Dark Lord Vladimir Putin
I am given to understand that, in addition to causing Trump to win the US election, Russia is responsible for Brexit, and for the Catalonian independence vote.
Russia, with a GDP of less than half that of California, has, in other words, the most effective election tampering program, in the form of internet trolls and fake news, the world has ever known (or at least since back in the 50s, when the CIA was pretty good at this stuff, and willing to overthrow the government of any country that voted the wrong way).
Is this credible?
Or is Russia being used as a scapegoat for election results neo-liberal elites don’t like?
This isn’t to say Russia may not have tried to influence elections. Sure as hell, the US spends a ton of money influencing foreign elections, but is Russia “the reason”?
It seems unlikely to me, and to whatever extent it might be true, it would only be true in the sense that truly close election results have a thousand parents. If it’s close, any number of things made up the margin.
But I think it’s largely bullshit. That it is an attempt to evade responsibility by domestic elites for screwing things up, or in the case of political opponents like Clinton’s Democrats, for running terrible electoral campaigns (or both).
Trump was possible because a lot of people are very unhappy. Brexit was possible because a lot of people are very unhappy. Catalonia was possible because a lot of Catalonians are unhappy with how Spain treats them.
Or, if you wish, two out of three are driven by racism, or regional anger, or…your choice of reason. They were possible because there were already serious problems.
Something like Trump or Brexit or an independence referendum doesn’t happen primarily because of foreign interference, it happens because a lot of people are unhappy with the status quo. In such circumstances, perhaps foreign interference might make the difference, but it wouldn’t do shit unless it was already razor close.
Look home, not abroad, for why people are willing to vote for actions which elites consider unthinkable.
The primary reason for it is always, always, elite mismanagement of some sort or another.
Synoia
If it is true, then the political advisers in the US are not cost effective by a factor of at least 100.
Bill H
The liberal faction seems always to delegitimize elections when it loses – i.e. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016. If they continue to do this, what stops the right from claiming that a victory by liberals was not also due to an illegitimate election?
“The victory by Chelsea Clinton in 2034 was caused by interference of English and Canadian government trolls posting on Facebook and Twitter.”
Willy
Maybe Clinton was a terribly flawed neoliberal candidate, and Russia tried to meddle in our election, and Trump is a buffoon, and people are getting sick and tired of all this corrupt and incompetent kleptocratic establishment shit that’s ruining America.
V. Arnold
The U.S. is a Kakistocracy; a system of government ruled by the least competent and most corrupt.
The only thing Russia has done is to stay true to its cultue and values.
V. Arnold
culture
Emma
I am actually willing to cosign for about 67% of this opinion, except that:
1.) Many people all over the world have been comprehensively immiserated by neoliberalism, but most of them have selected the most horrific and unrelated scapegoats possible in an effort to assert their superiority — this makes them look like delusional idiots and delegitimizes their complaints. & I still haven’t got any sympathy for anybody who thought Donald Trump was going to ride into Dodge and save the day. (To a lot of liberals’ credit, very few of them thought Hillary Clinton would ride anywhere and save anything.) (They still nominated her, for some reason.)
2.) I’m not really informed enough to comment on Brexit, and I’m most definitely not informed enough to comment on Catalonia, but seems to me that Trump has been borne into the Oval Office on a tide of extra dirty money. More than is typical. He probably should’ve been arrested for money laundering and real estate fraud in the early 00s, as a private citizen. I don’t know how the collusion prosecution is going to go, obviously, but I don’t understand why all these Trump campaign fuckers were taking meetings with Russian oligarchs and diplomats. Is that normal? It looks like a shitty spy movie that would play on HBO on Thanksgiving afternoon. If Trump’s campaign wasn’t trying to triangulate some kind of shady-ass election scheme, why was all that shit happening? And why are people on the ultra-left so sanguine about it? America is shit, but I don’t want to see it getting worse. (It has gotten worse.)
