From the perspective of those who have a lot of money, what’s the problem with that? My wealthy friends always vote r because they want to pay less taxes. Thats their only motive. This selfishness needs to be manipulated.
Edit- thinking deeper. The problem is also that they’re not taking things seriously. They believe it’ll work out… by itself… in a little while. That’s not how problem solving works. This is how we got to the situation we are in today.
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Holy shit is there no middle path between “accept oligarchy” and “French Revolution”? It’s the mid-21st century; surely we have figured out better solutions than this by now? The entire reason why one might think “bloody uprising” is the only solution - the fact that the masses are too apathetic and inattentive to come together over a more complicated message - is the exact reason why it’s also a terrible idea, as it lends itself to subversion by ideologue and perverted towards nefarious ends. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”, etc, and in the meantime the bloodthirsty mob slaughters not just the rich but then the usual scapegoat minority groups too, with the purges that follow such revolutions frequently turning anti-intellectual too. When you cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war, you have no control over what happens next nor any way to stop it until it’s run its full course.
The best way to defeat the enemies of the common folk, IMO, is the “greatest insult an enemy can suffer: to be ignored”. We should simply build the new system in defiance of the old system, or (when possible) subverting the old system to the new system’s needs. For example: we need to start more Community Land Trusts, where renting is not simply paying somebody else’s mortgage.
Systems in between are subject to manipulation via their vast wealth. The only way to diminish that is dissolution of superPACs and heavy regulation of all systems that allow cash to flow into politics.
My family is decently wealthy but comes from a pretty impoverished background (They moved to Canada from Sri Lanka during the civil war)
They’re pretty centreist. Although in the last elections elections they voted Green (Provincial and Federal)
To compare - many of my friends are immigrants too (from the former Soviet Union) and grew up poor in the states. And they don’t understand why others who had more opportunities than them weren’t able to “make it”. They view being poor a choice and they don’t want to subsidize people who made the “wrong” choice.
I think my parents Buddhist upbringing has a lot to do with their beliefs. They always want to do good when they can. Respecting other cultures and identities etc.
I like former President Obama, but his ACA was half baked. It is not even close to the healthcare system in Germany and other EU members.
Blame Republicans and a couple of Democrats. Yes, it was half-baked, but it was also almost defeated, and later almost repealed. The alternative of “nothing” is so much worse.
The ACA was essentially the republican compromise that was offered to Clinton when he tried to get universal health care. He rejected it and was unable to get any meaningful change.
It shows how much we have moved to the right that the republican plan from 10 years earlier was barely able to be passed by Democrats.
I’ll also point out that Clinton’s big goal for his time in offices was universal health care not balancing the budget. He completely failed on that but did briefly balance the budget.
Still better than the republican goals.
Do you know why though?
Romneycare
Rich people are richer than ever though, so at least the red party delivered.
I would point out that, objectively, Clinton did achieve a budget surplus, and Kennedy’s program eventually got us to the moon (though he, obviously, didn’t live to see it). Say what you will about the ACA. No matter what standard you take, that’s at least a 2/3rds success rate for the blue party by your measure.
ACA was a huge success in the millions of additional people with healthcare. This saved lives. Lots of lives.
The possibility of Universal Healthcare was dropped: this was not a goal of ACA. Most of us expected a follow up to ACA that would do that, but too many people voted for politicians fighting against it. Despite ACA being overwhelmingly popular, it hurt Dems in elections and they really haven’t had an opportunity to do much since
Which let’s be real - the only reason there was opposition to the ACA was because Obama did it. It was basically RomneyCare. Most people (on the right) opposed to the ACA didn’t actually know why they didn’t like it - it was done by that uppity guy who wore a mustard suit.
My little brother has a genetic disorder - already had multiple, intensive surgeries by his tenth birthday. He would have capped out his lifetime insurance payouts around the time the ACA passed. He would probably not be able to get any form of insurance now because of his preexisting conditions, if not for the ACA.
The ACA’s problem was that it did not have a public option. We aren’t operating under a free market - insurance companies are colluding with each other and hospitals. There is no actual competition. Even if universal healthcare wasn’t a moral imperative (how the fuck do you keep up your insurance when you’re sick? when the company you work for fires you because you miss too much work?), it’s also not even being run by the rules of the “free market.”
If I remember correctly a survey of people was done asking how they felt about “the ACA” and how they felt about “Obamacare.” They approved of the ACA and HATED Obamacare…
Fucking propaganda man…
The ACA’s problem was that it did not have a public option.
That’s still rationing healthcare by wealth. The problem with the ACA is that it was written by liberals and relies on capitalism. The best healthcare systems use central planning and are free or near free.
