US Politics - It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life for US

[Lollygag]

Hitler always deeply despised socialism but he needed a rapid means to consolidate power and socialism was a better selling point, hence the name of the party. It was never anything but a bait and switch.

Raises questions about any country swinging between socialism and fascism as Hitler's stunt could be replicated. Someone with good intentions puts in consolidated, centralized power with our crap and unenforceable checks and balances, then a true and competent fascist gets that power in an election....

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David Brooks backs getting rid of the filibuster.

https://www.rawstory.com/senate-filibuster/

Quote

In his latest column—titled the "The Case for Biden Optimism"—Brooks contends that if current efforts to forge a bipartisan power-sharing agreement fail, efforts to pass a comprehensive Covid-19 economic relief package put forth by President Joe Biden are stymied, and "Republicans go into full obstruction mode" then the Democrats, led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, "should absolutely kill the filibuster."

 

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

All else being equal I could imagine he'd rather run against Sinema than Kelly.  But all else is not equal, and 2022 could be a very good year to be a Republican running for senate.  2024 - who knows.

I agree on both counts.  Another consideration is it appears the Arizona Republican Party is set to censure him - along with Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain:

Quote

The Arizona Republican Party is holding its biennial convention on Saturday morning, where they’ll elect new party leaders and also consider censuring some of their own members.

An agenda for the party’s statutory meeting includes votes on censures of Gov. Doug Ducey, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain.

Ducey’s censure accuses the Republican governor of abusing his authority during the pandemic by declaring a public health emergency that has yet to expire.

He may not wanna go through a primary right now.

[Hereward]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

This is a pretty common theme among the more idiotic right wingers, which is that National Socialists were socialists because its in the name, ergo WW2 in the European theater was fought to defeat socialism. Never mind that we paired up with communism to defeat its bargain-basement knock-off..

Now I’m confused. As the UK elected a fully fledged socialist government while the war was still going on, does that mean we won or lost? Help me Senator.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Now I’m confused. As the UK elected a fully fledged socialist government while the war was still going on, does that mean we won or lost? Help me Senator.

Churchill beat Hitler, but Stalin beat Attlee.  You should know these things.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

21 minutes ago, DMC said:

I agree on both counts.  Another consideration is it appears the Arizona Republican Party is set to censure him - along with Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain:

He may not wanna go through a primary right now.

Class acts till the end, right....

[A True Kaniggit]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Churchill beat Hitler, but Stalin beat Attlee.  You should know these things.

And that stroke beat Stalin!

[broken one]

21 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

 It was never anything but a bait and switch.

Lets not forget about Strasser brothers.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 1/23/2021 at 1:04 PM, SFDanny said:

This really isn't really directed at you, Centrist Simon Steele, but seeing you bring the label of "neo-liberal" into discussion, may I take issue in its use? At least in this usage of the term? For the longest time it had a very specific meaning. It meant those who advocated going back to a classic "liberal" economic theory in the wake of Keynesian economic theory. Economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were "neo-liberals." Ronald Reagan was a neo-liberal. It is not a label that truthfully applies to mainstream US Liberals or to US Liberalism. At least not since FDR. It is commonly used as a slur. Usually by those who don't think a liberal politician is "progressive" enough for their tastes.

For whatever reason you choose to use it, Simon Steele, I would only point out that using the slur isn't conducive to building strong alliances among people of different political views. As a device to narrow who is and is not acceptable to work with it is remarkably effective.

Indeed, how we define neoliberalism is complicated. The first time I really came across and analyzed this term was while I worked on my MA. I always approach news concepts/definitions in a text by forming connections and understandings of the construct without outside sources, then, once I feel I have an understanding of it, I begin researching the term more broadly.

With neoliberalism, I remember having a real hard time with this. I can't remember the specific text, but I'd imagine it was one of the educational scholars Michael W. Apple or Wayne Au (all my grad level research has been in education). The term was described as an adherence to the free market, smaller government/less government intervention which may impede private business, focusing on competition, and promoting meritocracy. As I read about it, I remember writing in margins of the article "is this libertarianism?" This was probably midway through the Obama era, and this was my first time using scholarship to inform my general political knowledge. Worth noting, these descriptors for neo-liberalism are in line with Friedman's original analysis of neoliberalism. At its core, neoliberalism becomes very difficult to separate from what Republicans claim they are.

