Politics & Stuff

[cosmicway 1,323]

1 hour ago, robsblubot said:

The best place to be in a global nuclear war is inside one the blast zones. 😉 

Xenon and iodine radiation will kill you.

[Vesper 28,799]

On 15/07/2024 at 21:39, Vesper said:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-15-dangerous-authoritarian-russell-vought-trumps-grand-vizier/

 

Then-President Donald Trump listens as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought speaks during an event at the White House, October 9, 2019, in Washington.

 

Christian nationalism is a dangerous, far-right ideology that advocates abolishing the separation of church and state, and on behalf of a truly warped religious vision. Indeed, Christians opposed to Christian nationalism have denounced it as a “cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation,” a theocratic and fascist movement with no trace of the radical generosity shown by Jesus in the Bible. Borrowing from the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that welcoming nonwhite immigrants into Western countries is a plot to supplant the cultural and political influence of white people, Christian nationalism has influenced acts of racist violence, such as the deadly shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in 2015.

So it’s alarming that this is the ideological worldview espoused by Russell Vought, a career conservative activist and former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director under President Trump, who is reportedly under consideration to be White House chief of staff in a potential second Trump administration. Currently, Vought leads a Trump-aligned think tank, the Center for Renewing America, producing endless reams of viciously cruel proposals.

For decades, Vought has been something of a reverse Robin Hood. Some examples include: leading a pressure campaign while at the Heritage Foundation urging Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act; heading up the Republican Study Committee (RSC), during a time when the ultraconservative caucus wrote a “highly unbalanced” budget (which is to say, it was full of tax cuts for the rich and austerity for the poor) to offset relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina; heading policy for the House Republican Conference; and of course working under the Trump OMB. Vought seems to have a particular animus toward programs helping the very worst-off. He drafted a cruel budget where he proposed eliminating the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides federal assistance to cover utility costs for low-income families, cutting nutrition assistance for low-income families, and throwing 90,000 children off of the Head Start program, which helps children from low-income families with their cognitive, emotional, and social development.

After all, who can forget the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Blessed are those who snatch bread out of the mouths of widows and orphans?”

Vought’s contempt for his fellow Americans is not limited to the poor and children—civil servants also draw his ire. He has long advocated for the Schedule F policy initiative, which would allow for the dismissal of up to 50,000 federal civil servants (to be replaced by Trump lickspittles and toadies) in a bid to purge the so-called “deep state.” President Biden rescinded Trump’s Schedule F executive order before any employees were affected, but Vought is one of the chief architects of Project 2025’s plan to resurrect Schedule F—and this time it would be done right away, rather than at the end of the administration. Nonpartisan federal employees, including those with specialized expertise, would be replaced with witless Trump acolytes by the tens of thousands.

Needing an outlet for his Christian nationalism after leaving the White House, Vought locked arms with other Trump devotees and founded an organization under the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) umbrella called the Center for Renewing America (CRA). CRA hosts a clown car of former Trump officials such as the recently indicted Jeffrey Clark, Ken Cuccinelli, and Kash Patel. CRA was founded on the premise of renewing “consensus of America as a nation under God with unique interests worthy of defending that flow from its people, institutions, and history, where individuals’ enjoyment of freedom is predicated on just laws and healthy communities.” The think tank’s “Christian” bona fides truly shine through with charitable policy proposals such as utilizing state war powers to target undocumented immigrants, opposing DEI or any other “woke” social measures, fighting the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and enthusiastically supporting voter suppression.

CRA, as part of CPI, lays the groundwork for potential policymaking and lobbying efforts in a hypothetical second Trump administration. Vought affirmed his Christian nationalist beliefs in a CRA document revealing that he and his influential think tank plan to infuse Christian nationalism into the very fabric of the federal government. In the same document, CRA proposed invoking the Insurrection Act to quell protests and prohibiting use of congressional funds for specific projects.

