Tag: progressives

Why no progressive inquisitors at the Democratic debate?

Via @AdamBaldwin by this tweet by Joan Walsh… and it has a question that has some veritable teeth to it. No, really. This is a great question, and I wish that I had thought of it first:

Continue reading Why no progressive inquisitors at the Democratic debate?

Tweet of the Day, The Netroots Doesn’t Win Enough To Deserve That Comparison edition.

One small problem with this analogy:

https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/623131431095652352

…the tea party folks actually win elections.  Frustrated as our grassroots may be with the federal results sometimes*, on the state level things are going rather nicely for conservative activists right now.  Which suggests that, perhaps, the universes are a little less parallel than either Barney Frank or the Democratic party would care to admit. Continue reading Tweet of the Day, The Netroots Doesn’t Win Enough To Deserve That Comparison edition.

‘The Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.’ …Wait, the acronym is PAtCII?

 As in, ‘patsy?’ Talk about truth in advertising…

If you’ve ever wondered whether a basic lack of empathy for, and understanding of, one’s political opponents can be a problem, wonder no further. Progressive Democrats will be happy to demonstrate the flaws in that strategy. MSNBC: “Dozens of progressive elected officials, labor leaders, policymakers and economists will gather outside the Capitol in Washington Tuesday afternoon to lay down a marker on a progressive economic vision they hope the Democratic party and its next leader will adopt.”

The conference is at 3 PM: last week Politico called it “the left’s answer to the Contract with America.” Or, more accurately, Politico opined that Bill De Blasio (whose baby this is) hopes that this will be the left’s answer, etc. etc. etc. – which has certainly not been disputed by anybody involved.  Although possibly they should have, because there’s a glaring problem with comparing “The Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality” with “The Contract With America.”  To wit: progressives are going to look like idiots when this Agenda of theirs goes nowhere. Continue reading ‘The Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.’ …Wait, the acronym is PAtCII?

Just had the Chromebook eat a post on the crazy people who hate Scott Walker.

Short version: they are, indeed, crazy.

Continue reading Just had the Chromebook eat a post on the crazy people who hate Scott Walker.

Topic for discussion: was Prohibition the Progressive movement’s *greatest* disaster?

Having been reminded that today (January 16th) is the anniversary of one of the greatest social policy disasters (if not the absolute worst) in American history:

…I am left to wonder: was it also the greatest policy disaster of the Progressive movement? Because, let us be honest here: Prohibition/temperance was a Progressive scheme from start to finish. The popularity of it among rank-and-file Progressives at the time is well known, and only surprising to those who have not received an adequate enough education on the subject*.  But was it the worst Progressive policy ever?

  • Arguments for yes: Prohibition, of course, resulted in a decade-long exercise in societal hypocrisy where a large section of the population routinely broke the law – and the more affluent parts of said population easily evaded the legal consequences from doing so.  We also, again of course, managed to encourage the rapid growth of organized crime in this country by giving them the opportunity to make a ridiculous amount of money from acquiring and disseminating an illegal substance… and as soon as Prohibition was over, that existing infrastructure went right into branching out into other illegal drugs with nary a hiccup.  Finally – and this is not trivial, actually – domestic beer quality dropped catastrophically; a dropt that it took us almost a century to recover from.
  • Arguments for no: Well, let’s see.  There was the income tax. There was the direct election of Senators.  There was the drastic increase in the size of government that resulted from the previous two points. There was the entire institutionalized racism** thing – oh, yes, Woodrow Wilson was acting in perfectly Progressive terms, in no small part to the entire eugenics thing***. All in all, when you compare Prohibition to widespread segregation and dubious genetic policy… the mere banning of the sale of alcohol can appear to be, and forgive me for saying it, rather small beer.

I think that you can make an argument either way, honestly. What does everybody else think?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Which, admittedly, probably means ‘most people.’

**Which, by the way, was even more widespread than you might think.  Unless you happen to have Italian, Irish, Polish, or Jewish ancestors who came to the United States before about 1930 or so. In that case, you probably have any number of family stories to ensure that I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know.

***I give Salon(!) credit for tackling the subject, but the ugly truth of the matter is that, absent World War II, the eugenics movement would have probably been a viable concept in American political discourse right up to the 1950s and the Civil Rights movement.  And wouldn’t that have been a mess.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D, Vermont) meets with some of his Jew-hating constituents.

You know, we hear a lot of guff from the American Left about how insular rural areas of Red States can be.  But I gotta tell you: speaking as a transplanted Northeasterner, listen to some of those progressives in Vermont and it’s like you’re in a time warp back to 1830 and the Know-Nothing Party.

This is from a recent town hall in Cabot, VT: basically, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Commie*, Vermont) had to stand at a podium and listen to a heck of a lot of angry Vermonter anti-Semites scream about Israel, to the point where he started screaming back about halfway through. Amazingly, from the aforementioned anti-Semites’ right. Heck of a thing when that guy’s the least vile person talking. Continue reading Sen. Bernie Sanders (D, Vermont) meets with some of his Jew-hating constituents.

Rooting for Injuries Watch: labor union targets anti-Keystone House members.

Mind you, I want the unions to win this one.  After they’ve gone round and round with the Greenies a few more times.  Which is horribly partisan of me; then again, so is everybody else.

A letter distributed Friday by the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) to the districts of 27 House Democrats calls for union members to make sure their representative “feels the power and the fury of LIUNA this November.”

Their crime: signing a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last month urging him to reject Keystone, which would carry oil sands from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

What makes this particularly savory is that the Congressmen involved are hardcore progressives; the letter is hard to find, but what lists I’ve seen of signatories suggest that they’re not too used to intra-party squabbles of this sort.  This is free media that can’t particularly splash back on us, in other words; and there’s going to be hurt feelings among our political opponents either way.  Pass the popcorn.

Nick Rahall (D, West Virginia) must repudiate the pension-busting financial transaction tax.

…Do not be embarrassed if you have to ask, What is a financial transaction tax (FTT)? I had to have had it explained to me, too.

Basically, it’s part of the well-the-Democrats-didn’t-quite-kill-the-economy-last-time-so-let’s-try-again ‘budget’ proposal (called, with no visible awareness of irony, the ‘Back to Work Budget’) set up by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  Essentially, what they want to do is tax actual stock, bond, and derivative contracts transactions.  Not the profits made on those transactions; the transactions themselves.  As even a cursory glance at the previous link will reveal, Heritage is absolutely horrified at the idea, largely because a FTT would have horrific effects on profits.  Including, say, profits acquired by pension funds – and, no, they didn’t carve out an exception for pension funds. And yes, this is an issue; Europe is going through its own version of this, and the Left over there is pretty adamant that pension funds not be exempted.  Because the Left wants that money.

Shorter Moe Lane: remember the Stamp Act?  Yeah, that’s what this is, more or less. Different system, different reasons, same basic idea.

Continue reading Nick Rahall (D, West Virginia) must repudiate the pension-busting financial transaction tax.

Let me show you precisely how messed up progressive pundits are over #obamacare.

Brian Beutler’s Salon post is otherwise worthless*, but here’s this gem:

A net reduction in individual market coverage would be politically humiliating. It would also raise the moral question of whether it’s fair to impose penalties on people for not entering a system that they can’t access and probably don’t trust.

…It is not fair to impose penalties on people for not entering a system that they can’t access.  If you think that this is somehow a topic for debate, then you are in very deep, very dark waters indeed.

Moe Lane

*If for no other reason than the fellow’s victory condition for Obamacare is to have five million people sign up on the exchanges in (looking at calendar) eleven days.