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Tenpoundbass
2016 May 25, 6:45am
How to defeat rightwing populism
By getting rid of Left wing fascist commies hell bent on ruining America and putting a socialist world order policed by Sharia law in place.
Then I can go back to kissing Nader's ass and calling him the greatest thing since sliced bread and ignoring the fuck out of both parties.
Got any ideas to help me out?
MisdemeanorRebel
2016 May 25, 8:48am
There is a widespread belief that the system is being exploited by disreputable insiders
Belief?!?!
"Insiders and their Cronies deny corruption charges. Media owned by biggest Campaign Donors and Lobbyist Employers deny pay-for-play and quid pro quo for political donations."
Optional title: How to Defeat Right Wing Stupidity.
I guess I 'm looking for a miracle.
That's funny. It's the Republicans fault! They're racists!
See, it's supposed to be much more simple. The democrats are supposed to offer us an alternative. Then we go vote against the right wing rot, with a nice progressive alternative.
The problem is, you left wing loud mouth phonys, are exactly who we thought you were. You're all lining up to vote for the Corporatist whore, who's drowning us with tsunami of her drool that she can't contain herself with anticipation to sell what's left of our country's soul to the FIRE industry. You's are actually attacking us Bernie voters for "helping Trump win"
Look in the fucking mirror. This is your fault, quit blaming everyone else, and own it.
www.youtube.com/embed/bkq9FNrp3wE
Is Mark Kaye going?
By Mark Kaye -
LYRICS:
If you wanna rob a bank, or run a red light,
Then There’s something you should do first
That will make it alright.
You can break any law, with no oversight.
If you change your last nameTo Clinton.
You can lie to the Feds or just act like a jerk.
Make a crap ton of money without doing any work.
Plus you can sleep with your staff
as an added perk,
If you change your last name to Clinton.
The SEC. The FBI. The House of Representatives,
They just don’t apply.
You can have all of your enemies
Mysteriously die if you change
Your last name to Clinton.
Sell special favors to the Communist Chinese.
Charge a hundred million for some speaking fees.
Tell that sexy intern to get down on her knees
You can do it! If your last name is Clinton.
Collect lots of cash through your private foundation.
Store Top Secret Info in an unsecure location,
And somehow secure the Democratic Nomination.
You can do it, if your last name is Clinton.
Nothing to it, if your last name is Clinton.
Wait, it’s against the law? Screw IT!
Your last name is Clinton.
You obviously didn't watch the video of the song or catch this part:
"You can have all of your enemies
Mysteriously die if you change
Your last name to Clinton."
Heraclitusstudent
2016 Jul 13, 2:27pm
Right-Wing Populism
Definition: Populism: democratic opinion going against the enforced beliefs in the mantras of the establishment
The response of the establishment to any dissenting opinions is predictable:
- first acknowledge the problem
- second, blame the other political side (the right wing) for everything.
- third, call the dissident a bigot or an islamophob
- finally: go back to ignoring the problems
marcus
2016 Jul 13, 3:13pm
The democrats are supposed to offer us an alternative. Then we go vote against the right wing rot, with a nice progressive alternative.
The problem is, you left wing loud mouth phonys, are exactly who we thought you were.
This is such BS.
Look, I'm not happy with where the democratic party is at all. But I'm just a voter choosing between what the republicans put up there versus who the democrats put up.
I know this is hard to comprehend, but I'm not so politically active that I am actually able to influence who the democrats put up as candidates, or the fact that neither party is fixing how broken the system is, with loobyists, and so much money required to run for office or for reelection.
What kind of sense does it make to tell me to look in the mirror ?
I'm just a voter, who votes for the best of the choices I'm given.
Trump would be worth considering if not for:
1) The extreme risk. We don't know who he is or what he'll do. We do know that if he isn't a lot different than he has been during his campaign, he will make us the laughingstock of the world. Yes, I care about that. But also I understand risk anaysis enough to know that any half way circumspect person can not in their right mind conclude that Trump is an acceptable risk.
2) We don't even know that Trump isn't even more of a corporatist than Hillary. That's what Bernie thinks. Many think Trump is not the establishment, he's worse than the establishment.
3) He lies more than twice as much as any politician I've ever seen. His followers actually like his lies. That's how fucked up this country is now.
Trump is the hero of the most intellectually dishonest people out there.
That doesn't frighten you ?
Heraclitusstudent
2016 Jul 13, 3:31pm
What kind of sense does it make to tell me to look in the mirror ?
It makes exactly sense when you have an elite that is pushing an agenda sacrificing half the population.
The agenda includes globalism, weakened nation identities, free-trade, open door immigration, interventionism.
All these ideas were centered on quick profits at the expense of the countries real sources of wealth, starting with the skills, ethos, and sense of community of its people.
They led us into a wall. With growth drifting down to 0. With China's increasing assertiveness. With Jihadism. Etc, etc...
Don't blame the right wing populism.
Blame the agenda that was pushed for the past 30yrs.
Blame your support for that.
Many seem to think that things could not get worse. Oh yes, they could.