Vought’s efforts to provide the infrastructure for a second Trump administration do not end with CRA. As noted above, he is also involved with Project 2025, for which he wrote a section of the Mandate for Leadership memo. In it, he interprets the Constitution as giving the president full control over the executive branch—no more independent agencies overseen by Congress, but just the office of the president. The former OMB director goes so far as to say that civil servants and Congress effectively get in the way of a conservative executive branch.

Vought has chastised “the Left’s legal theorists” for adopting “an approach to interpreting the Constitution based on it being a ‘living’ document, meaning that its provisions should be understood to be malleable, keeping up with a modernizing nation.” But if the left has a flexible view of the Constitution, Vought wants to burn it to ashes. There can be no other conclusion when someone supports Trump, a man who attempted to overthrow the very concept of government by “we the people” and install himself as dictator. As Politico’s Heidi Przybyla put it, Christian nationalists are “bound” by the belief that inalienable rights—for them, not for others—come from God, not the law.

When the office of the White House chief of staff was established in 1953 under the Eisenhower administration, it was meant to help guide the president through the policymaking process and coordinate with the federal government. Russell Vought would turn the position into a sort of grand vizier for King Trump. Such a man, who spits on the Constitution, hates civil servants, Congress, and democracy itself, has no business anywhere near power.

Breaking.....

Trump just announed he is likely going to give Vought a Cabinet level position

[Vesper 28,799]

Trump has chosen President of the World Wrestling Entertainment to lead the Department of Education

Linda McMahon was a co-founder with her husband, Vince, of the wrestling company and also Trumps campaign co-chair.

 

 

smdh

[Vesper 28,799]

The ‘now they’re going to find out’ argument is flawed

Why are we expecting so much from Trump voters?

https://www.editorialboard.com/the-now-theyre-going-to-find-out-argument-is-flawed/

 

There’s an argument I want to discuss. It goes something like this: Donald Trump’s policies are going to alienate some of the people who voted for him. To be sure, many of them wanted something done about the economy. Prices were too damn high. But they didn’t sign up for tariffs, deportations and cuts to social services, like food stamps.

As a liberal pundit put it, Trump seems poised to follow through with that policy agenda, though going through with it is “political suicide.”

My question is why. 

Why are we expecting so much from Trump voters? I’m not making a distinction between his base and those who chose to go along for the ride. I mean all of his supporters, and I’m asking: Why should we place our democratic faith, and the future of the republic, in their hands? 

It’s not like Trump had an agenda to bring down the cost of living. All he said was “Make America Great Again.” Deport “illegals.” Suppress transgender rights. Beat down weak and marginalized folks. Voilà! 

His one economic plan was tariffs. A tax on imported goods from China and elsewhere will raise prices on everything, not just imports, as retailers will price-gouge under cover of inflation. Tariffs are the opposite of what you do to reduce costs. And that’s why he lied. Trump said nations would pay the tax, not companies bringing goods in. 

His voters chose to believe him. 

So let me get this straight.  

People who can’t or won’t understand tariffs are going to deduce all by themselves that tariffs are the reason they’re now paying three and four times more for their sneakers, T-shirts and video-game consoles? 

People who voted against their own economic interests are going to figure out on their own what exactly those interests are, but only after they’ve been screwed over by the president they voted for?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, it would be easier to continue scamming these people than convince them that they’ve been scammed. 

And the scamming will continue.

The rightwing media apparatus, which is global in scale, prevented these voters from knowing what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had done for the economy, inflation, wages and the GDP, but especially for the material interests of the white working class. Biden and Harris literally ditched 40 years of supply-side consensus in favor of growing the economy, as Biden liked to say, from the bottom up and middle out. But no one who watches Fox or listens to Joe Rogan or reads The Daily Wire or sees YouTube ads for gold bullion knows any of that. 

This same rightwing media apparatus, which has only grown larger since 2020, is going to prevent Trump voters from knowing who’s responsible for price hikes, job losses and soaring interest rates that will be directly attributable to deportations, tariffs and other insane policies. If there’s someone to blame, it won’t be Donald Trump. It will be RINOs or “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialists” or immigrants. 

