Really, really hoping Mamdani doesn’t turn out to be Obama 2.0.
That would require Zohran to be ideologically liberal. I think it’s pretty clear from a number of litmus tests that he’s a socialist. It’s much more difficult to go from being a socialist to a centist. Ideologically, being a socialist isn’t merely a step to the left of liberal. It’s a fundamentally different worldview which resembles American liberals in a few areas but only in appearance. E.g. both a liberal and a socialist might advocate for universal healthcare. The liberal feels that private healtchare is a defect of an otherwise functioning system. The socialist sees the system working as intended in that it enriches the oligarch class via private healtchare. Therefore the socialist sees public universal healthcare as removing a revenue stream from the oligarch class, diminishing its power in the process and reducing the scope of the capitalist system. The improvement to people’s lives naturally follows as a consequence of that. From this perspective, it would be very difficult for a socialist to be convinced they should abandon universal healthcare because insurers would lose too much money like Obama did.
He says he’s a socialist.
Democrats say a lot of things that sound really, really good too… until they’re elected, and then we realize they’re shit-stains.
You’re not wrong and that could totally be the case but again, he’s gotta be a really good actor to keep the socialist line when being grilled on some issues. It’s certainly possible that he is. But I think he’s leftist schtick is very different than Obama’s. Only one way to find out. Vote for him if you’re in NYC. 😁
I badly want to be wrong, but there’s something about these supposed progressives that changes when they get into office and suddenly are confronted with the possibility that they can 100% exploit their office to give their family generational wealth.
So while I’m cautiously optimistic, most of me is very ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’.
I believe it’s the progressives who realize they’re an extremely small minority within the DNC, so you must swallow a few bitter loads to get certain stuff you believe in through while making backroom deals you would never do.
Ultimately it is up to the American People to shift the Overton window to the left. It is possible, but won’t be easy as Democrats cave to Corporations and the media being billionaire owned doesn’t help when you’re a progressive.
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So while I’m cautiously optimistic, most of me is very ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’.
Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.
This guy all ready comes from a well off family so it’s not like that I don’t think.
Most politicians do. Then again most politicians don’t play leftist very well. I hope we find out.
He says he’s a socialist.
Obama explicitly and repeatedly stated he was a capitalist
The dems trying to take him out is evidence that he’s real
No, it isn’t. They did the same with Obama, because at the time it was supposedly Hillary’s turn.
This strikes me as something written by someone who doesn’t clearly remember 2008. After Obama got the nod, Democrats largely cleared the field for him. They didn’t spend months talking about how they didn’t know who he was, or saying that they couldn’t endorse him.
That’s fair.
I’m thinking before that point. They did everything could to tank his candidacy in the primaries but the voters overwhelmingly rejected Hillary.
How deep you want to go down the rabbit hole?
AFTER Obama got the nomination.
Exactly. This dude got the nomination and they’re still not endorsing him.
Uh, were you around in 2008? That’s definitely not what happened. If anything that’s what happened to Bernie. Are you confusing Bernie with Obama?
I was referring to the primaries, not the general. There was definitely a sense that it was Hillary’s turn and they did their best to keep Obama’s popularity from developing into a legitimate candidacy.
Not that it mattered. Obama was another smooth-talking son of a bitch, just like the rest of them.
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That’s the problem. Thank you for articulating it.
I think part of that is true and part of that is that they just don’t get enough votes to actually do things.
Especially as just a Congressperson you can’t change everything all at once. You don’t have the same influence as a president. So you pick your battles.
People here get disappointed they didn’t get enough done fast enough and then vote red in the next election hoping for faster change.
Well, we got faster change. Never seen change as fast as this.
I don’t think so.
People not voting comes down to living through the last eight years and both parties doing nothing meaningful about the fact that you’re working 100 hours a week at three jobs and all you can afford is a roach-infested studio.
Why would you miss a badly needed day’s pay?
As for the folks who switched to vote Trump. That was the only option for change that they had, and they knew from experience how shitty Biden/Harris were. Of course they switched.
