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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
She/her
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...I don't know in what universe progressives are asking for that to happen but okay.
In fact, isn't Musk ridiculously unpopular among progressives?
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:24:37 AM
It's one thing to make a spectacle. It's another to make a difference.
She/Her Pronouns
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Uh, yeah.
He's generally seen similarly to Jeff Bezos, in the 'extremely rich and a colossal asshole' kind of way.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:26:13 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
That's not what I'm saying progressives want, it's how actual climate change mitigation happens; oil companies and other sunset industries lose out big time, certain people get massively wealthy off of green energy, and the politicians who helped them get there get huge reelection campaign donations. Meanwhile costs of living skyrocket, which impacts ordinary people the most. Wealth inequality goes up as a consequence, but those people are considerably better off than they'd have been in the apocalyptic 4 degrees celsius warming scenario.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:30:37 AM
She/her
I mean, if we want to avoid enriching green private companies and execs, we could do like the Hoover Dam and build public solar farms, wind farms, etc, do a civilian construction corps sort of like during the New Deal... hey, good idea!
You can't just have people out digging trenches anymore; modern infrastructure requires extensive specialized expertise, and that's found primarily in, you guessed it, the private sector. Actually rebuilding public sector expertise would require substantial raises to government pay and benefits, along with decades that we don't have of recruiting new talent from universities.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:36:44 AM
Oh, bother.
I think we've drifted into some weird technocrat corporatist territory here.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Cap, it kinda feels like you abruptly jumped to a completely different topic after being forced to admit that NYC did in fact, try to negotiate with Amazon, and that Amazon could not, in fact, be negotiated with. And whatever your current argument is, you're presenting it so incoherently that I'm not even sure if you think what you're describing is a good thing or a bad thing.
Edited by Gilphon on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:38:45 AM
She/her
Yeah, no way the government could hire engineers. And I’m sure that solar and wind don’t require any labor that’s construction based. No way the government could provide job training for lower level jobs; it’s not like the military has done education programs before and achieved substantial results in only a few months.
Edited by wisewillow on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:38:49 AM
They probably could, but they won't, because they'd have to seize or buyout a huge amount of private property owned by people who can afford very expensive lawyers and lobbyists and who donate lots of money to reelection campaigns.
@Gliphon: I get easily sidetracked, Sorry if I frequently struggle to articulate my point. The whole point of my position is that it's a waste of political capital to try and take on the private sector in aggregate, because that's not a fight you can win. Protecting the rights of sexual and racial minorities and taking on sectors of the private economy that are especially problematic are fights that can be won.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:50:34 AM
She/her
Yeah, you’re right, it’s not like we already have public land.
I'm talking about privately held patents on technologies important for green energy initiatives, and businesses that would be in competition with government run infrastructure.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:52:09 AM
She/her
Right, of course, cause publicly funded research at public universities isn’t a thing.
Universities do basic research. Actual product development and implementation primarily happens in the private sector, though obviously not exclusively. The problem is a lot of those companies and patents already exist.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:54:42 AM
I mean, 'we should focus on battles that are actually winnable' isn't a unreasonable statement, but I hope you can understand why it's not easy for me to get that statement out of an argument where your initial opening statement was 'AOC is a representative of a scary left-wing populism that I had thought was a myth', especially when the following discussion paints her as, at worst, the kind of naive one should expect and to a certain extent even want from a young and inexperienced politician.
Cap's having an incredibly normal one tonight.
But seriously, that stuff about cost of living skyrocketing under a Green New Deal and further environmental protection is just complete bullshit. If we continue on our current path toward utter destruction of the planet, then there isn't going to be anywhere to live.
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"
Figure of Hourai
Any economic policy has so many side effects that, by necessity, you should really just look at its primary goals to see if it will work.
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Student of Story
Citation very much Needed about AOC having played any role of note in the whole thing, it was city and state politicians in NY and Amazon's own inability to read a room that did that. (Amazon reps basically openly said in community board meetings with local citizens that no, Amazon wasn't going to allow unionization, no they weren't going to contribute anything extra to the neighborhoods and cities that they were going to move into, and they were in fact going to campaign full stop to make it harder or impossible for unionization to happen. And they did it all in an arrogant "take it or leave it" fashion that caused local NYC resident to say "We'll leave it, now fuck off.")
The final straw was a NY state politician who had been a critic of the deal was made head of a committee to study the deal brokered between Governor Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio and Amazon, with the power to either veto or to reccommend vetoing it. Amazon then decided not to even bother to make a case for its own deal or to consider revising it.
As far as I know AOC had no real part in this, and trying to make her a figurehead for it is part of the general Occasio Cortez Derangement Syndrome which seems to be sweeping the country. And a city or state has every right to set the rules for a company that wants to come into it, it also has the right to refuse to throw billions of dollars at a company that proudly says it won't provide anything for the area and will actively try to change the area's culture, employment rules, etc. Especially when that company has a history of employee abuse and giving absolutely zero fucks about how much it messes up its surroundings, as Amazon does.
