or Iran Contra? This is nothing new. The difference here is that the media isn't calling him on it. To be blunt, they never do when the checks are cashing in the form of multi billion dollar tax cuts and military budgets. But that same media has been trying to get a sound bite out of Bernie and Occassio Cortez where they say they'll raise middle class taxes to pay for healthcare for months now.
They only let you use that 20% off coupon for 1 item, no matter how much begging and pleading you do. Wait, maybe if each engineer had their own coupon...
as mentioned by other posters they got the economic incentive in the form of massive tax breaks ($200-$400 billion worth) and still didn't do the roll out. Even when we pay them to do it they don't do it.
If we want national rural broadband the government's going to have to do it. No private business will. They'll take your money and run.
but it's not a conservative response. The entire social and economic order was at stake. The banks really were too big to fail, at least not without a massive counter balance in the form of a total government bail out of the economy, which itself would have been a huge change to the current order and social/political systems.
Bailing out the banks was the correct response from a Conservative standpoint. It preserved as many of the existing power structures and systems as possible and with them the existing order.
From your post it's hard to infer your entire politics, but I don't think your a conservative, rather you like the sound of it. But it's not healthy to use the word incorrectly.
since it's going to have to leave it's sandbox to scan your file system and it's going to have to have root or near root to do it. That's probably why they're the "first", because it's not a very good idea.
and fired a few warning shots with Steam OS and some more by bundling WINE with Steam. Nobody wants to see Microsoft take over because nobody trusts them. They've got a worse reputation with partners than Apple or even bloody Nintendo.
everyone who could jump ship did with the result being that Microsoft got nothing of value when all was said and done. All it took was one game (Grabbed by the Ghoulies) and folks knew Rare was toast.
the last I heard they'd gotten rid of most of them to focus on being a contractor company that doles out H1-Bs. I'm not saying that facetiously, it was big news several years back when they said they were going to back off new tech to focus on being a "consultancy firm"; and it was no secret their "consultants" were all folks on work visas.
I know they've got some engineers around for vanity projects like Big Blue, but is there any real tech (of the sort that is meant to become a product in the next 3-5 years) coming out of them like there is with say Intel, AMD, ARM? I guess if they're buying Red Hat that'll change, assuming they don't just gut the company...
of Government. See: Robber Barons. The Machiavellian Merchant Class. The Military Industrial Complex. Etc, etc.
The thing you've got to remember is that at the end of the day this is all about one thing: A small group of people want to have a lot of money in exchange for doing nothing but owning shit. Used to be the Monarchy & Aristocracy. Then it was the robber barons. Now it's the 1%ers. But it's all the same thing and it's all the same pattern.
Democratic Governments have been the only thing that's ever gotten us past those people, however briefly (and I do mean briefly, it's been less than 100 years since they had total control and abused it with impunity in all countries and they still have that control in 70% of the world).
haven't since Carter. Clinton moved the Overton window hard right so he could soak up enough campaign cash to run and the country's left never really recovered. TV didn't help either. You had guys like Dukakis with good policy who were absolute goof balls in the flesh. TV showed the goofiness of the left and folks vote on their 'gut'.
the economic right wing own virtually everything. Talk radio is almost completely right of center (with NPR being a bit left on social issues but still centrist on the economy). Same with newspapers when it comes to money. Right of center.
What's more, America is not nearly as divided as the media tells you. 70% of us support medicare for all. You'll find similar numbers for marijuana legalization, infrastructure spending and putting a stop to our endless wars.
Americans are actually pretty well united. Our ruling class figured that out in the 50s. They used hot button wedge issues to motivate a fringe to vote against their interests and gerrymandering, voter suppression combined with our pseudo Democracy (e.g. Senate & Electoral College) to make sure the majority didn't get what they wanted.