If Trump voters are not especially attuned to the rightwing media apparatus, they will nevertheless feel its ambiance, as the Washington press corps habitually launders Trump’s talking points and, as we have seen, appeases him by either self-censoring or acting as if already under threat of investigation or prosecution by his administration. 

If Trump voters are able to see through the fog of the rightwing media apparatus and the Washington press corps, they still might not understand the damage done by Trump’s economic policies, as his administration will almost certainly try to corrupt government data. The jobs report, inflation index, consumer spending – there will huge incentive to fudge those after Trump commits “political suicide.”

If Trump voters are able to connect all the dots and blame him for everything he did or didn’t do, as they blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for everything they did and didn’t do, so what? Is Trump going to respond to the backlash as if he were a normal president? 

He doesn’t care about his party. He doesn’t care about the next election (presuming he doesn’t run again). It’s hard to see any incentive outside his self-interest that would move him to back off anything.

And I haven’t mentioned the fact that these voters, even the ones who chose to go along for the ride, inhabit a world of fantastical fiction, absolute trash reality, that none of us should put our hopes in. 

These people believe mothers “abort” babies after they’re born or if they don’t believe it, they don’t mind people who say so. They believe a student goes to school as a girl and comes back as a boy or if they don’t believe it, they don’t mind people who say so. Even if we give them the maximum benefit of the doubt, and treat them more like children than adults, are we going to trust them to realize Trump is bad for them?

And even if Trump voters turn against Trump, thus creating an opportunity for the Democrats to win them over, are they going to recognize what the Democrats are offering in terms of economic policy given the hold the rightwing media apparatus has on them and given their past record of voting against their own economic interests?

I’ll pass. 

I’ll pass on believing these people are going to find out anything after having fucked around. They don’t take democracy seriously. They don’t take their own lives seriously, much less the fate of a free republic. 

I’ll put my faith in good people who seek out good trouble in the name of liberty, equality and justice for all. They’re a minority these days, but that’s OK. The world never changed for the better because a majority wanted it to. It changed because a righteous minority demanded it.

[cosmicway 1,323]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

The ‘now they’re going to find out’ argument is flawed

Why are we expecting so much from Trump voters?

https://www.editorialboard.com/the-now-theyre-going-to-find-out-argument-is-flawed/

 

There’s an argument I want to discuss. It goes something like this: Donald Trump’s policies are going to alienate some of the people who voted for him. To be sure, many of them wanted something done about the economy. Prices were too damn high. But they didn’t sign up for tariffs, deportations and cuts to social services, like food stamps.

As a liberal pundit put it, Trump seems poised to follow through with that policy agenda, though going through with it is “political suicide.”

My question is why. 

Why are we expecting so much from Trump voters? I’m not making a distinction between his base and those who chose to go along for the ride. I mean all of his supporters, and I’m asking: Why should we place our democratic faith, and the future of the republic, in their hands? 

It’s not like Trump had an agenda to bring down the cost of living. All he said was “Make America Great Again.” Deport “illegals.” Suppress transgender rights. Beat down weak and marginalized folks. Voilà! 

His one economic plan was tariffs. A tax on imported goods from China and elsewhere will raise prices on everything, not just imports, as retailers will price-gouge under cover of inflation. Tariffs are the opposite of what you do to reduce costs. And that’s why he lied. Trump said nations would pay the tax, not companies bringing goods in. 

His voters chose to believe him. 

So let me get this straight.  

People who can’t or won’t understand tariffs are going to deduce all by themselves that tariffs are the reason they’re now paying three and four times more for their sneakers, T-shirts and video-game consoles? 

People who voted against their own economic interests are going to figure out on their own what exactly those interests are, but only after they’ve been screwed over by the president they voted for?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, it would be easier to continue scamming these people than convince them that they’ve been scammed. 

And the scamming will continue.