And I agree, it could/will get much, much worse if Hillary gets in. I'm not crazy about Trump but for me let's put it on a scale. A 1 thru 10 scale, but this time it will be negatives. So 10 would be the worst person/candidate and 1 would be the least worst person/candidate. Bernie was a 10 for me, Hillary is a 9 and Trump is an 8. So because of this my vote will reluctantly go to Trump, only because the alternative is worse.
FuckTheMainstreamMedia
2016 Jul 13, 8:33pm
He lies more than twice as much as any politician I've ever seen.
You should open your eyes once and awhile:
Marcus is incapable of seeing truth at any level.
Shaman
2016 Jul 13, 9:28pm
Productivity growth accounted for more than 85 per cent of the job losses in manufacturing between 2000 and 2010.
This is a prime example of the disconnect between elites and the general public they believe adores them. Productivity growth is another way of saying "we got more production with fewer employees that were paid less." To assert that productivity growth (generating increased shareholder profits) in any way compensates workers for the massive job losses incurred by free trade and offshoring policies is to completely miss the target by half a light year. Workers want meaningful work that pays them enough to live and move ahead however slowly on the ladder of succesS. Squeeze them until they can't manage this and they will be unhappy. Since their votes count as much as elite votes, and there are a lot more workers than elites, this gives rise to populism.
Honestly the economic problems would also be solved if workers had better jobs and more of them were employed. Along comes Trump promising all that. Why wouldn't these folks be interested in someone, ANYONE who is willing to recognize the problem and do something about it?
Bernie was the same thing from a different angle.
Put them together and the movements would be unstoppable, but the elite-owned media has managed to make this about race and thus isolate a good number of people who would benefit most. So only a fraction of Bernie lovers will vote for Trump. Most will vote Hillary and some will vote Green in protest. This leaves it up to the Hildabitch and Cheeto Jesus to battle it out for top rabble rouser.
To the winner goes the White House!
Sharingmyintelligencewiththedumbasses
2016 Jul 14, 1:27am
Productivity growth is another way of saying "we got more production with fewer employees that were paid less."
never heard of computers, the internet or robots...
what a thread dominated by low iq losers!
MisdemeanorRebel
2016 Jul 14, 6:15am
Sharingmyintelligencewiththedumbasses says
never heard of computers, the internet or robots...
Hmmm, how come 50 years ago, a HS or even HS dropout could support a wife and kids in Levittown suburban home on one F/T Factory Job, and you can't today... despite satellites, computers, internet, fax, etc. etc.?
Because 50 years ago , not only was there no globalization for the Clinton/Bush family's to use to crush American Labor, there also wasn't the dumb ass Feminist idea that women should ditch the family and the home, to water down the labor pool with all those super important "jobs" that women do
Shaman
2016 Jul 14, 7:01am
We got new jobs from new technologies to replace jobs that were lost through application of the new tech to production, sure. 50 years ago nobody worked with computers outside a few government spy agencies. And medical tech has advanced incredibly. But at the same time, globalization is sending these new jobs away as fast as they are made, or importing third world peasants to replace the "uppity" citizens here who think they should make a fair wage.
Or outsourcing jobs like call centers and accounting and paperwork to pay lower wages. Even public universities have gotten in on this, outsourcing whatever jobs they can to Chindia. Even with all the cool new stuff, Americans are worse off than before. Maybe smart phones are cool, but it's not so cool to have nowhere you can afford to live despite making an average wage. Or to watch the upwards march of the price of consumables while your paycheck remains stagnant. For an economy with zero inflation, the price of essentials seems to rise in a sharp upward trend.
This year we have seen a populist revolt on both sides of the aisle. I guess poor conservative folks were worse off or maybe just smarter than poor liberal folks because the GOP race was hijacked by the populists and not the Democrat race. So now you have a populist running against an imperialist plutocrat.
Do I believe that Trump is the Cheeto Jesus who will make everything better? No. But I do think he will try to make jobs more plentiful by rolling back the regressive Left's war on industry. I do think he will try to end the corrupt practices of government rewarding outsourcing, and I do think he'd be better at trade negotiations. I also don't think he's a war hawk, preferring to make deals rather than play Machiavellian games with world politics. I KNOW that Hillary will be the total opposite here and that scares me to think of her sociopathic ass having the launch codes.
And finally, while Trump isn't informed enough to make good policy decisions right now, that will come in time, and he will have many layers of buffer between his ignorance and causing the country lasting harm.
I'd rather have a buffoon with good intentions than a political wizard with cruel intentions.
How to defeat rightwing populism
There is a widespread belief that the system is being exploited by disreputable insiders
Martin Wolf
Read next:
Rightwinger Norbert Hofer concedes defeat in Austrian election
MAY 23, 2016
James Ferguson illustration, Trump plug pulled
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YESTERDAY by: Martin Wolf
The rise of Donald Trump is, as I argued last week, a symptom of the failings of elites, notably, but not exclusively, the Republican Party’s elite. Mr Trump is successfully channelling aggression and anger. That tactic is not new. Again and again, it has brought demagogues to power. But demagogues do not give answers. On the contrary, they make things worse.