I mean, agreed, but at least having the public option would drive down some prices. Our health care system is a failure even by the standards of liberal capitalism.
Rolled my ankle a few weeks ago - probably fractured it, hobbled around and now I can walk on it without hurting. No medical care - I’m saving up $300 for my blood work for my routine check up and figured that even the Urgent Care would do nothing and charge me $100 for it.
The ACA gave me affordable healthcare when I was young and poor and had none.
Republicans have never even come close to doing something like that for me. Quite the opposite actually.
Oh, I agree with you. However, I wasn’t going to assume that the person to whom I was replying would agree.
I would point out that, objectively, Clinton did achieve a budget surplus,
That’s not even a worthwhile goal. The state can print money for whatever it wants. Clinton didn’t change any of that. The state still wastes endless resources on the MIC, imperialism, etc. while many people lack basic human needs: food, shelter, healthcare, livable environment, etc.
Zero is a meaningless goal that changed absolutely nothing, especially long term.
fixed that for you
Now that’s an infographic
Much better graphic. Maybe shit head will change the us for the better in the long run. The only way the us can move forward is when the r’s start experiencing the consequences of their own actions… and it’s slowly happening.
honorable goals
“tHeY’rE tEh SaMe!!!”
More like “the lesser evil is still evil.”
in terms of their motives? absolutely. is -1 a better score than -5? yes. are they both in the negative? you better believe it. don’t go slobbering all over clinton and obama’s loafers just because there are worse people out there. they tried to enrich the wealthy and succeeded. only difference between the dems and the republicans up until the trump era was that the dems lied about being progressive to distract from their wealth transfer and the repubs committed a casual ongoing genocide to distract from theirs. but it worked- you are distracted. from clinton deregulating corporate oversight and obama kneecapping socialized health care on behalf of the insurance industry. were bush and reagan and bush junior more harmful? yeah of course, but let’s not lionize their coworkers because they used a different disingenuous strategy to launder money for their corporate masters. in the present moment, of course, it’s a bit different- the republicans are stoking the engine of an outright fascist coup and the dems are spoiling the only chance we have to stop it with weak appeals to “decorum” and “practicality”.
so no, they’re not exactly the same. one is jabba the hutt, and the other is the little shitgoblin cackling on his tail. neither will help you. get used to it.
edit: math
This is not true. Trump’s goal as president is to stay out of prison.
That was goal 1, now goal 2 is excuting the biggest grifting world tour ever seen.
I’d’ve rather that it’d never come but, at a certain point, it reaches a point where it is mesmerizing, in its scope and scale.
Well there’s two rows missing. That would be Trump 2: get trumped
That was his goal as a candidate. His goal now is to put everyone else in
prisonconcentration camps.Imagine how much he would snitch. He’ll never be allowed to cop a deal or go to prison.
they all got more money for rich people. did any of them impose term limits, stop insider training, or impose any meaningful penalties for those that already have a lot of wealth? they got wealthier and so did all around.
They literally didn’t, though. Clinton obtained surplus by raising taxes and by removing several caps which benefitted the wealthy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Bill_Clinton_administration
President Clinton oversaw a healthy economy during his tenure. The U.S. had strong economic growth (around 4% annually) and record job creation (22.7 million). He raised taxes on higher income taxpayers early in his first term and cut defense spending and welfare, which contributed to a rise in revenue and decline in spending relative to the size of the economy. These factors helped bring the United States federal budget into surplus from fiscal years 1998 to 2001
raising taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans.[5] It also imposed a new energy tax on all Americans and subjected about a quarter of those receiving Social Security payments to higher taxes on their benefits.
The 28% rate for capital gains was lowered to 20%. The 15% rate was lowered to 10%. In 1980, a tax credit was put into place based on the number of individuals under the age of 17 in a household. In 1998, it was $400 per child and in 1999, it was raised to $500. This Act removed from taxation profits on the sale of a house of up to $500,000 for individuals who are married, and $250,000 for single individuals. Educational savings and retirement funds were given tax relief. Some of the expiring tax provisions were extended for selected businesses.
