Carl Sagan -
“I have a foreboding of an America when awesome tech powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/252618-the-demon-haunted-world
2/n
One of Trump's biggest promises was to address the rising cost of living. But will he do anything to challenge the main source of high prices — corporations who have gobbled up their competitors and now have enough market power to keep prices high even as their costs have dropped? Of course not.
Corporate monopolies get rich, and we pay the tab. Keep the receipts.
The GOP loves blaming the deficit on Social Security and Medicare. But the real culprit is giveaways to corporations and the rich.
If not for the regressive tax cuts under Bush and Trump, we would have a stable debt-to-GDP ratio.
That's one thing the GOP will never tell you.
Being better at math can make you worse at math problems, and it’s completely rational. Get all sides of every story at https://groundnews.com/Ve and read th...
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Shifting $677m from the banks to the people, every year, forever; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/01/bankshot/
1/
"Democrats! This is your opportunity! Take it!"
It's the same in the UK and Australia.
Politicians and media parrot the mantra that the Democrats, Labour and Labor are alienating voters by being radical leftists.
In fact, they're clearly nothing of the sort. The cosy established parties prefer to chum up with leaders of industry and biillionaires rather than doing the work of building a better world.
"It is telling how little “stolen” elections have been mentioned since Trump’s second victory. But it is within these lies that Trump’s chaos calibrates itself, inside a unified and powerful ecosystem of rightwing news, online content and viral disinformation that has grown more powerful throughout this era, spewing the same falsehoods in unison day after day, on repeat, for years. It is the “political technology” by which swathes of the population have voted in effect to anoint a king in the belief it will amount to more freedom." "It is astonishing, too, that the vice-president only expressed her support for a $15 (£11.80) federal minimum wage – a policy that enjoys widespread support across the country and an issue that Trump has dodged repeatedly – less than two weeks before election day. As if to exemplify the missed open goal, voters in the conservative states of Alaska and Missouri voted last week to implement a $15 minimum wage." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/14/ive-been-to-more-than-100-trump-rallies-since-2016-this-is-why-i-think-he-won
@rbreich You're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. That's a distinction without a difference.
What's important now is effective resistance a MAGA President, a MAGA Congress, and a MAGA Supreme Court. It's 1933 and we're living in the $*&^%@! Weimar Republic.
@rbreich 60k votes went Green and about 100k votes less Blue in Wayne County MI which includes Detroit. Harris made gains everywhere else in the state but not enough.
Arab Americans have a seat at the table in US Politics.
@rbreich If you (or anyone else) has a breakdown of who those 9 million voters are, or what they have in common, I'd love to see it. Are there clear patterns in age, race, income, or where people get their news & information across the country? Did it vary by region? Are there any discernible patterns?
That analysis has been missing from all of the postmortems I have seen thus far.
@rbreich
We need a serious conversation about our oligarchs' drive for world hegemony vs. a multipolar world.
We cannot win wars against Russia, China, Iran, or any combination of them on their turf, and they won't send ground troops over here.
Therefore, we must turn off the propaganda machine and figure out how to co-exist.
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