Many seem to think that things could not get worse. Oh yes, they could. Things could get far worse, not just in the US, but across the world. This is why Mr Trump is so dangerous: he has no notion of the foundations of US success.
Mr Trump is a rightwing populist. Populists despise institutions and reject expertise. They offer, instead, charisma and ignorance. Rightwing populists also blame foreigners. Mr Trump adds to all this a zero-sum view of “the dealâ€.
In any country, embrace of the delusions of populism is disturbing. In Italy, for example, Silvio Berlusconi’s ability to play the pied piper to the misguided lost the country two decades of reform. Yet the US matters more: it has shaped the modern world by spreading enduring institutions built upon legally binding commitments.
Two results of what was a bipartisan achievement are noteworthy. The first is that the US has potent allies. Neither China nor Russia has such allies. They do not even trust each other.
The US has allies only partly because it is so powerful; it is still more because it has been trustworthy. The second is that the US has accepted enduring commitments. The obvious example is in its promotion of trade. Without that, the progress of many emerging economies in recent decades could not have happened.
With his transactional view of the world, Mr Trump could well discard both alliances and institutions. This would damage, perhaps destroy, today’s economic and political order. He and his supporters might believe that the US would escape unscathed if it tore up its commitments. They are wrong. If the word of the US proved worthless, everything would change, for the worse.
Mr Trump’s indifference to the credibility of the US goes deeper still. The country provides the world’s most important financial asset: US Treasuries. Since the fiscal position of the US has deteriorated, caution is necessary. So what does the presumptive nominee of the supposedly fiscally prudent party propose? According to the Tax Policy Centre, his (hugely regressive) tax proposals would raise federal debt by 39 per cent of gross domestic product, relative to the baseline. One response might be huge cuts to spending, which he has not explained to his gullible supporters.
Chart: Martin Wolf column data
Another would be a default. He “loves playing with†debt, he says. He even contemplates buying US debt back at a discount. Such “playing†would destroy the credit built up since Alexander Hamilton, the first US Treasury Secretary, devastating global finance.
Some claim Mr Trump feigns commitment to policies he knows would destroy US credibility and devastate global stability. Yet if he were really so dishonest, what might his limits be? Folly or cynicism — which would be worse?
It is still quite likely, albeit far from certain, that Mr Trump will be defeated. That might depend on whether Bernie Sanders decides to run as an independent. But if he were defeated, would that be the end of the matter? Arguably, not. Yes, the populist moment might pass. But it might also not do so. The domestic legitimacy of the US role in the world economy has understandably eroded.
Martin Wolf
Ferguson illustration
Failing elites are to blame for unleashing Trump
A healthy republic requires a degree of mutual sympathy rather than equality
This is partly because of the financial crisis, but also because many Americans have done poorly in recent decades. This is not just a US problem. Branko Milanovic has noted in his book Global Inequality that the upper-middle class — largely the middle and lower classes of high-income countries — has done relatively poorly in recent decades. Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton note, in addition, a sharp relative deterioration in mortality and morbidity among middle-aged white American men, due to suicide, and drug and alcohol abuse. This surely reflects the despair of these people. It is tough to fail in a culture that worships personal success. Support for Mr Trump among this group must express this despair. As their leader, he symbolises success. He also offers no coherent solutions. But he does provide scapegoats.
If rightwing populism is to be defeated, one must offer alternatives. In a forthcoming article Dartmouth College’s Douglas Irwin notes that protectionism is quack medicine. Productivity growth accounted for more than 85 per cent of the job losses in manufacturing between 2000 and 2010.
Chart: Martin Wolf column data
Effective policies would include generous earned-income tax credits, combined with higher minimum wages. The evidence from the UK is that this mixture can be highly effective. Anger over illegal immigration is also understandable. Employers of undocumented workers should surely suffer heavy penalties.
US banks have paid more than $200bn in fines. But almost nobody has gone to prison. Combined with the (necessary) rescue of the financial sector, this has generated a widespread belief that the system is being exploited by morally disreputable insiders.
More fundamentally, within the high-income countries, the gainers from globalisation and technology feel no apparent responsibility for losers. Lowering taxes should not be everything. Above all, the system’s legitimacy depends on elite performance, which has been poor.
The US commitment to both institutions and alliances was right. The creation of an open and dynamic world economy and broadly co-operative relations among the powers remains a great achievement. Yet the greed, incompetence and irresponsibility of elites has now brought forth great populist rage. Mr Trump’s rise is a symptom of a disease that he would undoubtedly exacerbate. If it is not too late, people must now find more effective ways to cure it.
martin.wolf@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
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VIENNA, AUSTRIA - MAY 22: Norbert Hofer, presidential candidate of the right-wing populist Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Oesterreichs, or FPOe), greets supporters at the FPOe election party following initial poll results during Austrian presidential elections on May 22, 2016 in Vienna, Austria. The FPOe is facing off against the Austrian Green Party and its presidential candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen. The FPOe's recent success is part of a larger trend across Europe in which right-wing parties have gained ground, in part due to public unease over the large influx of refugees and migrants over the past year and a half. (Photo by Jan Hetfleisch/Getty Images)
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