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Netroots Politics
Michael Gracie writes "I picked up "Crashing The Gate - Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics" from the DailyKos website, albeit apprehensively. The Kos community has a "reputation," and some would suspect that any printed material associated with the site would parallel what is said there. Nevertheless, I was curious to hear what Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga would say, knowing they wouldn't have to deal with the instant (and often aggressive) feedback the "Kossacks" dispense. For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised." Read the rest of Michael's review.
Crashing The Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics
author
Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
pages
196
publisher
Chelsea Green
rating
8
reviewer
Michael Gracie
ISBN
1931498997
summary
A must read for constituents on both sides of the fence
As background, the authors are no strangers to the Internet or its political enablement. Armstrong is a household name in the arena, having started one of the first political weblogs, MyDD.com, and assisting with the Howard Dean campaign's blogging efforts. Zuniga is just as well known, if not more so. He founded DailyKos, which is likely the most popular political group weblog site in existence. In other words, these guys should know their stuff, and for the most part they seem to.
As pure reading material goes, the book ("Progressive Partner Special Limited Edition") is precisely 196 pages of 100% post-consumer waste recycled, old-growth forest-free paper, including 14 pages of reference notes and indices. The type is large, well spaced, and generally easy on the eyes. I knocked this puppy off over three afternoons, including note taking.
While I didn't fact check every line of the book, what I received was a pretty thorough, analysis-driven opinion of what has gone wrong with Democratic Party politics. It starts with a definition of "the enemy," the "cons" of the Republican political thought process. Corporate insiders, right-wing think tank graduates, religious leaders, and old-school mindsets are overstuffed in a barrel. What pops out is the realization that the Republican Party is less a tank mowing over everything in its path than a loosely bound, fragile coalition that has succeeded not by Borg-like assimilation, but through sheer patience and will.
Onward to the "failing" side, in which Armstrong and Moulitsas slice and dice their political party in what can only be described as a semi-hostile, scathing rebuke of the disorganization, the infighting, and the selfishness which has kept it divided. The authors are, however, quick to point at two examples of success (in Colorado and Montana during 2004). In those cases, campaigns took decidedly different approaches, but one thing seemed certain - anything BUT the status quo could work.
Diving deeper into the situation, "Crashing The Gate" now hits the hot button that is going to piss a lot of Progressives off - the wholesale pilfering of campaign dollars by political/media consultants, who enrich themselves fabulously while using worn out techniques that lead to failure after failure. The D.C. power base, showing no inclination to stop the madness, is not forgotten either. If any one point becomes perfectly clear to readers, it will be that big money has and is wasted in extraordinary magnitudes.
At this point, J & M point to McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, as the tipping in the power struggle over Progressive direction. McCain-Feingold redirected high-dollar contributions from direct-to-politicians pockets into 527 organizations that cannot "explicitly advocate the election or defeat of any candidate for federal office." What it really did, according the authors, is force Democrats to look to "the people." Numbers no longer followed dollar signs - they had to follow individual support roll counts. Then Howard Dean captured the Internet's imagination.
The authors give Howard Dean a lot of credit for initiating the "grassroots movement," something I found unsurprising considering they were in the middle of it. By engaging a myriad of internet tools managed by foot soldiers, Dean quickly proved McCain-Feingold naysayers wrong. The Democratic stronghold eventually trounced Dean - they took it upon themselves to define him as "unelectable," and turn Dean's overzealousness into perceived nuttiness. It was a concerted attack, and not without casualties. First and foremost, John Kerry lost the Presidential election, and that is where I inferred that the tables really turned. While "wounds were being licked" offline, Internet activists maintained engagement as thought the battle wasn't over. As described, after Terry McAuliffe (Chairman of the DNC) departed, the bloggers made their presence hard to ignore, uncovering dirt on hand-selected McAuliffe successors, one after the other. Howard Dean maintained his loyalty to those folks, and the end result...he is now Chair of the Party.
The last chapter, entitled "Inside The Gate," follows up on some successes for the Democratic Party in places like Montana and Virginia, and infers that "grassroots" campaigning, not "netroots" organization, was the primary motivating factor. In many campaigns, however, "netroots" did play a role, and even when losses were incurred, the efforts succeeded in draining opposing candidates of funds and energy while giving good reason for progressives to relish in their newfound power. Fair warning - the net was not to be ignored.
No review of a political reference would be complete without some conclusion for those so inclined. Rather than air my personal views, I will provide some perspective-based alternatives:
A) If you are anything close to Progressive (which I suspect many readers will be), you may at first feel a bit betrayed by your leaders, and certainly enraged by the pilfering of contributions that came from your pocketbook. Your suspicion that what is being suggested is emulation of the long-term strategies of the enemy is not unfounded. Crashing The Gates sometimes infers just that, albeit with a bit of a "net twist." Be patient until the end - you may wind up wanting to blog for your favorite local candidates - but it won't be an easy road. I'd say I concur with the authors that there is no short-path to election success, no matter the effort - the authors are making no promises, and that is refreshing from any set of written words deemed political. And be forewarned - what led to victory in a particular place and particular situation, might not work the next time. I interpreted that by reading between the lines.
B) If you lean right you will feel warm (and smug) over your Party's triumphs, and a little confused as to why someone would so openly lay out a potential roadmap for defeating you. You may be inclined to read the book again, just to make sure you have a game plan to thwart any such attempts. Alternatively, you might brush off any thoughts of a grassroots movement ever having a chance of taking your team to the mat. You have a "big machine" on your side, one constructed over decades - how could any grassroots effort put a dent in it? This reader, having a meager understanding of how "new media" communications spreads, says the latter take might not be a wise one. Conservatives have their pundits, but they should ask themselves whether they could engage armies of them.
C) If you sit in the middle, a most likely social liberal and fiscal conservative, I'd say you may still feel a bit lost. You have choices: go the route of the ultra-organized "idea generators," but risk more betrayal on the fiscal end while you turn blue over the social fanaticism; or, you can bet on those who still haven't gotten their act together, but have a lot of momentum, gained recently, in the new media realm. Yes, the progressives have a "new machine," but can they effectively control it as it grows? The conservatives have certainly proven they can steer theirs, and it is anything but small. Either way, you'll solidify your previous view that politics is about big money, intensive recruitment, and, ultimately, some form of indoctrination. You might not exactly get the "warm-fuzzies" if you fancy yourself an independent thinker.
I said my satisfaction with the read contained some caveats. It did, and they affect my rating of the book as such.
1) I found the historical elements of the book the very compelling - again, while I didn't check facts, I didn't feel I needed to. The first couple of chapters were relatively unbiased - at times I almost felt like the authors were glorifying Republican efforts. Then, wham, they actually say Republican strategies are "brilliant," while describing their party's entitlement participation philosophy (meaning, one should be happy to have a job on a Democratic campaign, even if you electricity just got shut off) in comparison to the well paid, constant grooming and care that Republican "students" usually received.
2) I was hoping for a complete separation between the web diatribe the authors are associated with, and their view to initiate change through hardcopy publication. Unfortunately, I found at least one element of major distraction, on pages 114 through 118, which referenced events regarding politically motivated compensation for both old and new media input. It hinted, unnecessarily, of some bitterness, while I would rather have heard a token "Oh well, that is how the game is played." The section in question was hard to shake - it followed me for the last sixty or so pages. Additional anecdotes describing "normal, sane" candidates having the ability to win elections left me chuckling a few times as well, meaning I had some difficulty disassociating the authors with some of what I have read at DailyKos.
3) The title conflicted with some of the nuances within. For someone sitting on the fence (as described above), I thought the authors would have tried to harder to convince that the supposed "progressive revolution" isn't just more of the same. The dollar signs strewn throughout made me think more about all the money that politics engulfs (even if it is raised by citizen journalists) than the power any individuals have to instigate real change. I sometimes felt that the subtitle could have included "people-powered fundraising."
4) As the authors point out (as excuse or not), the manuscript was scrapped late in the process. They started from scratch, under considerable time pressure, and I can respect that. In my eyes (assuming it is true), they scored some points here for admitting the need to start over, and re-working on the fly.
I know Slashdot readers have their opinion of bloggers in general, and it is not always the most favorable. However, as a consistent reader of both Slashdot and several major political blogs I have to say "Crashing The Gate" is a heck of a job from a couple of "bloggers." I am now intensely curious to see if Glenn Reynolds's "An Army of Davids" paints a different (and/or alternative) picture of the "netroots" phenomena.
As a final offering, Armstrong and Zuniga note that the world of progressive bloggers could already be four to five million strong, with extraordinary growth predicted for the future. In addition, they offered that anyone, anywhere could contribute. But, a democratic system requires mutual acceptance, healthy debate, and a willingness to accept a role alongside, not hands above, the rest. The online world already seems to be straying from those core tenets, with clubby recruitment gatherings, A-list bloggers and too much crosstalk. Without some correction, I wonder whether the growing political force the authors portray can sustain itself long term, or whether new media will turn out like old media - sensationalist, untrustworthy, and begging to be ignored."
You can purchase Crashing The Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
As background, the authors are no strangers to the Internet or its political enablement. Armstrong is a household name in the arena, having started one of the first political weblogs, MyDD.com, and assisting with the Howard Dean campaign's blogging efforts. Zuniga is just as well known, if not more so. He founded DailyKos, which is likely the most popular political group weblog site in existence. In other words, these guys should know their stuff, and for the most part they seem to.
As pure reading material goes, the book ("Progressive Partner Special Limited Edition") is precisely 196 pages of 100% post-consumer waste recycled, old-growth forest-free paper, including 14 pages of reference notes and indices. The type is large, well spaced, and generally easy on the eyes. I knocked this puppy off over three afternoons, including note taking.
While I didn't fact check every line of the book, what I received was a pretty thorough, analysis-driven opinion of what has gone wrong with Democratic Party politics. It starts with a definition of "the enemy," the "cons" of the Republican political thought process. Corporate insiders, right-wing think tank graduates, religious leaders, and old-school mindsets are overstuffed in a barrel. What pops out is the realization that the Republican Party is less a tank mowing over everything in its path than a loosely bound, fragile coalition that has succeeded not by Borg-like assimilation, but through sheer patience and will.
Onward to the "failing" side, in which Armstrong and Moulitsas slice and dice their political party in what can only be described as a semi-hostile, scathing rebuke of the disorganization, the infighting, and the selfishness which has kept it divided. The authors are, however, quick to point at two examples of success (in Colorado and Montana during 2004). In those cases, campaigns took decidedly different approaches, but one thing seemed certain - anything BUT the status quo could work.
Diving deeper into the situation, "Crashing The Gate" now hits the hot button that is going to piss a lot of Progressives off - the wholesale pilfering of campaign dollars by political/media consultants, who enrich themselves fabulously while using worn out techniques that lead to failure after failure. The D.C. power base, showing no inclination to stop the madness, is not forgotten either. If any one point becomes perfectly clear to readers, it will be that big money has and is wasted in extraordinary magnitudes.
At this point, J & M point to McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, as the tipping in the power struggle over Progressive direction. McCain-Feingold redirected high-dollar contributions from direct-to-politicians pockets into 527 organizations that cannot "explicitly advocate the election or defeat of any candidate for federal office." What it really did, according the authors, is force Democrats to look to "the people." Numbers no longer followed dollar signs - they had to follow individual support roll counts. Then Howard Dean captured the Internet's imagination.
