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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Elizabeth Warren Posts Her 2018 Taxes: ‘Doing This Should Be Law’ – Ms. Warren’s tax returns showed she earned about $325,000 from her books, in addition to her Senate salary. She has called on all candidates to release their taxes
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-taxes.html
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Pedant here, but only the House Speaker is a lawmaker. They're all elected officials, but those in the Executive Branch aren't lawmakers.
So, with Barr claiming (with no evidence provided as of yet) that Trump's campaign was spied on, I'm wondering if that will help or hurt Trump. If there were warrants authorizing such monitoring, it might hurt him. I doubt that Obama would be so reckless to unilaterally order monitoring or anything like that.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/10/politics/barr-doj-investiation-fbi-russia/index.html
All three of those Presidents operated in vastly different political environments and cultures. Populism is a very wide and fluid term, even more so over time.
Edited by Rationalinsanity on Apr 10th 2019 at 3:56:22 PM
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.So, basically, I think that's something that makes it a neutral thing.
If the problem of your society is the people then that's something policy cannot fix.
This doesn't really mean anything, every rule has exceptions. Roosevelt and Lincoln being great is perfectly compatible with populists being terrible as a group.
Personally, while I distrust populism I don't find it to be an especially useful term in that it's often very fluid and vague. But I still think this argument is vacuous.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Apr 10th 2019 at 12:02:19 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangIts not a vacuous point if the question is whether populism is inherently negative to bring up positive examples of the fact. It is, in fact, quite pertinent as a counter-example.
I agree with its utter uselessness at description, though. I see it a lot used to describe "candidate I don't like", or "candidate that veers too far Left or Right for my taste".
Edited by AzurePaladin on Apr 10th 2019 at 3:09:38 PM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerWe're not likely to see such a thing any time soon. It would mean making people's incomes public access, and that's a no-no in the United States. Corporations don't like it when their employees compare salaries to figure out who's getting ripped off.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Or, for that matter, find out that the top offices aren't as charitable or (I suspect one indiviual in particular of this motivation) as rich as they claim to be.
I think the whole Nielsen image thing boils down to those close to her wanting to establish it as either Just Following Orders at best or Punch-Clock Villain at worst - she wasn't doing it because she was malicious, she was doing it because it was her duty!
So, with Barr claiming (with no evidence provided as of yet) that Trump's campaign was spied on, I'm wondering if that will help or hurt Trump. If there were warrants authorizing such monitoring, it might hurt him. I doubt that Obama would be so reckless to unilaterally order monitoring or anything like that.
I'm reminded of the SNL skit "What Even Matters Anymore?", as I suspect that even getting the warrant wouldn't matter a damned bit to the GOP base, who were more than happy to ignore the FISA fuckery back when Bush was the one doing it.
Edited by ironballs16 on Apr 10th 2019 at 5:05:49 AM
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"More like Everyone Has Standards and hers is she won't do shit that'd put her in jail.
@Charles-
I'm kind of questioning the idea of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt (I think FDR is a closer call) qualifying or even self-identifying as populists.
I mean I know that people on the then-contemporary Left (i.e. Marx himself) liked Lincoln, and that Teddy adopted policies favored by populists, but I'd say that Lincoln was representing a pro-business party, but one whose policies included anti-slavery, open-borders/immigration, and providing land to Homesteaders, which IMO basically makes him the 19th century equivalent of a (neo)liberal Democrat. And as I understand it, Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive policies were in part a more conservative/ "respectable" adoption of the policies favored by Socialist agitators, so as to take away steam from those movements (in addition to Roosevelt being genuinely against corruption and in favor of various good polices).
Lincoln does lead to a lot of hairsplitting, because Left and Right don't really comfortably line up with contemporary versions (and at least arguably, the Democrats of the time period had some overlap with contemporary Democrats, especially the avowedly populist kind), but with Teddy, I'm pretty sure Left-wing Populists (i.e. a party that called themselves that) actually existed during his lifetime/Presidency, and he wasn't one of them.
"Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive policies were in part a more conservative/ "respectable" adoption of the policies favored by Socialist agitators, so as to take away steam from those movements (in addition to Roosevelt being genuinely against corruption and in favor of various good polices)."
FDR did him one better: he took the leaders of the socialist left and gave them jobs in his administration and a chance to implement their ideas.
It was a pretty good Deal, but it gutted the Left as an opposition. And they had to compromise on the racism.
That's a very self-serving view of the "compromise on racism" element. A more honest and less noble fact was that a lot of the Left in America outright betrayed the anti-racism element of their program to encourage America to get involved in the war on behalf of the Soviet Union. They more or less dropped all equality calls to focus instead on the war.