They should have known that Trump was worse from term one…
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For the first few months of his presidency, following the tail end of the economic growth under Obama. Under Trump the economy dumped jobs and it only did well for the wealthy. Biden added like 100,000 jobs to the economy during his first 4 months.
It’s amazing how this happens every single time. Republicans control the narrative so well that people forget that the economy consistently does better under Democrats. Every. Single. Time. It happened with Clinton and Bush. It happened with Obama and Trump. And it happened with Biden and Trump. Republicans add billions to the national debt, destroy aid programs, shrink the job market, drive up housing prices and the cost of living, and cause all that lost money to siphon to the oligarchy while lowering their taxes and raising them for everyone else. Everybody blames the Democrats for it while Republicans are in charge, and then completely miss it getting better when the Republicans are out of office.
McCarthy spins in his grave
Can we hook him up to a dynamo? Free, clean energy.
Free?
McCarthy spins faster
It would also require a group of Republicans with the power to gag him every time he tries to do something.
Years ago, I saw a list that someone compiled of all of Obama’s campaign promises and the results of them, and basically all but one he tried to do and was voted down by Republicans who threatened to shut down the government if Democrats tried to push it through. The one thing he promised and didn’t even attempt to do was shutting down Guantanamo Bay. For everything else, the Republicans who controlled both the house and the Senate for 7 and a half years of his presidency shut him out. There’s a reason that Trump spent the first two years of his presidency repealing every executive order that Obama made. Besides being racist and upset that a black man held any power in this country, of course.
Where do you get the republicans controlled senate and house for seven and a half year?
Democrats had 57 senators after 2008 and 51 after 2010, 53 in 2012, then lost the majority in 2014. In 2006 they got 233, increasing to 257 in 2008. They lost that majority in 2010 and lost more seats in the following years.
They had a window of complete control.
Did I get it reversed? I was talking strictly from memory so it wouldn’t surprise me, and that does sound more right that the Dems had control for at least the beginning of Obama’s presidency and lost it when they did nothing with it. What I remember from that period is that when the Dems had control, the Republicans would threaten to shut down the government or filibuster every time the Dems tried to pass something, and the Dems would back down every single time. Sometimes before the Republicans would even have the chance to say something. But that still doesn’t mean that Obama lied or broke his promises, it means that the Dems as a whole were/are spineless and didn’t want to actually do the things they were elected to do. Except for closing Guantanamo Bay. That’s completely on him and not something we should forgive and forget. We’ve seen similar things this year already, where they need 3 Dems to vote with Republicans in order to pass their abominable legislation, and the same 3 vote with the Republicans every single time. Or how 100% of Dems voted yes on the first couple of Trump’s cabinet picks. That’s not Biden’s fault.
It’s much more difficult to go from being a socialist to a centist.
Mussolini was a socialist, and I don’t mean in a fake “national socialist” way (although yes, later he became that), I mean he was an important figure of the “Italian socialist party”, editor in chief of the official party newspaper
Well he didn’t turn into a tinkering-around-the-edges liberal. 😄
I’m not arguing that people’s views can’t change. Rather I’m making this narrow point of the difficulty shifting towrds the centre from a liberal versus socialist position. I think one’s much lower friction than the other. Both are possible.
Given a lot of his known history, I have enough confidence to say he’s a real one, unlike Obama.
Given a lot of his very recent history…you might want to reconsider.
Any suggestions for what to read up on?
The news, I guess? He made some very bombastic proclamations that endeared him to leftists and then promptly walked them right back to the middle of the road when the Democratic establishment (including Obama 1.0) got their claws into him
Probably best to approach people who ask you for suggestions in good faith and give them an honest answer.
It was partially in good faith. I also wanted to know if they were full of shit.
I got the answers I was looking for.
LIKE WHAT?! Seriously give us one single morsel to digest?
“Do your own research!” “It’s obvious!”
Extraordinary claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Really not a choice time for friendly fire here.
He can’t become president so no worries on an exact repeat. Personally, good to see such a great representative of democratic socialism on display at this moment.
Agreed on that second point.
I just need more than words before I’ll buy in. I gotta see it to believe it.
