I don't like deficit spending by Republicans any more than by Democrats. In my view, both parties are utterly corrupted, and all but worthless to us. These two identifiers have become no more than ways to choose your poison, in my view. — Michael Zwingli
This position is now obsolete. — Xtrix
I wondered if U.S. alphabet agencies were down there stirring the pot and fucking with the socialist economies. Riling up and funding agent provocateurs and calling them "freedom fighters." — James Riley
Funny how talk of deficits and the national debt only get pushed by media, and then echoed by people on the internet, when anything that's good for the country is proposed. Never any money for that. Plenty of money for tax cuts for the rich, fossil fuel subsidies, and trillions for wars and defense budgets. Just a reflection of priorities, I guess. — Xtrix
The Government is the only counterweight to The Corporation. It's no surprise that the Right are always harping on about 'the evils of Government', because it's the only institution big enough to hold them to account. Do away with Government and have everything privatized and run by corporate boards for the benefit of shareholders and directors. — Wayfarer
What gave you cause to seemingly put words into my mouth? No, I don't want tax cuts for the rich, I want tax cuts for everybody, right across the spectrum, and for the federal government to shrink by about 40 percent, and state governments by nearly as much. — Michael Zwingli
envision the best world as one without government or nation states, or being more realistic, with as little government as possible. — Michael Zwingli
The size of our government doesn't bother you? — Michael Zwingli
The fact that it constitutes over one third of our outsized GDP? It does more than bother me, it frightens me...a gigantic monstrous abstraction claiming power over my liberty and even my life. — Michael Zwingli
Governments in general frighten me, as I view them to be working in no interest but their own, which is ytpical organizational behavior. — Michael Zwingli
The Government is the only counterweight to The Corporation. It's no surprise that the Right are always harping on about 'the evils of Government', because it's the only institution big enough to hold them to account. Do away with Government and have everything privatized and run by corporate boards for the benefit of shareholders and directors. — Wayfarer
if corporate officers and board members were made personally responsible and subject to swift arbitrary (this being the key word) prosecution for corporate misdeeds, rather than the current practice of generally impotent financial penalty, then corporate oversight would become much easier. But of course, that will not happen, because politicians are whorish animals by nature, who only bite the hands that feed them when the event is within public view. — Michael Zwingli
Libertarian socialist ...Rather, like 180 Proof and others on the site, I am a libertarian (in actuality, an anarchist ["minarchist"] who despises the state, but begrudgingly admits that we need it in the present technological climate). — Michael Zwingli
Does Exxon and the fossil fuel industry generally, who knew of climate change in the 1970s but continued on anyway, lobbying and propagandizing to sow doubt and hamstring any governmental action, frighten you as well? It should -- far more than the government, in fact. — Xtrix
Corporations buy off these politicians, and thus the government. They have huge influence through campaign finance... — Xtrix
Libertarian socialist. — 180 Proof
I view it as more loathsome, as uglier in liberals though, because of the duplicity involved, — Michael Zwingli
But of course, that will not happen, because politicians are whorish animals by nature, who only bite the hands that feed them when the event is within public view. — Michael Zwingli
man, it's not about faction — Michael Zwingli
Do we agree that our government should do something about climate change, as the science community is telling us needs to happen? — Xtrix
Read again Robert Kagan’s foreboding Washington Post essay on how close we are to a democratic disaster. He’s talking about a group of people so enraged by a lack of respect that they are willing to risk death by Covid if they get to stick a middle finger in the air against those who they think look down on them. They are willing to torch our institutions because they are so resentful against the people who run them.
The Democratic spending bills are economic packages that serve moral and cultural purposes. They should be measured by their cultural impact, not merely by some wonky analysis. In real, tangible ways, they would redistribute dignity back downward. They would support hundreds of thousands of jobs for home health care workers, child care workers, construction workers, metal workers, supply chain workers. They would ease the indignity millions of parents face having to raise their children in poverty.
In normal times I’d argue that many of the programs in these packages may be ineffective. I’m a lot more worried about debt than progressives seem to be. But we’re a nation enduring a national rupture, and the most violent parts of it may still be yet to come.
I wonder how the making of concrete and steel will be powered? — Xtrix
Only a few I can think of. Bacon, Saint Augustine if you count Bishops, which I think you can. Marcus Aurelius obviously, the equivalent of a US presidential writing philosophy. I believe Abelard had some serious secular responsibilities at some points — Count Timothy von Icarus
Having pricked its finger on Christian theology, philosophy fell asleep for about a thousand years until awakened by the kiss of Descartes. — Anthony Gottlieb
I feel like that's a very myopic quote. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Plato and Aristotle didn't start being forgotten with the rise of Christianity; the process began soon after Aristotle's death. Stoicism and Epicureanism would come to overshadow them soon after, and while both certainly made contributions to philosophy and logic, I think it's fair to say things actually took a step back through antiquity. Plato doesn't come roaring back until he is reintroduced in a religious context himself, with Plotonius as a grand theologian / scholar. Point being, philosophy had already pricked it's finger back in the time of Alexander and only woke up in fits and starts. Hence most philosophy surveys barely skimming the years between Aristotle and Plotonius, then going back to sleep until Decartes- but that's centuries before the rise of Christianity. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Ockham — Count Timothy von Icarus
Potentially a great thing. It's 50/50 that they in fact pass absolutely nothing as progressives vote down the infrastructure bill and then can't get the rest through the Senate. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I would say it is trending towards more likely that they get nothing, in which case it is more likely than not that Biden will have no major legislative achievements in his term, as I highly doubt the Democrats hold on to their razor thin margins in 2022. — Count Timothy von Icarus
In retrospect, letting Progressives pack their wish list into the House bill was a mistake, since it seems to have given them the sense that they can make policy with just 25% of the seats in the legislature by threatening to tank everything, and what is more likely is that they get nothing. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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