But given how Friedman and many scholars since have described neoliberalism with phrases and terms like adherence to the free market, smaller government/less government intervention which may have impeded private business, competition and meritocracy, using this word to describe modern liberals in control of the party is wholly fair. 

Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal) looks at the left's response (primarily Clinton and Obama) to Reaganism as the left's shift toward neoliberalism. Frank wrote that it was Clinton who "deregulated derivatives, deregulated telecom, and put our country’s only strong banking laws in the grave. He’s the one who rammed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through Congress and who taught the world that the way you respond to a recession is by paying off the federal deficit" (p. 84). Less government regulation in favor of the "market" (so to speak). This is a direct transfer of power from the public sector to the private sector. It was in the 1996 State of the Union, after all, where Clinton announced, "The era of big government is over."

The issue isn't so much with the term neoliberalism as it is with liberalism. Finding an agreed upon definition for the term reveals massive contradictions within the understanding of liberalism. Is it about the free market in favor of helping working people? Is it about expanded government that provides social safety nets? Those two views are contradictory, but much of literature on liberalism includes definitions of both. Is the Democratic party synonymous with liberalism? In today's understanding of the terms--yes. But we know the first Democratic party is not today's Democratic party. What separates them? Democrats certainly opposed civil and political rights for black people in the 19th century. Earlier than that, Democratic-Republicans (like Thomas Jefferson) favored decentralized government. Where Democrats and liberalism in general shifted away from conservative roots is most clearly seen with FDR. Yet, they never truly shifted away from free market capitalism. Neoliberalism is precisely a more directed approach in which the government supports free market capitalism.

All of that aside, we can agree on what the term means. But who we apply it to is not off limits. If Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, etc. have all been part of the push for the government to actively support free market capitalism, then they are part of neoliberalism. For some, that's an attack (but not a slur) because many see this active support of the free market over active support of people as the driving reason that the U.S. is a downwardly mobile society. I don't want to argue if that's true or not, but it's a valid response to modern liberalism. 

But even putting all of that aside, we can't look at a term like "neoliberalism" as a static term existing in a void. Over time, how we understand it through popular culture, through scholarship, and through the current state of politics expands on the term. This is true of any term. What is capitalism? How it was once described versus what it is now (if you use the U.S.'s current form of capitalism) is very different (so much so, we see sub categories of capitalism arise in the literature). Are Democrats still a party opposed to racial justice? No--the party and the ideology of the party has changed.

The critique of the modern Democratic party as neoliberalism is exactly that: a critique. To say people on the left cannot levy a (valid) critique of the modern Democratic party using neoliberalism to describe the party would be to ignore what the word has always meant. 

I don't take any of this personally, and I understand where you're coming from, but building coalitions between the left and liberal wings of the Democratic party is still happening. Biden has demonstrated in his first days in office a true willingness to be inclusive of what the left wing of the party pushes for, but I would not call Biden a leftist. He is building coalitions (much to my joy, to be clear) in new meaningful ways. This alone suggests to me that neoliberal critiques have not at all impeded coalition building. Those critiques (which really came to prominence since 2015) have led to what appears to be a meaningful shift of the Democratic back to the left and away from neoliberalism. 

[Myshkin]

1 hour ago, A True Kaniggit said:

And that stroke beat Stalin!

Too soon.

[Zorral]

The Hunts Point strike has been settled.  The workers' union was successful. This was their first strike since 1986! (And we all recall who was prez and the attitude about unions then.)

https://gothamist.com/news/we-fought-em-hard-hunts-point-produce-workers-toast-victory-after-approving-contract

O ya, AOC was there, providing hand warmers and hot drinks to the strikers, along with other NY officials who come from the communities who make up the labor at Hunts Point. (Which is why she wasn't at the Inauguration, as much as she'd like to have been.  She thought her freezing at Hunts Point was more important for her constituents than freezing at the Inauguration. (There might have been those there too, who she maybe didn't want to see, perhaps?)