I feel like mayor is a better jump up for a candidate like Mamdani than President. Also, Mamdani is coming up with a lot more policies that can get implemented. In contrast, Obama ran on far less openly socialist policies outside of healthcare. When it got to healthcare, Obama was relatively hands off when the bill was being written.
As a German it will always amuse me to read about policies that Otto von Bismark enacted here as socialist. Like general health care was given to weaken the power of worker unions.
Over here in the good ole US of A, “socialism” usually doesn’t refer to collective ownership of the means of production, or some other fancy book-learnin’ version.
Socialism is when the government takes some CEO and/or redneck’s hard earned tax dollar and tries to do something that helps poor people.
If the government wants to spend money on poor people, it has to be to blow them up on the other side of the world.
Back home there are way too many big hands to fill with handouts, between corporations and rich people. We can’t get to the poor beggars until some time after the fusion power rollout. And please think of the economy!
To my knowledge, he does not have the ability to drone strike anyone. So we’re safe on that count
Unless he decides to take police militarization to another level.
Given how DeBlasio was treated, I’d be more worried about the police taking it to the next level without him
A legit fear, really.
The NYPD are one of the largest and well-funded gangs on the planet.
An African-born Muslim Socialist?
You might wanna drop religion label; honestly, adding the religion label isn’t exactly comforting. Religious people, regardless of which religion, are not exactly very “left”, religious people often misogynistic, oppress LGBT+ people, not to mention, its an abrahamic religion, these stupid religions have been causing havoc on the world.
I guess I forgot the “/s”.
I was joking about how the Right called Obama all those things, when he isn’t any of them and now they got the real deal.
What is Lemmy badmouthing Obama now? JFC this place is 14 and very edgy.
How many people lost their homes when Obama was president ? Did Obama not boast about turning the USA into a leading of oil production ? Did Obama not drone American kids ? Did Obama not keep the wars going and start news ones?
You are the one that’s 14 and didn’t follow nothing he really achieved.
I was going to start typing but then I noticed ml. There’s no point.
Then why did you reply anything ?
So that you know that it’s not because I’m stumped, it’s so that you know that it’s not worth bothering explaining to ml users.
Funny enough your message is unwittingly a perfect display of what I’m talking about. Ok peace.
I would be 100% fine with that, Obama was a great president. Regardless, we need to make sure the GOP and 3rd party Cuomo lose.
Obama was an “okay” president, I wouldn’t say “great” lolol.
The bar was low and he tangibly helped or even saved Millions of Americans.
Great President.
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Me too, but if his recent overtures are any sign of things to come he’s absolutely going to be Obama 2.0
Goddamn I can’t imagine anything worse than Obama 2.0!
Oh! Oh I’ll be having nightmares for months!
ffs
yeah, what could be worse than the guy who authorized 563 drone strikes that killed nearly 4000 people, including American kids. Hmm.
What could be worse? Man, i can’t think of a single thing! Obama was the awfulest human to defecate in the white house of All Time!
(for my autistic friends; i don’t really think that. I’m using hyperbole to underscore my position that Obama was not the worst person of all time.)
Care to share any specifics? I haven’t been following him too closely, like many others I’m a bit burnt out on US political news.
Mandani’s opposition has been tireless in trying to get him into making stances on wedge issues, especially on things like foreign policy, to deflect from his popular intended policies as mayor.
So recently like after months of being burned by his own party for supporting Palestinians, he made a statement that called Oct 7 a war crime. So now the job is to paint him as a secret zionist.
Which again, is not an issue for a NYC mayor. His plans to tax the rich, however, is.
If Mamdani backed down from free busses and rent freezes, then we’d have cause for concern.
Off the top of my head, he’s very pro-NYPD (which I guess is the easiest way to get the cops to vote for him) and also he straight up said he’d have Zionists in his administration and not worry about what their support for Zionism means in practical terms, so. Yeah.
I searched for his comments on the NYPD, all I could find was an “apology” that reads more as “potential new mayor, after years of criticism of the NYPD, realises that an openly antagonistic NYPD wouldn’t help his agenda for New York and says the bare minimum to placate them”. Keep in mind too, this is under a presidency that would gladly assist the NYPD in disturbing whatever Mamdani does when elected. He also mentions victims of police brutality in the quote. Hardly “very PRO-NYPD”, IMO.