The authors give Howard Dean a lot of credit for initiating the "grassroots movement," something I found unsurprising considering they were in the middle of it. By engaging a myriad of internet tools managed by foot soldiers, Dean quickly proved McCain-Feingold naysayers wrong. The Democratic stronghold eventually trounced Dean - they took it upon themselves to define him as "unelectable," and turn Dean's overzealousness into perceived nuttiness. It was a concerted attack, and not without casualties. First and foremost, John Kerry lost the Presidential election, and that is where I inferred that the tables really turned. While "wounds were being licked" offline, Internet activists maintained engagement as thought the battle wasn't over. As described, after Terry McAuliffe (Chairman of the DNC) departed, the bloggers made their presence hard to ignore, uncovering dirt on hand-selected McAuliffe successors, one after the other. Howard Dean maintained his loyalty to those folks, and the end result...he is now Chair of the Party.
The last chapter, entitled "Inside The Gate," follows up on some successes for the Democratic Party in places like Montana and Virginia, and infers that "grassroots" campaigning, not "netroots" organization, was the primary motivating factor. In many campaigns, however, "netroots" did play a role, and even when losses were incurred, the efforts succeeded in draining opposing candidates of funds and energy while giving good reason for progressives to relish in their newfound power. Fair warning - the net was not to be ignored.
No review of a political reference would be complete without some conclusion for those so inclined. Rather than air my personal views, I will provide some perspective-based alternatives:
A) If you are anything close to Progressive (which I suspect many readers will be), you may at first feel a bit betrayed by your leaders, and certainly enraged by the pilfering of contributions that came from your pocketbook. Your suspicion that what is being suggested is emulation of the long-term strategies of the enemy is not unfounded. Crashing The Gates sometimes infers just that, albeit with a bit of a "net twist." Be patient until the end - you may wind up wanting to blog for your favorite local candidates - but it won't be an easy road. I'd say I concur with the authors that there is no short-path to election success, no matter the effort - the authors are making no promises, and that is refreshing from any set of written words deemed political. And be forewarned - what led to victory in a particular place and particular situation, might not work the next time. I interpreted that by reading between the lines.
B) If you lean right you will feel warm (and smug) over your Party's triumphs, and a little confused as to why someone would so openly lay out a potential roadmap for defeating you. You may be inclined to read the book again, just to make sure you have a game plan to thwart any such attempts. Alternatively, you might brush off any thoughts of a grassroots movement ever having a chance of taking your team to the mat. You have a "big machine" on your side, one constructed over decades - how could any grassroots effort put a dent in it? This reader, having a meager understanding of how "new media" communications spreads, says the latter take might not be a wise one. Conservatives have their pundits, but they should ask themselves whether they could engage armies of them.
C) If you sit in the middle, a most likely social liberal and fiscal conservative, I'd say you may still feel a bit lost. You have choices: go the route of the ultra-organized "idea generators," but risk more betrayal on the fiscal end while you turn blue over the social fanaticism; or, you can bet on those who still haven't gotten their act together, but have a lot of momentum, gained recently, in the new media realm. Yes, the progressives have a "new machine," but can they effectively control it as it grows? The conservatives have certainly proven they can steer theirs, and it is anything but small. Either way, you'll solidify your previous view that politics is about big money, intensive recruitment, and, ultimately, some form of indoctrination. You might not exactly get the "warm-fuzzies" if you fancy yourself an independent thinker.
I said my satisfaction with the read contained some caveats. It did, and they affect my rating of the book as such.
1) I found the historical elements of the book the very compelling - again, while I didn't check facts, I didn't feel I needed to. The first couple of chapters were relatively unbiased - at times I almost felt like the authors were glorifying Republican efforts. Then, wham, they actually say Republican strategies are "brilliant," while describing their party's entitlement participation philosophy (meaning, one should be happy to have a job on a Democratic campaign, even if you electricity just got shut off) in comparison to the well paid, constant grooming and care that Republican "students" usually received.
2) I was hoping for a complete separation between the web diatribe the authors are associated with, and their view to initiate change through hardcopy publication. Unfortunately, I found at least one element of major distraction, on pages 114 through 118, which referenced events regarding politically motivated compensation for both old and new media input. It hinted, unnecessarily, of some bitterness, while I would rather have heard a token "Oh well, that is how the game is played." The section in question was hard to shake - it followed me for the last sixty or so pages. Additional anecdotes describing "normal, sane" candidates having the ability to win elections left me chuckling a few times as well, meaning I had some difficulty disassociating the authors with some of what I have read at DailyKos.
3) The title conflicted with some of the nuances within. For someone sitting on the fence (as described above), I thought the authors would have tried to harder to convince that the supposed "progressive revolution" isn't just more of the same. The dollar signs strewn throughout made me think more about all the money that politics engulfs (even if it is raised by citizen journalists) than the power any individuals have to instigate real change. I sometimes felt that the subtitle could have included "people-powered fundraising."
4) As the authors point out (as excuse or not), the manuscript was scrapped late in the process. They started from scratch, under considerable time pressure, and I can respect that. In my eyes (assuming it is true), they scored some points here for admitting the need to start over, and re-working on the fly.
I know Slashdot readers have their opinion of bloggers in general, and it is not always the most favorable. However, as a consistent reader of both Slashdot and several major political blogs I have to say "Crashing The Gate" is a heck of a job from a couple of "bloggers." I am now intensely curious to see if Glenn Reynolds's "An Army of Davids" paints a different (and/or alternative) picture of the "netroots" phenomena.
As a final offering, Armstrong and Zuniga note that the world of progressive bloggers could already be four to five million strong, with extraordinary growth predicted for the future. In addition, they offered that anyone, anywhere could contribute. But, a democratic system requires mutual acceptance, healthy debate, and a willingness to accept a role alongside, not hands above, the rest. The online world already seems to be straying from those core tenets, with clubby recruitment gatherings, A-list bloggers and too much crosstalk. Without some correction, I wonder whether the growing political force the authors portray can sustain itself long term, or whether new media will turn out like old media - sensationalist, untrustworthy, and begging to be ignored."
You can purchase Crashing The Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The Kos community has a "reputation," and some would suspect that any printed material associated with the site would parallel what is said there
Yes, they do. But I know of no news or opinion service that doesn't have a reputation. Many don't trust Fox because they are to the right. Many don't trust the NY Times because they are to the left.
Whatever we write, no matter how much we try to be 100% objective, will be subjective due to our own experiences, culture etc.
That being said- Kos is not someone I always agree with- but he does show that many Democrats are not liberal hollywood weenies. Many Dems (like my grandfather and Kos) are Vets. I don't consider myslelf Dem or Republican, but thats another story....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
It looks like the scope of the book is much too narrow to infer any type of trend. Thomas Friedman's book The Lexus and the Olive Tree gives a much more macro view of the democratization of information and the impact the internet has on government. Although a bit dated, its scope is much wider and thus its easier to pick out trends than it is in this book.
As a lover of the free market and someone who has seen repeatedly that all politicians lie, and no politician will run government the way you want it run, I am constantly surprised by the Progressive movement. I have so many friends who label themselves Progressive, when they don't realize that the Progressive ideaology is no different than the political agenda of both the Democrats and the Republicans: to control others against their will in hopes of creating a better world. The reality of any political agenda is to control the many in order to give more power to the few, usually the friends and family (the cronies).
Here's my review of the review:
assisting with the Howard Dean campaign's blogging efforts.
I'm sure Howard Dean had time to blog himself. Most political blogs are carefully crafted and planned by the campaign crew -- it is no different than a speech given by a politician: they usually haven't read it before hand.
precisely 196 pages of 100% post-consumer waste recycled, old-growth forest-free paper
Which means the paper costs way more to make than regular forest paper. Considering that this cost means more people had to work on it, more air conditions were run, more people had to drive to work and more buildings were needed, I'm not sure how environmentally friendly the book is. I do know that Boise-Cascade has a great tree-planting policy, so I prefer to buy non-recycled paper. In fact, I never buy recycled products unless there is no alternative.
While I didn't fact check every line of the book,
I check every fact because I don't trust political books.
what I received was a pretty thorough, analysis-driven opinion of what has gone wrong with Democratic Party politics.
In my experience, the Democrats and Republicans both have the same problem: they don't follow through with their promises. When they do pass a law that they promised to pass, along with it comes 1000 other pork barrel projects. Usually the law is so modified from the promise that it has unintended consequences that affect us all in a negative way.
Corporate insiders, right-wing think tank graduates, religious leaders, and old-school mindsets are overstuffed in a barrel.
That's an interesting attack there. Almost every single Democrat in federal office is a corporate insider as well. Instead of being think tank graduates, most Democrat politicians are graduates of a college where the mindset is more socialist than Democratic. Don't get me started on old-school mindsets -- the Republicans definitely have forgotten the old school that they came from.
the infighting, and the selfishness which has kept it divided.
Of course there is infighting, you're talking about accepting a job that gives you incredible power over the masses.
campaign dollars by political/media consultants, who enrich themselves fabulously while using worn out techniques that lead to failure after failure.
Consider that the campaign finance system was broken by any time of reform or regulation (which created these consultants and it is now these consultants to fight for even more reform to give them even more power)
The D.C. power base, showing no inclination to stop the madness, is not forgotten either. If any one point becomes perfectly clear to readers, it will be that big money has and is wasted in extraordinary magnitudes.
The big money would not be wasted if campaign finance was deregulated, and Congress and the President were returned to the minimal powers as set forth by the Constitution in very specific ways. Destroy the power of the federal government, and you'll see the big money disappear.
redirected high-dollar contributions from direct-to-politicians pockets into 527 organizations that cannot "explicitly advocate the election or defeat of any candidate for federal office."
Actually, McCain-Feingold was written specifically to keep incumbents in powe
One doesn't argue on the internet to prove a point. Like the photoshop says, you're still retarded.
It's a heck of a way to kill time, though.
The only thing 2004 taught us was the unreliability of electronic voting machines. Without a paper receipt as proof of your vote, there is absolutely NO way to ensure that the outcome is accurate. Can somebody explain what DIG is? Never heard of it.
"Can somebody explain what DIG is?"
digg
Vote for Pedro
But what the heck, it looks interesting. Might want to add it to the summer reading list. I'm busy revisiting Zelazny's Amber right now.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
For someone sitting on the fence (as described above), I thought the authors would have tried to harder to convince that the supposed "progressive revolution" isn't just more of the same. The dollar signs strewn throughout made me think more about all the money that politics engulfs (even if it is raised by citizen journalists) than the power any individuals have to instigate real change. I sometimes felt that the subtitle could have included "people-powered fundraising."
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. Money is the root of all evil, etc. etc. etc.
FIRST and FOREMOST, take out the corporate money, you will get better leaders that aren't solely out to make a buck for their buddies who run the corporations and the military-industrial complex.
But in a 'capitalist' economy and consumerist-society, does anyone actually believe that will happen or even work?
True Progressives do not have a voice in today's government - they are only heard in obscure, online blogs.
And if you want to initiate REAL change and start a 3rd party, FORGET ABOUT IT!
The current government will make rules to prevent you from even getting a 3rd party on the ballot.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It's the Eds. They've been posting stories that have their own bias embedded into them or totally missing the mark to the article in question. As such, it's the lack of credibility that is moving people away from Slashdot.