But this created a problem. It was now too obvious America wasn't a Democracy anymore. So they bought up the media and started pushing a narrative that we're divided. We're not. Not on the issues anyway. We have a classic tyranny of the minority.
he was an active member of a community that in turn actively encourages folks like him to come to their side. You know this. You're trying to shift the narrative. I don't think anyone's gonna fall for it though. At least not anyone who doesn't _want_ to fall for it.
and you shouldn't be using that word. You're misusing it. Perhaps intentionally in order to get real conservatives on your side. I've said this before, but Hilary Clinton was and is the best true conservative in America. She'd have kept everything the same, only making a few minor changes to keep everything on course. She lost because Americans don't want actual conservatism. They want change, and it's no wonder why.
Also nobody is in favor of small government when it suits them. Folks who get it with a natural disaster want the Fed to come in and help. Most people support a large, national military for defense. And our interstate highway couldn't be built by a small government. The "Conservative" Red states get more money from the fed than they put in and if you touch those subsidies expect their Senators to fight tooth and nail against you.
What you're really in for is "small enough to drown in a bathtub" government. In other words, small, local governments that can be pushed around by large power organizations. Even if that's not what you want, it's what the folks who fund and run the "small gov't" movement do. And they make the rules.
You can't make direct threats. That's what's at issue here. Paypal was fine with Gab until one of their own shot up a place.
That said, Paypal's a payment processor, not a web forum. I don't think this is pressure from the gov't. It's more likely they're worried about a backlash from their customers.
of being Conservative? If change isn't happening then they're winning.
I think you're mixing up the radical right (alt-right?) with actual Conservatives. But even then the radical right wing is doing pretty well for themselves. There's been a massive and successful attack on gov't regulation. Much of Dodd Frank has been repealed. Most of the Obama era EPA guidelines have been eliminated or toned back. Net Neutrality is dead putting control of the internet in the hands of private industry. Mitch McConnell is even able to talk openly about ending Social Security and Medicare. These are policies the far right has wanted for decades and had to back down on.
Meanwhile the left can't get any tracking on Medicare for All, even though a majority of Republicans support it (let alone Democrats). The left are completely on the defensive in all respects. The right is winning on all fronts.
but that makes things a little hard for the American Right wing vis-a-vis gay rights, so I don't see that happening. Nonetheless if the right wanted this to stop for real that would be the way to do it.
That said, I don't think they do. The right wing own all 3 branches of government and nearly all of the media (they dominate talk radio, Fox News' ratings are much higher than MSNBC and, well, as a lefty I can safely say that MSNBC is right wing on economics, just go watch some of their coverage of Orcassio-Cortez and the Medicare for all Issue).
What I'm saying is this is great for them. It lets them paint themselves not as the ruling class in charge of everything that matters but as an oppressed minority because their extremist aren't welcome. That narrative of oppression grants them sympathy that folks like this normally wouldn't have it.
who got away with knowingly laundering money for drug cartels for years (decades?), got to keep all the profits and had little to no repercussions ($100 million dollar fine sounds like a lot unless you consider the profits they made from the illegal activity).
They way I look at it is like this: Police yourselves so the gov't doesn't have to. See here for a far more amusing take on it though
with mixed results. He got a nice house... that he lost in the crash. His lower wages in the new state made it hard to keep even the relatively modest home he bought. If the economy had held out another few years he would have been Ok, but he was forced into retirement and lost it with the crash.
one of the dirty secrets of the housing market is that the government was paying for the hard party (prepping the land, grading it, running water, power and telecom lines, etc, etc). It was basically a trillion dollar subsidy program for home builders who reaped the rewards of cheap land they could throw a frame up on and sell for 5x times profit.
That was all well and good until "Austerity" kicked in. We kept cutting taxes on the wealthy until we had to start cutting programs, and infrastructure spending one of the first to go (right before education).
Home builders are not going to prep their own land. If they do something that was a sure fire investment becomes risky. They'll take their capital and use it to buy up existing homes to rent out. After all, you got to live somewhere.
What we need in this country is the New New Deal. A return to FDR's programs (and the high marginal tax rates for the wealthy that paid for them). But the ruling class own the media and everytime it comes up they do a 6 week ad blitz to shut it down.
and not median income. You're mixing in a few high earners who skew the results.