3.) I’m not sure the kind of “collusion” liberals are alleging requires a huge budget and a sophisticated endgame.
4.) But I also don’t see, under any circumstances, why we would punish Russia for engaging in Model U.N. propaganda politics that could only have been successful if large numbers of voters were both extremely stupid and very angry, and if simultaneously we had a candidate competing for the presidency that had both the brains and the morals of a starving ferret. Even if all the allegations are true, Americans ought the be embarrassed that all it took to destroy our stolen hoard of nice things was some sneaky Facebook ads and a conman who promised to fix the economy, but only for white people. Like, really embarrassed. Get blind drunk & commit yourself embarrassed.
I am unexpectedly invested in Russia collusion narratives, who knew.
someofparts
“Or is Russia being used as a scapegoat for election results neo-liberal elites don’t like?”
plain truth, plain English and, to the great detriment of us all, still only understood by a tiny tiny minority
jonst
Emma, define please, if you would, what YOU mean by the term—in what I take are now ubiquitous ‘scary quotation marks’— “collusion”.
Russ
Good demonstration of how stupid liberals are. Like the Bourbons, they learned nothing and forgot nothing.
Trump of course is the most logical result of modern electoralism.
https://attempter.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/the-vote-was-unanimous-for-trump/
John
As American imperial chickens come home to roost, we will blame shift it onto everything including the family dog. Russia has just returned to form with tsar, boyars and serfs. The tsar, like any good mafia don, will screw with the competition wberever possible. America is filled with wannabe tsars and boyars running the show and a lot of serfs who are realizing their true situation. Will probably not end well.
Stirling Newberry
In their dreams.
Sid Finster
If “Russia” had such granular knowledge of state- and national-level politics and powers of persuasion that they could routinely flip elections, not only in the US but in Europe, and do it all for less money than it takes to run a contested City Council race in Fargo, North Dakota, why did “Russia” not bother to spend a few grand more to elect a new and friendlier Congress?
And why did “Russia” stop using its Pied Piper like superpowers on the public after Election Day?
For that matter, why stop at elections? Why isn’t Stolichnaya Vodka the best-selling beverage in the land, touted by top athletes and brainwashed doctors for its alleged health benefits (“Only Russian vodka has elektrolites!”) and swilled neat for breakfast, lunch and dinner by every man, woman and child? Why don’t zombified consumers bash each other over the head in the grocery store aisles, fighting to get their mitts on the last jar of genuine authentic Russian! caviar like it was a Cabbage Patch Kid?
Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that “Russia” has the intelligence to develop superpowers that Lex Luthor never dreamed of, but it doesn’t have the imagination to put them to use?
realitychecker
@ Sid
Well, I saw a woman buying 4 bottles of borscht at the Kroger yesterday.
How the hell do ya explain that????? 😉
Phil Perspective
I don’t know how the collusion prosecution is going to go, obviously, but I don’t understand why all these Trump campaign fuckers were taking meetings with Russian oligarchs and diplomats.
Because they have lots of money? Loads and loads of money. Us lowly proles can’t afford condos in buildings like Trump’s.
Hugh
I noticed a hole in a couple of my socks recently and I suspect a Russian connection.
Ian has this exactly right. Did Russia mess in the US election? Probably. Did other countries, like Israel, mess in them a lot more? Yes. Are there lots of unhappy and angry people in the country that would gnaw off their right hand rather than vote for a more of the same candidate like Clinton? Absolutely. Is this due to the failure of the rich and elites, and more than this their betrayal of the rest of us? You bet. Was Clinton, infamous for having the biggest tin ear and the worst political instincts in American politics, a shit awful candidate who ran a shit awful campaign? The question answers itself. Was Russian influence microscopic in relation to all this?
Does Trump and company still face lots of legal exposure due to its Russia connections in Mueller’s investigation? Yes. Collusion is not a crime, but, as has been mentioned, money laundering is. The big two, however, remain conspiracy and obstruction, and for Trump associates add in lying either to Congress or the FBI.
