Progressive Peanut Gallery: I plan to transform my town into a socialist utopia

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Progressive Peanut Gallery: I plan to transform my town into a socialist utopia

«‹›72 »

Concerned Citizen: Jul 22, 2007; Ramrod XTreme

this is my favorite progressive, chicago mayor rahm emanuel. he's for affordable healthcare, good schools, and he has worked very hard over his life to elect progressives all over this country. i hope everyone will donate money to re-elect him for a 3rd term

# ? Apr 29, 2016 05:44

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 28, 2024 00:15

Fast Luck: Feb 2, 1988

Classic Comrade posted:

nope. the only three that got an e-mail so far were zephyr, lucy, and pramila.

Fetterman was on Berniecrats.net, which btw when I was getting text telling me to vote, they mentioned that website so it's sort of tied in
http://berniecrats.net/#PA

# ? Apr 29, 2016 05:45

Pinterest Mom: Jun 9, 2009

Concerned Citizen posted:

this is my favorite progressive, chicago mayor rahm emanuel. he's for affordable healthcare, good schools, and he has worked very hard over his life to elect progressives all over this country. i hope everyone will donate money to re-elect him for a 3rd term

I think it's very inspiring that he didn't let his physical disability deter him from seeking office.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 05:48

Fast Luck: Feb 2, 1988

Concerned Citizen posted:

this is my favorite progressive, chicago mayor rahm emanuel. he's for good schools

just seeing rahm mentioned i already know youre trolling, but lol

# ? Apr 29, 2016 05:48

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Concerned Citizen posted:

I love poop

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:25

stoutfish: Oct 8, 2012; by zen death robot

this is a real nice safe space you got here

shame if a micro-aggression were to happen to it

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:26

NumberLast: Jun 7, 2014

Concerned Citizen posted:

this is my favorite progressive, chicago mayor rahm emanuel. he's for affordable healthcare, good schools, and he has worked very hard over his life to elect progressives all over this country. i hope everyone will donate money to re-elect him for a 3rd term

Nah he's apparently running in Minnesota now.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:33

Breadallelogram: Oct 9, 2012

Good thread CC.

My probation was 100% worth it. Gassing a very active thread for an active campaign (even if it's not succeeding) is dumb as gently caress when there are Jeb and Scott Walker threads still open.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:36

Freemason Rush Week: Apr 22, 2006

BIG DUMB POST INCOMING :yarg:

When it comes to identity politics, I think one of the problems is that we are accepting the terms set forth by moderates and right-wing extremists. As an example, here's how one group of allies responded to Ted Cruz's comments wrt bathroom bills:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ddblwBpvA

I don't mean to single these guys out, they're just the first ones I found with a handy bite-size clip of their coverage. But what are we actually getting here? Some head-shaking, some righteous indignation. Sometimes there's a bit of hand-wringing about how the LGBT community is being attacked so heavily by regressives. But what's missing?

1) Context. Did you know that there's a single law firm that has been pushing these bathroom bills? That many of these bills have language that is almost word-for-word identical to the text put out by this anti-gay organization? I'm trans and even I didn't know about this until ChickenArise posted the following URL to the trans megathread:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/alliance-defending-freedom-lobbies-anti-lgbt-bathroom-bills

So in other words, these are not legislatures independently choosing to pursue this issue. This is a coordinated attack on transgender people, carried out by an organization working from the shadows. An organization headed by a man who wrote a book called The Homosexual Agenda. So let's call them what they are: a deep-pocketed hate group that's interfering in the personal lives of minorities. This is an opportunity to showcase how unelected but moneyed interests work behind the scenes to shape our national discourse. That should never be accepted, and should be called out at every opportunity.

2) A refutation of false claims. Transgender women are the victims of sexual assault, not the perpetrators. In fact I've been unable to find a single case of a transgender woman sexually assaulting anyone, much less in a bathroom. But so far, I've only seen a single news organization highlight this point:

http://abc11.com/politics/transgender-sexual-assault-victim-says-shell-defy-hb2/1296062/

Even then, they gave McCrory a pass when he said this was a "new issue." That is a boldfaced lie. The first transgender American to publicly discuss their transition fought in World War 2, and garnered a fair bit of attention and media coverage in the 1950s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Jorgensen

This is not a new phenomenon, but once again by failing to provide that context the news and even advocates are inadvertently giving legitimacy to their opponents. This issue is not "some people think you have to use the bathroom that matches your birth certificate because they think it will cut down on sexual assault," it's "a hate group is secretly workshopping its discriminatory legislation around to local and state governments to use as a wedge issue in a cynical attempt to get votes by pretending this is a strange new phenomenon, when in reality this issue is over 50 years old and should have been addressed a long time ago." And you can take it further from there: if we knew transgender people were a thing in the 50's, why didn't we start working on it? Why didn't they teach kids about gender dysphoria, so that we could identify the problem and get treatment before they killed themselves (something over 40% of all trans people attempt)? Why was this reality hidden from children growing up before the 21st century, and why did we as a society do nothing to address this very real issue?

How bathroom discrimination is discussed is part of a larger pattern in our national discourse, which is to keep falling for the Golden Mean fallacy. SMBC Theater had a pretty good parody video of this a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGArqoF0TpQ

Right now, both sides of the debate are usually a regressive social conservative and a moderate liberal. Neither party is interested in discussing the money angle, because they both want the status quo. This framing of the national discourse as a dialog between the socially left and right wings of social conservatives is, obviously, a false narrative. Which is why when we discuss identity politics issues, we have to keep hammering home how important the role of money is in all of our political issues. Off the top of my head, here are some ways in which money plays a part in bathroom bills:

1) Money in politics is not only about bribery. The organization pushing this legislation has a wide reach because they can buy the time and energy required to get it in everyone's hands. And unlike the other side - the HRC, UCLA, etc. - they're doing it while hiding from the public. Why isn't it mandatory for the origin of this legislation to be disclosed to the public? Well, because moneyed interests from out of state know it's bad PR to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar. And in a country where bribery is legal, it was bound to happen that parties other than industry lobbyists would start sneaking around with pre-written laws for power-hungry pols to crib from.

2) Trans people are already handicapped economically, making it hard to fight back. Trans people have some of the highest rates of unemployment and homelessness of any group in America. Given that there is no protection against discrimination for employment or housing in many parts of the country, that's to be expected. And since many health insurance companies won't pay for any of our approved treatments - we're talking thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars - we're on average poorer than even people with the same take-home pay that we get. Without the support of non-profits, we'd be hard-pressed to defend ourselves from a bunch of rich regressives.

3) The only pushback that has made a real difference so far is from the 1%. If it wasn't for large corporations and rich artists boycotting the state, North Carolina would only have a handful of protesters on their hands. McCrory and company have been blindsided because they assumed they'd be able to push the trannies around with impunity, but they weren't counting on the capital class to take a stand (they usually don't, after all). In a country where wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few, the concerns of those few are the only ones that are seriously considered. Whether you're for or against bathroom discrimination bills, that should give you pause.

tl;dr - show the receipts, expose them for the lying amoral hucksters they are, then bring it back to class war

(feel free to pick this apart and show me why I'm dumb and wrong, by the way)

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:37

Smoremaster: Aug 5, 2009; Don't forget to source your quotes!

Mr. Horrible posted:

BIG DUMB POST INCOMING

When it comes to identity politics, I think one of the problems is that we are accepting the terms set forth by moderates and right-wing extremists. As an example, here's how one group of allies responded to Ted Cruz's comments wrt bathroom bills:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ddblwBpvA

I don't mean to single these guys out, they're just the first ones I found with a handy bite-size clip of their coverage. But what are we actually getting here? Some head-shaking, some righteous indignation. Sometimes there's a bit of hand-wringing about how the LGBT community is being attacked so heavily by regressives. But what's missing?

1) Context. Did you know that there's a single law firm that has been pushing these bathroom bills? That many of these bills have language that is almost word-for-word identical to the text put out by this anti-gay organization? I'm trans and even I didn't know about this until ChickenArise posted the following URL to the trans megathread:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/alliance-defending-freedom-lobbies-anti-lgbt-bathroom-bills

So in other words, these are not legislatures independently choosing to pursue this issue. This is a coordinated attack on transgender people, carried out by an organization working from the shadows. An organization headed by a man who wrote a book called The Homosexual Agenda. So let's call them what they are: a deep-pocketed hate group that's interfering in the personal lives of minorities. This is an opportunity to showcase how unelected but moneyed interests work behind the scenes to shape our national discourse. That should never be accepted, and should be called out at every opportunity.