Other news:
Progressive ballot measures that passed in otherwise right wing states during the 2018 elections are being reversed or neutered by the legislatures of those states. This does highlight some of the key weaknesses of trying to use a ballot petition to get around entrenched political interests: if the ballot succeeds and becomes law, it can still be amended, repealed, or challenged, just like any other law. (The other big weakness being that if the wording in the law is flawed or not well thought out in the first place, it can easily cancel out the good intentions behind the initiative.) On the plus side, I hope the brazenness of state and local politicians in going against popular measures will encourage more people to kick those pols out and pay more attention to state races instead of solely focusing on national & presidential races.
It’s a similar story from Maine to Idaho. A raft of states passed progressive ballot measures seemingly at odds with their more conservative legislatures and governors; now those lawmakers are taking steps to hedge or even cancel popular initiatives to expand healthcare, end partisan redistricting, decriminalize cannabis, and increase the minimum wage. This conservative backlash highlights the growing role these initiatives play in cities and states where gridlock and gerrymandering can decide outcomes over the popular vote.
“It’s not a new phenomenon by any means,” Josh Altic, who tracks ballot measures for Ballotpedia, told City Lab in October. But winning initiatives are facing challenges with increasing frequency. “I haven’t seen this much brashness on the part of legislative bodies in the six years I’ve been covering these, or even in the last decade or so.”
That’s fine with some critics of ballot initiatives, on both the left and the right. Many believe these measures shouldn’t carry the legislative weight they do at all. Some measures are sponsored by corporations, as the money it takes to get one on the ballot—much less win one—grows each year. Others are said to be flawed from conception, hurriedly pushed through to the polls via petition. Any of these criticism can be used for politicians to reverse, stall, or restrict the reach of these laws.
“What we’ve seen is that politicians who cannot win with voters at the ballot box try to undermine the will of voters where they do have their power,” said Jonathan Schleifer, the executive director of the Fairness Project, which advocated for Medicaid and minimum wage expansions. “If the system is sick, we’re trying to heal it by going straight to voters. It’s no surprise that the virus is acting up.”
Much greater detail on referendums about various issues in the different states can be found in the link, sadly I don't think there's much I could do to go into it except quote the entire article. Check it out to see if your state is doing an end-run around a ballot initiative.
There are really no words for what a big deal the Trump-Saudi Arabia nuclear thing really is. Multiple people who were working on it had blatant conflicts of interest, as they were in a position to profit from it or, like good old Michael Flynn, were working for foreign organizations that were pushing for this. There's also the concern that, unlike Obama's deal with Iran, it would have given the Kingdom access to material and secrets for making nuclear weapons. Lets also not forget the Trump ties to Saudi Arabia (Trump: Saudi Arabia... I get along great with all of them. They buy apartments from me, they spend $40 million, $50 million, am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.) the fears that MBS is wrapping Kishner around a finger, or that Saudis have been spending tremendous amounts of money at Trump properties ever since his election, which some believe is a move to funnel money to Trump or launder it through the properties.
Finally, lets remember the enthusiasm Trump showed for more countries, including Saudi Arabia, having nuclear weapons back in 2016.
Here are articles with a further breakdown about the developments regarding the Saudi Arabia story.
Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings' staff issued an "interim staff" report Tuesday, citing "multiple whistleblowers" who raised ethical and legal concerns about the process.
"They have warned about political appointees ignoring directives from top ethics advisers at the White House who repeatedly and unsuccessfully ordered senior Trump administration officials to halt their efforts," the report states. "They have also warned of conflicts of interest among top White House advisers that could implicate federal criminal statutes."
The committee's report alleges that the major drivers behind the effort to transfer U.S. nuclear technology were retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who served as the president's national security adviser, and Thomas Barrack, who chaired Trump's inauguration committee. Flynn was fired in February 2017 for lying about conversations with the Russian ambassador to Vice President Pence and the FBI.
For about seven months in 2016, including during the presidential transition, Flynn served as an adviser to IP 3 International, a private company seeking to build nuclear plants in Saudi Arabia.
The whistleblowers told the committee that Flynn continued to advocate for IP 3's plan even after he joined the White House as the president's national security adviser in 2017.
The Atomic Energy Act requires that Congress approve any transfer of nuclear technology to a foreign country. The committee's report states that a senior director at the National Security Council (NSC), Derek Harvey, "reportedly ignored ... warnings and insisted that the decision to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia had already been made."
The NSC's lawyers realized that Flynn had a possible conflict of interest that could violate the law, the whistleblowers said, and told NSC staff to stop working on the nuclear technology transfer plan. Despite Flynn's firing in February 2017, the plan appeared to continue to progress with Barrack's support.
The committee announced that it intends to launch an investigation into this matter "to determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States, or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy."
Let's take a closer look now at what a transfer of highly sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia would mean for U.S. national security. Jeffrey Lewis is a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. And he joins us from member station KAZU.
Hi, there.
JEFFREY LEWIS: Hi.