Life is not for the lazy.
One problem with politics is that there needs to be some return for competent people who work in the field. Otherwise it gets dominated by thieves and obsessives. Right now the thieves are winning.
The big challenge is finding a way to offer a decent lifestyle to an honest, sane politician.
The book seems to be complaining about one system for doing that.
Didn't all 17 or 18 of the political candidates that Kos openly endorsed lose? I'm not sure what in this kind of track record would qualify Markos to write a book on the subject...
Let me say that I think the "net effect" that these guys have on the political & media scene in America is, in fact, a very _very_ positive one; They have played a critical role in bringing America back to the yellow-fedora-wearing-"get-the-story-at-any-cost" style of journalism that the mainstream media has been denying the public for a long time. Granted- most of their stories lean to the left, but the right has the "Drudge Report" to balance that out. So, insofar as they act as "channels" for information, they are very valuable: They've played an important role in making sure that the MSM doesn't "pin" stories like the Abramoff/Delay/Culture-of-Corruption stories under the public's radar.
As political analysts? Take it with a grain..no, a _block_ of salt. It's ironic that this topic would get posted today...as it marks the 0-for-20 record for them in backing House candidates (they couldn't even get Cuellar [TX-28] into a stinking _runoff_!). They want to harp and harp about how bad the "party establishment" is...and they propose that they should be the shining leaders of this movement to replace that establishment...But it's hard to buy their arguments when their record is as poor as it has been. They are kelp being tossed around in the waves of American politics. They might like to think that they are making those waves - and I'm sure their book contains all manner of self-congratulating passages telling the reader how they think they did that - but they aren't. If you are reading this article - Congratulations! You have a better record at supporting democratic candidates than either of them do!! But if you want to get a book that tells you why their "New Establishment" is so much better than the ones put together by Democrats _who actually got elected at some point_, then go pick it up at your local book store.
Save yourself $1.75 by buying the book here: Netroots Politics. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
How is it that people who prefer big, tax-supported bureaucracies that manage a significant amount of public and private life are called progressive? This is what's so ironic about my geeks and nerds. They can see the obvious fatal flaw in a Windows NT domain and the centralization that it brings to a network topology, but they cannot see the even greater flaw in directing the economic output and general government of a country from a single point, often the central government.
There is nothing progressive about having a general preference for state controls over the people and the economy. It's a reactionary fear that somewhere, somehow someone might say, do or produce something that others might not like or that might make them happy.
You know who was a true progressive? John Locke, not Noam Chomsky or any other leftwing hack. John Locke was the first person in the modern world to stand up and say, who the hell do you think you are to boss everyone around like you're an emissary from the divine? Divine right to rule, rule by the mob, the proletarian revolution, they're all descended from the old idea that some people are born to control others.
Liberals, in the classical sense, were the first ones in modern history to overturn all of that, which is why Marx hated liberalism. Most of what "progressives" stand for is just another way to tear down the individual and elevate the group. How that's different from our ancestors' tribalist tendencies is beyond me. You want progress? Move away from tribalist notions of what the group means toward a modern notion which is a freely chosen, non-coercive relationship.
limiting authoritarianism in America ... by giving it to private companies.
While Libertarians do come with different stripes, I would say that the more extreme do not seem very realistic -- I, for one, would not entrust everything to whims of private hands.
But I think it kind of misses the point of what kos is about.
It's not so much about winning elections, but rather changing the dynamics of the debate. Changing the dynamics of the debate is a longer term strategy than just winning an election.
While I haven't read this book, my impression is that is what it is about. Not on how to win elections, but rather on how to influence direction.
I thought Joe Trippi's book on the Howard Dean campaign was interesting and I am not at all in the Dean or Kos end of the spectrum. If you think the Kos book sounds like it might lay on the politics pretty thick, try checking out The Revolution Will Not Be Televised : Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything. It speaks more to the use of technology for fund raising and organizing and leaves a lot of the politics in the background.
I have yet to be convinced that this new medium can reach middle america. So far it just seems to be getting to the well-educated + net-savvy younger generation, whom tend to the Left anyway so I'd question how this will revolutionize the political landscape in America and be a force for broadcasting the liberal message to the masses.
Very nice charicature of a party that in no way resembles the Democrats.
Over the last fifteen years, which party was responsible for most of the cuts in government and which was responsible for most of the expansion of government? Which party had a surplus and which has record deficits? Which is surveilling you in direct opposition to laws passed to prevent warrantless surveillance and which party is fighting that surveillance?
Time you reconciled your perceptions with the realities.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
#1. Repair the voting system. If you cast a vote, it must be counted. Until the votes of the people are counted, there won't be any reform.
#2. If you can't vote, you can't contribute. No corporations giving money to candidates or their election funds. Only people can vote and only people should be contributing money.
#3. End all PAC/lobby contributions. If a PAC wants to convince a Congress Critter to do something, that PAC can send a brochure or booklet or study. But it must be printed. That is all that they can do. No trips. No dinners. No gifts.
Once you've managed those, the people will have a CHANCE of taking back their government. Right now it is run by corporations, for corporations.
oh, to have mod points today...
Quite true. The party platform needs some adjustment to get away from the "crazy nutcase" end of the spectrum. Anything taken to its logical extreme is a bad idea, and so is Libertarianism. Libertarianism at is logical end is just plain anarchy, and that never works for a civilized society. I see voluntary taxes and privately owned roads as a really bad idea, but I also see most of the other things the government has a hand in as being really bad ideas, too.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Your comment makes no sense. The current state of American government is that it gives loads of money to businesses. A Libertarian government gives no gifts to individuals and very few gifts to the whole.
Sing it, brother. Big-L libertarians are very bad students of history.
in the latin tradition of using both the father's and mother's family name, his last name is Moulitsas, not Zuniga
Libertarianism at is logical end is just plain anarchy, and that never works for a civilized society.
There's more to anarchism than you might think. Whether or not it's possible or even desireable is definitely up for debate. Note that "anarcho-capitalism" is probably closer to the extreme end of "libertarianism" than "anarchism" itself.
Adhering to the desires of any political party is always a bad idea. I don't completely support the Libertarian party agenda, but I do think it's a far better agenda and more sincere one than the R's and D's. I work from within the party to try to grow it and to shape it into a little bit more moderate organization. Only when the party finally gets set in reality can it begin to gain a foothold in the government.
My comment was a little snarky, but essentially boils down to me saying something like:
Giving power to private companies is not any better than leaving it in the hand of a bureaucratic institution.
The Democratic stronghold eventually trounced Dean - they took it upon themselves to define him as "unelectable," and turn Dean's overzealousness into perceived nuttiness.
I'd say that Howard Dean played a large roll in that himself. His "YEEAHHH" moment and forwarding conspiracy theories about 9-11 lost him more votes than it won him.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Anarchism is no government. People will do as they please, meaning they'll share like a communist utopia or maybe they'll sell things in an anarcho-capitalism. It doesn't matter what they choose to do, anarchy is still anarchy. Anarchy will eventually lend itself to chaos.
I only RTF'd the first fiew PP's, but I thought it was important to point out. Democracy is not an end in itself, it is a means, a means to preserve liberties and freedoms that people are entitled to from birth. It is a tool, and like any tool can be used constructively or destructively.
Freedoms do not mean free room, borad, health care, eduction, and (insert good cause here) coerced at every one elses expense by the popular mob. Anyone can do grand feats when done with other peoples money.
Freedoms mean free, as in free will, as in your right to controll, allocate, and use opportunities, money, and resources honestly gained without the government coercing it away. All to often people act like the government taking money from one group of people to give to another has consequences so neglable that it isn't even worth mentioning. Well, the truth is that it is that the consequences are more harmfull for government to take from people, than if individuals had gotten it by stealing it all by themselves.
But who knows, I haven't read this book, maybe it's all about how to turn their site into a bad-ass propaganda machine.
Asshole said: "...I prefer to buy non-recycled paper. In fact, I never buy recycled products unless there is no alternative."
Have you ever even seen an old growth forest? No I suppose not, and if you did you would find a soulless strip mall to be more beautiful.
I sincerely hope your house is destroyed by a landslide from a clearcut slope.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
The politics of failure have failed. It's time to make them work again.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Now, that's not to say it isn't crazy on its own merits, but let's not throw labels around casually.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
The NYT SAT on enough Iraq war lies stories until after the 2004 elections to help get GWB reelected. I wouldn't classify them as "left wing". They did it *on purpose*.
And for that matter, the only left wing and right wing in the US is an artificial construct. We have two major parties, BOTH of which cater to the large transnationals and globalist "the rich get richer and more powerful" forces as their primary focus. Any "grassroots" noises they make are to keep the rabble amused and to stop them looking behind the curtain. As long as those globalists can keep "the people" squabbling with each other with the phony left/right paradigm, they win. In 2004, the globalist fatcat party won the election, just like it did in 2000 and 1996 and 92. I mean, look at the election fraud with diebold et al. Kerry couldn't have run faster nor ignored it harder if he tried. How much evidence do the skull and bones deniers need? We don't have smoking gun, we have smoking artillery evidence, going way way back on any number of treasonus scandals involving both parties. They swap around who they take money from, the chinese army, haliburton, enron-who cares? Mena, Arkansas ring a bell with anyone? A boat load of connected Ds and Rs and dot mil goons involved there. Is this really that hard to grok?
It is BEYOND corrupt.
If anyone thinks things will get "better" with some globalist dipsquat puppet like Hillary or Kerry or even Dean in, they are swimming in the river of de nile. The R supporters are exactly the same, well meaning in their own way,but very naieve.
I'm a libertarian in the small-l sense. While in 2004 the Libertarian party did make an attempt to be serious, I generally find that it's mostly filled with college kids who think the world is simple and don't really spend much time thinking.
Consider this line off the website:
"The Libertarian Party would increase employment opportunities by slashing taxes and government red tape. We would also end the welfare system with its culture of dependence and hopelessness."
Now we tried this once, a long time ago and it resulted in a series of boom and bust cycles made most famous with the Great Depression. That's not to say I necessarily support the Great Society programs in entirety, but I do support the safety net. In fact I would argue that the safety net allows the economy to grow faster, as people are willing to take risks because they know if it doesn't pan out they aren't entirely fucked. Now obviously there is balance, but eliminating it is as bad as over doing it.
Anyway, this is the kind of policy ideas you come up with when you analyze something, see one small symptom and then decide that is the disease. It's like a doctor amputating a leg because you've got a blister on your foot and then saying "See, the problem with the blister is solved!"
I don't agree with the Right and Left dichotomies, but the Libertarian party isn't the answer either.
1) I found the historical elements of the book the very compelling - again, while I didn't check facts, I didn't feel I needed to.
And that's exactly the problem. You look at things like the Rather reporting on George Bush and the blatent falsehoods and the Republicans do it so much better then the Democrats. How many people pledged to defeat the Patriot Act only to sell you out and vote for it? But that might not be important to you, that might count as fact-checking. You look at the careful review done about the CBS memo and it becomes startlingly clear that fact checking is not only encouraged in politics, it's required. If dKos is urging you not to trust the people making up the government, then the least you can do is fact check the book. If you don't trust one, why would you even consider trusting the other?
The problem with politics is that people turn their brains off and don't do fact checking. Everyone has their own dollars at stake, they're going to say whatever it takes to get more of those dollars. How many Democrats said they would defeat Bush and the Patriot Act simply to turn around and vote to renew it?