2) A refutation of false claims. Transgender women are the victims of sexual assault, not the perpetrators. In fact I've been unable to find a single case of a transgender woman sexually assaulting anyone, much less in a bathroom. But so far, I've only seen a single news organization highlight this point:

http://abc11.com/politics/transgender-sexual-assault-victim-says-shell-defy-hb2/1296062/

Even then, they gave McCrory a pass when he said this was a "new issue." That is a boldfaced lie. The first transgender American to publicly discuss their transition fought in World War 2, and garnered a fair bit of attention and media coverage in the 1950s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Jorgensen

This is not a new phenomenon, but once again by failing to provide that context the news and even advocates are inadvertently giving legitimacy to their opponents. This issue is not "some people think you have to use the bathroom that matches your birth certificate because they think it will cut down on sexual assault," it's "a hate group is secretly workshopping its discriminatory legislation around to local and state governments to use as a wedge issue in a cynical attempt to get votes by pretending this is a strange new phenomenon, when in reality this issue is over 50 years old and should have been addressed a long time ago." And you can take it further from there: if we knew transgender people were a thing in the 50's, why didn't we start working on it? Why didn't they teach kids about gender dysphoria, so that we could identify the problem and get treatment before they killed themselves (something over 40% of all trans people attempt)? Why was this reality hidden from children growing up before the 21st century, and why did we as a society do nothing to address this very real issue?

How bathroom discrimination is discussed is part of a larger pattern in our national discourse, which is to keep falling for the Golden Mean fallacy. SMBC Theater had a pretty good parody video of this a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGArqoF0TpQ

Right now, both sides of the debate are usually a regressive social conservative and a moderate liberal. Neither party is interested in discussing the money angle, because they both want the status quo. This framing of the national discourse as a dialog between the socially left and right wings of social conservatives is, obviously, a false narrative. Which is why when we discuss identity politics issues, we have to keep hammering home how important the role of money is in all of our political issues. Off the top of my head, here are some ways in which money plays a part in bathroom bills:

1) Money in politics is not only about bribery. The organization pushing this legislation has a wide reach because they can buy the time and energy required to get it in everyone's hands. And unlike the other side - the HRC, UCLA, etc. - they're doing it while hiding from the public. Why isn't it mandatory for the origin of this legislation to be disclosed to the public? Well, because moneyed interests from out of state know it's bad PR to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar. And in a country where bribery is legal, it was bound to happen that parties other than industry lobbyists would start sneaking around with pre-written laws for power-hungry pols to crib from.

2) Trans people are already handicapped economically, making it hard to fight back. Trans people have some of the highest rates of unemployment and homelessness of any group in America. Given that there is no protection against discrimination for employment or housing in many parts of the country, that's to be expected. And since many health insurance companies won't pay for any of our approved treatments - we're talking thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars - we're on average poorer than even people with the same take-home pay that we get. Without the support of non-profits, we'd be hard-pressed to defend ourselves from a bunch of rich regressives.

3) The only pushback that has made a real difference so far is from the 1%. If it wasn't for large corporations and rich artists boycotting the state, North Carolina would only have a handful of protesters on their hands. McCrory and company have been blindsided because they assumed they'd be able to push the trannies around with impunity, but they weren't counting on the capital class to take a stand (they usually don't, after all). In a country where wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few, the concerns of those few are the only ones that are seriously considered. Whether you're for or against bathroom discrimination bills, that should give you pause.

tl;dr - show the receipts, expose them for the lying amoral hucksters they are, then bring it back to class war

(feel free to pick this apart and show me why I'm dumb and wrong, by the way)

nice meltdown

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:38

Breadallelogram: Oct 9, 2012

there are still Chafee and Webb threads open lmao

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:39

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

Concerned Citizen posted:

this is my favorite progressive, chicago mayor rahm emanuel. he's for affordable healthcare, good schools, and he has worked very hard over his life to elect progressives all over this country. i hope everyone will donate money to re-elect him for a 3rd term

Rahm Emanuel faught harder for public healthcare than anyone else in the Obama administration.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:39

ur in my world now: Jun 5, 2006; ^{Same as it ever was}
^{Same as it ever was}
^{Same as it ever was}
^{Same as it ever was}; Smellrose

That's because this forum isn't actually for discussing elections, it's for dank meme spam and lovely zingers. Bernie thread included, unfortunately.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:42

Breadallelogram: Oct 9, 2012

Anyway there's a race for one of Iowa's US Senate seats this year. Tom Fiegen endorsed Bernie and is running for the D nomination but it's almost certainly going to Rob Hogg who stayed "neutral" for the pres primary and doesn't seem terrible.

It all may be moot though as Grassley is a super entrenched incumbent. :smith:

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:43

Freemason Rush Week: Apr 22, 2006

NumberLast posted:

You're gonna want to start going to locals.

I'm starting off small myself. Going to locals for the LD. They're looking for someone to run for state senate in two years - or so they said at the caucus - so now seems to be as good a time to start as any.

Hey, isn't that basically how Bernie got started?

Looking forward to voting for President NumberLast in a few decades. :patriot:

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:43

ur in my world now: Jun 5, 2006; ^{Same as it ever was}
^{Same as it ever was}
^{Same as it ever was}
^{Same as it ever was}; Smellrose

Thank you for making this thread though CC. I might do an effortpost about the MO-2 district when I'm bored at work. Like right now lmfao

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:44

Error 404: Jul 17, 2009; MAGE CURES PLOT

Mr. Horrible posted:

BIG DUMB POST INCOMING

When it comes to identity politics, I think one of the problems is that we are accepting the terms set forth by moderates and right-wing extremists. As an example, here's how one group of allies responded to Ted Cruz's comments wrt bathroom bills:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ddblwBpvA

I don't mean to single these guys out, they're just the first ones I found with a handy bite-size clip of their coverage. But what are we actually getting here? Some head-shaking, some righteous indignation. Sometimes there's a bit of hand-wringing about how the LGBT community is being attacked so heavily by regressives. But what's missing?

1) Context. Did you know that there's a single law firm that has been pushing these bathroom bills? That many of these bills have language that is almost word-for-word identical to the text put out by this anti-gay organization? I'm trans and even I didn't know about this until ChickenArise posted the following URL to the trans megathread:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/alliance-defending-freedom-lobbies-anti-lgbt-bathroom-bills

So in other words, these are not legislatures independently choosing to pursue this issue. This is a coordinated attack on transgender people, carried out by an organization working from the shadows. An organization headed by a man who wrote a book called The Homosexual Agenda. So let's call them what they are: a deep-pocketed hate group that's interfering in the personal lives of minorities. This is an opportunity to showcase how unelected but moneyed interests work behind the scenes to shape our national discourse. That should never be accepted, and should be called out at every opportunity.

2) A refutation of false claims. Transgender women are the victims of sexual assault, not the perpetrators. In fact I've been unable to find a single case of a transgender woman sexually assaulting anyone, much less in a bathroom. But so far, I've only seen a single news organization highlight this point:

http://abc11.com/politics/transgender-sexual-assault-victim-says-shell-defy-hb2/1296062/

Even then, they gave McCrory a pass when he said this was a "new issue." That is a boldfaced lie. The first transgender American to publicly discuss their transition fought in World War 2, and garnered a fair bit of attention and media coverage in the 1950s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Jorgensen

This is not a new phenomenon, but once again by failing to provide that context the news and even advocates are inadvertently giving legitimacy to their opponents. This issue is not "some people think you have to use the bathroom that matches your birth certificate because they think it will cut down on sexual assault," it's "a hate group is secretly workshopping its discriminatory legislation around to local and state governments to use as a wedge issue in a cynical attempt to get votes by pretending this is a strange new phenomenon, when in reality this issue is over 50 years old and should have been addressed a long time ago." And you can take it further from there: if we knew transgender people were a thing in the 50's, why didn't we start working on it? Why didn't they teach kids about gender dysphoria, so that we could identify the problem and get treatment before they killed themselves (something over 40% of all trans people attempt)? Why was this reality hidden from children growing up before the 21st century, and why did we as a society do nothing to address this very real issue?

How bathroom discrimination is discussed is part of a larger pattern in our national discourse, which is to keep falling for the Golden Mean fallacy. SMBC Theater had a pretty good parody video of this a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGArqoF0TpQ

Right now, both sides of the debate are usually a regressive social conservative and a moderate liberal. Neither party is interested in discussing the money angle, because they both want the status quo. This framing of the national discourse as a dialog between the socially left and right wings of social conservatives is, obviously, a false narrative. Which is why when we discuss identity politics issues, we have to keep hammering home how important the role of money is in all of our political issues. Off the top of my head, here are some ways in which money plays a part in bathroom bills:

1) Money in politics is not only about bribery. The organization pushing this legislation has a wide reach because they can buy the time and energy required to get it in everyone's hands. And unlike the other side - the HRC, UCLA, etc. - they're doing it while hiding from the public. Why isn't it mandatory for the origin of this legislation to be disclosed to the public? Well, because moneyed interests from out of state know it's bad PR to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar. And in a country where bribery is legal, it was bound to happen that parties other than industry lobbyists would start sneaking around with pre-written laws for power-hungry pols to crib from.

