Election fallout
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Thursday, January 9, 2025 04:34
VIEWED: 11920
PAGE 2 of 13
Just to continue in the "fallout" theme:
Even tho there will be a divided government, Biden's backers (*with Biden as the front piece) still have a lot of authority as chief administrator, Commander in Chief, and chief negotiator for the USA.
Since Biden* has the backing of the deep state (CIA/FBI/NSA, State Department, DOD, aparatchiks scattered throughout the administration, MI6, NATO, the EU, IMF, etc) we can expect that he* will authorize and promote the folowing
MOAR WAR. Trump let Mike Pompeo and the State Dept interfere with any number of other nations, but the one thing I can say in his favor was that -unlike Obama- he didn't start any NEW wars. Biden* will recommit USA troops and proxies to various hotspots like Syria, Ukraine, possibly moving (jihadi and/or Nazi) proxies into Nagorno-Karabakh and other places you can't find on a map and probably don't care about. The ironic thing is that the Democrat party used to be the party of peace; it is now the party of war.
MOAR "FREE" TRADE. Biden* will attempt to negotiate TTP and TTIP-like "free trade" agreements. Fortunately, this must be ratified by the Senate, so there is a possibility of stopping it there.
MOAR SUPPORT OF BANKS Like Obama before him, Biden will shower money on banks without prosecution when they come into trouble (which they will).
MOAR surveillance. Another thing you can say about Trump is that he didn't institute or promote the widespread illegal surveillance that GWB inititated and that Obama greatly expanded.
PERMANENT POWER TO THE DEMS. I expect the Biden* would fail at any attempt to swing power to Dems by - for example- adding DC or Puerto Rico as states, doing away with the Electoral College, and expanding the Supreme Court etc. and that these will be blocked by the Supreme Court, which now has a majority of literalists. Anything that requires a Constitutional Amendment will be referred to the process of amending the Constitution thru Congressional or state ratification.
"REPARATIONS", ONE-TIME assistance. I expect Biden* will advocate for reparations to pander to the indentitarians, and one-time assistance, but will not promote UBI.
Overall, expect to see a RE-EXPANSION OF FEDERAL POWER OVER THE STATES.
The remainder needs more thought.
-------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Ooh... The DEEP STATE!
Sounds sinister. Please tell me more. 
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Just to continue in the "fallout" theme:
Even tho there will be a divided government, Biden's backers (*with Biden as the front piece) still have a lot of authority as chief administrator, Commander in Chief, and chief negotiator for the USA.
Since Biden* has the backing of the deep state (CIA/FBI/NSA, State Department, DOD, aparatchiks scattered throughout the administration, MI6, NATO, the EU, IMF, etc) we can expect that he* will authorize and promote the folowing
MOAR WAR. Trump let Mike Pompeo and the State Dept interfere with any number of other nations, but the one thing I can say in his favor was that -unlike Obama- he didn't start any NEW wars. Biden* will recommit USA troops and proxies to various hotspots like Syria, Ukraine, possibly moving (jihadi and/or Nazi) proxies into Nagorno-Karabakh and other places you can't find on a map and probably don't care about. The ironic thing is that the Democrat party used to be the party of peace; it is now the party of war.
MOAR "FREE" TRADE. Biden* will attempt to negotiate TTP and TTIP-like "free trade" agreements. Fortunately, this must be ratified by the Senate, so there is a possibility of stopping it there.
MOAR SUPPORT OF BANKS Like Obama before him, Biden will shower money on banks without prosecution when they come into trouble (which they will).
MOAR surveillance. Another thing you can say about Trump is that he didn't institute or promote the widespread illegal surveillance that GWB inititated and that Obama greatly expanded.
PERMANENT POWER TO THE DEMS. I expect the Biden* would fail at any attempt to swing power to Dems by - for example- adding DC or Puerto Rico as states, doing away with the Electoral College, and expanding the Supreme Court etc. and that these will be blocked by the Supreme Court, which now has a majority of literalists. Anything that requires a Constitutional Amendment will be referred to the process of amending the Constitution thru Congressional or state ratification.
"REPARATIONS", ONE-TIME assistance. I expect Biden* will advocate for reparations to pander to the indentitarians, and one-time assistance, but will not promote UBI.
Overall, expect to see a RE-EXPANSION OF FEDERAL POWER OVER THE STATES.
The remainder needs more thought.
Oh, and I forgot to add the obvious, it just slipped my mind...