Re another issue that was raised, are US elections democratic? Absolutely not. The party duopoly shuts out other parties. House seats are heavily gerrymandered. The Senate is outrageously unrepresentative with the majority of Americans being represented by just 18 Senators and a minority of other Americans having 82. And the electoral college is, and was instituted by the Framers to be, anti-democratic.
Did Bush steal the 2000 election and was his theft validated by the Supreme Court? Of course, to say otherwise is to be disingenuous, dishonest or suffering from deliberate historical amnesia. A recount of the whole state of Florida would have shown that Gore had won the state despite voter purges sponsored by his brother Jeb. The Court decided to decide on grounds sufficiently narrow to preclude such a recount and deliver the state, and the election, to Bush. Was Gore also a dreadful candidate who ran a dreadful campaign? Yes to that too.
At least in 2016, Trump won the electoral college without cheating, but in losing the popular vote and by such a wide margin, his election was both undemocratic and not legitimate.
I currently give Trump about a 40% chance of completing his term mostly due to the inertia of the corrupt elites he ran against (and yet remains very much a part of). There is also the Trump taint to reckon with. The one area where Trump has been surprisingly effective is in undermining Republicans in Congress. Much of his original White House team is either gone, under investigation or both. Those that remain the so-called adults in the room, like the Vice President, the conservative goon Pence, his chief of staff Kelly, National Security Adviser McMaster, Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin, and Secretary of State Tillerson have lost most or of their credibility or like his OMB director Mulvaney or press secretary Huckabee Sanders had none to begin with. Mattis at Defense is about the only one left with cred, and with this Administration it could only be a matter of time before he falls into disrepute.
Willy
A better question is, what the hell would make somebody like Trump think he can do a difficult job like POTUS, without making a complete fool of himself? Why would he hire all ‘oligarchic’ or neoliberal staff, with mostly oligarchic and neoliberal results?
In the corporate world I found that the players (usually the winners) top commodity was inside information about other players, and not a deeper knowledge of the product they’re supposed to be trying to develop, market and sell. Inside information was used for influence, and the creation of FUD amongst the mob (many of whom ‘waste’ their time doing what they’re supposed to be doing, like gaining a deeper knowledge of the product they’re trying to develop, market and sell). Of course the players were always marketing themselves as being wholly involved with making our company “great again”.
Willy
Hugh got to it before I could post, and again, said it best.
wendy davis
of course the ‘russia did it’ meme is everywhere now. keep in mind: ‘russians’ does not mean state actors, as we saw w/ the facebook follies ads silliness creating “Chaos ahead of (and after) the election!’ but remember, post cold war, NATO repurposed itself to make sure that russia would never be revanchist, never have military or economic might again. and that’s why nato has bases and weapons systems surrounding the Bear, and more weapons going in, more drills everday, much like the ones US and SC have going on over and around north korea.
but one of herr Trump’s campaign wishes was ‘getting along with russia’, yes? well, we cant have that, can we? the rooskies are our #1 enemies! (not that it’s altogether clear just how the vaunted happy talk between DT and vlad really stretches… but i digress. zo, not only did ‘some intelligence agencies assess that the podesta emails, the DLC emails published by WikilLeaks, come from ‘russian hacking’, why Trump had shouted out in a tweet: “hey wikileaks! give us some more!” proving that assange is wikileaks pitch, as trump is…putin’s bitch, right?
so now you have (as of the past black friday) hundred-billionaire amazon bezos using his Dem mouthpiece to create #PropOrNot mccarthyite #fakenews websites, and here comes news that not only amazon host a complete cloud computing service for the CIA and intelligence agencies (C2S), but bezos will get the contract to sell everything they carry to the cia, military, and bases around the world need. who would want the endless war on terror to end? not bezos, by golly.