2) Trans people are already handicapped economically, making it hard to fight back. Trans people have some of the highest rates of unemployment and homelessness of any group in America. Given that there is no protection against discrimination for employment or housing in many parts of the country, that's to be expected. And since many health insurance companies won't pay for any of our approved treatments - we're talking thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars - we're on average poorer than even people with the same take-home pay that we get. Without the support of non-profits, we'd be hard-pressed to defend ourselves from a bunch of rich regressives.

3) The only pushback that has made a real difference so far is from the 1%. If it wasn't for large corporations and rich artists boycotting the state, North Carolina would only have a handful of protesters on their hands. McCrory and company have been blindsided because they assumed they'd be able to push the trannies around with impunity, but they weren't counting on the capital class to take a stand (they usually don't, after all). In a country where wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few, the concerns of those few are the only ones that are seriously considered. Whether you're for or against bathroom discrimination bills, that should give you pause.

tl;dr - show the receipts, expose them for the lying amoral hucksters they are, then bring it back to class war

(feel free to pick this apart and show me why I'm dumb and wrong, by the way)

You a fuckin effortpost! :bernget:

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:44

Freemason Rush Week: Apr 22, 2006

Smoremaster posted:

nice meltdown

You'd know about melting down you smore-loving gently caress! :argh:

tranime scholar posted:

Thank you for making this thread though CC. I might do an effortpost about the MO-2 district when I'm bored at work. Like right now lmfao

I want to learn more about local politics! I tried doing research on my local candidates last year and it was a loving nightmare. Finding anything besides their name and party affiliation was like pulling teeth.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:47

Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

Ted Ooze is bad for the average American, keep him contained here in the great poo poo wastes

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:55

Concerned Citizen: Jul 22, 2007; Ramrod XTreme

Breadallelogram posted:

Anyway there's a race for one of Iowa's US Senate seats this year. Tom Fiegen endorsed Bernie and is running for the D nomination but it's almost certainly going to Rob Hogg who stayed "neutral" for the pres primary and doesn't seem terrible.

It all may be moot though as Grassley is a super entrenched incumbent.

patty judge is probably going to win now, actually. imo hogg is better than judge and i will vote for him instead, but dscc is all up judge's butt.

tom fiegen is loving horrible. he isn't really progressive, he just latched on to bernie. he has a pro-life background (which he plays down these days) and literally has been unable to say anything except sexist comments since his wife left him years ago. like in 2010 when he not-so-subtly accused roxanne conlin of having an affair with a lobbyist in the middle of a debate ("she's standing closer to the lobbyist in this photo than her husband..") or when he can't help but suggest that joni ernst won in 2014 because the election was a "beauty contest." he literally personally comments on articles on the des moines register website about rob hogg where he just calls him a corporate shill. and if you've ever seen him speak, he never loving shuts up about gmos and other bullshit.

there is no candidate i hate more than tom fiegen.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 06:56

NumberLast: Jun 7, 2014

Concerned Citizen posted:

patty judge is probably going to win now, actually. imo hogg is better than judge and i will vote for him instead, but dscc is all up judge's butt.

tom fiegen is loving horrible. he isn't really progressive, he just latched on to bernie. he has a pro-life background (which he plays down these days) and literally has been unable to say anything except sexist comments since his wife left him years ago. like in 2010 when he not-so-subtly accused roxanne conlin of having an affair with a lobbyist in the middle of a debate ("she's standing closer to the lobbyist in this photo than her husband..") or when he can't help but suggest that joni ernst won in 2014 because the election was a "beauty contest." he literally personally comments on articles on the des moines register website about rob hogg where he just calls him a corporate shill. and if you've ever seen him speak, he never loving shuts up about gmos and other bullshit.

there is no candidate i hate more than tom fiegen.

Tom Fiegen did a reddit AMA where he talked about how we should annex Mexico. Like, in all seriousness.

I'm gonna try to find it.

Oh, he deleted it. You can either trust me (and my terrible memory) or not, but iirc the response here was that Mexican citizens should have the right to gain dual citizenship by "Swearing loyalty to the (US) constitution," and once enough of them do it opening up Mexican states for US statehood.

NumberLast has issued a correction as of 07:37 on Apr 29, 2016

# ? Apr 29, 2016 07:30

NumberLast: Jun 7, 2014

Mr. Horrible posted:

BIG DUMB POST INCOMING

When it comes to identity politics, I think one of the problems is that we are accepting the terms set forth by moderates and right-wing extremists. As an example, here's how one group of allies responded to Ted Cruz's comments wrt bathroom bills:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ddblwBpvA

I don't mean to single these guys out, they're just the first ones I found with a handy bite-size clip of their coverage. But what are we actually getting here? Some head-shaking, some righteous indignation. Sometimes there's a bit of hand-wringing about how the LGBT community is being attacked so heavily by regressives. But what's missing?

1) Context. Did you know that there's a single law firm that has been pushing these bathroom bills? That many of these bills have language that is almost word-for-word identical to the text put out by this anti-gay organization? I'm trans and even I didn't know about this until ChickenArise posted the following URL to the trans megathread:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/alliance-defending-freedom-lobbies-anti-lgbt-bathroom-bills

So in other words, these are not legislatures independently choosing to pursue this issue. This is a coordinated attack on transgender people, carried out by an organization working from the shadows. An organization headed by a man who wrote a book called The Homosexual Agenda. So let's call them what they are: a deep-pocketed hate group that's interfering in the personal lives of minorities. This is an opportunity to showcase how unelected but moneyed interests work behind the scenes to shape our national discourse. That should never be accepted, and should be called out at every opportunity.

2) A refutation of false claims. Transgender women are the victims of sexual assault, not the perpetrators. In fact I've been unable to find a single case of a transgender woman sexually assaulting anyone, much less in a bathroom. But so far, I've only seen a single news organization highlight this point:

http://abc11.com/politics/transgender-sexual-assault-victim-says-shell-defy-hb2/1296062/

Even then, they gave McCrory a pass when he said this was a "new issue." That is a boldfaced lie. The first transgender American to publicly discuss their transition fought in World War 2, and garnered a fair bit of attention and media coverage in the 1950s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Jorgensen

This is not a new phenomenon, but once again by failing to provide that context the news and even advocates are inadvertently giving legitimacy to their opponents. This issue is not "some people think you have to use the bathroom that matches your birth certificate because they think it will cut down on sexual assault," it's "a hate group is secretly workshopping its discriminatory legislation around to local and state governments to use as a wedge issue in a cynical attempt to get votes by pretending this is a strange new phenomenon, when in reality this issue is over 50 years old and should have been addressed a long time ago." And you can take it further from there: if we knew transgender people were a thing in the 50's, why didn't we start working on it? Why didn't they teach kids about gender dysphoria, so that we could identify the problem and get treatment before they killed themselves (something over 40% of all trans people attempt)? Why was this reality hidden from children growing up before the 21st century, and why did we as a society do nothing to address this very real issue?

How bathroom discrimination is discussed is part of a larger pattern in our national discourse, which is to keep falling for the Golden Mean fallacy. SMBC Theater had a pretty good parody video of this a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGArqoF0TpQ

Right now, both sides of the debate are usually a regressive social conservative and a moderate liberal. Neither party is interested in discussing the money angle, because they both want the status quo. This framing of the national discourse as a dialog between the socially left and right wings of social conservatives is, obviously, a false narrative. Which is why when we discuss identity politics issues, we have to keep hammering home how important the role of money is in all of our political issues. Off the top of my head, here are some ways in which money plays a part in bathroom bills:

1) Money in politics is not only about bribery. The organization pushing this legislation has a wide reach because they can buy the time and energy required to get it in everyone's hands. And unlike the other side - the HRC, UCLA, etc. - they're doing it while hiding from the public. Why isn't it mandatory for the origin of this legislation to be disclosed to the public? Well, because moneyed interests from out of state know it's bad PR to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar. And in a country where bribery is legal, it was bound to happen that parties other than industry lobbyists would start sneaking around with pre-written laws for power-hungry pols to crib from.

