2020 is 2020, not because of some arcane numerology ‘reason’…
…but because people fought to make it this way….
~
The Architect of the Radical Right
How the Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan shaped today’s antigovernment politics:
✁
Her book includes familiar villains—principally the Koch brothers—and devotes many pages to think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, whose ideological programs are hardly a secret.
But what sets Democracy in Chains apart is that it begins in the South, and emphasizes a genuinely original and very influential political thinker, the economist James M. Buchanan.
✁
To see all this as simple obstructionism, perversity for its own sake, is a mistake.
A cause lies behind it: upholding the sanctity of an ideology against the sins of the majority.
This is what drives House Republicans to scale back social programs, or to shift the tax burden from the 1 percent onto the parasitic mob, or to come up with a health-care plan that would leave Trump’s own voters out in the cold.
To many of us, it might seem heartless. But far worse, Buchanan once explained in a famous essay, is misguided Good Samaritanism, which, by helping the unlucky, cushions them against the consequences of their bad choices.
This is exactly the sentiment voiced by the House Republican who voted to strip away Obamacare and then explained that the new proposal, which punishes people with preexisting medical conditions, has the advantage of “reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives.”
Charles and David Koch, the enormously rich proprietors of an oil company based in Kansas, decided that they would spend huge amounts of money to elect conservatives at all levels of American government.
David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket in 1980, but when the campaign was over, he resolved never to seek public office again.
That wouldn’t be necessary, he and his brother concluded; they could invest in the campaigns of others, and essentially buy their way to political power.
Thirty years later, the midterm elections of 2010 ushered in the political system that the Kochs had spent so many years plotting to bring about.
After the voting that year, Republicans dominated state legislatures; they controlled a clear majority of the governorships; they had taken one chamber of Congress and were on their way to winning the other.
Perhaps most important, a good many of the Republicans who had won these offices were not middle-of-the-road pragmatists. They were antigovernment libertarians of the Kochs’ own political stripe.
The brothers had spent or raised hundreds of millions of dollars to create majorities in their image.
They had succeeded. And not merely at the polls: They had helped to finance and organize an interlocking network of think tanks, academic programs and news media outlets that far exceeded anything the liberal opposition could put together.
It is this conservative ascendancy that Jane Mayer chronicles in “Dark Money.” The book is written in straightforward and largely unemotional prose, but it reads as if conceived in quiet anger.
Mayer believes that the Koch brothers and a small number of allied plutocrats have essentially hijacked American democracy, using their money not just to compete with their political adversaries, but to drown them out.
In a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, he detailed why he’s lost faith in the court.
~
Dear Chief Justice Roberts:
I hereby resign my membership in the Supreme Court Bar.
✁
I can no longer say that with any confidence. You are doing far more— and far worse– than “calling balls and strikes.”
You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.
The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent.
Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others.
The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it.
More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most.
There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.
Without trying to write a law review article, I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party, as vetted by the Federalist Society.
✁
It is clear to me that your Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessy.
The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control.
This isn’t even phoned in. He asked his mom to tell his publisher the dog ate his homework…
How Lincoln Survived the Worst Election Ever — There are many parallels between 1860 and 2020. Let’s hope there aren’t too many.
By Ted Widmer Dr. Widmer is the author of “Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/opinion/lincoln-trump-1860-2020.html
So what? In March of this year one bitter judge from Hawaii, with one bitter opinion, made a gesture. Besides, the bar of the Supreme Court is not cohesive, and it is not active or binding in any organizational sense. Again so what? Ka-Ching.
Wilde Bill over 3 years ago
Just in case you think 2021 will be any better.
braindead Premium Member over 3 years ago
Stantis, 233,000 covid deaths. So far. Remember to THANK TRUMP!
You know, “It is what it is.”
Cheapskate0 over 3 years ago
My favorite New Year’s monologue was by Ogden Nash, wherein we are warned, to the effect of,
How can we expect the new year to be any better than the previous year – considering its ancestors?
Silly Season over 3 years ago
2020 is 2020, not because of some arcane numerology ‘reason’…
…but because people fought to make it this way….
~
The Architect of the Radical Right
How the Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan shaped today’s antigovernment politics:
✁
Her book includes familiar villains—principally the Koch brothers—and devotes many pages to think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, whose ideological programs are hardly a secret.
But what sets Democracy in Chains apart is that it begins in the South, and emphasizes a genuinely original and very influential political thinker, the economist James M. Buchanan.
✁
To see all this as simple obstructionism, perversity for its own sake, is a mistake.
A cause lies behind it: upholding the sanctity of an ideology against the sins of the majority.