a couple days ago wws.org reported: “Responding to a question about the “manipulation of information” on the Internet during an appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, Schmidt announced that Google is working on algorithms that will “de-rank” Russian-based news websites RT and Sputnik from its Google News services, effectively blocking users’ access to either site.”
oh, and assange just tweeted a couple spanish news articles noting that russia really hadn’t interfered in their catalunya secession vote.
now how Trump’s DoJ making RT register as a foreign agent fits into all this is a bit beyond me, but…they did under threat of very harsh penalties, unless that the site often busts many of the myths of the Imperial foreign misadventures.
different clue
The “popular vote” majority for Clinton was made up of several million voters in just two states: California and (I have been told) New York. Trump had to win a majority of the casted votes in every state where he won the electoral votes. So Trump’s win was entirely legitimate and representatively democratically federal-republican.
Under a “national popular vote” system, New York and California would have elected their beloved preciousss “the One” Clinton. Having a pack of Californicators and New Yorkazoids determine the President for the other 48 states would have been illegitimate. If we go to a strict national popular vote-total system, the outcome will probably be civil war and the division of America into the Jonestown Clinton States of America and the Storm Trumper States of America.
different clue
I don’t have Facebook or Twitter or any other social media. I have a TV set but it isn’t hooked up to anything. I don’t know when the Russian Information Operations were supposed to have begun, so I can’t say whether they began before or after Candidate Clinton promised that “when elected”, she would put Bill Clinton in charge of the Economic Recovery Plan. She lost my vote when she said that. She revealed that she supported NAFTA, WTO membership for America, MFN for China, TTP, TTIP, and every other Trade Treason Agreement written or not-yet-written.
Trump gained my vote when Clinton declared she would support a “no fly zone” over Syria. That’s when I realized that Clinton was firmly wedded to supporting the CLEJ ( Cannibal Liver Eating Jihadis) in Syria and the GAJ ( Global Axis of Jihad) all over the world. Two , three, many Libyas! I realized that the Clinton had to be stopped before it killed again. And the only way to stop the Clinton was to elect its opponent, the Trump.
Trump has destroyed one political dynasty ( the Bushes) and may have aborted another ( the Clintons). I am grateful for that.
It looks like Trump is delivering on one good thing already. By reversing Clintonite-Obamazoid policy against Syria, he has passively permitted the R + 6 the space they need to defeat the GAJ and the CLEJ. Pat Lang’s most recent SST post describes the likely outcome of the victory for law and order in Syria which Trump has allowed the COLA ( Coalition Of Lawful Authority) to achieve. Here is the link.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/11/the-end-is-in-sight-in-syria.html
Peter
There may be some hidden logic, based on fear, in the snowflakes continuing illogical screeds about Putin/Russia. They have good reason to fear the craft that the Russians bring into play when they lobby for their interests.
Snowflakes view everyone but themselves in the US as weak minded and easily led astray and yet their Red Queen was the victim of Putin’s guile and manipulation. She was only a Pink Princess when SOS but the wily Rasputin led her by the nose into the U1 deal selling our strategic uranium reserves
It only took some smooth talk and a few large checks to manipulate the Clintons so how could inexperienced Trump and his minions resist this omnipotent Russian force? Just talking to the Russians means they are already trapped in collusion because the powerful experienced snowflakes and their Red Queen already suffered that fate.
Willy
Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here….
Sweet creeping jesus man.
Ché Pasa
Are the all-powerful Clintons and Obama responsible for your misery? DC and others would say they are.
It’s absurdity, of course, just as the notion that Russia/Putin caused the election of Trump. It’s nonsense.
But where did many of the false notions about the HellBitch come from? The false notion I point to most often is the pernicious lie that she of her own accord and on her own authority as President would start a war with Russia and would escalate to a nuclear exchange due to a purported dispute over no-fly zones in Syria. This is apparently a very deeply seated falsehood among certain Clinton haters, but Clinton hate has been around for decades, initiated almost immediately after Bill Clinton’s election by a plurality of the voters in 1992.
