It would also be useful to stop pretending that racism has a geographical boundary. Of the unabashedly racist people I have spoken with recently, the top two most blatant were in Chattanooga, Tn. and Allentown, Pa.
Actually, slavery was waning and neither side considered it the primary issue. The primary issue was trade and taxes.
That was a bit of a hard sale in the Union, so slavery was put in the mix. That's like actually believing that line about how it's not the oil, we're blowing people up to free them.
FYI, the emancipation proclamation didn't come about until after the war started and it only covered slaves in Confederate states. The remaining slaves in Union territory were NOT freed.
While I do believe Lincoln's wish was to free all of the slaves, political support for that in the North was tepid at best, to the point that an order under the war powers act was the best he could do at the time. To be more clear, this was because of continued support for slavery in the North.
You may have better morals in general than the racist idiots who have mis-appropriated Lee's battle flag, but your grasp of history isn't much better.
Those people weren't exactly living in the lap of luxury before the fake communism either. How do you think the would-be kings that called themselves communists were able to rally the public? (note, there were actual communists involved as well, but they got ousted)
So they weren't plunged into poverty, they were already there if they weren't part of the nobility.
China simply doesn't seem to know what it is anymore but they will continue to call whatever it is communism.
Actually, I advocate the basic income tied with elimination of minimum wage. I also advocate that be funded through a sharply progressive tax. That removes the inherently coercive nature of the employment market. I'm guessing it will result in employers paying more than ever for 'minimum wage jobs'. Or at least treating the employees much better so they will stay.
Homelessness certainly shouldn't be a crime, not even constructively. One move would be to open long abandoned buildings to homesteading.
Communism, particularly as it has been practiced is a very tiny speck in the continuum of things which are not trickle-down economics or globalization.
Your claim is akin to me suggesting that hot dogs and soda for all three meals a day is a bad Idea and you try to refute it by pointing out that arsenic and a cyanide chaser is deadly.
Only when the bank goes well beyond accepting a bit of added risk and talks them into a McMansion with a time-bomb style loan and then sells it off like a hot potato fraudulently claiming it's a AAA investment.
If they just look carefully and loan them enough for a proper starter home that they should be able to pay off successfully, not so much.
Or the fire department launches a drone to follow the other drone home and capture photographic evidence. Give it a strobe so it also serves to warn firefighting aircraft of the situation.
For a start, sharply penalize absentee owners that fail to maintain the properties in excellent condition. Most of the bank owned homes are left to compost these days. Surely it would be better to raise penalties high enough to force a fire sale so that the homes that are still livable get occupied by people who couldn't otherwise afford them.
A few judges started actually forcing banks to show that they held a mortgage before allowing foreclosure to go through. It turns out the banks couldn't so they stopped trying to foreclose in those areas lest they lose even more. A few fortunate homeowners were ruled to own their homes outright based on nobvody being able to show otherwise.
In short, quit treating the banks like royalty and we go a long way to fixing the problem.
There are several houses in my neighborhood in exactly that condition. Zoning enforcement (county, not HOA) beats actual homeowners over the head for minor things, but doesn't seem to mind when the bank lets the grass grow 5 feet tall and leaves the windows broken with TREES growing on the roof.
For some, it's not. For others, saving the down payment and getting a bank to actually give them a loan is an exercise in futility. So even though they would be financially better off by buying, it won't happen. Relative poverty can be expensive in the U.S.
That is something a lot of the crazy end of the free market, no minimum wage crowd routinely fail to understand, that constructive coercion is not freedom any more than coercion at gunpoint is. Often it is worse.
It's already covered in contract law. Concepts such as substantial performance, force majeure, etc. would come in to play.
A president that promises X and then beats Congress over the head for X but fails can be said to have substantially performed on the promise. It would be up to tyhe public to elect Congressmen who have made binding promises compatible with their elected president's binding promises if they want to see action.
Even if the binding promises are severely weakened by a legal implied best effort clause, we get improvement since it would still be a problem to promise X and then act against X once in office.
Or, someone actually does the research that they should do to be ready to take office should they be elected and makes promises that they have actual reason to believe they can keep and beats out all the people who promise nothing.
In that case, voiding your earlier promise is the responsible thing to do, even if it makes you look like a bit of a liar.
Should that happen, you have some splainin to do. I see no reason not to hold a politician's feet to the fire for that explanation. It might encourage politicians to actually consider how likely it is that they will be able to keep their promises.
If you make promises you have no reason to believe you can actually fulfill, you are a liar and you should face the consequences.
As opposed to a government where everyone promises the moon to get elected and then does whatever the hell their hidden agenda and under the table deals tells them to do. Somehow that doesn't seem better. Then they retire to a cushy job somewhere when they get voted out. Lather, rinse, repeat endlessly. It also sounds eerily familiar.
It can also employ the carrot rather than the stick. That could include low/no cost loans or grants to install alternative energy solutions, putting up free charging stations for electric cars that use alternative energy, etc.
Only a mental defective defaults to the stick when the carrot will do the job.
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It would also be useful to stop pretending that racism has a geographical boundary. Of the unabashedly racist people I have spoken with recently, the top two most blatant were in Chattanooga, Tn. and Allentown, Pa.
Actually, slavery was waning and neither side considered it the primary issue. The primary issue was trade and taxes.
That was a bit of a hard sale in the Union, so slavery was put in the mix. That's like actually believing that line about how it's not the oil, we're blowing people up to free them.
FYI, the emancipation proclamation didn't come about until after the war started and it only covered slaves in Confederate states. The remaining slaves in Union territory were NOT freed.