I hope you're just spinning and don't really believe that tripe; else, I fear for your sanity. The GOP hasn't been great, but the Dems are always, always, always worse on non-defense spending. And which party tried to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment and which party killed it?
Of course you don't, because kos disappeared it because the backlash was so great.
That comment is just one representative example of the "debate" that the kos kids want to have.
If this is the kind of debate kos wants, no wonder his candidates keep losing elections.
I noted something about Republican campaigners being better paid. A big difference in the 1004 GOTV efforts was that Dems were paid while the GOPs were volunteers. By all accounts, this dichotomy worked to the GOPs favor: they were true believers intent on spreading their glorious message of truth, justice, and the Republican way, while the Dems were just showing up to make a buck.
If you lean right [...] You have a "big machine" on your side, one constructed over decades - how could any grassroots effort put a dent in it?
Republicans (and hopeful progressives) should take note that the current Republican "machine" arose out of fervent conservative activism that has roots going back almost 60 years, to the tireless efforts of one Clarence "Pat" Manion, who utilized direct mail techniques to begin the process of uniting disparate elements of conservative citizens in the hopes of winning back their own party which had become increasingly liberal to compete with the Democrats.
Despite history's usual focus on the leftist activists of the 1960s, there was a very strong undercurrent of conservative student activism as well, resulting in the candidacy of Barry Goldwater. This failed at first, but they arguably ultimately succeeded in Reagan. Not that any of their "small government" hopes and dreams ever succeeded. They never will. But I digress.
The point here is, though, that what's happening on the left right now is almost the mirror image of what happened back then. As a progressive, I hope that, with the benefits of increased communication times and cheaper mass-communication, we can do things a little faster... but time will tell. We progressives should be in for a long, difficult process, with much failure before eventual success.
Conservatives, conversely, should be asking themselves if they're actually getting what they want from their elected officials. But that's just par for the course for partisans of both parties, isn't it?
I was at a town meeting organized by my local Congressional rep. Listening to the people at the meeting, I realized the biggest problem our country faces is ourselves. Literally, every single person who got up and spoke wanted money for some reason or another. One guy was a postal worker who wanted social security payments because he'd worked the minimum # of quarters to qualify for social security. Another was a school teacher who wanted a bigger pension. Another was a parent with a child with some brain disease who wanted help. The entreaties for money never stopped.
What really is depressing is the realization that Social Security is going to start spewing cash like never before as my generation retires and the money isn't there to fund it. Sure, it's there on the books but the reality is the money was spent the moment it came in the door. So a lot of baby boomers are going to start asking for their share and though the books show the money is there, the "there" is some taxpayer's pocket.
It doesn't matter whether the politician is Republican or Democrat - neither of them is willing to take that problem on because whoever does knows they'll get voted out of office.
I actually agree that the L party isn't the answer presently. Things like voluntary taxation and privatization of highways can't possibly work. I figure the L party is the best shot I have at reducing the size of government since I've seen what Republicans really mean when they say "freedom" and "small gov't". Also, you should look into the idea called (I think) the "fair tax". It's a little crazy, but it sounds at least plausible. So you give everybody in America a $500 EBT card once a month to buy enough food to barely live and then you put a sales tax on everything. That should mean the end of intrusive income tax and death tax and all those other really awful taxes. It should also be able to gain the needed funds if done right. It's a bit unrefined, but worth looking at. I believe there is a website for it somewhere.
WTF is a libertarian doing posting on the internet? I mean didn't it start as a useless, wasteful government project. I think you should practice what you preach and use compuserve.
Come on, writing is easy when you don't try so hard, and when you proofread.
I picked up "Crashing The Gate - Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics" from the DailyKos website, albeit apprehensively. The Kos community has a "reputation," and some would suspect that any printed material associated with the site would parallel what is said there. Nevertheless...
WTF does that mean? As somebody who doesn't read DailyKos, I have no idea.
I knocked this puppy off over three afternoons, including note taking.
What does that mean?
Then, wham, they actually say Republican strategies are "brilliant," while describing their party's entitlement participation philosophy (meaning, one should be happy to have a job on a Democratic campaign, even if you electricity just got shut off) in comparison to the well paid, constant grooming and care that Republican "students" usually received.
This sentence is impenetrable.
I was hoping for a complete separation between the web diatribe the authors are associated with, and their view to initiate change through hardcopy publication. Unfortunately, I found at least one element of major distraction, on pages 114 through 118, which referenced events regarding politically motivated compensation for both old and new media input. It hinted, unnecessarily, of some bitterness, while I would rather have heard...
A "hint" was an element of major distraction? Really? And what does it have to do with the website?
Additional anecdotes describing "normal, sane" candidates having the ability to win elections left me chuckling a few times as well, meaning I had some difficulty disassociating the authors with some of what I have read at DailyKos.
I'm happy you're happy. But that sentence means nothing if you haven't read this website.
The purpose of a review is to inform. If you start off by assuming that people reading the review know what you know, then it defeats the purpose of writing the review in the first place.
And who was pushing for socialized healthcare, carnivore, had to be coerced into accepting welfare reform and oversaw a DoJ that twice in a few years time had major, violent confrontations with American citizens that ended in innocent civilians getting killed by carless federal agents? Bill Clinton, a democrat. Did you know that David Koresh, the leader at Waco, used to go for a walk into town about 4 days a week and that law enforcement knew this at the time? They didn't arrest him because they wanted a confrontation with what they called an extremist group. Last I checked, that's not a professional attitude. That's a military attitude, not a peace officer mentality.
The Republicans are worse than the Democrats, but that's not relevent to anything that I said. Clearly, I am not a Republican as I identify with classical liberalism. And what pray tell, oh defender of the party of the ass, does that make me inclined to be? A voting Libertarian, that's right. I voted for Badnarik, not Busherry in 2004. Why, that would make me a genuine opponent of both "progressives" AND their republican country club counterparts.
The truth is that both parties do the same things. The Democrats are better in a few degrees, not principles, and that really does depend on the area you're talking about because they are far worse than the Republicans in their fair share of areas as well. Last I checked it wasn't the Republicans that generally favor an end to private firearm ownership or laws against hate speech or thought crimes that punish people for having hateful motivations.
The government shouldn't have started it. Now that it's here, I'm gonna go ahead and use it. The government shouldn't have built that huge library in my town. It is there, though, and I will use it. Not every action of every day is a philosophical battle.
I don't think parent was talking about Ds and Rs, rather the underlying philosophies apparantly ignored by each. But to answer your questions,
Over the last fifteen years,
Remember that spending bills originate in the house, which has been under republican control for the past 11 years, so they're going to get credit/blame for the vast majority of spending related events.
which party was responsible for most of the cuts in government and which was responsible for most of the expansion of government?
The answer to both is the Republican Party.
Which party had a surplus and which has record deficits?
again, the Republican party on both counts.
*unless you're talking about percent of GDP. Then the Democrats win the deficit record.
Which is surveilling you in direct opposition to laws passed to prevent warrantless surveillance and which party is fighting that surveillance?
ahh. well the last 15 years include 8 years of clinton in the exectuive office. Since your question refers to executive action, the answer is that both parties are roughly equal in that regard, but under clinton, the agencies were not allowed to share information with each other. Also under clinton, 1 family was killed for not denouncing white supremecism enough (IIRC, the main offence was that he refused to spy on his neghbors), and 1 crazy cult was raided and burned for being creepy (also for having some firearms which maybe had not had proper tax paid on them), but at least he didn't wrongfully imprison any of them.
Also, it is imporant to remember, that at no time during the past 15 years was there ever an actual surplus. The surplus you refer to was a projected surplus slated to occur a few years into the bush presidency IF the economy continued grow at 1999 levels. One of Bush's campaign points for 2000 was that the economy was entering into a recession, and so those projections could not remain accurate. Not surprisingly, when he turned out to be correct, he got most of the blame for that as well.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
In order to make money as a democratic/liberal political blogger, one must toe the Demcratic party line, which is the neoliberal, conventional wisdom, Washington Consenus. If you allow posters on your liberal forum that deviate markedly from this party line, they will be banned. This is how the mass media and those already in power maintain the status quo, and how they maintain ideological hegemony. People who own and run forums like Kos, DU, etc, can make money from Speaking Fees, books, Consultation fees, etc. But only so long as the material in their blogs substanially toes the party line. Generally speaking, the party line requires less attention be given to economics oriented aspects of politics, and more focus on social issues politics, i.e., wedge issues, like gay rights, identity politics, race and gender politics, guns, abortion, and other wedge issues. How does one become a MAJOR Liberal blogger? You must be mentioned by the mass media. How do you get mentioned by the mass media? It is like being "made" by the Mafia, I suppose. You gotta show them you are a Good Fella! Show them that you enforce ideological hegemony by banning not only rightwing posters, but also those posters who question the party line of BOTH parties. Once you have been mentioned repeatedly by the mass media as a blogger, you are MADE. You can make a living at it. But don't wander from the conventional wisdom. These same things pretty much apply to the rightwing GOP political forums
Homo Sapiens Americanus--A documentary in p
...the eternal libertarian philosophical lynchpin: "fuck you".
NO ONE but a libertarian could confuse regulated capitalism with socialism. It's a sure sign of an extremist. Thanks for playing.
Kythe
You, and many GOPists, make the assumption that all defense spending is de facto good. I submit that this is false.
And it's important to note that while GOPists were all for a BBA in the 90s, the most recent endeavor did not have the same support. Interesting, no?
...no one who links to Little Green Footballs as a source has the right to critique someone else's fact checking :)
Kythe
...the fun that can be had with the Libertarian Party's platform is endless :)
Kythe
Your username includes the word "punker." What the hell kind of credibility do you really think you have? Nobody who matters cares what "punkers" think about politics.
I hear ya.....and it isn't like they will take over huge majority of reps and senate AND the presidency. There will still be R's and D's in there...
Frankly, I'd like to see all 3 of them in some fashion...I'm thinking it would take a mixture of all of them these days to balance things back out again. The Dems and Reps have each gone WAY over to far to the left and right for me. I'd like to see some Lib's in there to balance the fuckers out...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
point by point:
The Libertarian economy: Runaway to Ruin
no
Libertarianism is like communism: both look great on paper.
no
Libertarians never seem to understand that lifting all constraints from powerful organizations ultimately means the end of freedom and democracy. Why can't they see the end game of their simplistic thinking?
Libertarianism is about lifting the contraints on individuals not corporations. But it is about lifting contraints on corporations that are really just proxies for contraints on individuals.
"Powerful organizations" derive their power from unnatural gifts from the state. They don't die and they are only penalized financially for legal transgressions. There is nothing in Libertarianism that would allow Corporations free play, in fact some Libertarians might argue against the Corporation alltogether as an unnatural player in the marketplace. And without the legal framework that the government bestows, a corporation literally is nothing.
# Libertarianism constitutes the ultimate in linear thought processes.
no disagreement, Libertarianism is based on a government's responsibility to sparingly use threat or force against its citizens. Very simple.
# The central problem (and irony) with big-L Libertarianism is that ultimately, in this linear system of thinking, all liberty is lost. Libertarianism always seems to leave out the concept of the big-power players, who obviously will always exist and will always work to build their power at the expense of the masses. Libertarianism leads to a feudalist society with no liberties. That's why I say Yes to small-l libertarianism for individuals, and No to big-L Libertarianism for corporations and industries, which I believe must *always* be regulated by small-d democratic fiat.