And as we all know, Bill Clinton personally strangled all 500,000 Iraqi children who are said to have died due to the imposition of sanctions, and then, while getting a blow job from an intern, he fed their livers to the HellBitch who was in the process of murdering Vince Foster or Qaddafi or somebody.
We all know this. It’s the common understanding, just as we are expected to understand that Putin and his troll farms elected Trump.
Well, no. That’s not what happened, but oh well.
Maybe in a century or two, some of this madness will dissipate. But for the time being…
Dan
Elites don’t want to admit they fucked the little people so hard they’re tech-addled, afflicted with austerity-anxiety, shit-education, and all kinds of PTSD — which they cope with by turning to bad religion, bad food, bad internet information, and sheer bloody minded reaction.
If you look at that great brain trust at U of T, Jordan Peterson, he is plainly a self-made personal crisis solving his problems by making them all of ours, by projecting solutions to the “crisis of modernity” espoused by far-right Russian, European, and American religious and political reactionaries for over a century. The gods are dead! The masters have betrayed us! Run around screaming with hair on fire!
I guess we should be glad the elites are prompting the masses to blame Russia, not the academic “cultural Marxists” and multicultural Left.
Just give them time.
Peter
@DC
‘COLA’ produced a spit-take I’m still trying to clean off my screen. Assad and his military dictatorship will rule under martial law for the forseeable future in Syria. The Russians may be able to keep them and their Iranian Jihadi friends from inflicting too much law and order on the defeated population and I hope they are up to that task.
When Trump sent Assad a clear cruise missile message to stop the gassing the Assadists at SST were wetting their pants and hissing like snakes. It was probably a wise decision by Trump to let Russia keep their imperial holding in Syria so they are stuck to the tar-baby Assad and responsible for reconstruction along with Iran.
The big question now is what will Russia do, if anything, when the Israel/Hezbollah war begins.
Duncan Idaho
Those are commonly known as US citizens, whose vote should be worth as much as that of any other US citizen, but if you and your ilk insist that they are not, we can always secede taking our money and the other Blue States with us.
different clue
@Peter,
Things go better with COLA.
different clue
@Duncan Idaho,
Actually, the “Blue States” are mainly Red States with Huge Blue Cities. I suspect the 4 million popular vote lead for Clinton in California mainly happened along the coast . . . in the greater San Francisco Bay area and the Greater Los Angeles area, and elsewhere along the coast and maybe some inland college towns. I wonder who the Inland Empire Californians voted for . . . the people from the parts of California where the food is grown.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the inland parts of California and the upstate parts of New York reverse-seceded from a seceded California and New York . . . and sought to rejoin their fellow Red Zones?
Hugh
I agree with Duncan Idaho. There is a lot of deceptive substitution going on. A citizen is a citizen is a citizen. So why bring up states and *shudder* *gasp* *snort* California and *sgs* New York? And what? Isn’t this the same New York that Trump hails from?
What kind of meaningless made up term is “cultural Marxist”? And if the Left is multicultural, isn’t it just reflecting the rest of the country? So where’s the beef? unless you are some sort of Charlottesville white supremacist? And what does any of this have to do with anything, especially the elites? The elites are made up of both Democrats and Republicans. They are neoliberal in economic policy and neoconservative in foreign affairs. Crooks all and owned and paid for by the rich. Not a leftist or a marxist in the bunch. But I guess some people can’t breath without dogwhistles.
Ché Pasa
In nearly all cities in the United States a majority, often an overwhelming majority, voted for Clinton, even in the deepest red states. This is part of the reason why the mythology of the “rural white male” voter electing Trump got going.
In fact, there aren’t enough rural voters of any race or gender to elect anyone to the presidency. Nor has “Rural America” been deindustrialized, thus causing angst and opioid addiction among those despairing rural white male voters that supposedly elected Trump (on Putin’s orders, of course).
