Those numbers have tightened since election night. Trump took WI, PA and MI by a total of 77,188 votes (as of today), and the cheeto-head, thimble dick scumbag thinks he won in a landslide.
Clinton’s lead nationally is now 2,676,203. Those pesky illegals. :rolleyes:
Why shouldn’t every party exploit identity politics?
The Republicans have been the party of white racism for decades. I fail to see why that’s a good thing.
And no; persecuting, disenfranchising, exiling or outright murdering everyone who *isn’t *a straight conservative white male Christian isn’t good.
Yeah, a big company like Monsanto would Never, Ever pollute:
So let’s say I live in Colorado. And let’s say that a power plant in Wyoming, being entirely within the regulations of Wyoming, completely pollutes a waterway that goes through my district in Colorado, to the point where we can’t use it for drinking or fishing any more. Should I have to go to Wyoming to sue them? Should it be acceptable for Wyoming to have standards that far beyond the pale? C’mon, I’m a stupid librul, help me think this through. Who benefits from allowing the states to set their own pollution standards? Why should something which is necessarily an issue across state borders be dealt with by the states?
Black identity politics: “I cannot trust that if my murder is caught on tape, the perpetrator will be convicted, please help me.”
Gay identity politics: “I cannot marry the person I love, and in some places if I have sex with them I can be put in prison, please help me.”
Trans identity politics: “I literally live in fear for my life every day. I cannot get medical treatment. I can’t go to the bathroom in public without being harassed or abused.”
Female identity politics: “If I am raped and my rapist impregnates me, I may be forced to keep it. I don’t have sovereignty over my own body.”
White male identity politics: …You tell me. What, exactly, are the big “identity level” complaints for the dominant sociopolitical group in the USA? How are they being marginalized? Seems to me a lot of their complaints boil down to “WAAAAH I’M NOT THE SOLE DRIVING FORCE OF CULTURE AND THE ECONOMY ANY MORE!”
Nitpick: Colorado is not downstream from Wyoming.
Oh, it’s also “I wanna be able to rape and murder anyone who isn’t exactly like me! Bring back lynching! Kill the blacks, kill the browns, kill the gays, kill anyone who isn’t Christian! Nuke the Muslims! And let’s ‘Trump’ any woman we can catch!”
The shareholders of many large corporations are pension funds, institutional investors, so the individuals doing the investing have little control over what those corporations do. If Vanguard had a non-polluters fund I might put my IRA money there, but if it’s cheaper to pollute those companies that do will have an advantage over those that don’t
Ehr, sorry, but actually the idea that it’s always cheaper to pollute is a fallacy.
I’ve worked in companies where recovering raw materials or solvents required surprisingly small costs to set up and represented enormous savings just in the expense reduction of purchasing those materials. Setting up that on-site recovery process represented large savings over both the “take it all away” and the “throw it all into the river” options. But the “it’s always cheaper to pollute” people very often won’t approve that kind of projects; either they’ll throw it all into the river or they’ll pay someone to take it all away, but they won’t do the recover-on-site work because they’re convinced it’s going to be more expensive.
Yeah, they can be outright irrational that way. I recall reading an article way back in the 1980s about a company that was throwing away waste instead of extracting valuable byproducts from it, despite the fact that the waste contained of all things enough* gold* that it* visibly glittered.* But it was “waste” therefore it was *automatically *considered more profitable to just dump it.
The hits just keep on coming.
As I have said, we’re going back to the late 19th Century.
Puzder’s opposition to minimum wage increases is small potatoes, so to speak, compared to his support for replacing workers entirely with automation:
We’ve had Secretaries of Labor who were civil-rights lawyers, Congressmembers, federal government administrators, academics, etc. But AFAICT we’ve never had a Secretary of Labor whose career goals included simply eliminating labor.
This is classic Republican “put us in charge of government so that we can destroy it” to the nth power. How’s that going to fly with their recent conversion to working-class populism?
As long as you expect a logical thought process from those who elected or supported Donald Trump as the “Leader Of The Free World”, you will be let down.