Clinton signed the bipartisan Financial Services Modernization Act or GLBA in 1999.[41] It allowed banks, insurance companies and investment houses to merge and thus repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which had been in place since 1932. It also prevented further regulation of risky financial derivatives. His deregulation of finance (both tacit and overt through GLBA) was criticized as a contributing factor to the Great Recession.[citation needed] While he disputes that claim, he expressed regret and conceded that in hindsight he would have vetoed the bill, mainly because it excluded risky financial derivatives from regulation, not because it removed the long-standing Glass-Steagall barrier between investment and depository banking. In his view, even if he had vetoed the bill, the Congress would have overridden the veto, as it had nearly unanimous support.[2]
What Clinton did was disadvantage income against capital gains further, thus preventing more people from the middle class and upper middle class to become rich through work, while making it easier for rich people to become even richer. Add to that the deregulation of banks so more “too big to fail” casino players could play in a more deregulated casino which then needed to be bailed out a few years later. By slashing and taxing social security benefits he also made it so that less people could lift themselves out of poverty, which would not only lead to more poverty but also increase spending long term as people kept relying on insufficient benefits instead of getting the means to gain self sustainability and subsequently contribute more to taxes than they needed in temporary aid.
tldr: Clinton fucked the poor and middle class and benefited the rich. He just was more clever about it.
He raised the taxes on the highest bracket 7% and remove caps on several taxes that they pay into.
He definitely could have done better but he absolutely wasn’t the friend of the rich.
That’s just it, to prove your point you dont need to show he fucked over the poor, you need to show he helped the rich, and it simply is not there.
And cutting the social safety net.
Nope, they all deregulated, supported monopolies & tax loopholes.
… all while the core infrastructure (healthcare, transit systems, tax systems, education, housing, etc) withered away by design.
Not to mention the massive bail-outs via blank no-strings attached checks (if a gov has to give monies to a private company that usually means shareholders lose their value, but not in the USA, they just get free monies).
And ofc war profiteering (& constantly killing some of the poorest civilians on the planet).
What about Sanders? How about Warren?
We need congressional primary attendance to break 15% before we get to complain about term limits. If you don’t show up when you have a say, then you are responsible for the career politicians.
We should be voting twice every two years, not once every four, for federal elections alone.
I hope you’re aware that Sanders was never president. But also that he’s not a democra, which folks sometimes forget.
They’re asking about enacting term limits. There is a presidential term limit, so I assumed they were talking about Congress.
neither were president or are in this picture? so what about them?
You asked about creating term limits. There are limits on presidential terms, so I assumed you meant congressional term limits. No? Am I missing your point?
the OP posted Pic about presidents. my comment was did any of those presidents introduce term limits on congress or SCOTUS, etc.
I’d have loved Warren or Sanders, but neither were president.
Term limits would require legislation written by Congress. They cannot be implemented by POTUS.
I’m sure an executive order or thirty would have sufficed in leau of proper legislation.
see: current administration
Executive orders can just be repealed by the next administration. The most it could possibly affect is one House term.
And the Americans are dumb enough to fall for the red lies every time they run.
Nixon’s Southern Strategy
Winning elections for Republicans since 1968
Maybe nobody actually gives a shit about “balanced budgets”, imperialism in outer space, or sabotaged healthcare.
Missed a few.
Johnson: use war to win re-election
Nixon: fight hippies and commies
Ford: pardon Nixon
Carter: attain energy independence
Oops, all Heritage Foundation.
The two party system is cooked.
Nothing will get better till the two party system is a thing of the past.
Gotta switch to proportional representation if you want to break up the two parties. I suggest Sequential Proportional Approval Voting for multi-winner elections, and pair it with regular Approval Voting for single-winner elections. Both can be implemented at every level in the US, and some places can do so by referendum. Lemme know if you’re interested.
We don’t have a 2 party system.
In theory you don’t, in practice you do.
Kennedy got to the the moon. (Posthumously)
Clinton eliminated the deficit.
Obama did not achieve universal health care.
Congress wouldn’t let him. The President doesn’t write the laws and can only ask Congress to do so.
Sadly, even if Sanders were elected, it wouldn’t have made universal healthcare a reality.
You need 218 progressives in the house and 50 progressives in the senate. So… not happening.
Yes and, they also needed to break a filibuster by the Republicans, which took 60 votes in the Senate, despite severe illness and Republican shenanigans. It was a huge lift to get what we got.
Progressives would need to down ballot vote for that to happen. Would also need to support and fund progressive candidates.
Progressives currently can’t even do the bare minimum (actually voting), in large enough numbers to matter.
Progressives currently can’t even do the bare minimum (actually voting), in large enough numbers to matter.
Of course not!
They’re doing something far more critical and effective!
They’re withholding votes based on purity testing and otherwise being manipulated into nullifying themselves by online manipulation by the right.
Technically you need 51 or 50 + VP tiebreaker unless a Republican filibusters then you need 60.
You can change senate rules if you have a comfortable majority but I’m pretty sure they can filibuster that, too, and it might backfire like removing the filibuster for SCOTUS and cabinet picks has.
You can’t filibuster a rule change.