CONTINUED 230 PROTECTIONS FOR INTERNET PLATFORMS ACTING AS CENSORS AND APPLYING EDITORAL CONTROL, UNDER THE GUISE OF "PROTECTING" US FROM "DISNINFORMATION" and
CONTINUED CONTROL OF THE M$M BY DEEP STATE APARATCHIKS UNDER THE GUISE OF "PROTECTING" US FROM "DISINFORMATION"
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Quote:It is crooked businessmen, not the abstract concept of profits, wrecking the American economy. Sorry to tell you, but Picketty convinced me that a business owner can profit either from a slave or a well-paid worker. Which way the owner goes (slave or worker) depends on what kind of ideas are swimming around the owner's head. That's why crooked business owners seek out actual slaves and/or foreign workers who are being treated as slaves in their home country. If crooked owners can't get those, instead they will try to cheat their own employees out of pay and swindle customers. American economic history is a very ugly business, unless the government punishes cheaters and crooks pretending to be morally outstanding business leaders.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
SIGNYM:
The economy is like a game of cards with ten people sitting at a table. But one player get 1% of the pot, win or lose, with every round. At the end of 100 rounds everyone is out of money except one person, and the game folds. That is the nature of profit- it doesn't return money back into circulation- whether that profit is sucked out of the economy by manufacturing or financialism.
SECOND: Thomas Piketty wrote an entire book, Capital and ideology, about all the clever and complicated ways societies can go wrong in economic history. Download the free book: https://libgen.unblockit.app/search.php?req=Piketty+Capital+ideology
Piketty is not the kind of person who will simplify things for you, but I am. He is telling governments to NOT allow the greediest citizens to do what they please. Part Two, Slave and Colonial Societies, is full of such stories of greed running free.
I guess Californians don't read Piketty or can't generalize from what they read in order to understand what's happening right in front of them. Look around California at how Uber and Lyft operated and will legally continue to operate. And the ugliest part is that the voters approved it this week: "Big business spent millions to sway Californians’ votes, and received billions in return"
www.marketwatch.com/story/big-business-spent-millions-to-sway-californ
ians-votes-and-received-billions-in-return-11604540224
Voters approved of Uber drivers suffering and Uber stock-owners benefiting from the suffering. Uber understood the ideology of the voters and convinced them it is fair to harm Uber drivers.
Marx wrote a whole THREE BOOKS on the topic, and as far as I can tell Picketty is just rephrasing it for modern audiences. (And Veblen - someone that you previously referenced - wrote about the evils of rentier capitalism.)
So, do you agree that the fundamental problem is a systemic problem of profit, and not a problem of "Republicans" or "Democrats"?
Piketty wrote in Capital and Ideology:
From this historical analysis one important conclusion emerges: what made economic development and human progress possible was the struggle for equality and education and not the sanctification of property, stability, or inequality. The hyper-inegalitarian narrative that took hold after 1980 was in part a product of history, most notably the failure of communism. But it was also the fruit of ignorance and of disciplinary division in the academy. The excesses of identity politics and fatalist resignation that plague us today are in large part consequences of that narrative’s success. By turning to history from a multidisciplinary perspective, we can construct a more balanced narrative and sketch the outlines of a new participatory socialism for the twenty-first century. By this I mean a new universalistic egalitarian narrative, a new ideology of equality, social ownership, education, and knowledge and power sharing. This new narrative presents a more optimistic picture of human nature than did its predecessors—and not only more optimistic but also more precise and convincing because it is more firmly rooted in the lessons of global history. Of course, it is up to each of us to judge the merits of the
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Quote:Then IMHO Picketty doesn't understand how money and power work.
SECOND It is crooked businessmen, not the abstract concept of profits, wrecking the American economy. Sorry to tell you, but Picketty convinced me that a business owner can profit either from a slave or a well-paid worker.
A well-meaning business person may make a 3% profit, a crooked business person may make a 10% profit. Eventually, the business with the 10% profit will use that money to springboard either to greater market shares or business acquisitions. Either way, the businesses with the highest profits will evolve over time into monopolies if not restrained. It's an inevitable consequence of our political-economic model. People don't seem to understand, but while many things in nature tend to disperse (like smoke, water, and heat etc) SOME things concentrate, like gravitational objects: the more they get, the more they get.
Money and power acts like a gravitational objects unless restrained: they concentrate rather than dispersing.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Quote:Money and power are not controlled by anything remotely like physics. You are making it a bloodless abstraction. If you compared it to war you'd have a better analogy than comparing to gravity. So you don't misunderstand, American slaves didn't fall into slavery, they were violently forced. 45 million Americans weren't attracted by a gravitational field into poverty. They were kicked, beaten, fired, and starved into it.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Then IMHO Picketty doesn't understand how money and power work.
SECOND It is crooked businessmen, not the abstract concept of profits, wrecking the American economy. Sorry to tell you, but Picketty convinced me that a business owner can profit either from a slave or a well-paid worker.