It started with Reagan – the idea that government is the problem. A generation and a half have swallowed that propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Trump is most likely the natural conclusion to this movement. It will end when white ‘Merikuh’ gets a real-life education on the importance of public institutions.
What would such an education look like? Oh, how about continued wage gaps, less spending power, and unregulated corporate excesses that ultimately result in another financial system breakdown. Only this time, with 70 percent or more of everyone’s financial accounts concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of banks, the US government won’t be able to bail them out. Thus, unlike 2008 when most people were spared the worst effects of the economic collapse thanks to the “socialism” of FDR and the New Deal, that won’t happen this time. It really and truly will be 1929 all over again. The next decade ought to be fun.
I empathize with white male liberal identity politics, at least from a geographical perspective. Some voices push for guaranteed minority representation, even if there is a risk of fewer liberal representatives overall. I can see white rural liberals close to a packed minority district be resentful of the conservative state legislation that exchanged two liberal representatives of majority white voters for one liberal representative of black voters, simply because it will make liberal policies harder to enact. I can also see them be resentful of the majority-minority district because they have a representative who looks out for their views and their district. That representative is going to vote for stuff that’s good for their city, not my village, and they certainly aren’t going to answer their phone if my Social Security check is in limbo.
It doesn’t affect me much currently as a white liberal, since the Space Coast is both populous and conservative, but if I were in a situation where it did matter, I’d gladly trade one minority Democratic representative if I got two white Democrats in exchange. I’d trade races the opposite way too as long as it increased the liberal representation and they represented my city, but that just isn’t on the table in America.
Now, in reality it is the GOP who mostly enacted these districts, so that’s where the blame lies. But I can emphasize with “white identity politics” insomuch as it means “doesn’t care as much about the racial makeup of the Congress and the districts as long as we elect people who agree with my policies and politics.”
You do. Richard Spencer, alt-right leader who led cheers of “Hail Trump” after the election, likes the word “identitarian.”
Spencer has also hinted that the country needs to purge itself of all non-“Europeans”. (Including the remnants of those who met the boats. And the descendants of those brought here in chains–long before my folks left the bogs.) He’s said it might be a bit messy but was too coy to go into details.
(Spencer just spoke at Texas A&M; he wasn’t invited by the school–a former student booked the performance. Apparently a couple of dozen in the audience were “his” people. The rest were angry. Outside, there was a silent protest, a noisy protest & the school sponsored “Aggies United” at Kyle Field.)
Thanks for the links! How much is the Trump EPA going to cut back on prosecutions? How much more are people going to pollute, knowing they’ll get away with it under Trump? That’s what I’ll be interested in.
CARB also does enforcement. Are they going to maintain their pace? Pick up some slack? Or are they going to be sabotaged under Trump?
Good link too. That’s a state prosecution. I see no reason why (the more enlightened) states would let up on their environmental enforcement under a Trump administration.
Again, I’m not saying Trump = Good, what I’m pushing back against is, “Obama’s strong EPA is the only thing saving us from utter environmental ruin! We’re all doomed!”
You convinced me! We really are all doomed!
Leaked Transition Team Memo Outlines Trump’s Catastrophic Energy Agenda
Is Europe suddenly going to ditch all of their environmental aspirations - or even any of their environmental aspirations - because Trump withdraws from their agreement??
I would be really disappointed if that happened. Not with Trump, but with the Europeans.
Given what I would say to a conservative who said something this stupid and in the name of not being a hypocrite: shut the fuck up, you stupid troll.
Y’know, it’s not exactly a bad idea. Replacing labor with automation should be a goal we have. Christ, wasn’t it a utopia not all that long ago to imagine not having to work because robots took all the menial labor jobs?
…Granted, that guy shouldn’t be running the Department of Labor, but still… That’s not an insane idea, y’know?
Telling that white identity politics often goes in that way.
An arsonist knows all about starting fires, but we don’t want him/her as Fire Captain, do we?
https://www.opensecrets.org/expends/vendor.php?year=2014&vendor=Attorney+General+Scott+Pruitt+Campaign