2) Trans people are already handicapped economically, making it hard to fight back. Trans people have some of the highest rates of unemployment and homelessness of any group in America. Given that there is no protection against discrimination for employment or housing in many parts of the country, that's to be expected. And since many health insurance companies won't pay for any of our approved treatments - we're talking thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars - we're on average poorer than even people with the same take-home pay that we get. Without the support of non-profits, we'd be hard-pressed to defend ourselves from a bunch of rich regressives.

3) The only pushback that has made a real difference so far is from the 1%. If it wasn't for large corporations and rich artists boycotting the state, North Carolina would only have a handful of protesters on their hands. McCrory and company have been blindsided because they assumed they'd be able to push the trannies around with impunity, but they weren't counting on the capital class to take a stand (they usually don't, after all). In a country where wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few, the concerns of those few are the only ones that are seriously considered. Whether you're for or against bathroom discrimination bills, that should give you pause.

tl;dr - show the receipts, expose them for the lying amoral hucksters they are, then bring it back to class war

(feel free to pick this apart and show me why I'm dumb and wrong, by the way)

Awesome and interesting post! I love learning about how much of a shithead I am and how I can be a better ally. :hfive:

# ? Apr 29, 2016 07:32

Modus Pwnens: Dec 29, 2004

Concerned Citizen posted:

patty judge is probably going to win now, actually. imo hogg is better than judge and i will vote for him instead, but dscc is all up judge's butt.

tom fiegen is loving horrible. he isn't really progressive, he just latched on to bernie. he has a pro-life background (which he plays down these days) and literally has been unable to say anything except sexist comments since his wife left him years ago. like in 2010 when he not-so-subtly accused roxanne conlin of having an affair with a lobbyist in the middle of a debate ("she's standing closer to the lobbyist in this photo than her husband..") or when he can't help but suggest that joni ernst won in 2014 because the election was a "beauty contest." he literally personally comments on articles on the des moines register website about rob hogg where he just calls him a corporate shill. and if you've ever seen him speak, he never loving shuts up about gmos and other bullshit.

there is no candidate i hate more than tom fiegen.

Thanks for this. I'd tossed him 5 bucks earlier, now I know better. Judge is awful and Krause is a nonstarter, so I guess that leaves Hogg.

It also looks like Fiegen is going down the Bernie or bust route big time, which is how I feel personally, but I think is an incredibly bad idea for someone running to represent a state that essentially tied.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 09:16

ANGRYGREEK: May 3, 2007; If you meet the Storm Spirit on the lane, gank him.

The revolution lives on in this thread. Nice. :unsmith:

Get the progressivm going, people. But this thread might've been better placed in D&D proper (i know, uugh), because the subforum will get purged in a couple month, also the local election stuff will stay relevant!

"All those moment. Lost like tears in rain. Time to die."
-the fucker who gassed the Bernie thread

# ? Apr 29, 2016 09:31

Enrico Furby: Jun 28, 2003; by Hand Knit

Mr. Horrible posted:

awesomesauce

I spend a lot of time railing against identity politics on Facebook, so thanks for giving me a nice big note to repost that is positive on the issue for once

# ? Apr 29, 2016 09:31

Enrico Furby: Jun 28, 2003; by Hand Knit

What do y'all know about Colorado/Denver politics? Seconding how goddamned difficult it is to get a good, clear picture of local candidates.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 09:32

Freemason Rush Week: Apr 22, 2006

NumberLast posted:

how much of a shithead I am

I hope no one actually thinks of themselves that way. :ohdear:

Bathroom bills have been on my mind a lot so I just figured I'd use that as an example. Obviously I'm thrilled to have allies though!

If anything I'm hoping there are some general tactics in that word salad that can be applied to other issues. Like how fossil fuel flacks will put out talking points for muddying the waters of climate change. Hell, they even wrote up prep material for poo poo-talking the Pope!

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/17/coal_industry_provides_congressional_republicans_with_some_handy_anti_pope_talking_points/

Instead of only responding to the presented arguments, I think it's time to start laying out fact-based attacks of our own. "The senator didn't come up with that line himself, someone from the coal lobby told him to say it. Do we really want to be represented by a bunch of puppets that answer to the people who pull their strings? I think the American people deserve better than that."

# ? Apr 29, 2016 09:39

Riot Bimbo: Dec 28, 2006

I used to whine about identity politics a lot and honestly what has given me pause is how Bernie Sanders has handled the issue.

Believe me I still lament the theoretical single-issue identity politics person who may exist somewhere up the food chain making GBS threads up a larger movement for the sake of their own pet issue, but I'm not sure this actually exists much as I and others sometimes think it does. I think there are bigger fish to fry since it's reasonably easy to integrate the politics of identity into a larger progressive movement and there are much more malevolent forces that actively work to undermine progressive politics and I would rather focus on that than being an rear end in a top hat because somebody is trying to be a part of something while having needs unique to them and people like them.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 09:49

FreakerByTheSpeaker: Dec 3, 2006; You got your good things
And I've got mine

Oh hey, the band got back together!

As much as I love hailing satan, i'm excited for this thread, and really like the effortposts so far.

Also to derail: Is it Classic Comrade who is the sunscreen advocate? I'm trying to get my girlfriend to wear it, but she's kinda a hippie and CHEMICALS! Any suggestions for well made sunscreen?

# ? Apr 29, 2016 12:36

Riot Bimbo: Dec 28, 2006

Sunscreen is essential for some people. Like me. I keep that poo poo in my car. My skin is insanely fair. The only time I had any color was after a week on the Florida coast, and I sunburned despite basically bathing myself in water resistant sunscreen, and the sunburns weren't the worst I ever had, in terms of blistering, but in terms of the time it took to heal, the time it was painful to exist, it was very rough.

In Texas, unless it's very cloudy and winter, I can't work outside without burning. If I didn't i would basically always be in pain and probably have skin cancer by now.

I know i'm a freak of nature but just based on what the sun does to my skin I could only advocate people be smart and wear sunscreen because even if I readily show more visible sun damage, that doesn't mean similar poo poo isn't going down in your body at the microscopic/molecular level.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 12:59

Fast Luck: Feb 2, 1988

hemophilia posted:

I used to whine about identity politics a lot and honestly what has given me pause is how Bernie Sanders has handled the issue.

Believe me I still lament the theoretical single-issue identity politics person who may exist somewhere up the food chain making GBS threads up a larger movement for the sake of their own pet issue, but I'm not sure this actually exists much as I and others sometimes think it does. I think there are bigger fish to fry since it's reasonably easy to integrate the politics of identity into a larger progressive movement and there are much more malevolent forces that actively work to undermine progressive politics and I would rather focus on that than being an rear end in a top hat because somebody is trying to be a part of something while having needs unique to them and people like them.

There's definitely an issue that exists when there's a clearly more left-wing candidate (Bernie) with a superior record to Hillary's who's had his supporters smacked with the label "Bernie Bro" and called "white men" all campaign long, when Hillary says things like "if you break up the big banks, would that end racism," when people considering not voting for Hillary are accused of "privilege," and on down the line. They did it in the UK too, calling Jeremy Corbyn a "brocialist." It's incredibly unfortunate that cynical people would leverage the identity-based movement against the economic left wing, but I don't think any of us could have missed that it's happened, and on a massive scale. Look, corporations aren't bad, they're good, just check out the beautiful brand logos! https://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/beautiful-rainbow-brand-logos-celebrating-marriage-equality

# ? Apr 29, 2016 13:17

C-SPAN Caller: Apr 21, 2010

Fast Luck posted:

There's definitely an issue that exists when there's a clearly more left-wing candidate (Bernie) with a superior record to Hillary's who's had his supporters smacked with the label "Bernie Bro" and called "white men" all campaign long, when Hillary says things like "if you break up the big banks, would that end racism," when people considering not voting for Hillary are accused of "privilege," and on down the line. They did it in the UK too, calling Jeremy Corbyn a "brocialist." It's incredibly unfortunate that cynical people would leverage the identity-based movement against the economic left wing, but I don't think any of us could have missed that it's happened, and on a massive scale. Look, corporations aren't bad, they're good, just check out the beautiful brand logos! https://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/beautiful-rainbow-brand-logos-celebrating-marriage-equality

It's not as bad as moneyed right interests but it is a distraction tactic for sure.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 13:34

meristem: Oct 2, 2010; I HAVE THE ETIQUETTE OF STIFF AND THE PERSONALITY OF A GIANT CUNT.

Eh, I think proper labelling would help a lot here. Don't call yourself 'progressive' (as in the One True And Only), call yourself 'economic progressive', and acknowledge that other people may find social progression to be personally as much, or more, important. I know that it drives a lot of people crazy that, they feel, Bernie fans try to usurp their progressive, well, identity.