The rightwing media apparatus, which is global in scale, prevented these voters from knowing what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had done for the economy, inflation, wages and the GDP, but especially for the material interests of the white working class. Biden and Harris literally ditched 40 years of supply-side consensus in favor of growing the economy, as Biden liked to say, from the bottom up and middle out. But no one who watches Fox or listens to Joe Rogan or reads The Daily Wire or sees YouTube ads for gold bullion knows any of that. 

This same rightwing media apparatus, which has only grown larger since 2020, is going to prevent Trump voters from knowing who’s responsible for price hikes, job losses and soaring interest rates that will be directly attributable to deportations, tariffs and other insane policies. If there’s someone to blame, it won’t be Donald Trump. It will be RINOs or “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialists” or immigrants. 

If Trump voters are not especially attuned to the rightwing media apparatus, they will nevertheless feel its ambiance, as the Washington press corps habitually launders Trump’s talking points and, as we have seen, appeases him by either self-censoring or acting as if already under threat of investigation or prosecution by his administration. 

If Trump voters are able to see through the fog of the rightwing media apparatus and the Washington press corps, they still might not understand the damage done by Trump’s economic policies, as his administration will almost certainly try to corrupt government data. The jobs report, inflation index, consumer spending – there will huge incentive to fudge those after Trump commits “political suicide.”

If Trump voters are able to connect all the dots and blame him for everything he did or didn’t do, as they blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for everything they did and didn’t do, so what? Is Trump going to respond to the backlash as if he were a normal president? 

He doesn’t care about his party. He doesn’t care about the next election (presuming he doesn’t run again). It’s hard to see any incentive outside his self-interest that would move him to back off anything.

And I haven’t mentioned the fact that these voters, even the ones who chose to go along for the ride, inhabit a world of fantastical fiction, absolute trash reality, that none of us should put our hopes in. 

These people believe mothers “abort” babies after they’re born or if they don’t believe it, they don’t mind people who say so. They believe a student goes to school as a girl and comes back as a boy or if they don’t believe it, they don’t mind people who say so. Even if we give them the maximum benefit of the doubt, and treat them more like children than adults, are we going to trust them to realize Trump is bad for them?

And even if Trump voters turn against Trump, thus creating an opportunity for the Democrats to win them over, are they going to recognize what the Democrats are offering in terms of economic policy given the hold the rightwing media apparatus has on them and given their past record of voting against their own economic interests?

I’ll pass. 

I’ll pass on believing these people are going to find out anything after having fucked around. They don’t take democracy seriously. They don’t take their own lives seriously, much less the fate of a free republic. 

I’ll put my faith in good people who seek out good trouble in the name of liberty, equality and justice for all. They’re a minority these days, but that’s OK. The world never changed for the better because a majority wanted it to. It changed because a righteous minority demanded it.

The working classes are no longer socialist or socialist leaning like they used to be, especially in America.
Sacco and Vanzetti would not be the folklore heroes they used to be. Crazy wildcats the modern day liberals woud probably call them or even "agents provocateurs".
In Europe a hard core of leftists still exists but they are becoming less and less important.
Even the rightists spend less and less time bashing them and Margaret Thatcher's famous speeches belong to the museum.
This is because the socialists in government did not produce the miracles they promised but also because communism is now thoroughly exposed as a system of universal poverty and destitution rather than as a system of emancipation and progress.
The populists is the current fashion, Pepe Grillo - Trump - Orban and Farage too (should be at 0.5% - he is at 15%).
Never mind their being fascist or semifascist, they are in fashion.
They will fall with a huge thud though, like Syriza did. This Greek Syriza actually claimed both titles, left and populist in one package but now is discredited.