You can't target the working poor. The right wing will put in so many exceptions that your attempts to will fail. In Missouri they just put a work requirement in place for Medicaid. They didn't raise the income threshold before you get kicked off Medicaid. You can probably guess where this is going...
There's an easy way to see how badly off min wage workers are: even with all the attempts to deny them access to gov't help they still get $6 billion/yr in help, which is a $6 billion dollar subsidy for companies that pay minimum wage, paid for by you and me.
if they hadn't been shut out of the world banking system by US sanctions. I've never once heard a good explanation _why_ we sanctioned them either. Meanwhile the Saudi's just murdered a permanent resident (more or less a citizen finishing up their paperwork) and we didn't just turn a blind eye, we bluntly said "we make too much money selling them bombs to punish them".
I'm not saying Venezuela is some kind of wonderful, lord knows they've got their problems, but like all of South America they'd have a lot less problems if the American CIA would stop fucking with them. And meanwhile we'd have a lot less illegal immigration if we'd stop destabilizing South America & Mexico. Kind of a win-win for everybody but the oil industry and prison industry.
as a tech worker I'm happy to have fewer H1-Bs. But that said, I don't expect to see your guys out in the fields picking strawberries. Even for $15/hr. That's not just because it's shit work, it's also work that's hard to have a life around.
Also, well, we are going to need some kind of immigration because Americans, like the rest of the first world, just aren't having enough kids. If you want your 401k to not collapse you're gonna have to let them in. A better economy can only do so much for birth rates.
What you really want and need is more social programs paid for by the wages those immigrants earn and the wealth they generate. Single Payer health care's a great start. How about a federal jobs program? Infrastructure spending? The real problem with immigrants is that you as a worker don't get any benefit from them (me neither, btw). The best way to change that is with Democratic Socialism. Let 'em come here and work, but make sure the money they bring in doesn't just go to the top.
Slashdot Mirror
or Iran Contra? This is nothing new. The difference here is that the media isn't calling him on it. To be blunt, they never do when the checks are cashing in the form of multi billion dollar tax cuts and military budgets. But that same media has been trying to get a sound bite out of Bernie and Occassio Cortez where they say they'll raise middle class taxes to pay for healthcare for months now.
They only let you use that 20% off coupon for 1 item, no matter how much begging and pleading you do. Wait, maybe if each engineer had their own coupon...
a well educated electorate doesn't necessarily vote the way you want them to.
Remember how before the printing press only the priesthood could read the bible? Internet is like that times 100.
as mentioned by other posters they got the economic incentive in the form of massive tax breaks ($200-$400 billion worth) and still didn't do the roll out. Even when we pay them to do it they don't do it.
If we want national rural broadband the government's going to have to do it. No private business will. They'll take your money and run.
but it's not a conservative response. The entire social and economic order was at stake. The banks really were too big to fail, at least not without a massive counter balance in the form of a total government bail out of the economy, which itself would have been a huge change to the current order and social/political systems.
Bailing out the banks was the correct response from a Conservative standpoint. It preserved as many of the existing power structures and systems as possible and with them the existing order.
From your post it's hard to infer your entire politics, but I don't think your a conservative, rather you like the sound of it. But it's not healthy to use the word incorrectly.
since it's going to have to leave it's sandbox to scan your file system and it's going to have to have root or near root to do it. That's probably why they're the "first", because it's not a very good idea.
and fired a few warning shots with Steam OS and some more by bundling WINE with Steam. Nobody wants to see Microsoft take over because nobody trusts them. They've got a worse reputation with partners than Apple or even bloody Nintendo.
everyone who could jump ship did with the result being that Microsoft got nothing of value when all was said and done. All it took was one game (Grabbed by the Ghoulies) and folks knew Rare was toast.
the last I heard they'd gotten rid of most of them to focus on being a contractor company that doles out H1-Bs. I'm not saying that facetiously, it was big news several years back when they said they were going to back off new tech to focus on being a "consultancy firm"; and it was no secret their "consultants" were all folks on work visas.