Mind you, the communist party was actively anti-New Deal as a belief that repairing capitalism was something that would inhibit its collapse in their view. Again, dropped for support of the war.
Populism isn't a Right or Left viewpoint so much as a tool. It's more akin to polls or lobbying groups than it is to a position. Basically, it's an attempt to circumvent party politics and appeal directly to the people. The Republican Party was created on a populist platform with the view that the existing parties had compromised too much on the issue of slavery.
Slavery which was a huge issue among the public who considered it a great evil (enough to—drum roll—create the Republican party).
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 10th 2019 at 3:07:26 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Excuse me? Are you suggesting that the US shouldn't have gotten involved in WW 2?
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangReally?
[eye roll]
The sad fact is I'm going to have to say no, that's not what I meant.
I'm generally against abandoning equality as a goal. They should have supported intervention against the Nazis and continued to support equality.
They threw blacks under the bus for their Soviet masters and it was a gross betrayal of American civil rights.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 10th 2019 at 3:12:08 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Charles, I honestly have no idea what you are talking about here. FDR? American Communists? Something else? Because I don’t see the connection between favoring intervention and abandoning African American rights.
Like you make it sound like you are arguing that the anti-intervention/ pro-Nazi side was more pro-Civil Rights and that people who favored fighting alongside Russia/against Nazis were worse on Civil Rights.
Which I don’t think is what you are arguing or at least I hope not. But that’s what it sounds like. Especially because IIRC you’ve stated that as a pacifist you don’t think the US should have intervened.
Incidentally, your Lincoln argument doesn’t really make sense. Like as I understand it, you are arguing that since Lincoln was representing a majority of people by being anti-slavery, he was a populist. But that’s not actually what the term populist means.
Edited by Hodor2 on Apr 10th 2019 at 5:38:17 AM
Binary doublethink seems to be the problem here.
I am anti-authoritarian.
Pro-Equality.
Pro-Democracy
So I hate the Nazis.
And I hate Stalin slightly less but still a lot.
And hate the fact the American Communist Party (the Far Left of its time) abandoned racial equality as a goal because the Soviet Union wanted support.
None of which remotely means I'm not anti-Nazi.
Because in what universe does being against one dictator require u to support another?
Mind you, a large part of me assumes you're taking the piss because I can't imagine anyone supporting Stalin or the Nazis on these boards.
But for the short Wikipedia summary of, "How Blacks Left the Communist Party"
Basically, the Communist Party died in the USA because it tilted like a windmill. First supporting the Nazi regime when the Soviets signed their pact and then turning against it when they were enemies again—both times betraying black members.
Much like the American Nazis, the US Communists were foreign actors serving a foreign power and people wised up to it.
I don't use "Soviet masters" lightly but it was unfortunately true.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 10th 2019 at 3:46:03 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Populism basically means stating that the "Elites" (whoever they be) are out of touch with the common man and not representing their interests. In the case of Lincoln, a good chunk of the Republican Party's platform was the existing Washington structure was wholly compromised by the attempts to appease Southern interests in the matter of slavery.
Which...in direct opposition to Trump...is 100% true as virtually everyone not interested in compromise then joined the Republican Party.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.But in what way are you arguing that the American Communists abandoned support for equality. Didn’t they support intervention? Are you arguing that supporting fighting on the same side as Russia/ supporting FDR’s bad civil rights policies in favor of opposing Hitler constitutes abandoning civil rights?
If so, you’re really sounding like Pat Buchanan here.
Edit- I see your edit. That makes more sense. Yeah, I agree that there was a lot of support for Stalin over everything else. Still, I think you’re kind of equivocating over whether you think US intervention was bad. It sounds like yes, but you should come out and say it.
As for Lincoln, while I agree that slavers we’re elites, I’m very skeptical at the label of populist because I don’t have an impression that there was any kind of anti-elite framing to the then Republican platform. And conversely, I feel like the most anti-elite framing of the time was among Democrats who didn’t like Northern factory owners or fighting on behalf of African Americans (not the word they would use). Because populists can be and often are the bad guys.
Til;dr you are defining populist as meaning good policies/ looking at the ideal meaning of populism to define Lincoln as a populist, rather than looking at Lincoln’s policies and rhetoric.
Edited by Hodor2 on Apr 10th 2019 at 5:59:05 AM

Sales taxes inherently fuck over poor people. Fuck this bill and the horse it rode in on.
Edited by wisewillow on Apr 10th 2019 at 2:22:43 PM