[NikkiCFC 7,949]

4 hours ago, cosmicway said:

The working classes are no longer socialist or socialist leaning like they used to be

Maybe you should focus on working class infront your door right now. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/20/greece-faces-general-strike-as-workers-protest-cost-of-living-squeeze

Greece faces general strike as workers protest cost of living squeeze

Edited 20 hours ago by NikkiCFC

[cosmicway 1,323]

55 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

Maybe you should focus on working class infront your door right now. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/20/greece-faces-general-strike-as-workers-protest-cost-of-living-squeeze

Greece faces general strike as workers protest cost of living squeeze

Ha', I just returned from downtown where I had various business to attend. Full of commies, I need a doctor for my ears.
Then I ate a burger sandwich from Everest - horrible, for the cats - 6.20 euro.

I see what you mean in the quote but as I said in Europe certain nuclei exist.
But not a single cop - I saw only two who were looking at shop windows.

Edited 20 hours ago by cosmicway

[NikkiCFC 7,949]

29 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

Ha', I just returned from downtown where I had various business to attend. Full of commies, I need a doctor for my ears.
Then I ate a burger sandwich from Everest - horrible, for the cats - 6.20 euro.

I see what you mean in the quote but as I said in Europe certain nuclei exist.
But not a single cop - I saw only two who were looking at shop windows.

Isn't that illogical? You don't support protest about high costs of living but in the next sentence complain about shitty burger for 6.20 euros. 

On Crete I was eating big and tasty Gyros for 4.50e. 

 

[cosmicway 1,323]

25 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

Isn't that illogical? You don't support protest about high costs of living but in the next sentence complain about shitty burger for 6.20 euros. 

On Crete I was eating big and tasty Gyros for 4.50e. 

 

It rather is.
But with commie governments everyone eats raw corn. Can't trust certified liars to demo for me, sorry.
Also it was only commies. I had to follow a peculiar trajectory, parallel to the demo for 600 meters or so, then through, then through again on the way back, Eveywhere commies.
Now about the burger in my neighbourhood it is 4.50 from 3.50 last year and it's very nice. The Everest chain are thieves and it was doggie food.

Edited 19 hours ago by cosmicway

[NikkiCFC 7,949]

30 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

Also it was only commies.  Eveywhere commies.

What gives them away? How to recognize them? You are expert in this. 

[cosmicway 1,323]

21 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

What gives them away? How to recognize them? You are expert in this. 

Come on. Banners - slogans - the works.

[KEVINAA 95]

13 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

Don't worry, even if shit happens Australia is among best places to be. 

Look it up on Google maps. I live in Howick in Auckland, New Zealand.

I moved from Johannesburg South Africa on Sunday 19 June 2005 and landed on Tuesday 21 June 2005 at Auckland airport from spending 8 hours inside hong Kong airport to flying over some parts of Australia to get to Auckland.

[Fernando 6,456]

8 minutes ago, KEVINAA said:

Look it up on Google maps. I live in Howick in Auckland, New Zealand.

I moved from Johannesburg South Africa on Sunday 19 June 2005 and landed on Tuesday 21 June 2005 at Auckland airport from spending 8 hours inside hong Kong airport to flying over some parts of Australia to get to Auckland.

You never responded to me, since you love a lot of conspiracy theory what was your thought on Ashton Forbes that USA had their hand in the disappearing of MH370?

 

 

[KEVINAA 95]

3 minutes ago, Fernando said:

You never responded to me, since you love a lot of conspiracy theory what was your thought on Ashton Forbes that USA had their hand in the disappearing of MH370?

 

 

When discussing these topics on a internet forum it's hard to put it into text form plus the internet was created to track and trace any truther and get arrested for knowing what going on. Everything that is on TV and news is a psyop or coverup of a real reason to misplace people's thoughts and cause division by getting everyone stressed fear fighting and vonfusiin and not looking at the shadow secret underground government that runs puppet people with money to do their bidding.

I've moved in from that airplane distraction EVENT, if the news breaks the info on tv, it's used to get everything paying attention to it so they cause division and wars between humanity while the elites get away with evil behind the scenes.

[Vesper 28,799]

6 hours ago, KEVINAA said:

the internet was created to track and trace any truther and get arrested for knowing what going on

No, this is false at multiple levels.