While I do believe Lincoln's wish was to free all of the slaves, political support for that in the North was tepid at best, to the point that an order under the war powers act was the best he could do at the time. To be more clear, this was because of continued support for slavery in the North.
You may have better morals in general than the racist idiots who have mis-appropriated Lee's battle flag, but your grasp of history isn't much better.
Wow, such an incisive rebuttal!
And from an AC no less.
Now I KNOW I'm on to something!
Those people weren't exactly living in the lap of luxury before the fake communism either. How do you think the would-be kings that called themselves communists were able to rally the public? (note, there were actual communists involved as well, but they got ousted)
So they weren't plunged into poverty, they were already there if they weren't part of the nobility.
China simply doesn't seem to know what it is anymore but they will continue to call whatever it is communism.
Actually, I advocate the basic income tied with elimination of minimum wage. I also advocate that be funded through a sharply progressive tax. That removes the inherently coercive nature of the employment market. I'm guessing it will result in employers paying more than ever for 'minimum wage jobs'. Or at least treating the employees much better so they will stay.
Homelessness certainly shouldn't be a crime, not even constructively. One move would be to open long abandoned buildings to homesteading.
Communism, particularly as it has been practiced is a very tiny speck in the continuum of things which are not trickle-down economics or globalization.
Your claim is akin to me suggesting that hot dogs and soda for all three meals a day is a bad Idea and you try to refute it by pointing out that arsenic and a cyanide chaser is deadly.
Actually, no. Raising the minimum wage hasn't created any of that gloom and doom you claim anywhere in the U.S. now or in the past.
And there are better approaches to breaking the coercion than simply mandating rent from private renters.
Only when the bank goes well beyond accepting a bit of added risk and talks them into a McMansion with a time-bomb style loan and then sells it off like a hot potato fraudulently claiming it's a AAA investment.
If they just look carefully and loan them enough for a proper starter home that they should be able to pay off successfully, not so much.
Or the fire department launches a drone to follow the other drone home and capture photographic evidence. Give it a strobe so it also serves to warn firefighting aircraft of the situation.
No, I didn't. I said that government's legal obligation to the people is a core value of democratic representation.
For a start, sharply penalize absentee owners that fail to maintain the properties in excellent condition. Most of the bank owned homes are left to compost these days. Surely it would be better to raise penalties high enough to force a fire sale so that the homes that are still livable get occupied by people who couldn't otherwise afford them.
A few judges started actually forcing banks to show that they held a mortgage before allowing foreclosure to go through. It turns out the banks couldn't so they stopped trying to foreclose in those areas lest they lose even more. A few fortunate homeowners were ruled to own their homes outright based on nobvody being able to show otherwise.
In short, quit treating the banks like royalty and we go a long way to fixing the problem.
There are several houses in my neighborhood in exactly that condition. Zoning enforcement (county, not HOA) beats actual homeowners over the head for minor things, but doesn't seem to mind when the bank lets the grass grow 5 feet tall and leaves the windows broken with TREES growing on the roof.
If people want to buy it's not hard
For some, it's not. For others, saving the down payment and getting a bank to actually give them a loan is an exercise in futility. So even though they would be financially better off by buying, it won't happen. Relative poverty can be expensive in the U.S.
Sophistry! Clearly it is constructive coercion.
That is something a lot of the crazy end of the free market, no minimum wage crowd routinely fail to understand, that constructive coercion is not freedom any more than coercion at gunpoint is. Often it is worse.
Sure, because the plaintiff would have no standing in that case since it wouldn't be representing the voters that the government is beholden to.
Sure, they certainly know how to engineer around it, but it will cost plenty if they have to do it.
But they didn't. It's a core value of democratic representation. If the obligation really doesn't exist, there is no representation at all.
A delusion which has plunged more people into poverty and in some cases slavery than anything the left has ever come up with.
Then it's up to the taxpayers to elect people who haven't promised to do things they can't afford.
What is the line? Do I promise no new taxes and then suddenly have to fight off an invasion. What do I do then?
That falls clearly under force majure.
If you want to get rid of pandering, you have to make it a risky game to play with real consequences.
It's already covered in contract law. Concepts such as substantial performance, force majeure, etc. would come in to play.
A president that promises X and then beats Congress over the head for X but fails can be said to have substantially performed on the promise. It would be up to tyhe public to elect Congressmen who have made binding promises compatible with their elected president's binding promises if they want to see action.
Even if the binding promises are severely weakened by a legal implied best effort clause, we get improvement since it would still be a problem to promise X and then act against X once in office.
Or, someone actually does the research that they should do to be ready to take office should they be elected and makes promises that they have actual reason to believe they can keep and beats out all the people who promise nothing.
In that case, voiding your earlier promise is the responsible thing to do, even if it makes you look like a bit of a liar.
Should that happen, you have some splainin to do. I see no reason not to hold a politician's feet to the fire for that explanation. It might encourage politicians to actually consider how likely it is that they will be able to keep their promises.
If you make promises you have no reason to believe you can actually fulfill, you are a liar and you should face the consequences.
As opposed to a government where everyone promises the moon to get elected and then does whatever the hell their hidden agenda and under the table deals tells them to do. Somehow that doesn't seem better. Then they retire to a cushy job somewhere when they get voted out. Lather, rinse, repeat endlessly. It also sounds eerily familiar.
It can also employ the carrot rather than the stick. That could include low/no cost loans or grants to install alternative energy solutions, putting up free charging stations for electric cars that use alternative energy, etc.
Only a mental defective defaults to the stick when the carrot will do the job.