Nevermind
Speaking as a resident of Astoria, Queens, this has all been quite exciting. Mamdani lives here and represents the district in the state assemlby and AOC is my U.S. rep. Astoria isn’t some hotbed for radical, left-wing politics, but circumstance has focused a lot of attention on our humble little slice of NYC. Trump will probably send troops here under some bullshit pretext before too long.
It’s going to be a circus of an election. Hell yeah, let’s go Zohran.
Krugman today.
Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York’s Democratic primary has created panic in MAGAland. Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s deportation policies, waxed apocalyptic:
NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, declared that New York is about to turn into “Caracas on the Hudson.”
And Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama basically declared New York’s voters subhuman, saying:
These inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt. And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home, that are living off the American taxpayers that are working very hard every week to pay taxes.
These reactions are vile, and they’re also dishonest. Whatever these men may claim, it’s all about bigotry.
…
Anyway, when masked men who claim to be ICE agents but refuse to show identification are grabbing people off the streets because they think those people look illegal, does legal status even matter? Does it even matter if you’re a U.S. citizen?
…
He might be a teeny bit communist.
But then there are other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s BDS, or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production
Socialists also believe in seizing the means of production - even Democratic Socialists, which is why they’re on the wrong side of the line for me (as opposed to Social Democrats).
Leftists seem to make very fine distinctions between their various sub-groups. “Democratic socialists” vs. “Social democrats” is basically a Monty Python skit. I think most Americans would consider “seizing the means of production” to be highly associated with Communists. It’s not something that has any support whatsoever in mainstream US politics, even leaving aside the fact that it’s basically stupid in an information economy.
Discord’s quote function doesn’t really work if you’re quoting the immediately preceding post. It automatically strips out the quote, and it takes a bit of work to get it to display the post you’re trying to respond to.
That “means of production” clip seemed pretty tongue-in-cheek to me.
I agree with you on basically all of that, but that’s why I draw my line at Social Democrats. Unlike Democratic Socialists, they don’t want to seize the means of production.
I agree. Except maybe utilities, I can see them run by the State.
(no problem quoting)
Personally, I favor what I call “free-market socialism”. If a business is too big to fail and needs to be bailed out, the bailout is in the form of a buyout. The government now owns that business, which can now compete with all other businesses in that market. If the privately-held companies can’t keep up, that’s the sign that that industry is something that should be done by the government. If they can keep up, and drive the government-owned company out of business, that’s a sign that it’s something that shouldn’t be done by the government.
Maybe, but he explicitly paired it with BDS, which isn’t really something you’d be tongue in cheek about. And the entire line follows an argument (rewind 30 seconds or so) that your agenda must be dictated by conviction, not calculus, and used those as explicit examples of things that do not yet have popular support (like Medicare-for-all or student debt cancellation) but that they firmly believe in nevertheless. The laugh just seems to be acknowledgement that yes, the public still views this position as commie shit.
Yeah, the tongue in cheek bit is the acknowledgement that seizing the means of production is a distant dream, not a concrete immediate goal.
…is anyone seriously denying that the Democratic Socialists want to seize the means of production, in the long run?
What does “BDS” mean?
Turns out it wasn’t true:
He was mostly elected by millennials.
Boycott Divest Sanction, the movement against businesses that have anything to do with Israel.
To Tommy Tuberville:
New York pays more in federal taxes than it gets back. Alabama is #2 in receiveing more than it sends.
So fuck off (NOT meant at you @ThelmaLou )
I’m all for equalizing the money. Let’s stop the rats who live off the federal government. Let them know Tuberville is all for stopping this waste.
How do you fuck up that bad?
Binning error in constructing the histogram? Those can sometimes mess up the endpoints while leaving the middle more-or-less right.
But I’d like to know the answer, too.
Of course, when you tell the average person that, there’s a good chance they’ll think you mean “voters aged 18 to 24.”