I know they've got some engineers around for vanity projects like Big Blue, but is there any real tech (of the sort that is meant to become a product in the next 3-5 years) coming out of them like there is with say Intel, AMD, ARM? I guess if they're buying Red Hat that'll change, assuming they don't just gut the company...
of Government. See: Robber Barons. The Machiavellian Merchant Class. The Military Industrial Complex. Etc, etc.
The thing you've got to remember is that at the end of the day this is all about one thing: A small group of people want to have a lot of money in exchange for doing nothing but owning shit. Used to be the Monarchy & Aristocracy. Then it was the robber barons. Now it's the 1%ers. But it's all the same thing and it's all the same pattern.
Democratic Governments have been the only thing that's ever gotten us past those people, however briefly (and I do mean briefly, it's been less than 100 years since they had total control and abused it with impunity in all countries and they still have that control in 70% of the world).
haven't since Carter. Clinton moved the Overton window hard right so he could soak up enough campaign cash to run and the country's left never really recovered. TV didn't help either. You had guys like Dukakis with good policy who were absolute goof balls in the flesh. TV showed the goofiness of the left and folks vote on their 'gut'.
the economic right wing own virtually everything. Talk radio is almost completely right of center (with NPR being a bit left on social issues but still centrist on the economy). Same with newspapers when it comes to money. Right of center.
What's more, America is not nearly as divided as the media tells you. 70% of us support medicare for all. You'll find similar numbers for marijuana legalization, infrastructure spending and putting a stop to our endless wars.
Americans are actually pretty well united. Our ruling class figured that out in the 50s. They used hot button wedge issues to motivate a fringe to vote against their interests and gerrymandering, voter suppression combined with our pseudo Democracy (e.g. Senate & Electoral College) to make sure the majority didn't get what they wanted.
But this created a problem. It was now too obvious America wasn't a Democracy anymore. So they bought up the media and started pushing a narrative that we're divided. We're not. Not on the issues anyway. We have a classic tyranny of the minority.
any true Conservative's first concern would be preserving the existing order and stability. That's what Conservatism is. It's what the word means.
Now, a libertarian would have let the banks fail. But not a Conservative.
he was an active member of a community that in turn actively encourages folks like him to come to their side. You know this. You're trying to shift the narrative. I don't think anyone's gonna fall for it though. At least not anyone who doesn't _want_ to fall for it.
and you shouldn't be using that word. You're misusing it. Perhaps intentionally in order to get real conservatives on your side. I've said this before, but Hilary Clinton was and is the best true conservative in America. She'd have kept everything the same, only making a few minor changes to keep everything on course. She lost because Americans don't want actual conservatism. They want change, and it's no wonder why.
Also nobody is in favor of small government when it suits them. Folks who get it with a natural disaster want the Fed to come in and help. Most people support a large, national military for defense. And our interstate highway couldn't be built by a small government. The "Conservative" Red states get more money from the fed than they put in and if you touch those subsidies expect their Senators to fight tooth and nail against you.
What you're really in for is "small enough to drown in a bathtub" government. In other words, small, local governments that can be pushed around by large power organizations. Even if that's not what you want, it's what the folks who fund and run the "small gov't" movement do. And they make the rules.
You can't make direct threats. That's what's at issue here. Paypal was fine with Gab until one of their own shot up a place.
That said, Paypal's a payment processor, not a web forum. I don't think this is pressure from the gov't. It's more likely they're worried about a backlash from their customers.
of being Conservative? If change isn't happening then they're winning.
I think you're mixing up the radical right (alt-right?) with actual Conservatives. But even then the radical right wing is doing pretty well for themselves. There's been a massive and successful attack on gov't regulation. Much of Dodd Frank has been repealed. Most of the Obama era EPA guidelines have been eliminated or toned back. Net Neutrality is dead putting control of the internet in the hands of private industry. Mitch McConnell is even able to talk openly about ending Social Security and Medicare. These are policies the far right has wanted for decades and had to back down on.