Its literally been done before.
First, filibuster was removed for normal court appointments during Obama Admin
Then filibuster was removed for supreme court appointments during the first trump admin.
Neither could be filibustered (otherwise the rules wouldn’t been changed, and we don’t have 3 trump appointees in SCOTUS)
Executive order deporting anyone in senate not voting for his agenda?
/s (but only for a few months, then headlines will explain how it’s apparently a real option)
The funny thing is, americans already kinda have universal healthcare… just with a middleman. Where do they think those insurance premiums are going?
Universal Healthcare (behind a paywall)
There’s still a significant amount of people who are uninsured. So, no, Americans do not have universal healthcare.
He never seriously fought for universal healthcare. He stopped advocating for it before he even started fighting. As soon as he got a “reality check”, not a word of support for universal healthcare was ever uttered by him to the best of my knowledge. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, though.
This is exactly it. Obama waged no fight a pre negotiated good healthcare plan to get us the heritage plan.
He did give free or extremely cheap healthcare to tens of millions of americans and brought down proces nationwide by creating competition.
And if not for independent Joe Leiberman being the holdout for the 60 it took to pass any form of the bill he would have accomplished more.
Kennedy got to the the moon. (Posthumously)
I think just a few parts of his skull made it to the moon.
Weird cuz a lot of things Clinton did seem to be more money for rich people too
That was always their secondary goal.
Yes, it’s why the clintons win primaries over progressives.
Neo-liberals are the scum of the earth.
Reducing the deficit by cutting things that benefit the working class coincides with money for rich people.
Did bush actually have time for what’s claimed here? He was mostly about removing rights from Americans in the face of a sham war. I don’t think he actually had much focus on tax breaks for rich people…
Obama continued that ritual, removing even more rights from the American people under the guise of “safety”. And Obama could have shoved Universal healthcare through but didn’t - he watered it down in the name of “bipartisanship”, but then ultimately nobody voted for the bill on the right anyways. If that were going to be the case, he should have just rammed through what the American people NEEDED; but he didn’t – because he wanted MORE MONEY FOR RICH PEOPLE (insurance companies)
Hell, Obama bombed more brown people than any president before him as well…let’s not pretend he was an angel.
The ACA wasn’t “watered down in the name of bipartisanship”. The public option was removed because that’s the only way Joe Lieberman, the 60th vote in the Senate, would vote for it. And yes, what initially came out of committee was not as progressive as we wanted, but if Lieberman wasn’t even going to vote for that, there was no way he was going to vote for M4A.
I wish he just pushed to end the filibuster.
Then, all he would’ve needed was 50 senators, he can sacrifice 10 of those 60 votes in exchange for a better healthcare system.
Obama’s legaacy should prove that “playing nice”, in fact, does not work.
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Nah, the crash was well underway by the time Obama took office. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (the bailouts) was Bush Jr’s for example and Obama’s first action was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (The stimulus packages)
No, Obama wasn’t in office. The election was in 2008, jr. was the president the entire year.
Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009.
He had nothing to do with the great recession that started in December 2007.
Dumbass.
Bush literally cut taxes in 2001 and 2003, after enterring office of president in 2001.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/the-legacy-of-the-2001-and-2003-bush-tax-cuts
High-income taxpayers benefitted most from these tax cuts, with the top 1 percent of households receiving an average tax cut of over $570,000 between 2004-2012 (increasing their after-tax income by more than 5 percent each year). Despite promises from proponents of the tax cuts, evidence suggests that they did not improve economic growth or pay for themselves, but instead ballooned deficits and debt and contributed to a rise in income inequality.
Edit to add the chart - while technically the lowest fifth of earners saw a 1% cut in their taxes, the highest 1% saw a 6.7% cut.
Its weird that you agreed with me but got +5 and I got 3:3
But but Donny gonna send us $5k by Febru-sprin-summer!
Everyone will get their $5k in two weeks.
Yeah let me ignore all the atrocities that blue presidents committed abroad, those don’t count since its brown people
I happen to be a fan of voting for what’s best for the country I live in and the people I care about, then taking other countries into consideration after that.
Life isn’t perfect. I strive for whatever is closest. And I’m smart enough to know voting 3rd party in a presidential election is dumb as fuck because no 3rd party is viable because none have done the work to become viable.
So I’ll take the party that has a record of voting in favor of middle/lower class Americans over the party that only punishes average Americans and takes their rights away.
Pretty basic math.
And I’m smart enough
Proceeds to justify how a “slow loss” is somehow a win.
You’re part of the problem, and these problems won’t get solved until you’re as insignificant as 3rd party voters.