Rural America was never industrialized to begin with, but it has been exploited and largely depopulated by the banks and the rest of the financial sector. What’s left of the population in Rural America is not all that white or male in any case.
Trump voters tended to be relatively well-off or very well off suburban and exurban residents, most of whom were white, but a not inconsiderable number weren’t. The vote for Trump was a class vote, and it wasn’t working class.
This is the same Republican voter demographic Clinton and her consultants were so futilely chasing.
Of course they were easily persuaded by Putin’s online trolls that Clinton was Teh Evul. Never mind they were tribalist Republicans who wouldn’t vote for a Democrat if their lives depended on it. They simply won’t.
If HellBitch had only run as a Republican! Heh.
Dismissing the city vote is stupid. And it is bound to bite back hard when the time comes. Elevating the suburban/exurban vote to the be the only one that matters is equally stupid, but that’s what Trump and the Rs are doing. The majority of the population and voters have a much stronger claim on control of the government under the current system than the 30% or so who actually put Trump in the White House (after Putin badgered them into doing it, of course.)
The unfortunate fact is that there aren’t enough rural residents or voters to affect presidential elections, so we who live in Rural America can actually vote for anyone we like or not vote at all, and it’s not going to make much difference. Freedom!
Luis
Hi Ian,
Can you please elaborate on what you mean by “Russia, with a GDP of less than half that of California”. The source I can find list Russia GDP (in nominal terms) as about the same size as Spain. Are you referring to GDP per capita?.
But leaving that aside, I find this kind argument a weak one. After all, it could also be used for the space sector (with a GDP half the size of Catalonia, Russia wound’t be in a position to send anything into space), and Russia has one of the strongest one in the world. So it seems to me Russia has enough resources, and it’ more about how they choose to allocate them that matter, and how they have allocated them for decades.
Regards
Luis
Duncan Idaho
People vote, empty acres don’t.
Yeah, where people live. I hate to break it to you but a vote is a vote is a vote and any president who loses the popular vote will not be considered legitimate by his opponents.
realitychecker
Um, some folks need to read up on what it means to be part of a federal system.
Just sayin’ . . . (free advice from a lawyer lol.)
A1
Ah Peter do you really think your Israeli buddies want to fight Hezbollah? Fighting women and children is one thing but real armed men ready and willing to fight?
So Peter do Christians have a place in the middle east? And why so worried about Russia when you have the mighty IDF? Or is it because the IDF were beaten last time?
Peter
@A1
Hezbollah does position its fighters in among the civilian population and they have located their massive missile force in heavly populated areas hoping people like you can influence the UN to save them just as they did the last time. I doubt that most Israelis want another war but the threat is real and growing and will be met.
Charlie
Way to many people seem to wish for a Hunger Games type scenario here. It’s bad enough that we’re already ruled by freaks, and some wish to be ruled by a small subset of techies?
If anything the popular vote count points to a complete overhaul of the system to allow people to have a hand in how the laws are written and the money is spent. The problem isn’t the electoral college. The problem is that so many people don’t have a say, it’s actually counterproductive to vote.
Charlie
Doh. Too, not to. Mobile phone.
different clue
@Duncan Idaho,
I hate to break it to you but Clinton and you and everyone else understood that our Presidential election system is constitutionally based on the Electoral College. Clinton and you and everyone else understood that going into the election.
Further, I hate to break it to you but an Electoral College vote is an Electoral College vote. Voter votes are counted within each state and the Electoral Votes of each state are assigned according to each state’s own rules about how the voter’s vote totals of each separate state come out. I don’t know if any states assign their Electoral College Votes proportionally according to voter totals within each separate state, or whether every state assigns its Electoral Votes on the basis of Winner of the voter-vote-totals Takes All.
So still more furtherer, the Electoral votes are the legitimate votes which legitimately elect the President.
