end too many ppl in white collar America take for granted that blue collar America delivers them their food, electricity, and housing. White collar America believes men and women are interchangeable, blue collar America knows better.
“Schaller and White Rural Rage co-author Paul Waldman make the same point, that “cities produce far more of the nation’s wealth,” and rural citizens are increasingly “subsidized by the taxes paid by higher-income metropolitans.” What gives? Why won’t they shut the fuck up?”
Urban cities produce wealth like Facebook and rural areas produce wealth like food.
As for the genius of the professional managerial class, an academic paper demonstrating that current university students have an average IQ of 102 has pissed off the establishment and is being held up in review. They’re all above average in Lake Woebegone.
https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/7a360e04-d2a1-4780-bb51-ac75257362ef/ScienceOpenPreprint/StudentIQ-r500-scienceopen.pdf
>Urban cities produce wealth like Facebook and rural areas produce wealth like food.
This is really the core of it.
It is interesting how those of the high-minded intelligentsia class are missing the many cues that "the university," as they know it, is on a trajectory to obsolescence.
Let them eat bugs.
And rats. They have lots of them, being all civilized and whatnot
Kind of ironic, Facebook was created from stolen property of two other students.
People who live and move and have their being in virtual reality (and are more likely to be urban and white collar) are also more likely to believe all sorts of nonsense, so long as it is widely approved by their peers in digital-land. People whose livelihood depends on understanding and accepting the unyielding realities of conception, birth, death, the hardness of wood, the sharpness of steel, the heat of the sun, are less easily snookered.
Wait 'til the toilets stop flushing in Urban America.
I made my comment before I saw yours. But I so, so agree.
I say let their toilets go unclogged.
Haha Lynne! I was made aware of an Oberlin student (they had some kind of queer agenda that I don’t recall) anyway they needed a plumber to come in for the toilets in the dorms and she/he complained that a “toxic” male made her feel stressed and uncomfortable.
🤦♀️ what to do??
I think it is going to be hard to automate plumbers.
But what about the nonbinaries and genderfluids?
A pox upon them for being annoying.
I think about rural Americans savng cities during natural disasters like floods or hurricanes. Men in boats rescuing other men who probably can't change a tire or jump start a car.
For a group that endlessly lectures us about "othering" different groups the liberals at the NY times seem to have no problem "othering" the people they perceive as political opponents. This is weapons grade hypocrisy (and stupidity) on display.
It's the same with the whole "diversity" agenda. They approve of a diversity of races and genders, but not a diversity of thought. Look how they ostracize minorities who do not comply with their narratives: Coleman Hughes, John McWhorter, heck, even Caitlin Jenner
Oh my gosh. I AM one of these "rural Americans." I have advanced degrees in math and science. I've owned multiple businesses and lecturered at a small state university. The Democrats did everything they could to label myself and my kind as hayseeds, buffoons, racists and violent xenophobes because we valued our way of life and refused to volunteer to give up our voice through things like the electoral college. I'm in Idaho, but over in Oregon and Washington, the coastal Democratic areas run the rest of the states. What the left really doesn't like is anyone with the moxy, and especially the gravitas, to push back on their bullshit - which goes back decades. I don't love Trump either, but it's far from clear to me who's worse.
Not sure why we need to "love" our leaders. Sounds kinda cultish. One thing nice about flyover country is we don't need as much money.
Moved from east coast to Texas five years ago. Wish we could have done it earlier but family. Went back for a funeral, I hope to never have to go east again.
Because you don’t worship at the altar of money and greed.
Oregon coastal elites are rude, pride themselves on high IQ, yet cannot survive without blue collar workers and farmers that grow all their “ organic” food.
STEM degrees? Oh you selfish, greedy hilljack. (j/k, k?)
I feel so... ungrateful. ;)
It's not like they spend a lot of time with the people they smear crap on. They don't like the smell , I guess.
The Left understands that dividing people by stocking class resentment is the most effective way to foment the unrest and turmoil needed to destabilize our culture, which then provides the perfect entrê for their plans to refashion society in accordance with their "progressive" vision.
Not just class resentment but a vast array of microscopic gradations of resentment. Whole lists of reasons to hate--that's the magic of intersectionality!
One important lesson is trying to understand perspectives you do not understand. I can assure you Paul K has NO understanding of anyone outside his hermetically sealed circle. His observations are wrong on all counts. Yes, the real danger are my neighbors, not the sociopaths in Washington...mk.
Pesky voters always threatening Democracy.
War is Peace.
Ignorance is Strength.
Voting Threatens Democracy.
This is bigotry pure and simple. Let’s call it for what it is.
Let's demonize the people we're screwing over. Brilliant!!
Back to calling out “the basket of deplorables”… They should just have issued their own “New Yorker’s view of the world” poster showing nothing between themselves and California.
Just a wide white space with something like "here there be deplorables" or something like that.
wow. "Why are voters a threat to democracy?"
A threat to "their" democracy.
When the D's say it, it's 'our democracy', meaning 'our hold on absolute power'.
tyranny = democracy. The pork council can only bill the serfs for "democracy". If they submitted a budget notice for public appropriations as 'tyranny' - no one would pay it. So it's all coded as 'democracy' so the tyrants can get their free public money. See how that works?