Starting with the entire premiss that 'truthers' have special, insider knowledge that makes them the only ones who know what is going on.

They think they are the only ones who have it all sussed out, when in reality they are just dupes being played by a cottage industry lunatics, crackpots, grifters, pied pipers, disinformation agents, etc etc.

Most 'truthers' exist within a massive, self-contained, self-perpetuating ecosphere of delusional paranoia, and far too often are milked like cows by the various and sundry malign actors (Alex Jones being the archetypal example) who keep the whole thing up and running.

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,839]

On Russia 1, the Russian state channel - war against the US.

"To use their Storm Shadow, their SCALP and their ATACMS, you need a launcher, the missile itself and a satellite navigation system. For us, there is a simple answer, let's destroy NATO satellites and more specifically, the American satellites that fly above us. They could not prevent it, it would be a challenge for them, a real slap in the face because America has always declared that attacking its satellites is a declaration of war, by doing this, we would be getting back at them by saying, you want a Cuban missile crisis? You will have a Cuban missile crisis, with each strike (with American weapons), there will be a satellite on the ground."

[Vesper 28,799]

https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-but-harris-ran-as-a-moderate

In the weeks since Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Democrats and their allies have begun the long process of trying to determine why they lost. Some of these conversations have been productive and have pointed to factors that we at The Liberal Patriot have been writing about for some time: the party’s governing woes, longstanding support for neoliberal economics, misperceptions about the electorate, ideological shift away from the median voter, and reluctance to pick fights with the left wing of the party, including interest groups and donors—all of which likely played some role in fracturing their coalition this year and allowing Republicans to win the popular vote for the first time since 2004.

Some of the discourse, however, has taken a different track, specifically resisting the charge that Harris and the Democrats have veered too far left or idea that the party should moderate its stances on some social and cultural issues. This view was perhaps best summarized in a recent monologue by comedian-turned-pundit John Oliver:

If what you want is a centrist campaign that’s quiet on trans issues, tough on the border, distances itself from Palestinians, talks a lot about law and order, and reaches out to moderate Republicans, that candidate existed—and she just lost… I’m not sure how you reach out to moderate Republicans more than appearing with Liz Cheney multiple times.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but the general idea that Oliver and several other prominent writers and pundits on the left are promulgating is that Harris took deliberate steps to appeal to the middle of the electorate and avoid discussions about identity, and yet she lost anyway. Thus, it’s silly to attribute her loss to a perception among voters that she was too liberal or too focused on identity politics.

But this critique misses some key dynamics at play in this election. To be sure, Harris did sound like a moderate for much of the campaign. She touted the popular accomplishments of the Biden administration like caps on insulin prices, promoted policies to help lower housing costs, played up her career as a prosecutor, vowed to be tough on crime and the border, and mostly eschewed hot-button culture-war topics like race, gender, and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

However, a mere five years ago ago, Harris adopted—or at least sympathized with—a host of objectively radical and unpopular positions, including decriminalizing border crossings, defunding the police, abolishing ICE, banning fracking, confiscating guns, allowing convicted felons to vote from prison, and requiring all new car sales by 2040 to be electric (to name just a few). As the party’s 2024 nominee, she was reluctant to disavow these past positions or fully account for her reversals on them, saying only, “My values haven’t changed.”

This left many people unsure of her true beliefs. It also left a vacuum for Republicans to hit her repeatedly over those past views and claim that her attempt to cast herself as a “moderate” was a charade. One Trump campaign ad that memorably captured this argument highlighted comments Harris had previously made in support of using taxpayer funding for sex-reassignment surgeries in prisons, including for detained migrants. The spot concluded: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Some understandably decried the ad for picking on transgender Americans, but it was clearly making a broader point that seemed to resonate with many voters—that Harris wasn’t the moderate that she purported to be and that she cared more about being on the right side of progressive interest groups than advocating for the vast majority of the country. And it turned out to be extraordinarily effective. According to the New York Times, pre-election focus group tests by the pro-Harris super PAC Future Forward found that the ad shifted the race 2.7 points toward Trump after viewers watched it, as it “cut to the core of the Trump argument: that Ms. Harris was ‘dangerously liberal.’”