And therefore, most furtherest of allest, the feeling of the vast surplus of popular voters for Clinton in the two states where that surplus was concentrated that basing Trump’s victory on Trump’s winning of the more Electoral Votes is illegitimate is in itself an illegitimate feeling. And I personally don’t care how you, or 4 million other Pink Kitty Cap voters feeeeeeelllll.
If all those Pink Kitty Cap voters for Clinton have decided to feel that the Electoral College system is illegitimate, let them support the movement for another Constitutional Convention which is building in any number of states so that they can seek to have the Electoral College abolished and a unitary popular-vote-total system established.
( Maybe Clinton should have spent some campaign time in Wisconsin/Michigan/Ohio/etc. where she lost all those Electoral Votes due to losing the slenderest thread of voter votes in those states . . . the Brexit States as Michael Moore called them. Then again, perhaps Clinton should not have announced her intention to make the Free Trade Treasonist Bill Clinton her chief of the Economic Recovery Plan when elected. That statement of support for TTP, TTIP, and every other Free Trade Treason )
Tom W Harris
Actually she did run as a Republican. That’s the main reason she lost.
Charlie
You can place a good bet that if it were the other way around, the kitty cat hat wearers would not be complaining.
Hellfire Hillary can just be the queen of California.
jrkrideau
@ Luis
Data grabbed off the internet with no warranty whatsoever.
GDP by country
Californa 2.448 trillion USD (2015)
Russia 1.283 trillion USD (2016)
Ratio in %
Russia / California = 52%
So roughly in line with Ian’s statement. This is not surprising, the California economy dwarfs many countries. Flawed as the GDP is it seems to say that California is damned wealthy.
S Brennan
“California is damned wealthy” and they tax the shit out of paycheck Joe’s & Jane’s with a 10% income + 10% sales tax…while letting the wealthiest claim residence in WA, NV & TX. That corrupt tax system leads to crappy roads for Jane & Joe to navigate as they commute past the miles of empty “investment homes” closer to work.
Duncan Idaho
Different Clue,
In the entire 20th century, no President won the electoral college without winning the popular vote, in the 21st century, it’s already happened twice. The first time we got an incompetent idiot who started two wars, this we got another incompetent idiot who is about to sign a tax bill that will fuck almost every American and make the economy even more fragile than it currently is…
If you think this can happen too many more times with a violent backlash, I have got a bridge to sell you.
realitychecker
@ Duncan
I think you meant to type “without a violent backlash . . .”?
If so, doesn’t that serve classic revolutionary theory which asserts that the people must first be made angry and hurting enough to make a revolution?
Hmmm. (Maybe that’s why we should all learn to consider things from all angles?)
Peter
Poor Duncan the snowflake still in denial that the Red Queeen was denied the throne by our republic’s constitution. You can see the Stalinist tendencies of these coastal creatures displayed openly when they demand the constitution be destroyed so they can regain their lost power.
The democracy they want is the one that serves their twisted goals and mob rule suits them fine at least until they gain the power to install Party rule.
The snowflakes failed and were humiliated in the last election and they are continuing to fail. So long as that remains true there will be no reason for patriots to rise to meet the commie threat with violence.
realitychecker
I don’t want to see my country ruled by either the ‘commies’ or the corporatocracy.
“We the People” is still the phrase that most warms my heart.
Nobody in power gives a damn about taking care of We the People. That is blatant and obviously truie.
So I don’t give a damn about them, or what happens to them, for that matter.
Peter
@RC
We may be living in the best example possible of we the people being represented over the objections of the commies and corporates. Trump is certainly a capitalist with a family corporation but his policies are populist and challenge the worst of crony capitalism.
Trump winning the election with the corporate elite outspending him by almost double looks like a huge loss of power for the corporate side. When the RNC spent ten times more corporate money than Moore spent in Alabama and lost is another example of corporate failure and people winning.