In other words: don't deny the need for identity politics, because this denies the needs and feels of people who might be your potential allies. Find your place within the intersectional context and try to work from there instead.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 13:47

empireofcrime: Nov 3, 2015; The crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood.

meristem posted:

Eh, I think proper labelling would help a lot here. Don't call yourself 'progressive' (as in the One True And Only), call yourself 'economic progressive', and acknowledge that other people may find social progression to be personally as much, or more, important. I know that it drives a lot of people crazy that, they feel, Bernie fans try to usurp their progressive, well, identity.

In other words: don't deny the need for identity politics, because this denies the needs and feels of people who might be your potential allies. Find your place within the intersectional context and try to work from there instead.

How about calling yourself a progressive and valuing both economic and social issues. I have no problem with people valuing the social side over the economic one, I don't appreciate using social progressivism as a shield to excuse candidates that can just claim taking corporate money and being corrupt shitheads is just due to being shrewd operators and they are somehow protected from being called out on their poo poo.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 14:24

Riot Bimbo: Dec 28, 2006

Way too many social issues have related if not causative economic factors, so to be merely socially progressive doesn't compute for me. To me, being socially permissive and/or accepting while also having apathetic or rear end-backwards attitudes about the economy already has a label, it's called 'libertarianism'.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 14:38

MeatwadIsGod: Sep 30, 2004; Foretold by Gyromancy

http://billmoyers.com/episode/the-one-percent-court/

quote:

BILL MOYERS: Welcome.

When five conservative members of the Supreme Court handed corporations and the super-rich the right to overwhelm our elections with tsunamis of cash, they moved America further from representative government toward outright plutocracy, where political power derived from wealth is devoted to protecting wealth.

We saw it first in the mid-term elections of 2010, and we�re seeing it in spades in this year�s elections � organized money, much of it dark money, given secretly So it can�t be traced, enveloping the campaign for president, Congressional campaigns, and state legislative and judicial races. There�s never been anything like it in our history � not on this scale, and not this sinister. We�ll take a look at this radical threat to democracy in our next two broadcasts � how it�s happening, and what can be done about it.

We�ll begin with this current issue of "The Nation" magazine, �The One Percent Court,� devoted entirely to the United States Supreme Court. It�s one you�ll not want to miss � and not because it opens with an article jointly written by me and the historian Bernard Weisberger. Our mission was simply to remind the reader of what�s obvious: that because of the partisan gridlock paralyzing both president and Congress, more than ever the court has become the most powerful branch of government, and the center of a controversy which may shape the fate of democracy for generations to come.

With me to talk about this is "The Nation" magazine�s editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel. She�s a frequent presence on the talk news shows and a familiar byline in major publications. She has been one of those out in front, calling the president to task for orphaning his values and promises, as can be seen in her most recent book, "The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama."

The prolific Jamie Raskin also joins us. One of the country's leading scholars on constitutional law, he teaches at American University and is a Maryland State Senator, where in his first legislative session alone he managed to see more than a dozen of his bills pass into law. He's been described as �one of the nation�s most talented state legislators.� His many writings include a centerpiece article in this special issue of "The Nation."

Welcome to you both.

JAMIE RASKIN: Thanks so much.

BILL MOYERS: Okay, let�s play the numbers. What comes to mind when I call out 79, 76, 75, and 73?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The age of the four oldest justices on the court. And one of the reasons we did this issue is that as we enter this election season, this election could determine not only the future of the court for generations to come but the shape of our democracy for generations to come.

BILL MOYERS: You've devoted whole editions of the magazine, in the past, to the Supreme Court. What makes this one different?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: I think we're at a moment, Bill, where we are witnessing the unprecedented concentration of power, wealth, and income. It is reminiscent not just of The Gilded Age, but of the New Deal period, when you had a Supreme Court which wanted to invalidate and dismantle the New Deal legislation that President Roosevelt was putting forward.

There's always been a threat. The court has always been important. But now we've seen a spate of 5-4 cases, 5-4, 5-4, 5-4, on the core issues that this magazine grapples with. The A.C.A. health care decision, in my mind, Jamie I'm sure has--

BILL MOYERS: Obamacare decision?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The Obamacare--

BILL MOYERS: Judge Roberts voting with the majority?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: I think at that point partly because Citizens United has awakened Americans to the understanding that this court favors corporate interests. It's burgeoning. It's latent, but it's there. And I think Judge Roberts decided to be an institutionalist and wanted to save the court to come back to a next session and perhaps do some damage on voting rights, affirmative action, and other issues.

BILL MOYERS: You could have chosen any subject to write for Katrina, in this issue. But you chose Citizens United. Why?

JAMIE RASKIN: The way I look at it is, we'd had a decade of right-wing derailment of the Supreme Court and the politics of the country. In Bush vs. Gore in 2000, we had a 5-4 decision which took victory away from Vice President Gore, who had more than a half million votes more than Bush did and gave it to George W. Bush by intervening to stop the counting of ballots, for the first time in American history. And the history all of us know with the Iraq War and Afghan War and the corruption and so on.

That was the last decade. Now in 2010, a decade later a 5-4 coalition on the court, the right-wing block gets together and says, "Corporations, for the first time in American history, are declared to have the political free speech rights of the people, such that they can take money directly out of the corporate treasury and put it into politics."

Well, that threatens a total capsizing of democratic relationships that we've known before. And it completely upends what the Supreme Court has always said about what a corporation is. Because you can go back to Chief Justice John Marshall in the Dartmouth College case who said, "A corporation is an artificial entity. It's an instrument set up by the state legislatures for economic purposes." He said, "It's invisible. It's intangible. It exists only in contemplation of law. And it has all of these rights and benefits conferred upon it. But it must remain under the control of the government, essentially."

And that has been standard conservative doctrine on the Supreme Court all the way through Chief Justice Rehnquist. Justice White who said, "We give them limited liability. We give them perpetual life. But in return, we ask them to stay out of politics." And there's a beautiful sentence from Justice White dissenting in a case called First National Bank of Boston vs. Bellotti, where he said, "The state need not permit its own creature to consume it." And yet, this court is saying that, "We must permit the creation of the state legislatures to consume our politics." And so to me, the Citizens United case is the emblem for the whole era we're in. We're living in the Citizens United Era, I think.

BILL MOYERS: But before Citizens United, wealthy people were funneling money into politics, corporations were forming political action committees. And CEOs of those corporations were lavishing money on selected favored political candidates.

JAMIE RASKIN: Absolutely right, the corporate voice was never missing. And that's something, you know, Justice Stevens has pointed out. He said, "There were many faults to American politics. But nobody thought that a lack or a dearth of corporate voices was among the vices." But there was still a radical change effectuated by the majority--

BILL MOYERS: How so? Radical?

JAMIE RASKIN: --in Citizens United.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

JAMIE RASKIN: Because before corporations could have issue ads. They could take out an ad in the New York Times on something. Before the CEOs and executives, as you say, could put their own money into campaigns. They could spend to the heavens of their own money. And they could contribute directly to candidates. But the one thing that couldn't happen was the CEOs could not take money directly out of the treasury and funnel it into campaigns,

ExxonMobil for example. I mean, in 2008, ExxonMobil had a political action committee. And that was money that was given directly by executives. People wrote checks for it. And they raised about a million dollars, which is not chump change. And they were able to spread it around.

But if ExxonMobil had been able to take money directly out of the corporate treasury, their profits in that year were $45 billion. If they had taken a modest 10 percent of their profits to spend in politics, it would have been more than the Obama campaign, the McCain campaign, the DNC, and the RNC, and every congressional campaign in the country. One corporation in the Fortune 500.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: What Jamie is describing is the reason we have unprecedented inequality today and why we don't hear people's voices. We're hearing the voices of money. Money is the realm, the coin of power in this country. But, you know, one of the reasons we did this issue was because of the trajectory of this court. Because it is true that this is a radical shift. But we could see more dismantling of the frail structures of campaign finance reform that remain.

BILL MOYERS: There's hardly anything--

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: There's hardly anything left. But it has been a terrible downward spiral. But the clean money legislation in states like Arizona, the ban on corporate spending in Montana. These are other steps that this court could take if it moved to not a 5-4, but if you had more right-wing justices on this court. But it--

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: There's no question that the arc, as Jamie said, from Bush v. Gore, which in so many ways was a right-wing coup. When you talk to people outside this country, they saw it as that. I mean, you had the brother of the governor overseeing the decision and the justices shutting down democratic votes to this decision.