Similarly, in a post-election survey, Blueprint tested several reasons why voters may not have chosen to support Harris, including the claim that she was “focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues than helping the middle class.” Among all voters, this was the third-most-cited reason for not voting for her, but even more telling: it was the top reason cited by swing voters who broke for Trump. (Meanwhile, among the least compelling claims in the survey? “Kamala Harris is too conservative.”)

A subsequent Blueprint survey confirmed Harris’s core problem was that many voters simply didn’t think she had genuinely changed her past positions.1 According to their findings, swing voters who chose Trump believed that Harris supported:

• Using taxpayer dollars for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants (83 percent)

• Requiring all cars to be electric by 2035 (82 percent)

• Decriminalizing border crossings (77 percent)

• Banning fracking (74 percent)

• Defunding the police (72 percent)

The other argument Oliver made to support his contention that Harris ran a moderate campaign was that she made several public appearances with Liz Cheney, a Republican stalwart whose father was a Democratic bogeyman just two decades ago. Earning crossover support like that might normally signal a candidate is expanding their appeal to some nontraditional voters. And to be sure, early post-election data indicate that Harris may have won a slightly greater share of Republican voters (seven percent) than Trump won of Democratic voters (four percent).

But Harris didn’t have to do anything meaningful to earn Cheney’s support, like make policy concessions, because Cheney’s dislike of Trump was strong enough that she was likely always going to side with Harris. This then prompts a question: how many Republican voters was Cheney actually able to bring along with her? Americans who shared her anti-Trump animus and whose votes were driven by it likely didn’t need any convincing to support Harris. So, if Cheney wasn’t forcing Harris’s hand on certain policies in exchange for her endorsement or bringing a new type of voter into Harris’s tent, it’s not clear that she boosted Harris’s “moderate” appeal at all.

One final thing that hurt Harris’s attempt to fashion herself as a moderate was her refusal to distance herself from President Biden. Though Biden ran to the right of most of the 2020 Democratic primary field, he made a conscious decision at the beginning of his presidency to swing left. He demonstrated this early on by hiring staffers who had previously worked for Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders while shunning moderates like Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers, veterans of Obama’s White House—all in an effort to ingratiate himself with the party’s progressive faction.

This was also evident in how he governed. Biden made a concerted effort to push policy ideas that thrilled the progressive wing of the party, such as the COVID stimulus package early in his administration, which has since been linked to the subsequently higher rate of inflation. He also acquiesced to their demands on a liberalized asylum policy and student debt forgiveness, neither of which went over well with the public. Biden additionally took controversial actions related to race and social justice. One of his first acts as president was signing several executive orders related to advancing “equity,” one of which called for “an ­ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.”

Perhaps all this is why polls in the early part of summer, just before Biden dropped out, showed that more voters saw Biden as “ideologically extreme” than said the same about Trump—and why Harris’s insistence on embracing him during the campaign may have hurt her. Indeed, Blueprint’s polling found that among the other main reasons voters chose not to support Harris was that they viewed her as too closely tied to Biden.

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There appear to be voices on the left that are reluctant to acknowledge some hard truths about the state of the Democratic Party and why it has struggled to consistently win or build an electorally dominant coalition. The reality is that although Americans are open to many of the economically populist ideas the party supports, they are also on average more culturally moderate or even conservative than the Democratic base. And the evidence is quickly becoming clear that unless the party adjusts to this—in both words and actions—it may continue to cost them votes.

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The High-Stakes Gamble of Doing Nothing: Why Business Must Act Now

In a world teetering on the edge of chaos, disengagement is a dangerous delusion. Here’s why smart leaders know that stepping up is necessary.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-high-stakes-gamble-of-doing-nothing-why-business-must-act-now

Investors and business leaders know all about the relationship between risk and reward. While a “steady as she goes” approach may seem to reduce risk, in the short run at least, it could be that relative inaction exposes you to much greater risk over the longer term. Doing nothing in fact becomes the riskier thing to do.