Aggregation of power is a central problem with Libertarianism *only if* if you consider the Corporation as equivalent to an individual. But I think you have to realize that indivuals have no ability to aggregate power without the backing of the government. Wealth and ownership have been defined by a system of common laws and have been codified and modified by statutes. Before the legal framework of the "Corporation" and other organizations as such, the aggregation of wealth was truly only possible through Family inheritence which is something that is codified in laws. I am as ardent a Libertarian as I know, and consider both inheritence and the corporation as matters to be carefully regulated to insure that a free society is not threatened by the concentration of power in undemocractic hands. Seeing as both inheretence and the corporation are inventions of government, I see nothing inconsistent with their regulation. As long as the regulation of corporations isn't really just the excessive regulation or taxation of individuals by proxy.
You and I are friends of each other, so let not my disagreement spoil that. :)
The Libertarian economy: Runaway to Ruin
And what evidence do you have to support this assertion? A libertarian economy is one where anyone is allowed to compete. Regulated markets usually end up as government protectionist schemes which stifles competition and thus decreases intention.
Libertarianism is like communism: both look great on paper.
We can point to several failed communist states to show that "communism only looks great on paper", but what "libertarian" state will you point to to show your point? There has never been one, because there have always been people in government power who use force to attain their goals. We can see numerous examples in China where the state gives up regulation, allows for capitalistic reforms, and China's economy prospers as a result.
Libertarians never seem to understand that lifting all constraints from powerful organizations ultimately means the end of freedom and democracy. Why can't they see the end game of their simplistic thinking?
It's not that I don't see that point of view -- rather, it's that I don't believe you. You can't just say that increasing individual liberty will end up decreasing it without supporting that statement with evidence and expect me to believe you. "Simplistic thinking" seems to be the hallmark of those who argue by assertion only!
Libertarianism constitutes the ultimate in linear thought processes.
This is a repeat of the "simplistic thinking" statement.
The central problem (and irony) with big-L Libertarianism is that ultimately, in this linear system of thinking, all liberty is lost. Libertarianism always seems to leave out the concept of the big-power players, who obviously will always exist and will always work to build their power at the expense of the masses. Libertarianism leads to a feudalist society with no liberties.
Now you're just building on your second point by adding some collectivist arguments to it. Your argument that "Libertarianism leads to a feudalist society" is false because feudalist implies static social classes, such as lords and vassals. Why does individual liberty (including your hated individual right to property) necessarily lead to static social classes and the implied lack of social mobility?
That's why I say Yes to small-l libertarianism for individuals, and No to big-L Libertarianism for corporations and industries, which I believe must *always* be regulated by small-d democratic fiat.
The one point that I wish anti-libertarians would realize is that they seem to solve the problem posed by "big powerful organizations" by replacing it with one single big powerful monopoly organization: the government. Simultaneously, they believe that since there is a voting system in place, the government will necessarily be free(er) from corruption than non-governmental entities. I think this is very much an article of faith. There is little data to support it. Governments draw their people from the same group of fallible humans that non-governmental entities do, and those people are in no way free from the negative traits that we've seen in the people in non-governmental entities.
However, there is one crucial difference between government and non-government which is the primary and overpowering reason that I want to decrease the power of government: government is the one entity that has the legal right to use deadly force to achieve its goals.
I'm a small-l libertarian who votes Libertarian simply because no one else stands up for individual liberty.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I agree with you completely. Speaking of balancing out the fuckers, isn't it interesting how in this particular forum on this particular website, everything I've said has been modded down for no good reason and some other things that have little value get modded up? Talk about "community" or "corporate capitalist pigs" and they love you. Talk about personal responsibility and freedom and they hate you automatically.
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
Err..dems to the left? If you're standing in Europe, democrats come across right wing, and republicans extremist right-wing. How about having some semi-sane party in power, or someone like the Greens?
Please explain how laissez-faire economics lead to ruin. (And please don't use the classic Great Depression argument; the Great Depression was caused by the Fed's mishandling of failing band and worldwide inflation caused by central banks moving away from the gold standard and printing too much money. Google for Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard; they present alternative views to the Great Depression).
It depends on your definition of libertarianism. If you equate libertarianism to anarchocapitalism, then I will be obliged to agree with you. Anarchocapitalist theories are logical and I do read articles from The Mises Institute every day, but I don't think anarchism of any form works in the long run, and if it did, it isn't the optimal solution. Pure communism is anarchy, but no country has voluntarily adopted a voluntary communist system. Instead, deranged dictators who read all of Marx's books and didn't read any other philosophy and like what they hear gain power and make the state have ultimate, unlimited power, which is contrary to theoretical communism.
However, I believe that minarchism (small government) can and will work. In the United States framework of government, the federal government can take care of the military, interstate highways, money supply (although the Federal Reserve should be replaced with a gold standard), and upholding the Constitution and other liberty-minded laws. Issues such as education, health care, scientific research, housing, social safety nets, and others are best handled by society, states, counties, cities, communities, families, or individuals; the federal government should back out of those issues.
I am assuming that you are talking about deregulation of corporations. Now, I am not completely laissez-faire in deregulation; I support anti-trust laws and other regulations that support fair business practices, because they help keep the markets competitive; restrictions of the growth of monopolies is an integral part of having a free market, IMO. I also agree that the laws about corporations being treated as people should be scrapped. However, I believe that too much regulation hampers freedom. We don't need price controls, government inspection of products (a private corporation could do the same), tariffs, 100-year old copyrights, FCC, (insert other regulatory function here).
I believe in environmental regulation, however. However, I am a supporter of free market environmentalism. Free market environmentalism combines taxation of pollution, upkeeping of government- and privately-owned parks and wildlife reserves, and other ideas that combine protecting the environment with free-market ideas.
Well, libertarianism is the most consistent of all of the political ideologies that I studied. However, it isn't illogical.
point by point:
no
no
Libertarianism is about lifting the contraints on individuals not corporations. But it is about lifting contraints on corporations that are really just proxies for contraints on individuals.
"Powerful organizations" derive their power from gifts of legal protection made by the state. They don't die as we do and they are only penalized financially for legal transgressions, but real people are often incarcerated for many years for their transgressions unable to participate in the market and interact with their peers. There is nothing inherent in Libertarianism that would allow Corporations free play, in fact some Libertarians might argue against the Corporation alltogether as an unnatural player in the marketplace. And without that legal framework that the government bestows, a corporation literally is nothing.
no disagreement, Libertarianism is based on a government's responsibility to sparingly use threat or force against its citizens. Very simple, everything should derive from that.
Aggregation of power is a central problem with Libertarianism *only if* if you consider the Corporation as equivalent to an individual. But I think you have to realize that indivuals too have very limited ability to aggregate power without the backing of the government through our system of property laws. Wealth and ownership have been defined by a system of common laws and have been codified and modified by statutes. Before the legal framework of the "Corporation" and other organizations as such, the aggregation of wealth was truly only possible through Family inheritence which is something that is codified in laws. I am as ardent a Libertarian as I know, and consider both inheritence and the corporation as matters to be carefully regulated to insure that a free society is not threatened by the concentration of power in undemocractic hands. I see this to not be in conflict with Libertarianism.
Seeing as both inheretence and the corporation are inventions of government, I see nothing inconsistent between Libertarianism and the government regulation of either. Really, using my linear thinking the whole concept of the Corporation could be done away with as really it is just a government empowered contrived entity that has been given abilities beyond that of a regular person. As long as the regulation of corporations isn't really just the excessive regulation or taxation of individuals by proxy, Libertarianism is not naturally against it.
But in a very fundamental way, if the government reserves to itself the right to use threat or force itself to compel people, and in a fundamental way restrains itself and others from the threat or use of force (or more correctly, it punishes such actions). Then by what means do people aggregate power and
Blah blah blah. I see your gums a'flappin but I hear nothing of substance coming out of them.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
American Idiot - Green Day
"Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
Well, thats enough to argue.
Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along to the age of paranoia.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
Well, thats enough to argue.
Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's going out to idiot America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
Well, that's enough to argue."
Green Day
Moderators aren't too bright.
Vote for Pedro
It's amazing how on slashdot, a completely subjective post (a personal opinion for crying out loud) magically transforms into an "insightful" truth. Does "interesting" not quite capture your emotional ties to employing coercion (government) as the means to the end?
BTW, if libertarianism only looks great on paper, then freedom only looks great on paper. After all, peaceful libertarianism would be the closest thing to true freedom (meaning lack of coercion, not democracy) short of peaceful anarchy.
So is that "reputation" anything like the reputation that slashdot has?
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I don't find the idea of a consumption tax to be any less awful than an income tax. In fact, I think it would be disasterous to our economy. If you want to see this model in action, look at Europe.
I'd go back to reading a bit of Adam Smith, if I were you. The reason why the income tax was his preference was because it was less obtrusive, and as such had the least impact on economic growth. Now the reason why Libertarians have been pushing for a consumption tax is that they want to show everybody just how costly taxes are. That is, make you think about it every day.
But it's a fantasy... we still have the fundamental problem that people don't want to pay taxes, y et they want all kinds of government services. These two demands are at polar opposites to one another. The Libertarian tax proposal isn't going to stop this.
The problem we have right now is the REpublicans broke the system of checks and balances. Rather than complaining about spending and taxes all the time, they decided they could have it both ways... lower taxes and increase spending. The voters would keep voting them into office, because they didn't notice the problem this causes in any immediate fashion.
Labels don't mean anything anymore. Only right-wingers persist in using them.
We have US soldiers who are putting their lives on the line for Duty, Honor and Country.
Meanwhile we've got a bunch of mercs running about the country, stirring trouble up, because they can make a few bucks. No duty, ho honor, no regard for their country, and no regard for the sacrifice that our soldiers make.
I say screw 'em as well. Mercs are the bane of a regular army. The cockroaches of war.
What I also find humorous is the fact that you simply blurted out a bulleted list of conclusions without offering the logic you used to achive them, let alone any sort of evidence to support your conclusions. "Insightful" indeed!
The government createth property, the government taketh it away.
In the natural world you only own what you can defend. It is this "popular mob" you fear so much that decides you actually have rights, and democracy is the mechanism by which that happens, and that mob enforces those rights with coercion through the instrument of government. Without that mob you are naked, starving, and vulnerable and your precious libertarian individualism is useless.
And if this great unwashed mob decides that the expense of health care should be shared, then that is its prerogative. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it theft or contrary to "freedom".
modded troll for that long and thoughtful reply? You people slashdot sicken me. This is why I dont comment here anymore.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
"they don't realize that the Progressive ideaology is no different than the political agenda of both the Democrats and the Republicans: to control others against their will in hopes of creating a better world."
I thought the agenda was to govern. That's what it ought to be. Are you seriously asserting that everyone in power intentionally pushes fascism/dictatorship/whatever? Are you, instead, asserting they are all being used by "the establishment"?
If the latter, then why is this a necessary system? If the former, then what proof do you have? Hell, what proof do you have for the latter either? This is the sort of line that sounds good, and that everyone likes, but it's bullshit in reality.
Besides that, it's irrelevant--unless you think we're all ready for anarchy.