A well-meaning business person may make a 3% profit, a crooked business person may make a 10% profit. Eventually, the business with the 10% profit will use that money to springboard either to greater market shares or business acquisitions. Either way, the businesses with the highest profits will evolve over time into monopolies if not restrained. It's an inevitable consequence of our political-economic model. People don't seem to understand, but while many things in nature tend to disperse (like smoke, water, and heat etc) SOME things concentrate, like gravitational objects: the more they get, the more they get.
Money and power acts like a gravitational objects unless restrained: they concentrate rather than dispersing.
www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2020/demo/p60
-270/Figure7.pdf
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:By people who had more money ... and power.
American slaves didn't fall into slavery, they were violently forced. 45 million Americans weren't attracted by a gravitational field into poverty. They were kicked, beaten, fired, and starved into it.
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Quote:I'm not saying that they're controlled by physics. I'm trying to make an abstract idea more understandable thru metaphor. Money IS LIKE gravity.
SECOND: Money and power are not controlled by anything remotely like physics.
The reason why I bring this up is because in our everyday experience, entropy rules: Heat spreads out. Dust gets everywhere. Water vapor and smoke diffuses. THINGS SPREAD OUT AND BECOME LESS CONCENTRATED.
So I think that most people believe that "money" and "power" behave the same way ... eventually, they diffuse thru a population.
But money and power behave DIFFERENTLY.
Let me give you a theoretical example: In a population of 100,000, let's say everyone starts out about the same in terms of circumstances. But some people are, perhaps, stronger. Others are smarter. Others are more persuasive or maybe just more vicious. Those people who, through some combination of strength, leadership, viciousness, or what-have-you, will gain a following. Yanno, like a junior high clique. Now among those are some who REALLY have a will to power. They're sociopaths with a laser focus on getting their way. They will use whatever advantage they have to gain more power. With a clique or gang behind them.. possible with some sort of shaman or priest to provide the supernatural imprimatur, they will use that clique or gang to get even MORE power. Iterate that through many generations, and you will get a super-elite who control, basically, everything: the ethics and economy and politics of a society. POWER CONCENTRATES. In the hands of those few who have a laser focus on power, POWER CONCENTRATES IN THE HANDS OF SOCIOPATHS.
Same with money: Some with more money get more money. Most will fritter it away, but there is a small percentage who will springboard that advantage to even greater advantage. MONEY CONCENTRATES. And just like power, MONEY CONCENTRATES IN THE HANDS OF SOCIOPATHS.
The only comparable NATURAL phenomenon is gravity: gravitational mass will attract more mass, which will attract more mass ... Except gravity operates automatically (we think) and power and money are concentrated by willful action.
Going back to society as an organism: Most people just go along doing their best to function in whatever role they have been cast. They simply can't believe that SOME people are actually like cancer cells. Society doesn't recognize these malign interlopers because these malign interlopers are very good at hiding; also, they have convinced everyone that their presence is natural, inevitable, necessary, or even beneficial. Society is warped to make concentrating power and money easier, legal, tolerable. SOCIETY ITSELF WILL PROMOTE SOCIOPATHY.
At that point, it's not a problem of individuals, it's a SYSTEMS problem.
Given that sociopaths arise in every society and gravitate to centers of power like needles to a lodestone, interpolating themselves deeply into government, the media, economy, military, and finance, what should the role of government be?
Capisce?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Quote:Can't spot sociopaths? Malign interlopers are very good at hiding? No, they are NOT good at hiding. I'll give you a really simple example of sociopaths in business releasing methane into the air. One President, I completely forget which one, had EPA rules against methane releases. Another President, I forget his name, but he has a history of being a sociopath according to his niece, withdrew the rules. The businessmen who are sociopaths immediately began releasing more and more methane when the rules changed and enforcement slacked off. Businessmen who are NOT sociopaths did NOT increase their methane releases, even if it is more profitable to dump methane into the air. It is EASY to spot a sociopath, if you understand the world, but if you know next to nothing, you won't see the sociopath.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Going back to society as an organism: Most people just go along doing their best to function in whatever role they have been cast. They simply can't believe that SOME people are actually like cancer cells. Society doesn't recognize these malign interlopers because these malign interlopers are very good at hiding; also, they have convinced everyone that their presence is natural, inevitable, necessary, or even beneficial. Society is warped to make concentrating power and money easier, legal, tolerable. SOCIETY ITSELF WILL PROMOTE SOCIOPATHY.
At that point, it's not a problem of individuals, it's a SYSTEMS problem.
www.edf.org/climate/methane-other-important-greenhouse-gas
IE Questions: “How Can We Know When Methane Leaks Happen?”
http://insideenergy.org/2017/07/25/ie-questions-how-can-we-know-when-m
ethane-leaks-happen/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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