This is what drives House Republicans to scale back social programs, or to shift the tax burden from the 1 percent onto the parasitic mob, or to come up with a health-care plan that would leave Trump’s own voters out in the cold.
To many of us, it might seem heartless. But far worse, Buchanan once explained in a famous essay, is misguided Good Samaritanism, which, by helping the unlucky, cushions them against the consequences of their bad choices.
This is exactly the sentiment voiced by the House Republican who voted to strip away Obamacare and then explained that the new proposal, which punishes people with preexisting medical conditions, has the advantage of “reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives.”
~
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-architect-of-the-radical-right/528672/
Silly Season over 3 years ago
The tragedies of 2020 were years in the making…
~
Charles and David Koch, the enormously rich proprietors of an oil company based in Kansas, decided that they would spend huge amounts of money to elect conservatives at all levels of American government.
David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket in 1980, but when the campaign was over, he resolved never to seek public office again.
That wouldn’t be necessary, he and his brother concluded; they could invest in the campaigns of others, and essentially buy their way to political power.
Thirty years later, the midterm elections of 2010 ushered in the political system that the Kochs had spent so many years plotting to bring about.
After the voting that year, Republicans dominated state legislatures; they controlled a clear majority of the governorships; they had taken one chamber of Congress and were on their way to winning the other.
Perhaps most important, a good many of the Republicans who had won these offices were not middle-of-the-road pragmatists. They were antigovernment libertarians of the Kochs’ own political stripe.
The brothers had spent or raised hundreds of millions of dollars to create majorities in their image.
They had succeeded. And not merely at the polls: They had helped to finance and organize an interlocking network of think tanks, academic programs and news media outlets that far exceeded anything the liberal opposition could put together.
It is this conservative ascendancy that Jane Mayer chronicles in “Dark Money.” The book is written in straightforward and largely unemotional prose, but it reads as if conceived in quiet anger.
Mayer believes that the Koch brothers and a small number of allied plutocrats have essentially hijacked American democracy, using their money not just to compete with their political adversaries, but to drown them out.
~
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/books/review/dark-money-by-jane-mayer.html
dotbup over 3 years ago
Some things Republicans will start caring about in 2021:
The debt
The deficit
The troops
Corruption
Dishonesty
Qualifications
Bipartisanship
Federal norms
Playing politics
Being “divisive”
Executive orders
National security
Americans dying
Silly Season over 3 years ago
Former Judge Resigns From the Supreme Court Bar:
In a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, he detailed why he’s lost faith in the court.
~
Dear Chief Justice Roberts:
I hereby resign my membership in the Supreme Court Bar.
✁
I can no longer say that with any confidence. You are doing far more— and far worse– than “calling balls and strikes.”
You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.
The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent.
Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others.
The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it.
More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most.
There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.
Without trying to write a law review article, I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party, as vetted by the Federalist Society.
✁
It is clear to me that your Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessy.
The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control.
This is wrong. Period. This is not America.
~
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/judge-james-dannenberg-supreme-court-bar-roberts-letter.html
William Robbins Premium Member over 3 years ago
This isn’t even phoned in. He asked his mom to tell his publisher the dog ate his homework…
How Lincoln Survived the Worst Election Ever — There are many parallels between 1860 and 2020. Let’s hope there aren’t too many.
By Ted Widmer Dr. Widmer is the author of “Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/opinion/lincoln-trump-1860-2020.html
RobinHood over 3 years ago
So what? In March of this year one bitter judge from Hawaii, with one bitter opinion, made a gesture. Besides, the bar of the Supreme Court is not cohesive, and it is not active or binding in any organizational sense. Again so what? Ka-Ching.
RonnieAThompson Premium Member over 3 years ago
Have a Happy and Safe Halloween My Friends. Don’t forget to set your clocks back 1 hour before going to bed tonight.
dotbup over 3 years ago
“That’s just my opinion and it doesn’t matter”.
We agree, it’s a Halloween miracle!
Happy Halloween.
Kip W over 3 years ago
Fists flying, the brave little avenger went out to face the attacks that invariably came from people who he had hit or tried to hit.
Holilubillkori Premium Member over 3 years ago
The virus is a fact of nature and we too are a part of nature; unfortunately the virus is going to do ,whatever it’s going to do… :^(
William Robbins Premium Member over 3 years ago
@Cheapskate, still think Harry’s not Ja/Tp?
William Robbins Premium Member over 3 years ago
Aww, Rip James Bond. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/movies/sean-connery-dead.html
braindead Premium Member over 3 years ago
Kieth Olbermann at his best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HZqN2gm-Ug
.
Nothing that a Trump Disciple would/should ever watch. About 11 minutes.