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BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Fri Nov 13, 2020 12:19 am
Kamala Harris was the DA when the innocent man was tried but she wasn't involved in the case directly.
She was aware of the case though and sat in court for both the conviction and the sentencing, with the man saying that at one point she looked at his eyes and smirked at him.
Seems like she fostered a very "tough on crime" culture in her office and there were several other cases where it and the police were accused of wrongful convictions and frame ups and she always fought them rather than taking them seriously.
Not incredibly damming though. He endorsed her for president under the same condition that I said.
And those are vague indications of corruption or administrative incompetence.
They don't really indicate either corruption nor incompetence.
They better indicate either realpolitik or crypto-conservatism, or perhaps just plain old opportunistic careerism.
The real issue is, if she doesn't have the support of the Democratic base, she will be a weak candidate in 2024 and another Republican President (or even Trump again if he campaigns properly or Harris makes mistakes between now and then) might take the White House.
Yeah that's what it all comes down to for 2024 I see you on that.
I feel that she's going to have to rely on a good amount of accountability, if she does anything real specific as VP that is. She'll mostly have to answer to Biden's administration's effort and her participation in an upcoming campaign. She seems like a person that can weave that web of administrative resourcefulness.
Assuming Biden doesn't leave early that is.
He'll probably retire in 2022 or thereabouts. That will excite the Democrat base in time for those elections (first woman President), plus any earlier and she wouldn't be able to run in 2028 (unless she loses in 2024).
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Sat Nov 14, 2020 3:09 pm
Yeah that's what it all comes down to for 2024 I see you on that.
I feel that she's going to have to rely on a good amount of accountability, if she does anything real specific as VP that is. She'll mostly have to answer to Biden's administration's effort and her participation in an upcoming campaign. She seems like a person that can weave that web of administrative resourcefulness.
Assuming Biden doesn't leave early that is.
He'll probably retire in 2022 or thereabouts. That will excite the Democrat base in time for those elections (first woman President), plus any earlier and she wouldn't be able to run in 2028 (unless she loses in 2024).
Again I agree (notably), but also again I see no indication of that necessarily happening.
To be lucid, I don't have the most overly modernist standard amidst the partisan political landscape.
So, Nevix, you did a pretty job laying things out. Now I'm giving a crack at it. I've spent so long arguing with people to the left of me and moderates and trying to get along with awkward coalitions and political marriages of convenience that it's good to step back and ask myself what I actually belief and stand for.
I am a Pagan American Social Democrat, in my early 30s. To the moderate Democrats and centrists I'm a radical leftist. To the leftists I'm a moderate, a liberal, or a running-dog lacky for the borgeouise. I worship Ostara, Dionysus, the Spirit of the Night Wind, and Hecate. I believe in human rights, that people are more important than money, and that money and power shouldn't be concentrated into the hands of a tiny, tiny portion of the population.
Two points for me are that no single human being should own a billion dollars and that the freedom to swing a fist ends where my neighbor's nose begins.
The Economy
To start with, I believe in Modern Monetary Theory. Taxes don't fund federal spending, they are the way governments delete wealth and create demand for their sovereign currency. Federal spending and tax cuts are the way the government shows its priorities and creates wealth.
Since the seventies, the price of groceries, housing, healthcare and education have skyrocketed while wages have remained stagnant. I find it especially egregious that people who work full-time can't afford a home of their own. I think a minimum wage increase would be the best way to stimulate economic growth. Workers who live paycheck to paycheck pump money into the economy and that creates jobs. Money to corporations and tax breaks for the wealthy just goes into stock buybacks or caiman island accounts where they sit on it. National productivity has risen and risen, but employees haven't seen any benefit from it in reduced hours or increased pay.
Deregulation terrifies me because just about every business regulation we have has been bought with human lives. Regulations are the reason why we don't have children working in coal mines and why young ladies aren't encouraged to lick the brushes they use to apply radium to watch faces. It's why employees can't be locked inside their workplaces. It came from brutal fights between workers and strike-breakers, and outright war of the coal companies against coal miners.