The world at the end of 2024 does not appear to be offering the business community a particularly appetising set of options. There is war raging in Ukraine and the Middle East. Energy prices remain high. And a familiar figure is about to return to the White House to pick up where he left off four years ago. Life is about to get even more complicated.

The temptation for business leaders to disengage, to keep their heads down and focus on spreadsheets rather than news bulletins, may be high. But this would be a bad choice. Events will inevitably impinge on business plans. However unappealing it may seem, this is a time for business to step up and engage, not opt out.

Sceptics may object that business’s track record on engagement is patchy or at least unconvincing. And the sceptics would have a point. Not so long ago – in 2019 in fact, during those last few happy pre-Covid days – the US Business Roundtable announced rather dramatically that the era of narrowly pursuing “shareholder value” was over. “Each of our stakeholders is essential”, declared a new statement on the purpose of a corporation, signed by 181 top chief executives. Employees mattered: “We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.” At the World Economic Forum in Davos the following January Klaus Schwab declared that a new era of stakeholder capitalism was being born.

This was not merely premature; it was wrong. One investor wrote to the board of JP Morgan, whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, had been a leading force in the production of the Business Roundtable statement. Had JP Morgan’s commercial goals, and the fiduciary duties of the board’s directors, changed? Not at all, came the reply. Essentially it was business as usual. Research conducted by scholars at Harvard Law School revealed that very few of the 181 corporations had indeed altered their fundamental approach to business after signing this statement. In fact, it had rarely been discussed at board level at all.

At least these CEOs were trying to move the conversation on from that destructive account of business inspired by the work of the economist Milton Friedman: that it is purely a matter of making profits without breaking the law (or without getting caught breaking the law, at least).

But in terms of political economy the Business Roundtable were slow learners. The British commentator Will Hutton had written about the stakeholder economy in his book “The State We’re In” in the mid 1990s. Indeed, as far back as 1932, Adolf A Berle and Gardiner C Means had written “The Modern Corporation and Private Property”, which looked at the separation of ownership and control and called for greater shareholder democracy, transparency and accountability.

Until recently, it had seemed that responsible business leaders might be able to make a positive contribution to society under the headings of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI – as referenced in the Business Roundtable statement), and that investors could support progressive (and sustainable) business activity with their ESG (environment, social, governance) funds.

But these ostensibly non-political interventions have been politicised. Donald Trump’s return to power has been accompanied by a wave of hostility to so-called “woke capitalism”. So certain Republican-run states in the US have attacked pension funds for investing under the ESG heading. The cause of DEI has been smeared, as if greater fairness and equality of opportunity at work are a bad thing. Businesses that still want to make a positive difference in this area are having to rebrand or even camouflage their activities to avoid the hostility of their newly-emboldened critics.

So what can a responsible business leader do? Luckily there is some good and practical advice available in a new book: Higher Ground – how business can do the right thing in a turbulent world, by Alison Taylor, who teaches at the Stern School of Business in New York City.

Taylor is pragmatic and wise. “Being an ethical business is about undertaking a process of discovery about your real-world impact and then basing your values and supporting principles on what you find,” she writes. “What has your company been doing that generates negative and positive impacts? How do you affect the external environment? How does it impact you? How might you alter these results?”

And in a footnote Taylor offers this telling insight: “During the course of this book I will cite examples of positive and negative practice, sometimes from the same company. I cannot provide a neat, holistic example of a company that gets everything right; I believe the expectation that this is possible is part of the problem.”

The world is struggling, and is facing a tough moment. Engaged businesses, thoughtfully led, can improve this situation: providing good jobs, and selling useful goods and services. We should not expect profit-making businesses to act in a saintly manner. But they should be able to do as little harm as possible. And sometimes they can actually make things better.