BILL MOYERS: Do you agree with Jamie that Citizens United is a game changer?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Yes, I do.

JAMIE RASKIN: But it's also emblematic of what's going on in the court. If you look at the 2011, last year's Supreme Court term, the court wiped out a very important class action suit brought by women in the Wal-Mart stores. A million and a half women brought a class action, again, a 5-4 decision saying that they didn't have enough in common with each other. They had not alleged a sufficiently common element to their complaint. The sex discrimination wasn't enough. They didn't have the same supervisor, for example.

Of course, they were all over the country. We saw another major blowout decision against consumers in-- AT&T Mobile versus Concepcion, where a family responded to an ad saying, "Get a free phone." And then after they got a free phone, they got a bill for $30, which was to go for taxes. They brought a suit. It was consolidated with a class-action suit. And AT&T said, "Well, you've signed our boilerplate adhesion contract which says you've got to go to independent arbitration."

That was appealed. And the Ninth Circuit said that you can't do that to people. This is unconscionable to steer them away from the ability to get judicial relief. Well, 5-4 decision reverses that in AT&T versus Concepcion. And the court said it was preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: And also the court siding with management against labor. Basically invalidating the National Labor Relations Act. And we saw in this decision which was underreported, because it was just on the eve of the Obamacare health care decision, Knox vs. S.E.I.U., Service Employee International Union.

Some called that the Scott Walker decision, because it placed such an undue burden on public employees that it has made collective bargaining more difficult. Dahlia Lithwick, has a piece in the issue, builds on what Jamie was saying, which is that in some ways the move to arbitration has closed off the possibilities of class action. Which has been an avenue for ordinary citizens to challenge corporate power, corporations, their malfeasance. And that is a trend which I believe we need to bring more attention to. It may seem dry, but again, it affects everyday lives.

BILL MOYERS: You open your article with a quote from the announcer in The Hunger Games. "And may the odds be ever in your favor." What are you trying to tell us?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, in the Citizens United era, we're moving dangerously close into a kind of corporate state mentality, where the corporations operate with impunity in the Supreme Court. And they're now endowed not with personhood rights, as some people think, but super personhood rights. Because they have all kinds of protections that ordinary human beings don't have, like limited liability and perpetual life. And they continue to, you know, accrue wealth through the generations.

But now they're given political free speech rights that people theoretically have. But of course, most American citizens don't have millions of dollars to spend in politics. But the corporations do. And it�s, you know, a matter of chump change for them to put several million dollars into a campaign that could, you know, very much affect the direction of public policy.

BILL MOYERS: You live in New York, Katrina, if you were explaining to another straphanger on a moving subway the impact on that person's life of Citizens United, what would you tell her before the next stop?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: What's misunderstood is that money is not an abstraction. Money will decide how people live, how their children are raised and treated, and how you're treated by corporations. I mean, if you're defrauded by AT&T and you don't have access to a fair legal system, you're not living in a fair democracy.

JAMIE RASKIN: And it's a fundamental distortion of a fair market, too. That's the other thing. It's not just an offense to Thomas Jefferson. It's an offense to Adam Smith.

BILL MOYERS: And by the way, this is why some conservatives I've talked to are distressed by Citizens United. They do not see it as a boon to--

JAMIE RASKIN: Corporations should compete based on the ingenuity of their engineers, their ability to come up with better products, not based on an army of lobbyists that they send to Washington or the amount of money they can put into politics to get their guy elected to office.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: You know, what I really dislike about the current campaign is this idea if you raise a question of corporate power that you're antibusiness.

We're not antibusiness. We're simply saying that you need to have labor. You need to have organized citizens given the same rights as corporations are now being given. The rights of free association are being limited while the rights of corporations are being enhanced. So that countervailing power, which was at the heart of an American politics and system, is being diminished and dismantled.

So the fact that the federal district and appellate courts are deciding so much, and those have been so seriously already reshaped by Bush, by the right. It's a long game that the right has played. And that it's not too late but it's almost too late--

BILL MOYERS: You've been publishing about this. You've been writing about this for some time now. You both have seen this coming. You've written about how the court has been taking the side of corporations against regulators. And as you said a moment ago, the corporations against citizens. So wasn't Citizens United the logical next step to this trend that has--

JAMIE RASKIN: Oh, it absolutely was. I mean, Justice Powell was a key figure here. He wrote this memorandum as a private lawyer for the Chamber of Commerce in 1971 saying, "We need a counter-attack against the environmentalists and the labor unions and so on." And developed a whole strategy for kind of a corporate takeover of the judiciary and politic.

BILL MOYERS: By the way, you said something very important. Justice Lewis Powell, then a lawyer in Virginia, wrote this for the Chamber of Commerce, later became appointed by Richard Nixon to the Supreme Court.

JAMIE RASKIN: Just several months later.

BILL MOYERS: Many people look at the Powell Memo as the charter--

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The foundational, the foundational document.

JAMIE RASKIN: And the first big case in this direction was the First National Bank of Boston vs. Bellotti case, which he wrote the decision on. And what it said was corporations -- the identity of the speaker is irrelevant, which becomes the key--

BILL MOYERS: What does that mean?

JAMIE RASKIN: What it means is you can't tell corporations that they can't put their money into politics just because they're a corporation. Which has, I guess, a surface plausibility to it. But then would you say that, for example, the City of New York can put money into an election--

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: That could be the next step.

JAMIE RASKIN: --to tell people how to vote?

BILL MOYERS: If we had any money. City of New York is broke.

JAMIE RASKIN: Can churches put their money in? I mean, if the identity of the speaker is really irrelevant. And even the court itself has not gone with that notion, because the next step was the right-wing lawyers who are pushing this today like James Bopp said, "Well, then we should have a right to give money directly to campaigns." Corporate contributions are next. And the court, at least at this point, is unwilling to go that far. So it doesn't totally buy the rhetoric of the identity of the speaker is irrelevant. But the First Amendment is being used today the way that the Lochner Court in the attack on the New Deal used due process.

BILL MOYERS: Back in the '30s.

JAMIE RASKIN: Which is you get everything through the First Amendment. For example, this outrageous case from 2011 from Vermont, Sorrell's decision, which struck down a patient and physician confidentiality law, which said that pharmacies and insurance companies could not sell-- information about patients being prescribed particular drugs by doctors directly to pharmaceutical companies. And the Supreme Court struck that down as a violation of the First Amendment, which is incredible that the data that's being collected by physicians somehow is free speech. And the pharmaceuticals have a right to it.

BILL MOYERS: So you could tell the straphanger on the subway that the data she gives her physician about her health could be sold by him to some corporate cause--

JAMIE RASKIN: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: --to some corporate subscriber.

JAMIE RASKIN: Now her name wouldn't be in it, at least in this variation.

BILL MOYERS: But it does change the relationship.

JAMIE RASKIN: It changes the relationship. And the point is that the First Amendment is being used by corporations to get everything that they want, including the right, basically, to own campaigns.

BILL MOYERS: Is your position that corporations do not have quote "free speech" under the First Amendment?

JAMIE RASKIN: They have commercial speech rights. And this is a point that Justice Breyer makes very effectively in the Vermont decision. He says, "What's happening is the majority is confusing the political speech, free speech rights of the citizenry with the commercial speech rights of businesses."

And those rights are constricted. For example, we say that states can punish businesses for lying and defrauding people. But we don't say that in politics. Politicians get up and say almost anything. And you can't sue them for fraud, basically. But commercial speech is a much lesser notion, because corporations are instrumentalities of the state. And they're endowed with all of these great rights and privileges that have made them fantastic accumulators of wealth and investors of money. But everybody from Chief Justice Marshall to Rehnquist to Justice White said, "You don't let them convert their economic power into political power."

And that is the fateful step that's been taken by the Roberts Court.

BILL MOYERS: Justice Scalia would disagree with you. I want to show you Justice Scalia earlier this summer on CNN.

PIERS MORGAN: At that moment, under your interpretation, I believe, of the Constitution, you should be allowed to raise money for a political party. The problem, as I see it and many critics see it, is that it has no limitation to it. So what you've now got are these super PACS funded by billionaires effectively trying to buy elections. And that cannot be what the Founding Fathers intended. Thomas Jefferson didn't sit there constructing something which was going to be abused in that kind of way. And I do think it's been abused, don't you?

ANTONIN SCALIA: No. I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better. That's what the First Amendment is all about. So long as the people know where the speech is coming from.

PIERS MORGAN: But it's not speech when it's...

ANTONIN SCALIA: The first...

PIERS MORGAN: -- it's ultimately about money to back up the speech.

ANTONIN SCALIA: You can't separate speech from the money that facilitates the speech.