Meanwhile the left can't get any tracking on Medicare for All, even though a majority of Republicans support it (let alone Democrats). The left are completely on the defensive in all respects. The right is winning on all fronts.
but that makes things a little hard for the American Right wing vis-a-vis gay rights, so I don't see that happening. Nonetheless if the right wanted this to stop for real that would be the way to do it.
That said, I don't think they do. The right wing own all 3 branches of government and nearly all of the media (they dominate talk radio, Fox News' ratings are much higher than MSNBC and, well, as a lefty I can safely say that MSNBC is right wing on economics, just go watch some of their coverage of Orcassio-Cortez and the Medicare for all Issue).
What I'm saying is this is great for them. It lets them paint themselves not as the ruling class in charge of everything that matters but as an oppressed minority because their extremist aren't welcome. That narrative of oppression grants them sympathy that folks like this normally wouldn't have it.
who got away with knowingly laundering money for drug cartels for years (decades?), got to keep all the profits and had little to no repercussions ($100 million dollar fine sounds like a lot unless you consider the profits they made from the illegal activity).
They way I look at it is like this: Police yourselves so the gov't doesn't have to. See here for a far more amusing take on it though
and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try.
with mixed results. He got a nice house... that he lost in the crash. His lower wages in the new state made it hard to keep even the relatively modest home he bought. If the economy had held out another few years he would have been Ok, but he was forced into retirement and lost it with the crash.
one of the dirty secrets of the housing market is that the government was paying for the hard party (prepping the land, grading it, running water, power and telecom lines, etc, etc). It was basically a trillion dollar subsidy program for home builders who reaped the rewards of cheap land they could throw a frame up on and sell for 5x times profit.
That was all well and good until "Austerity" kicked in. We kept cutting taxes on the wealthy until we had to start cutting programs, and infrastructure spending one of the first to go (right before education).
Home builders are not going to prep their own land. If they do something that was a sure fire investment becomes risky. They'll take their capital and use it to buy up existing homes to rent out. After all, you got to live somewhere.
What we need in this country is the New New Deal. A return to FDR's programs (and the high marginal tax rates for the wealthy that paid for them). But the ruling class own the media and everytime it comes up they do a 6 week ad blitz to shut it down.
and not median income. You're mixing in a few high earners who skew the results.
You can't target the working poor. The right wing will put in so many exceptions that your attempts to will fail. In Missouri they just put a work requirement in place for Medicaid. They didn't raise the income threshold before you get kicked off Medicaid. You can probably guess where this is going...
There's an easy way to see how badly off min wage workers are: even with all the attempts to deny them access to gov't help they still get $6 billion/yr in help, which is a $6 billion dollar subsidy for companies that pay minimum wage, paid for by you and me.
if they hadn't been shut out of the world banking system by US sanctions. I've never once heard a good explanation _why_ we sanctioned them either. Meanwhile the Saudi's just murdered a permanent resident (more or less a citizen finishing up their paperwork) and we didn't just turn a blind eye, we bluntly said "we make too much money selling them bombs to punish them".
I'm not saying Venezuela is some kind of wonderful, lord knows they've got their problems, but like all of South America they'd have a lot less problems if the American CIA would stop fucking with them. And meanwhile we'd have a lot less illegal immigration if we'd stop destabilizing South America & Mexico. Kind of a win-win for everybody but the oil industry and prison industry.
as a tech worker I'm happy to have fewer H1-Bs. But that said, I don't expect to see your guys out in the fields picking strawberries. Even for $15/hr. That's not just because it's shit work, it's also work that's hard to have a life around.
Also, well, we are going to need some kind of immigration because Americans, like the rest of the first world, just aren't having enough kids. If you want your 401k to not collapse you're gonna have to let them in. A better economy can only do so much for birth rates.
What you really want and need is more social programs paid for by the wages those immigrants earn and the wealth they generate. Single Payer health care's a great start. How about a federal jobs program? Infrastructure spending? The real problem with immigrants is that you as a worker don't get any benefit from them (me neither, btw). The best way to change that is with Democratic Socialism. Let 'em come here and work, but make sure the money they bring in doesn't just go to the top.