SHAPIRO: We've just heard about what's in the report. You've read this 24-page report from the House committee. What was your reaction when you saw what was in it?
LEWIS: Well, it's bonker-balls (ph).
SHAPIRO: Bonker-balls (laughter)...
LEWIS: Yeah, to use a...
SHAPIRO: Is that a nonproliferation term?
LEWIS: No, it's an NPR term. But you know, I can't come up with a better word. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. It's a half-baked, grandiose plan with all kinds of things that could go wrong in it and people screaming at them to stop. And they don't stop.
SHAPIRO: Well, just to explain why this plan was so problematic - I mean, Saudi Arabia has signed on to a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, meaning they've committed under international law to not developing nuclear weapons. So why is it so problematic? Why are there obstacles to the U.S. selling civilian nuclear energy technology to a country like Saudi Arabia?
LEWIS: Well, you know, it really depends on the kind of technology. If you're just talking about a reactor that produces power, then you know, that's a normal thing, and that might make a lot of sense. But one of the things that the Obama administration was trying to push the Saudis on was to agree not to either enrich uranium or what's called reprocess the spent fuel. And those are basically the technologies that can be used in energy but are also used to build a bomb. So I think people are very concerned that that kind of technology might have gone through.
SHAPIRO: When you look at what's described in this report, we've heard that it raises legal and ethical concerns. To you, are the primary concerns ethical, like this could be a bad idea, or legal, like this could actually be a crime?
LEWIS: Well, there are certainly ethical concerns. And it does look like, in some cases, that they crossed over into legal concerns. But from my perspective, you know, the reason that we have these laws is to make good policy. So when individuals are going about either breaking the laws or skirting the laws, then you really are defeating the very laws that are designed to stop the spread of this most dangerous technology.
SHAPIRO: And can you tell from reading this report what the goal of the people pushing this policy was? Were they trying to counter Iran by strengthening Saudi Arabia, or were they just trying to make money on the side?
LEWIS: I mean, all I can do is look at what people said. And I go with what the one senior political official stated in the report, which was it was a scheme for these generals to make some money.
SHAPIRO: Now, this report portrays top officials in the Trump White House talking about this as though it was a done deal. But of course, approval would have had to go through Congress. Do you see any way this actually could have been completed?
LEWIS: Well, I think that it was possible to imagine some kind of nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia before the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but now it seems pretty unlikely. And frankly, the scale that they were talking about was really unrealistic. The whole thing really seemed pretty half-baked to me.
SHAPIRO: If there were profit motives involved, who do you think was looking to profit?
LEWIS: Well, my guess is the people pushing it. You know, there have been reports that at one point Saudi Arabia spent $450,000 in a single month promoting the idea that it should have access to this technology. And so even if none of these reactors got built, my guess is a lot of people stood to do very well for themselves.
I think it's fair to say that the thought of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East should give everyone pause.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Figure of Hourai
... indeed it should! Because the idea of this being somehow a new thing would be acutely confusing.
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Student of Story
Well, yeah. 
But besides Israel the only power, as far as I know, that was making any active effort in the last 20 years or so to get nukes was Iran, and their efforts never came close to being realized, (to the point that they had more or less given up on it) and then the deal Obama made with them was supposed to put the issue to rest.
The idea of multiple sides actively acquiring nukes with active help from this administration, (because if SA has a solid shot at getting nukes, I gotta believe other countries are going to do their damnedest to get them, particularly given the way SA has been throwing its weight around in the region and trying to make itself the dominant regional power) is a whole other ball game.
Is that better phrasing, or is there more about nuclear weapons in the region that I'm forgetting at the moment. Keep in mind it's 2:30AM my time, and it's not like I've gotten much sleep in the last couple of days, so I'm sure I'm not operating anywhere near 100% at the moment and I'm sure I could be overlooking things or guilty of expressing myself poorly.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
A procrastination in of itself
We’re past the days of everyone trying to get nukes (thank god Saddam and Gadafii are gone) but it’s still worrying, Saudi Arabia is already under the nuclear umbrellas of both the US and Pakistan, so any attempt by the kingdom to acquire nukes is going to be taken as a very aggressive move. Iran may well react to the move by trying to get its own nukes before Saudi Arabia nukes it, which could then be used by the Trump administration to justify invading Iran.
I’m going to rule out this being a deliberate strategy by the Trump administration to justify an invasion by the way, I don’t think the’re smart enough for it.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Ocasio Derangement Syndrome? I'm going to have to start using that.
I liked it better when Questionable Casting was called WTH Casting Agency
Oh, bother.
As someone who still has some misgivings about AOC, I agree it's pretty apt.
Disgusted, but not surprised
The Mod with the Migraine
He's a dinosaur who's simply out of place in the modern Democratic political environment, I see no reason to believe that his name recognition will outweigh his many many flaws.
And let's try taking the Corporations=Evil talk to, um ... what thread would be best for that, Economics?
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
Conservatives aren't wrong when they point out certain people are getting rich off of climate change that donate a lot of money to democrats.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:23:15 AM