The Environment
The short version is that we are already pretty screwed, and there are lots of powerful people actively fighting against any efforts to mitigate the damage.
I live in Pennsylvania, and because of fracking, some parts of my state have flammable tap water. I believe we should fight pollution and climate change for religious reasons, but also because it's a matter of common sense and human lives. No short-term economic gain is worth poisoning the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the people who are least able to stand up to big companies. There's lots of practical solutions just waiting to be used that are actively suppressed to prop up dying industries who will do more to harm people living near them and fishing business than they will to help the people they employ.
Human Rights
There's certainly some grey area, but ultimately, human rights begin with the essentials of life. The right to housing, the right to food and water, the right to medical care. None of these are luxuries and everyone should have them whether they are poor or not.
Human rights are rights for all humans. This includes gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex humans. (LGBTQ rights are super important to me for both personal and religious reasons). This includes people with disabilities, physical and mental. This includes humans of all races. This includes humans of all religions. There are a lot of ways, subtle and not so subtle, that people try to take away the rights of certain groups, and you don't stop that kind of oppression by just pretending we're all equal and that systemic oppression was solved in the past.
This especially includes people who have committed crimes, because a crime can just be "something the government doesn't want you to do", and once you take away the rights of somebody for being a criminal, it's a hop skip and a jump to criminalizing your political opposition.
Refugees have human rights, too. That's really important for me, because of their relevance to one specific deity, because of the Pagan traditions of Hospitality, and because of basic moral principles. Refusing to accept refugees is like leaving somebody to die in a snowstorm on your front doorstep.
The Role of Government
Honestly I'd say the role of government is a conflicting miss-mash of systems assembled ad hoc, but we've got a few things worth keeping that I will fight for dearly. The USPS is one. Things like roads, bridges, and firefighters too. I want universal healthcare, not "access" to something that ensures poor people die and rich people live.
Maybe the biggest thing right now for me is that government should protect us from the power of corporations. We tolerate conditions of oppression and Orwellian intrusion from employers and megacorps that we wouldn't think of accepting from federal, state or local governments. Anyone who thinks the government shouldn't tell businesses what they can't do had better have a really good plan for who should and how to implement it.
I've kind of repeated myself and it's not as neatly laid out as I like, but this seems to cover the broad strokes. Most of what I support politically is a progression of these ideas, or at least an attempt to get closer to realizing them.
"Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it."
— Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Fri Nov 13, 2020 12:19 am
Kamala Harris was the DA when the innocent man was tried but she wasn't involved in the case directly.
She was aware of the case though and sat in court for both the conviction and the sentencing, with the man saying that at one point she looked at his eyes and smirked at him.
Seems like she fostered a very "tough on crime" culture in her office and there were several other cases where it and the police were accused of wrongful convictions and frame ups and she always fought them rather than taking them seriously.
Not incredibly damming though. He endorsed her for president under the same condition that I said.
And those are vague indications of corruption or administrative incompetence.
They don't really indicate either corruption nor incompetence.
They better indicate either realpolitik or crypto-conservatism, or perhaps just plain old opportunistic careerism.
The real issue is, if she doesn't have the support of the Democratic base, she will be a weak candidate in 2024 and another Republican President (or even Trump again if he campaigns properly or Harris makes mistakes between now and then) might take the White House.
Yeah that's what it all comes down to for 2024 I see you on that.
I feel that she's going to have to rely on a good amount of accountability, if she does anything real specific as VP that is. She'll mostly have to answer to Biden's administration's effort and her participation in an upcoming campaign. She seems like a person that can weave that web of administrative resourcefulness.
Assuming Biden doesn't leave early that is.
He'll probably retire in 2022 or thereabouts. That will excite the Democrat base in time for those elections (first woman President), plus any earlier and she wouldn't be able to run in 2028 (unless she loses in 2024).