"Here's my review of the review:"
Have you read the book? It doesn't sound like it to me, but i surely don't know. If you haven't, why on earth are you calling it a "review"?
"I'm sure Howard Dean had time to blog himself. Most political blogs are carefully crafted and planned by the campaign crew -- it is no different than a speech given by a politician: they usually haven't read it before hand."
Actually: he did. He did it only occassionally of course, because he was pretty busy. There are also some elected Democrats who post on Daily Kos occassionally and, although mostly it's staffers, occassionally a politicians will show up and write/post something personally. The Kos community gets pretty torqued off when someone pretends they wrote something themselves when there is no "prepared by the staff of..." note on it, for that matter.
"Which means the paper costs way more to make than regular forest paper."
That's kind of a simplistic, short-term view from a self-avowed "lover of the free market", isn't it?
"That's an interesting attack there. Almost every single Democrat in federal office is a corporate insider as well."
Oh really? You seriously are claiming the "corporate insider-ship" of Democratic and Republican officials is similar? Care to back that up?
"Instead of being think tank graduates, most Democrat politicians are graduates of a college where the mindset is more socialist than Democratic."
Hey look, there's the casual smear of colleges too.
So you are simultaneously claiming Democrats are tied to corporations on a level equivalent to Republicans and you are claiming Democrats remember the school they came from--which you assert to be "socialist"--as opposed to Republicans (an interesting claim which you, again, have declined to support here).
Here's a question: Are the elected Republicans socialists?
"Consider that the campaign finance system was broken by any time of reform or regulation..."
The main problem, here, is that citizens of the US are a bunch of babies. Nobody wants publicly funded elections--"Not out of MY pocket!"--but everybody moans about corporate influence. Our current system is one of those "worst of both worlds" results where people try to stop part of the problem (corporate funding) without addressing the entire problem.
I don't know what the book advocates, but i know the solution Kos has advocated elsewhere: if you feel strongly about this you must donate to candidates you approve of. Individual donations, not donations to and/or by massive political machinery, do have a positive effect.
"The big money would not be wasted if campaign finance was deregulated..."
Oh yeah, that will solve the problem. Sure. Whatever you say.
I wonder how you feel about words "Tammany Hall".
"Actually, McCain-Feingold was written specifically to keep incumbents in power and destroy any minority voice in office."
Gee, that's funny. It sounds like, according to the review above, the book reviewed presents a different picture. Do you have an argument for this position? Have you read and considered wh
Eh, I suppose you're aware that corporations are created by government? Plenty of libertarians think corporations should be severely limited, if not done away with entirely. Corporations were tightly constrained in early-1800s America, and Adam Smith, Mr. Invisible Hand himself, wrote in his famous book that they should be constrained, due to the immense power of their concentrated wealth.
The next question would be, are they constrained at present? Or does the government make them more powerful, in response to lobbyists, who stampede to the massive teat and make, according to recent reports, a hundred-to-one return on investment by influencing politicians? If the government were not so powerful, and therefore not so profitable to lobby, would the corporations have lost a constraint, or a resource?
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
You used "people", "politics", and "Green" in the same sentance as sane. What are you thinking?
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
The Libertarian economy: Runaway to Ruin
Libertarianism is like communism: both look great on paper.
Niether of the statements above is anything more than a sneer.
Libertarianism constitutes the ultimate in linear thought processes.
So, non-linearity is a good thing, in your view?
The central problem (and irony) with big-L Libertarianism is that ultimately, in this linear system of thinking, all liberty is lost.
What utter tripe. Libertarianism's goal is to reduce the interference of government in our lives, whether it be in the personal sphere, or in commerce. To claim otherwise is absurd.
Libertarianism always seems to leave out the concept of the big-power players, who obviously will always exist and will always work to build their power at the expense of the masses
On the contrary! Libertarians are intensely aware of the ability of rich people and companies to corrupt a government, and therefore argue against concentrating power in government, where it is so easily hijacked and abused. ADM gets billions of dollars in corporate welfare payments, for example. The libertarian asks: why does the government have the power to hand out billions of our dollars to such companies in the first place?
Let's not forget, that the ultimate "big-power player which seeks to build its power at the expense of the masses" is, and has always been, the government itself. Every once in a while, as in the American Revolution, a government's powers are sharply reduced, but I have never seen any eaxmple of a government which reduced its own powers voluntarily.
Republicans and Democrats both want more power, and only differ slightly in what they want to do with that power.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I wasn't assuming that, and in fact I think a lot of defense spending, perhaps even most of it, is wasteful (although OTOH, it should perhaps be pointed out the Internet itself, and by entension Slashdot itself, is a DARPA invention). I was simply leaving defense out of the equation because it's generally not what people complain about when they say the federal gov't spends too much.
most insightful thing I've read in here tonight!
------ no thanks... I've quit
I don't find the idea of a consumption tax to be any less awful than an income tax. In fact, I think it would be disasterous to our economy. If you want to see this model in action, look at Europe.
Europe has both the VAT, and income taxes. That is not the proposal given by the FairTax movement.
The chief benefit of the FairTax, is that it removes taxation as a consideration for investments. The FairTax is a retail-level sales tax only. No tax on capital gains, no reason to invent paper losses to offset taxable income, no benefit to keeping your money in Bermuda, etc. Eliminating income and investment taxes alone will most likely result in the re-patriation of some ten trillion dollars currently held in offshore accounts.
I'd go back to reading a bit of Adam Smith, if I were you. The reason why the income tax was his preference was because it was less obtrusive, and as such had the least impact on economic growth
Smith assumed a government that cared more for prosperity than power.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
1 family was killed for not denouncing white supremacism enough"
Uh, are you talking about the Weavers at Ruby Ridge? (If not, let me know who you're talking about, 'cause it sure sounds like Ruby Ridge.) Fascinating. When did Ruby Ridge take place? August...1992. Hmm. Let's see. Was Bill Clinton President then? No, he was not. Who was President in August of 1992? Ah, yes. George H. W. Bush, a Republican.
This point's already been made on this thread, but I guess it needs to be repeated.
How *exactly* do you blame Ruby Ridge on Clinton? More importantly, why are so few right-wingers honest about which administration his family died under?
and the President signs, or vetos the budgets that Congress passes.
------ no thanks... I've quit
As opposed to the very substantive comment you just left? It's sort of amazing the Dems even pretend to have any claim on fiscal discipline, when every time the GOP proposes spending cuts they claim Republicans want to push widows and orphans into the street to starve/freeze to death. Remember when Newt Gingrich shut down the government to try to force Clinton to reduce spending? Now they claim Clinton deserves credit for balancing the budget. The mind boggles. The funniest canard is the one about the deficits. Only the Dems could use "fiscal responsibility" as a euphemism for raising taxes.
A libertarian economy is one where anyone is allowed to compete. Regulated markets usually end up as government protectionist schemes which stifles competition and thus decreases intention.
As with most Liberatarians, you seem to be in denial about the existence of natural monopolies. Let's start with a though exercise: a world where no government power monopolies were established and a bunch of hard-working private power companies start up business.
Each business will build power lines to their customers from their power plants up until they butt up against each other. At that point, they must determine how to compete. Any business following their own rational self-interest will pursue vendor lock-in and refuse to let the other company use their lines to reach customers in their territory. As a result, the other company is forced to build a parallel infrastructure in their competitor's territory. Not only does this make their costs higher than their competitor to reach customers, but it also may be impossible due to the fact that building a parallel infrastructure may require land rights that have been snapped up by the competitor. All the incumbent has to do is price their power in between their costs and their competitor's costs, and unless the customers are spiteful and angry at the incumbent, the vast majority will stay with them.
Inevitably, though, both companies will look at each other and realize that they could have lower operating costs if they simply merged into one entity that didn't compete. They'd be able to fire redundant repair and home office staff and pass the savings on to themselves. In the meantime, the customers still don't have a choice, and the monopoly is free to charge above competitive rates because there is no one else with access to the customers.
In a regulated environment, the companies must share their lines and thus grant access to each other's customers. This means that the companies actually have to fight to bring down prices to beat out each other instead of just soaking the market for whatever it can bear to pay for an essential good. This is good for customers (i.e. the average citizen). This is one way in which regulation fosters competition that could not exist due to the realities of the difficulty of competitors in reaching their customers.
Of course, when advocating for an end to government regulation on utility monopolies, Liberatarians place all the blame for their existence on the government and offer no concrete ways in which total deregulation will get past the problem of entrenched infrastructure and economies of scale.
[What] "libertarian" state will you point to to show your point? There has never been one...
Somalia -- the world's only free market economy. This is the "paradise" you dream of when you wish to eliminate the government monopoly on deadly force. It's not a happy place, because when there is no monopoly on force, rule of the strong becomes the rule of law.
Anarchy/minarchy/liberatarianism cannot work because Power abhors a vacuum. I call this [Valdrax]'s Principle #1.
Why does individual liberty (including your hated individual right to property) necessarily lead to static social classes and the implied lack of social mobility?
Power attracts Power. Weakness attracts further Weakness. Without certain controls on society, the rich will accumulate wealth much faster than the poor and have significantly greater leverage to cause other people to part with their wealth. If I own all the power plants in a state, there's nothing that anyone can do in a Liberatarian society to prevent me from impoverishing anyone who can't afford the inefficiencies of localized power generation. This is even easier if I'm not the only essential monopoly in town trying to get as much out of people as they can. As the cost of ess
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
peaceful libertarianism would be the closest thing to true freedom (meaning lack of coercion, not democracy)
Until some people start coercing others but not calling it government.
short of peaceful anarchy.
So why not just shoot for anarchy?
Pure communism is anarchy, but no country has voluntarily adopted a voluntary communist system.
Actually, the Soviet Union did in its first two decades. The word "Soviet" is Russian for "council." In the early days, workers and communities got together and formed councils. These councils ran the local businesses and communities and elected leader to send to larger regional and national councils that voted on issues. The entire system was bottom-up.
During the Russian Civil War, the White Army (made up of former tsarist forces and backed by many foreign powers including France, Britain, Japan, and the US) fought against the revolution to reestablish the old government. The revolutionaries formed the Red Army to fight back. In the early days, the Red Army was so anti-authoritarian that they eschewed ranks and saluting, elected their leaders, and voted on actions to take. Unfortunately, this egalitarian and democratic system was horribly ineffective in actual combat, so they had to establish a more traditional command structure and discipline.
Eventually, though, Stalin would rise to power and destroy the bottom-up power structure in the Soviet Union to turn it into the harsh authoritarian government we all know, but that's a much longer story.
Incidentally, I mostly agree with the rest of your post, though I deeply distrust a lack of public education and healthcare due to the way their lack becomes a poverty trap, and I think that a lot of valuable fundamental theoretical research would not be done by the free market which favors marketable inventions and disfavors health and safety research that threatens products.
The main reason that I support government is the environment, but I too support primarily regulations that commoditize external costs like pollution with the occasional outright ban for something that has no business in the market (like asbestos or mercury emissions) over mandated technologies.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Er, there is a bit of a historical error there.... The pre WWI business cycle was actually fairly mild by comparison to modern times. And the Great Depression had nothing to do with it. The Great Depression was *caused* by the Federal Reserve Bank. It was a classic bubble-bust (like the dot-com crash of 2000). What happened was the newly-created Fed (1913) started inflating the money supply to try to help pay for WWI. This caused a massive bubble-type boom in the 1920's (that's why it was the "roaring twenties") At the time, there was little economic understanding of what the consequences would be, and the Fed kept it up, thinking they had found a method for a permanent economic boom (2000 era "New Economy" anyone?).