Covid-19 mortality by occupation:
 

 

 

 

[ThinkerX]

5 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

According to the American right, Facism=Liberalism-Socialism. Thank you very much Jonah Golberg. 

what I see most often is:

Democratic Party = Socialist = Communists of the old line USSR variety.

They do that, I tell them 

Conservatives = Nazi's 

and back it up with links towards what they believe and how Nazi's behaved.

[Fragile Bird]

It's amazing to listen to the lawyers for the people being charged talk about their clients getting caught up in "election hyperbole" and how they are all good people who have the support of their families.

I wonder if the lawyers for those turned in by their families are making the same statements.

[DMC]

@ThinkerX - In case you missed it, Biden signed an executive order yesterday to try and raise the minimum wage to $15 for federal employees and contractors:

Quote

The order instructs the Office of Personnel Management to develop recommendations to agencies that would ensure as many as possible are paid at least $15 per hour.

In addition, the order represents the beginning of a 100-day initiative to require federal contractors to pay their employees at least $15 an hour.

“He will direct his administration to initiate a process starting today that would allow him within 100 days to issue and executive order requiring federal contractors to pay at least a $15 minimum wage and provide emergency paid leave to workers,” said National Economic Council Director Brian Deese.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I will be surprised if the Republican party doesn’t split into Trumpanista and non-Trumpanista factions.

[ThinkerX]

59 minutes ago, DMC said:

@ThinkerX - In case you missed it, Biden signed an executive order yesterday to try and raise the minimum wage to $15 for federal employees and contractors:

 

I saw that.  Perhaps from here Biden could attempt a local/piecemeal approach - tell this or that corporation or local government that one of the strings attached to the federal gravy train of tax breaks and subsidies is a increased minimum wage.  

My contract (Obama era?  who knows?) stipulates I have to pay any employees I have $15 an hour plus either provide health insurance or give them an additional $4 an hour to compensate.  I went with the later option - fair enough considering what a monumental hassle this job can be. 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I will be surprised if the Republican party doesn’t split into Trumpanista and non-Trumpanista factions.

The non-Trumpanista faction is severely outgunned.

4 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

My contract (Obama era?  who knows?) stipulates I have to pay any employees I have $15 an hour plus either provide health insurance or give them an additional $4 an hour to compensate.

Interesting.  Sounds like this type of effort will be reinstituting the same type of mandates.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

@ThinkerX - In case you missed it, Biden signed an executive order yesterday to try and raise the minimum wage to $15 for federal employees and contractors:

 

Good thing, but here's a serious question: how many federal employees & contractors actually make minimum wage?

Edit: or less the $15/hr?

13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I will be surprised if the Republican party doesn’t split into Trumpanista and non-Trumpanista factions.

I think it's far more likely that one faction will pull the other along. They are remarkably loyal to the party. They could run a block of wood for president and 80% of Republicans would still vote for it.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Good thing, but here's a serious question: how many federal employees & contractors actually make minimum wage?

Edit: or less the $15/hr?

I don't know personally, but from the article I cited above:

Quote

Assuming an employee works a standard 40-hour workweek, that $15 minimum would result in a $31,200 yearly salary before taxes.

Currently the lowest general schedule pay grade is set at $19,738 per year before locality adjustments. Under 2021 pay tables, feds would have to reach GS-3 step 10 to surpass the $15 per hour requirement if working full time.

According to the most recent OPM employment data, nearly 20,000 federal employees make below $30,000.

“There are thousands of federal employees who work full-time yet earn less than $15 an hour,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said.

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

16 minutes ago, DMC said:

I don't know personally, but from the article I cited above:

Yeah I just went back and read that. That is absolutely crazy to me. 

It makes me wonder what things look at on the state level.

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 1/21/2021 at 4:29 PM, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

I don't think that people are going to be more or less forgiving. I don't think it matters. 74 million people voted for Trump. Think things like their actual situation matter?

But Democrats tend to demand from their leaders, and have less demagoguery for them.

No matter what Trump did nearly 40% of the country would approve of Trump.

Theres no similar infatuation for Biden.