PIERS MORGAN: Can't you?

ANTONIN SCALIA: It's utterly impossible.

Could you tell newspaper publishers you can only spend so much money in the publication of your newspaper? Would they not say this is abridging my speech?

PIERS MORGAN: Yes, but newspaper publishers aren't buying elections. I mean to -- you know, the election of a president, as you know better than anybody else, you've served under many of them...

ANTONIN SCALIA: I--

PIERS MORGAN: -- is an incredibly important thing.

ANTONIN SCALIA: Newspapers...

PIERS MORGAN: And it shouldn't be susceptible to the highest bidder, should it?

ANTONIN SCALIA: Newspapers endorse political candidates all the time. What do you mean -- they're almost in the business of doing that.

PIERS MORGAN: Yes.

ANTONIN SCALIA: And are you going to limit the amount of money they can spend on it?

PIERS MORGAN: Do you think the...

ANTONIN SCALIA: Surely not.

PIERS MORGAN: Do you think, perhaps, they should be?

ANTONIN SCALIA: Oh, I certainly think not. I think, as I think the framers thought, that the more speech, the better.

JAMIE RASKIN: Well first of all, the freedom of the press is just an irrelevant distraction from this. And that's an easy question, not that difficult a question. The good justice betrays either an ignorance of what Thomas Jefferson's position was or a willful defiance of it. Because Jefferson wrote several times about how afraid he was about an encroaching corporate tyranny and corporations who already, with their charters would bid fair to the laws of the land, in attempt to go off in their own direction.

BILL MOYERS: You actually quote Jefferson on the rise of a quote "single and splendid government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and incorporations." He said they would ride and rule over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry. The ordinary citizen, right?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, look, our founders understood power. And one thing that Jefferson really believed in, he invented the phrase "the wall of separation between Church and State," was dividing power up. And one way we've divided power up over the last century is building a kind of wall of separation between corporate treasury, wealth, and public elections.

That wall has been bulldozed by the Roberts Court. And now they're letting the corporate money flow in. And everybody knows, I think, across the country, what that means, from Montana to Florida. You know, what that means to have corporations directly involved in politics. And look, we should want corporations out competing and prospering and thriving and profiting. But we shouldn't want corporations to govern, because that inverts the proper democratic relationship.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Part of what Scalia and these originalist judges have done, and the right, is appropriate the language, is take the language. And we haven't found a narrative and a language to explain the importance of the court. They use terms like "freedom" and "liberty" and "activist judges.� And the importance of talking about the fairness and the balance and how these kinds of decisions infringe on the individual liberty of people.

It seems to me an important mission, as well as working with those in Congress to hold accountable State Senators, to hold accountable a president, to appoint and deepen the bench of those who understand the fairness and balance. And the values of freedom, of opportunity, of equality, that are at the core of our country's purpose and constitution.

BILL MOYERS: You include in here some very specific, concrete examples. I was especially taken with a particular case that you make in your centerpiece, where you say that the 2010 election should have been framed by three major events. They were?

JAMIE RASKIN: Corporate catastrophes.

BILL MOYERS: They were?

JAMIE RASKIN: The BP oil spill, which destroyed an entire ecosystem and created billions of dollars worth of damage. The Massey Corporation's collapsing coal mines, which caused the deaths of 29 people and--

BILL MOYERS: In West Virginia.

JAMIE RASKIN: --suffering in West Virginia. And then, of course, the biggest of them all, which was the subprime mortgage meltdown, which destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth for the American people, in terms of people's retirement incomes, their home values, and so on. That should have been what the campaign was about.

BILL MOYERS: But they weren't--

JAMIE RASKIN: No.

BILL MOYERS: --what the campaign was about, because?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, we saw, because of Citizens United and an infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars, an unprecedented amount of corporate money coming in, not just through Super PACs, but as The Nation pointed out, through 501c4's and c6's, what we saw was a complete reframing of the issue to the big culprit being regulation. And so the theme of the campaign was corporate deregulation being the solution to all of our problems. It was like a parallel universe.

BILL MOYERS: And it worked because the Republicans, funded by many of these corporations and billionaires, took control of the House. Sixty-three votes, I think they won then. And fulfilled the wishes of their funders for deregulation.

JAMIE RASKIN: And the corporate-funded Tea Party caucus in the Republican Party, in the House has basically been driving the train of government, which is why we've had near, you know, financial collapses again through these various debt controversies that have been taking place.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: But let me broaden it. I agree with Jamie that those are the three disasters which should have been at the focus of our attention. But it is the case that across the board, at the moment, the idea that we need austerity in this country, that jobs aren't the great crisis of our-- you know, the joblessness isn't the great crisis of our time, but debt and deficits. That's also a function of the .01 percent who are the big players, who have the money, Democrat and Republican, who are funding these elections.

Because if it wasn't that kind of money in our system, you would hear more of the people's voices and those who lost their wealth through the terrible subprime mortgage disaster, those who are seeking jobs, 26 million people in this country either underemployed or unemployed. Those voices aren't heard, because of the din of money in the system. You know the story, what is it, seven lobbyists for every representative. It may be ten, at this stage.

And one thing that isn't paid as much attention to. You have the lobbyists. But this National Chamber Litigation Center, the N.C.L.C., started by the Chamber of Commerce, again an outgrowth of the Powell Memo. Its record is better than the solicitor general. And if you want to track the court--

BILL MOYERS: They've won more cases before the court.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: They've won more cases before the court. And a nonpartisan group, The Constitutional Accountability Center documented this. And in the last, I think it was 2010-2011, their record was unblemished, meaning they won all the cases brought before the court. And this is the Chamber's specialized litigation bar. Now there are good environmental consumer civil rights, civil liberties groups working.

But you don�t have that coherence. And you certainly don't have foundations and individuals in this country supporting those groups in the way that the right has supported the Chamber of Commerce and this kind of bar. That distorts justice. It's about money. And what's always shocking, and not to diminish the amount of this money in the system, is for some of these people this is chump change that they're putting into the system, in terms of investment on return, because they will buy the deregulation, the low taxes, the ability to pollute, the ability literally to kill, as was the case in the Massey mine disaster, 29 miners killed because of the deregulation and the lax oversight. Why is that? Partly because of the starving of government, but also because the money in the system gives them the power.

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, and the Massey Company's exactly what Thomas Jefferson was talking about, a company that defied the law, had hundreds of violations written up--

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: That's right.

JAMIE RASKIN: --against it. Constantly litigated and gone against the government. Put millions of dollars into politics, in order to have its way, and continues to be a major political actor, despite its being essentially a criminal corporation, in terms of its disregard of human life and its defiance of the law.

BILL MOYERS: I talked to a well-known, a leading, and a very thoughtful conservative yesterday about the magazine. And he said, "Katrina is hyperbolic about this. We've only taken a small step to the right, trying to reverse the pendulum that swung so far, not only under Roosevelt, but under Lyndon Johnson and that period of the '60s when the conservatives had to grit their teeth and the only thing they could do was say, 'Let's impeach Earl Warren,' because all of what he called the social liberal causes that the court was trying to push down our throats." He says, "We're just correcting history." That was what he said.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: No, first of all, what's interesting about this issue in my mind is we're not dealing with some of the important cultural issues, which often rile up the right and rile up so many. Abortion--

RASKIN: Guns.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The schools, guns.

BILL MOYERS: Guns. Gay rights.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The whole-- but I think on the corporate front, this is an extremist court. A court that has shifted so far to the right that it is beyond just the backlash to the Warren and Berger courts, and moving in a direction that has very little check on it. And I don't believe it's hyperbolic.

In fact, you know, very sober commentators in commenting on the Roberts Court on the eve of the health care decision, noted how extremist, how radical the four or five-- I won't call them conservative, the right-wing justices on the court were in terms of literally-- one thing Jamie hasn't talked about is Citizens United, and he will express this far better than I do, they literally called back the case in order to open a jurisprudence--

JAMIE RASKIN: You talk about judicial activists.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Activism, that's right.

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, judicial-- I mean, for one thing, the masterpiece of judicial activism was, of course, Bush vs. Gore, where the Supreme Court intervened in democratic politics to stop the counting of ballots. Then a decade later, we get Citizens United, where the court says, "You know, we don't like the questions presented, even by this conservative group, Citizens United."

All they were saying was, "Don't treat our made for TV pay-per-view movie like a TV ad." And I think anybody could have gone along with that. They said, "That's not quite sweeping enough for us. We want to know, does every corporation in America have political free speech rights, such that they can take money out of the treasury and put it into politics. Go brief that." They briefed it. They came back. They reargued it. And what do you know, five justices say, "Yeah, they've got that right."