Eventually, the bubble popped, as they all do, causing the Crash in 1929.
Of course, on top of that came much meddling in the economy by an economically ignorant government, in an attempt to "fix" things, and much flat out totalitarian micromanagement by FDR. That wound up turning what would have been the Really Nasty Recession of 1929-1932 into the Great Depression of 1929-1938.
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
The income tax idea was formed when we had a tangibles reality based cuurency. The money supply couldn't be artifically inflated, wealth had to be produced, it couldn't just be data entryed into existence like they keep trying now. With fiat currencies-printing money on a whim, then going through various dodges like "borrowing" against an intangible like that-an absurdity to the extreme- the income tax serves only one pupose *now*, as a complex and highly effective and intimidating social engineering tool used by the political and economic conmen.
The income tax today is part of the command and control structure of our pseudogovernment, it has little to do with economics and everything to do with keeping the serfs in line and the autocrats in power.
It is not needed whatsoever. You could still have a fiat currency, without heinous wealth robbing inflation, and a functional economy and a government that would be adequately funded, as long as you had honest accounting and only added "new money" to the system that reflected actual productive growth.
I have so many friends who label themselves Progressive, when they don't realize that the Progressive ideaology is no different than the political agenda of both the Democrats and the Republicans: to control others against their will in hopes of creating a better world.
You could make the same argument about anyone who supports any laws -- anti-drug laws, anti-fraud laws, anti-murder laws, anti-rape laws, etc. That's the point of government -- to prevent people from inflicting their will on others in bad ways in order to produce a more just and equitable world.
The central thrust of Progressive ideology was summed up very nicely by Howard Dean in a Daily Show episode from last year that I watched last night: "Love thy neighbor. And you don't get to pick your neighbor." This means two things: Don't hate people because they're different; we're all Americans and all Humans. Don't hurt people through malice or selfish indifference. That's all it really is.
You guys don't trust government. We don't really it either, but we trust it more than we trust corporations. A democratic government is at its highest level meant to serve the benefit of the whole people of the nation. A corporation is at its highest level meant to serve the benefit of only its shareholders even at the expense of all non-shareholders. That's a whole different height to fall from and a whole different set of people with the power to do anything about it.
We see other people suffering, and we wish to build institutions to give them a helping hand because that could one day be us after one job loss or one family illness or some other disaster. We don't want other people to be allowed to abuse others because they might be able to abuse us. We don't like concentrations of unaccountable power whether it be in our executive branch or in a newly merged boardroom.
Now that you can't use your money to speak for you, the minority view is reduced to only a few hundred dollars per person.
As opposed to the millions of dollars per person that we all previously had to voice our popular opinions with? Honestly, you should be ashamed if you think that restricting the power of the elite to have disproportionate speech over the masses is a bad thing.
Destroy the power of the federal government, and you'll see the big money disappear.
No, no you won't because the big money will prevent the parts of the government that favor them from being destroyed. Why do you think we spend so much money on crop subsidies, no-bid reconstruction projects, and private security companies? Deregulation means simply that every one can have as much say with the politicians as they want so long as they're fantastically rich. We can go back to the bad old days of Congressional patronage.
If you want to see the big money disappear, you have to make it worthless to spend. You need Clean Money Clean Elections laws. Big Corn wants to donate $300,000 dollars to an incumbent Senator? Okay, the state matches their opponent for $300,000 who instead spends all their time talking to the people instead of the lobbyists. Advantage lost unless the indebted Senator still wins. However, by eliminating the fund-raising advantage that all incumbents have, you make the race significantly more competitive than it was before. With publicly financed elections, the only "customer" of a politician is the people instead of the lobbyists.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'll answer the criticisms with one statement:
Centralized corporate power is just as dangerous to personal liberty as is centralized government power. I despise and oppose both.
The public needs its own power base.
Further, anyone who barks that power grabbers wouldn't use a libertarian system to enslave most of us (thereby eliminating our personal liberty) is an abject MORON. Corporations are ALREADY making headway on this front, and EVERYONE KNOWS IT.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
The fact that the document did not originate with the Little Green Fascists (hah, i'm so funny!) does not really lessen the point.
The "careful analysis" of the CBS memos was a high-tech lynch mob.
I mean, seriously.
Kerning? Variable Line Spacing? Did anything put forth against the memos--at least for the first week to month, depending on how strict you are--withstand even the most basic of scrutiny?
What we need are publicly funded elections. To pass Constitutional muster (thanks to a disastrous Supreme Court decision equating spending disproportionate money with free speech), the law does not restrict people from taking money the old-fashioned way.
Instead, a candidate agrees to forgoe traditional funding and gets a long list of signatures in support of his campaign to prove he's a serious contender (instead of raising a certain amount of money before the election). Once qualified, he is given what the government estimates the election campaign should cost. If his opponent raises more money, he gets a matching amount so that the race is even.
This means that a traditional candidate is free to take money from special interest groups who are free to spend as much as they want. However, this will not buy their candidate a disproportionate advantage of the opponent which reduces the value of such an "investment." In the mean time, the public funded candidate is free to spend all their time talking to the people instead of fund-raising.
What you get are politicians who are more interested in attracting voters than attracting lobbyists. They have more time to meet with the people more often, and they don't have to beg and scrape for money from powerful interest groups. They are beholden only to the people -- the way representative democracy was intended to work.
I love this idea. I am seriously considering moving to a state that has already passed laws like these at some point later in life, and if a state possessed both this an some sort of non-partisan redistricting scheme that prevented the kind of gerrymandering that locks in uncompetitive races, I would start making my plans today -- even if it's one of those God-forsaken frozen northern states despite my hatred for cold weather. It would totally be worth it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Keep it coming hill-dwellers.We will profit by trading you food for your saprolitic rock in the future.
Bush=Hitler on steroids! We will crush you inferior leftist hippies.
God Bless America where at least I know I'm FREE to kick commie faggot hippie ass.
AmeriKKKa Uber Alles!
Greens Deans and Queens RAUS!
Actually, I was a big Dean supporter based on his policies and aggressive "give 'em hell" attitude, but I have to mostly agree with you. Even though he didn't come out and make the accusation, giving any recognition to the conspiracy idea was a really, really bad move.
However, the "Dean Scream" shouldn't have been all that bad at all. I mean, honestly, go back and listen to last bits of the speech he was giving. He was just doing some good old-fashioned rabble rousing and cheerleading. I blame the media (in particular the right-wing dominated elements of the media) for making a big scandal out of little more than a really nerdy cheer. I don't think he shot himself in the foot so much as hand the shotgun to hungry partisans eager to shoot it for him.
At any rate, the Troll mod is totally unfair.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'll counter with a quote from Milton Friedman inside of this Wikipedia article:
I'd rather deal with an unregulated monopoly than a regulated monopoly (as long as that unregulated monopoly doesn't try to monopolize another commodity). I am firmly against government intervention in the economy. Natural monopolies can still be defeated using market techniques if you really want to defeat the monopoly. Regulated monopolies are government sponsored and can never go away. We don't want nationalized or heavily regulated industries; they hurt the economy and the consumer more than an unfettered natural monopoly does.
WRONG. Somalia is not a libertarian state, it resembles an anarchocapitalist state. Learn your definitions. Sorry, kiddo, you lost major points with your argument.
Libertarians recognize that the government has a monopoly on force. Libertarians, however, recognize that there are legitimate usages for using government power (the military and law enforcement are big examples). That is what separates libertarian from anarchocapitalism. When you start bringing up Somalia in an anti-libertarian tirade, you lose major points in your argument. It clearly shows your ignorance of libertarianism.
A government that steals money from those who are economically successful is an illiberal, Robin Hood-esque government (and I'm using liberal in the classical sense here). Why pick on the rich? Oh, yeah, silly me, I forgot. (Picks up a red book). This red book here says that rich people are greedy and selfish, so they need to be heavily taxed. Getting back to the topic, redistribution of wealth doesn't help the poor improve their economic situation; it only keeps the poor impoverished, and the poor remain dependent on the "safety net" forever. Poor people are also hurt by lack of capital, lack of property (real estate), and lack of education. Egalitarianism makes everybody equally poor, and egalitarian goals like redistribution of wealth are completely opposite to the goals of liberty. Read this article, and then read another quote by Milton Friedman:
"SimFaux is an interactive Faux News TV simulation, which I just published on the Huffingtonpost Contagious Festival. It's written entirely in OpenLaszlo, and features simulated characters (Dick Cheney, George W Bush, Arianna Huffington, Bill O'Reilly, and more to come), streaming video, sound bites, talking points, slanted surveys, meaningless graphs, dynamic keywords, pie menus, and several channels with different split screen layouts. All the content is tagged with keywords, which it uses to decide what to play next. There's an "About" channel that explains more.
Technically, it's an open-ended data-driven AJAXian web application written in OpenLaszlo (JavaScript + XML that runs in Flash), so it's easy to add more content and plug in new behaviors. (I plan to add some mini-games like Tick-Tack-Faux and Hangman!) I'm regularly adding more characters, video, talking points, sound bites, surveys, etc. So please check back again later for the latest breaking news and propoganda!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
You forgot to mention that the group endorsing this book, the online community the DailyKos has endorsed around 19 candidates for targetting for their netroots program. None of the campaigns won.
"The Libertarian economy: Runaway to Ruin"
..."
You can assert this all you want. However it simply is not true. Yes there are abuses in the marketplace of today. However, I assert that these are all related to government intervention.
"Libertarianism is like communism: both look great on paper."
Except that libertarianism works in reality as well.
"Libertarians never seem to understand that lifting all constraints from powerful organizations ultimately means the end of freedom and democracy. Why can't they see the end game of their simplistic thinking?"
This is the bit that takes the cake! Like the poor and weak there will always be the rich and powerfull people and organizations. The problem is these people and orgs may abuse others. The solution is certainly not to create an organization so rich and powerfull it can controll any other person or organization by an extremely wide margin. I could rag on the concept of the state all night but I have other things to do.
PS: The solution is not the state but the spreading of respect for propert rights.
"Libertarianism constitutes the ultimate in linear thought processes."
??? Umm okay. whatever.
"The central problem (and irony) with big-L Libertarianism
I think you mean small "l". Big 'L" would refer to members of some Libertarian Party. I don't think that was your intent.
"... who obviously will always exist and will always work to build their power at the expense of the masses."
Economics is not a zero sum game. You can build wealth and power in conjunction with others not in exploitation of others.
You cannot count on a more powerfull organization to protect you from exploitation as the most powerfull organization(s) will always be in a position to be most corrupt. Thus the ONLY way to prevent abuse is to spread the idea that it is wrong! That is your first, best, and only defense.
What almost all thinkers (many liberty minded included) ignore is that we are not fighting a war with the sword or coin but rather with the pen. This is a war of ideas. As long as the ideas of freedom are prevalent in society we will be free indeed! As soon as we allow those who would subjigate us to destroy these ideas and we allow ourselves to fall into ideological sloth we can hope for no better than tyranny.
Unfortunately, in much of the world this generation has lost the battle and we are seeing the results. However, there is always a new day. There is nothing quite like an idea whose time has come.