What we see now is the corporate elite colluding with the commies to further NWO globalism. They are enraged by enough of the people choosing populism and nationalism to possibly stop their Stalinist one world government plans.
realitychecker
@ Peter
I was hoping to see a lot more populism by now, but I am not disappointed if we just get enough anger for the People to rise up. Unlike you, I can’t accept the deep-down unfairnesses and corruptions of our overall system, I think we should be doing MUCH better by the People who supposedly own the country.
That said, the Trump effect on political correctness is a constant source of delight for me. 🙂
Peter
@RC
Trump has done most everything he could do on his own including killing the TPP, the Paris agreement, the CPP and reviewing excessive Obama regulation. Anything else he wants will have to come through congress where he has powerful enemies in his own party. That blockade may be broken in the next election and then we will see what further populism is possible.
Just because I don’t support the death penalty for robo-signing doesn’t mean I accept any real corruption anywhere. When the FBI reported the fraud in liar loans they recommended prosecution of the mortgage brokers and the homeowners who knowingly signed the fradulent documents. So long as it isn’t repeated I can live with Bush’s changing the law to excuse everyone for these crimes.
Trump is trying to deal with some incredible corruption at the CFPB with a court ruling that their operating structure was unconstitutional. This is Goofy Warren’s little snake-pit and party power platform. The snowflakes will whine about an attack on this shining example of oversight and consumer protection while an account of its first years from an early hire enforcement officer exposes the corruption from day one.
This lawyer is a republican that was hired before the extreme, and illegal, hiring screening regime developed and may be the only republican hired for any position anywhere in this Stalinist Party Bureau. The hiring and other meetings were not recorded and no one was allowed to take notes. When they finally got to protecting the consumers they targeted businesses based on their available cash not the extent of their crimes. They kept $100 million from their first big score and the victims got pennies.
realitychecker
The supposed consumer protection was never really meant to materialize.
But you continue to ignore the role of the credit reporting agencies in the housing fiasco, and I think that is a key to understanding that this was an avalanche of fraud. I don’t think you really understand what happened there.
Peter
The consumer protection investigations were already underway in many different bureaus of the US gov but Dodd-Frank created this showboat to take over those investigations and make shiny PR for the Clintonites.
If you are referring to Moody’s and other credit reporting agencies they are not machines and were subject to the same human nature as everyone else. I think it was called irrational exuberance and it was contagious.
realitychecker
@ Peter
“If you are referring to Moody’s and other credit reporting agencies they are not machines and were subject to the same human nature as everyone else. I think it was called irrational exuberance and it was contagious.”
Calling corruption “human nature” doesn’t make it OK. Not even close. This was the key to everything bad that happened with the mortgage securitization business, causing the threat of collapse of the economy.
You should understand the essential role the credit agencies played. They were supposed to be the honest gatekeepers protecting everybody’s retirement money from being invested in unsafe securities; those pension funds REQUIRED only AAA grade investments, the agencies said that shit grade securities were AAA quality. So regular working folks got to be targeted by Wall Street pirates. The bribe was the threat of not getting more work, and was enough to get the agencies to lie about the quality of securities they had no basis for rating so highly.
I know you are capable of understanding this dynamic, puzzled why you act like you can’t.
Peter
@RC
You are trying to convince me that you are a mind reader and have special knowledge of the people at Moody’s thinking and that they are corrupt. There was a lot of presssure from the banks to get the AAA ratings but thay had no other credit rating agencies to threaten Moody’s with moving their business to. I don’t think anyone has shown there were kickbacks for good ratings which would be corruption and crime.
The people at Moody’s and other CRA’s made huge errors and failed in their duty to protect investors and should have paid for their human errors.
What’s amazing to me is with all this error, hubris and greed we survived a worldwide financial meltdown that shut down the flow of the lifeblood of our system. Many people were injured but because we survived they can recover.
realitychecker
Peter, I concede that you choose to remain unenlightened on this particular point. Much has been written about the details you seem to be not aware of.
Funny to have you call me a commie; I think of myself as a libertarian with humanistic flavoring lol.