BILL MOYERS: Alito and Roberts both come out of a corporate background, either serving corporations as lawyers or teaching corporate law.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Well, this is an-- I mean, in the issue, there's a piece by Sherrilyn Ifill which is interesting, because on the face of it, the court looks diverse. But when you look at their actual professional backgrounds, I believe that eight come out of the appellate court system. Elena Kagan, solicitor general. But you don't have a Thurgood Marshall, who had experience in civil rights or practical--

BILL MOYERS: Real life experience.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: --experience and real life experience that could connect to ordinary citizens. And so I think that diversity is something we've lost and has been an--

JAMIE RASKIN: And what's interesting--

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: --important part of the court.

JAMIE RASKIN: --is that it's not a partisan question that Katrina is raising here. I mean, my two favorite justices were Republican appointees, Justice Souter and Justice Stevens. They were incredible. They were evenhanded. They were serious and sober. They never would have gone along with this and didn't go along with this idea that somehow corporations should be treated like citizens for the purposes of political free speech--

BILL MOYERS: So what's happened?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, part of it is this story of the extremism of the Republican Party today. Because after Justice Souter was named to the court, the slogan, the mantra within the Republican Party was "No more Souters." They really are imposing a very strict litmus test, not just on the right to privacy and abortion but also on these corporate questions.

They want to see that you�re going to be, down the line, just voting with corporate, you know, big corporations regardless of what it is that they're saying. And that's not justice. We don't want justices who are pro-corporate or anti-corporate. We want people who are going to--

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Who are fair.

JAMIE RASKIN: --enforce the rule of law.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The rule of law.

JAMIE RASKIN: And here, what we've got is a complete derailment of the rule of law, just like we have a derailment of democracy. Because we have one part of society that's gotten too much power. And, you know, the economists, conservative economists talk about the difference between societies where the economy is closed and you have extractive industries that are taking money for themselves. And they end up closing politics at the same time. Versus societies that are open, that have open free markets and open politics. And we're moving to a closed kind of economy and a closed kind of society.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: And I would say, you know, Jamie talks about the extremism of the Republican Party, yes. But go back 40 years, because it was the revolt of the plutocrats, which was part of the Powell Memo and the reason for the Powell Memo. And that revolt is winning now. It was class war waged from the top down. And I think we're seeing the culmination of the Powell doctrine so to speak, which is that corporations should not be checked, should not be fettered, and that they have free reign of the land. And that--

BILL MOYERS: What puzzles me, Katrina, is that that's not a conservative position necessarily.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: No, it's an extremist. I don't-- I believe in conservatism. I believe that there is a role for conservatives. I believe that there's a role for a conservative Republican Party in this country. And we can talk about Edmund Burke and all of that. But at the moment, we're witnessing an extremist Republican Party willing to ravage and savage the freedoms and liberties in the name of-- they want to say greater good, but it essentially is a corporate good.

And I would argue that we're now going to witness a court next session, and Jamie follows this more closely that there is a well-funded, right-wing intellectual and corporate campaign now to try and really gut the Voting Rights Act, which I see linked to this, because I think more voices, more diversity in our political system can counter some of this corporate power. And if that's gutted, we are at great risk of a monotone political system.

JAMIE RASKIN: And that's why I invoke The Hunger Games. Because I think it doesn't have anything to do with conservatism. It has to do with corporatism. And that's a completely different philosophy of government.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Or Jamie has this great term, "jurist corporatists."

JAMIE RASKIN: Jurist corporatists.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Jurist corporatists. Jurist corporatists.

BILL MOYERS: So The Hunger Games announcer is, in effect, speaking for the corporate state, right?

JAMIE RASKIN: Yeah, I mean, she's basically saying, "May the odds be ever in your favor," wink, wink. "But everything is stacked against you once you arrive here."

BILL MOYERS: And are the odds now in the favor of corporations on the Supreme Court?

JAMIE RASKIN: You know, if you check out the People for the American Way website, where I follow the Supreme Court decisions, you will see case after case, where the court is throwing out tort verdicts against large corporations, jury verdicts for plaintiffs, throwing them out, because it's preempted by this federal law or that federal law or "You messed up the class-action mechanism below." There's always a reason why the little guy's got to lose.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you have written that over history the people have turned against the court and amended the Constitution 16-17 times when the enemies of democracy were slaveholders or people trying to prevent a minimum wage or stop women from voting and right on down. Is it feasible to expect that another amendment could reverse Citizens United?

JAMIE RASKIN: You know, we've had 17 amendments since the Bill of Rights. Most of them have been suffrage expanding, democracy enlarging amendments, where in a number of cases the people had to confront the court. So the court says in the Dred Scott decision that African Americans can never be citizens and persons within the meaning of the Constitution.

And it took a civil war and a whole bunch of constitutional amendments to reverse that. The Supreme Court said, "Women don't have the right to vote." In Minor vs. Happersett, despite the 14th Amendment. That got reversed by the 19th Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld poll taxes and that got reversed by the 24th Amendment.

So there are a whole bunch of cases where the people have said, "You know what? The court is a fundamentally conservative institution, often times reactionary. And we've got to confront their power and tell them what the Constitution really means. Because the first three words of the Constitution are 'We the people,' not 'We the court' not 'We the corporations' but the people."

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: I mean, the struggle in the country today is between "of, by, and for the people" and "of, by, and for the one percent," speaking about the corporate powers. And I think the importance of framing the debate about the future of the court, as this issue tries to do, between those who would roll back the civilizing advances of this country, economically, politically, socially against those who want to build a more just, fair, and diverse country.

And in the future of this country, the demographic shifts, for example, I do think the right looks out at this country, doesn't like what it sees, which is why you see the influx of money and the voting right suppression. And those two fused may give them a last hurrah, but there is a struggle moving forward in a different country that they may not be able to win.

BILL MOYERS: One of my colleagues asked me to tweet to her the essence of your magazine. Would this be an accurate expression of the essence of what you've done here? "The Supreme Court is now a corporate court that by giving big business the advantage is shrinking access to justice for everyday citizens."

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Most beautiful 140 characters I've heard.

BILL MOYERS: Right out of your magazine, too. Jamie Raskin, Katrina vanden Heuvel, thank you very much for being with me.

JAMIE RASKIN: Thanks for having us.

# ? Apr 29, 2016 14:43

Classic Comrade: Dec 24, 2012; (hair tousled from head shaking during speeches)

FreakerByTheSpeaker posted:

Also to derail: Is it Classic Comrade who is the sunscreen advocate? I'm trying to get my girlfriend to wear it, but she's kinda a hippie and CHEMICALS! Any suggestions for well made sunscreen?

no that is YOU A loving HAT!

# ? Apr 29, 2016 14:44

MeatwadIsGod: Sep 30, 2004; Foretold by Gyromancy

Also oh my god Bill Moyers started doing new Moyers & Company interviews a couple weeks ago :hellyeah:

# ? Apr 29, 2016 14:44

empireofcrime: Nov 3, 2015; The crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood.

This is what I'm talking about, a puff piece from The Hill on Cory Booker, who is progressive because...? If he were a white guy it probably wouldn't matter that he's a Wall Street rear end in a top hat and may be a charter school cheerleader too. This is how identity politics can be weaponized against progressives.

https://twitter.com/TheBpDShow/status/726042911935188992

# ? Apr 29, 2016 14:46

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 28, 2024 00:15

Classic Comrade: Dec 24, 2012; (hair tousled from head shaking during speeches)

Fast Luck posted:

There's definitely an issue that exists when there's a clearly more left-wing candidate (Bernie) with a superior record to Hillary's who's had his supporters smacked with the label "Bernie Bro" and called "white men" all campaign long, when Hillary says things like "if you break up the big banks, would that end racism," when people considering not voting for Hillary are accused of "privilege," and on down the line. They did it in the UK too, calling Jeremy Corbyn a "brocialist." It's incredibly unfortunate that cynical people would leverage the identity-based movement against the economic left wing, but I don't think any of us could have missed that it's happened, and on a massive scale. Look, corporations aren't bad, they're good, just check out the beautiful brand logos! https://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/beautiful-rainbow-brand-logos-celebrating-marriage-equality

yeah it's very sad how centrists (and right-wing ppl, on the opposite end) use identity politics to manipulate people. most 'economic progressives' embrace identity politic issues too, so what do you think would be a good way to counteract the whole "using identity politics to obfuscate" issue?

# ? Apr 29, 2016 14:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Progressive Peanut Gallery: I plan to transform my town into a socialist utopia

«‹›72 »