I'll counter with a quote from Milton Friedman
That's an Appeal to Authority argument. Even Friedman's quote does not say exactly how the free market will deal with a natural monopoly. He just says that he prefers it to not be regulated "where this is tolerable." You simply state then that it's better to be without regulation.
Natural monopolies can still be defeated using market techniques if you really want to defeat the monopoly. Regulated monopolies are government sponsored and can never go away. We don't want nationalized or heavily regulated industries; they hurt the economy and the consumer more than an unfettered natural monopoly does.
You state that natural monopolies can be defeated by market techniques, but you don't state how. That's what I asked. Blind assertions that it can happen are pointless. How exactly does the market defeat a natural monopoly which is what happens when economies of scale make the largest player capable of under-cutting all competitors due to having less fixed costs (and not having to charge as little as possible due to the fact that competitors can't match them)?
Also, you seem to be confusing regulation with state ownership. There's a difference between the government saying that only one company can do the job and the government saying that you guys all have to share access to customers and justly compensate one another for the privilege, that you can't collude with each other to avoid competition, and that you can't use control of a resource vital to the industry (like oil barrels) to force out competition. You seem guilty of the same sin of confusing the opponent's argument that I did.
Libertarians recognize that the government has a monopoly on force. Libertarians, however, recognize that there are legitimate usages for using government power (the military and law enforcement are big examples). That is what separates libertarian from anarchocapitalism.
My bad. The Liberatarian Party is currently infested with anarchocapitalists, so it gets really hard to determine who you're arguing with when you talk Liberatarian politics. You had derided government for possessing that power earlier, so I incorrectly assumed that you were of that bent.
If you wan't a Liberatarian ideal state, you're correct in saying that none has ever existed. The closest we've had is industrial revolution America -- the so-called Guilded Age. It was a time of unprecedented consolidation of power and wealth into the hands of a few men thanks to anti-competitive business practices, and it saw a lot of workers put through such misery that it birthed socialism and the labor movement as a backlash.
Getting back to the topic, redistribution of wealth doesn't help the poor improve their economic situation; it only keeps the poor impoverished, and the poor remain dependent on the "safety net" forever. Poor people are also hurt by lack of capital, lack of property (real estate), and lack of education. Egalitarianism makes everybody equally poor, and egalitarian goals like redistribution of wealth are completely opposite to the goals of liberty.
No, I'm afraid I'll have to strongly disagree here. Wealth is Power.
Let me repeat that: Wealth is Power. Concentrations of Power are inherently in opposition to liberty. When the people are marginalized, uneducated, and worn-down, they become non-participants in a political process that leaves them jaded until at some point they boil over into revolution.
There have been essentially only three distributions of wealth on the planet and they've all been strongly correlated with certain types of government -- pyramid shaped, diamond shaped, and flat. Pyramid-shaped happens in societies with a controlling elite and has been the shape of monarchies and dictatorships both rich and impoverished. Flat-shaped happens in anarchy and in early communism (before it goes pyramid-shaped due to corruption) where no one has power. Diamond-shaped is the shap
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Me thinks you best go back to the history books my friend, and put down the "Republican guide to why Roosevelt was a bad man".
The chief benefit of the FairTax, is that it removes taxation as a consideration for investments.
That same benefit could be derived by treating all income the same, regardless of source. One problem we have today is all the tax loopholes congress crooks have put in for their lobbyist buddies.
The FairTax is a retail-level sales tax only.
Yes, which means it impacts heavily consideration for purchases. Small clue here... purchases are what drive the economy, not investments. This is why I compared it to Europe, which has an incredibly high savings rate, but low spending as a result the economy remains much more stagnant than it needs to be.
No tax on capital gains, no reason to invent paper losses to offset taxable income, no benefit to keeping your money in Bermuda, etc.
Right, except now we've got this huge black market created sourced out of Bermuda for purchases.
Eliminating income and investment taxes alone will most likely result in the re-patriation of some ten trillion dollars currently held in offshore accounts.
Coupled with an ex-patriation of some 20 trillion dollars resulting from people buying merchandise in Mexico while on vacation there.
Seriously, I can't believe you are this naive. Think about what you are saying for a moment, and ponder why you want to amputate a leg to deal with a blister.
Any party up to fulfilling this platform?
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Hey it looks like you were right. I have been erroneously been blaming Reno for that family's deaths this entire time.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
That same benefit could be derived by treating all income the same, regardless of source.
The FairTax does exactly that. No income is taxed at all.
One problem we have today is all the tax loopholes congress crooks have put in for their lobbyist buddies.
That's about half of the problem. The other half is that our government considers taxation as a reasonable way to implement a policy, so they do stupid shit like levy punishing import tarifs on sugar, so that you and I can pay three times the going rate on the world market. The upshot of the crazy-quilt of tax regs, is that individuals and businesses make distorted business decisions, because the tax considerations distort the outcome.
Small clue here... purchases are what drive the economy, not investments.
Purchases are where the revenues come from. Savings (that is, invested capital) are where the means to improve the revenues comes from.
Right, except now we've got this huge black market created sourced out of Bermuda for purchases.
Umm.. Yeah, like everyone who wants a loaf of bread or a TV set will hop a flight to Bermuda? Get serious.
Coupled with an ex-patriation of some 20 trillion dollars resulting from people buying merchandise in Mexico while on vacation there.
I can see that you need to work on your straw man. Why do you assume that the taxes in Mexico won't follow suit?
Seriously, I can't believe you are this naive.
Well, fuck you too for the ad-hominem. Seriously, I can't believe you're so satisfied with the status quo.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
To a certain extent, both Democrats and Republicans do all of the above. The problem is, if you measure each of your points listed above on a sliding scale of how well a party/politician has achieved them, in order for all of *your* sliders to be perfectly aligned, the party/politician has to have pissed off, in some way, 99% of the people in the country.
Everyone has a different threshold on these ideals; for instance, you say you want civil liberties defended to the hilt. What's that mean? No more search warrants because they're an invasion of my civil liberties? Okay, the police can no longer search a person's house and most murder investigations never get solved. Is that too extreme for you? Why? *MY* slider has defense of civil liberties all the way to the right, while *YOURS* is set at 80%.
The short answer to your question is "No", and the long answer involves something about accepting a compromise and focusing on reforming our current laws.
--trb
Come on, writing is easy when you don't try so hard, and when you proofread.
Ah, irony. That sentence has a comma splice. There's no need for a comma after "hard."
WTF does that mean? As somebody who doesn't read DailyKos, I have no idea.
A quick Google search would clearly reveal that the DailyKos is a left-wing partisan blog. If you're online, and you have access to Google while reading, then there is no real need to coddle the ignorance of the lazy.
"I knocked this puppy off over three afternoons, including note taking."
What does that mean?
"To knock off" is slang for "to finish." "This puppy" is slang for "this thing." Get out more.
This sentence is impenetrable.
It's written in a conversational tone. Imagine that someone excited is speaking to you, and it becomes very easy to read. It's not what I'd consider good style, but it's hardly impenetrable.
A good summary would be:
Out of left field, the book calls Republican strategies "brilliant" and contrasts the way that Republicans groom and compensate their aides while Democrats portray an attitude that theirs should be thankful for the opportunity to serve.
A "hint" was an element of major distraction? Really? And what does it have to do with the website?
Are your reading comprehension skills that utterly poor? Let's break this down. There was a portion of the book that felt like a major distraction to the reviewer. That portion hinted of bitterness. The "hint" was not "an element of [a] major distraction." They are both descriptors for a segment of the book.
What does this have to do with the website? Well, you quoted the exact sentence that answered your question in your reply! He felt that the pages that bothered him were reminiscent of the sort of "web diatribe that the authors are associated with."
I'm happy you're happy. But that sentence means nothing if you haven't read this website.
The purpose of a review is to inform. If you start off by assuming that people reading the review know what you know, then it defeats the purpose of writing the review in the first place.
Honestly, is it that hard to go read the front page of the website yourself? Frankly, if you don't know who the DailyKos is, then this book wasn't really meant for you. It's meant for young people who want to be politically active, and it doesn't matter whether your left-wing, right-wing, or just a wing-nut. If you care, you've at least heard of the DailyKos. If you can't be bothered to do a Google search for it, then why can you be bothered to rant about the review?
Honestly, I have little tolerance for militantly angry ignorance and nit-pickers who betray their own sloppiness while decrying that of others.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You mean it's generally not what GOPists complain about. People on the left complain about defense spending all the time.. for instance the billions that we have wasted in Iraq. It's almost 250 billion and the latest appropriation is just about all the way through the Congress so it will certainly go up.
So in essence, what you're doing is paying taxes for security, and that security provides you freedom to develop as an individual. So why with that logic not extend that in to, let's say, security from poverty? Security from disease and illness? Security from joblessness?
You misinterpret my argument which leads you to a conclusion that I don't support.
I don't think that the military and police exist to provide me security. I maintain that the military exists to protect our country from foreign invaders. I maintain that the police exist to enfoce the law. And as far las law goes, I maintain that no act should be illegal if it does not deprive any other individual of life, liberty, or property. The police and military are valid functions of government, becuase there are some functions that cannot be performed without the right to use deadly force (namely those that involve killing -- hence, military and police). Government is the only entity that has the legal right to use deadly force.
You may say, "But those functions provide security!" They might provide security, and they also might not provide security. My point is that the end of those functions is NOT security. Security is hopefully the beneficial by-product.
Since I don't think the military and police (government) exist to provide security, it renders your conclusion ("so why with that logic...?") irrelevant.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Well, fuck you too for the ad-hominem.
That's not ad-hominem, merely a statement of observation.
Seriously, I can't believe you're so satisfied with the status quo.
This is a strawman.
At no point did I say I was happy with the status quo. I simply questioned your assumptions of this Fair Tax as being a silver bullet. Your argument towards the status quo is basically that taxes distort markets, and can be worked around, but at no point does the Fair Tax solve either issue. Therefore, I do not feel it is a solution to the problem you present.
I simply feel the real problem is something different entirely.
Iraq's war spending, not defense. It's seprate from the rest of the budget. Go back and look at the proposed Dem and GOP budgets for the last 25 years. Even with defense spending figured in, the proposed Dem budgets are larger in every single case. There are issues the Dems can legitimately claim to be better on, spending restraint just isn't one of them. It's like Republicans claiming to be the party that wants to give more money to the poor.
But I would like to see a party that holds my positions as its platform, even if compromises are required from time to time.
I would much prefer a form of government where the people could directly decide all issues on their own merits, but the technologies and interest in such a thing aren't here yet. I tend to believe that ultimately, people usually vote for ideas that give them the most freedom. And this, of course, is why both Republicans and Democrats don't like true democracy that much.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
There are issues the Dems can legitimately claim to be better on
I don't think I made this claim. In any case, I will seek out inflation-adjusted budget figures to perform this analysis.
Gingich's plan would have destroyed the economy. As I remember the public understood it was Gingrich overreaching and he blinked. I think that was the beginning of the end of Newt.
And only the Republicans could think you can balance a budget by increasing spending and cutting revenues. Simple damn math.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
You don't deserve the "troll" rating, but I don't think you're seeing clearly either. The reason that we call Republicans "right" and Democrats "left" is that Europe already has set the parameters for extreme right and extreme left with fascist and socialist parties respectively. You'll notice that it's not in the U.S. but in Germany that neo-nazis are winning elections.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.