In regards to the genocide in Gaza, he seems to be extremely pro-Palestine. He did recently visit some Zionist leaders in NYC. Jews are around 12% of the population of NYC, and whilst they certainly aren’t all Zionists, at lot of them undoubtedly are. Personally, I believe a good representative should represent every part of their constituency. You can’t realistically completely ignore these groups while running for a position like the mayor of NYC. Meanwhile, he has constantly throughout his life criticised Israel and expressed staunch support for the Palestinian cause.
Feel free to disagree with me on any of these points, but even then, don’t you think you might be letting perfect be the enemy of good in this case? Do you have another candidate you’d prefer?
This is TERRIBLE Strategy! Spending Taxdollars on Rich people is GOOD! Spending Taxdollars on Poor people is HORRIBLE AND LIFE ENDING!
-DNC Strategists!
It’s going to start trickling down any day now.
Why does it taste like pee?
Don’t ask.
It could taste worse.
Traditionally, it tastes like horse shit.
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Don’t forget that everything remotely good is SOCIALISM!
For sure vote DNC tho.
Nah. If the DNC thinks a Cuomo or Harris or other right-winger is electable, they will ratfuck progressives.
You literally just said “Don’t vote DNC” which makes you, whether you want to or not, an advocate of the GOP. People like you are the reason we are in this mess.
In 2026 and 2028 your options will be GOP or DNC, and no matter where the DNC candidate lands on the spectrum they are progressive from where we are now and they are better than the GOP.
K. Still not voting Newsom or any other republican-lite.
Cuomo is not the democratic candidate for mayor lol
Don’t you see?
Paying for buses for ILLEGAL ALIEN IMMIGRANTS doesn’t make money trickle down! When you “invest” money into poor people, they’ll just waste it! Money they don’t spend on the bus ride, they’ll spend on one more grocery at Walmart, which is INCONSEQUENTIAL FOR THE ECONOMY!
When you INVEST into products and services, that person will HIMSELF INVEST into buying what he needs. That makes money TRICKLE! Do you KNOW where our CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY WOULD BE WITHOUT ELON?!
(/s)
So close! Instead of spending it on Walmart, in your text they should be spending it on booze and drugs. Then it’s Republican-speak at its finest ;-)
Uh oh. If people realize that 700M in subsidies is the same amount of money as 700M in free buses, it’s all over. You’re supposed to act like one of them is cheap and the other is expensive. There’s not supposed to be math involved /s
To be fair, 700M in subsidies was supposed to have a return on investment. Though, it didn’t.
700M in free busses would not bring a return on investment except for just generally improving the quality of society. Which I still think is better, but we do have to consider that from their point of view.
Edit: please stop replying to this comment with counterarguments, I agree with all of you and was just trying to say how it might be seen. This is getting obnoxious. I wrote it wrong and now people think I’m a capitalist cuck lmao
$700M in free buses means better access to jobs and services, which has tangible economic benefits and results in tax money coming back to the government.
I… Err… I mean bus bad car good!
It’s also just good for people. Not everything needs an roi and the economy should work for people not the other way around.
I think free busses would have a return in investment (apart from quality of life).
A better connected city, transport wise, opens up new job opportunities or places to go for citizens, which can increase tax revenue.
More people using busses also means less cars (probably) and by extension, less pollution, which can save costs.
I’m not sure how much of a return those, and probably other stuff would give, but I think it’s more than nothing.
Maybe someone knows better.
You have a good point. If money is no longer a barrier to transport, the entire city would be open to everyone. That would increase incentive to have outings.
I agree with all of you and was just trying to say how it might be seen.
This right here is the problem. We allow the GOP and the Murdochs to dictate the meaning of these things and gaslight the people into believing the fiction that some billionaire industrialist stooping to grace a city with their business is worth more than thousands of regular folks just getting to work, doing their jobs, living their lives, and making our society work. It needs to be plastered everywhere that not only do we not need billionaires or even multimillionaires but that they are quintessentially harmful to our country and our society.
P.S. if you aren’t prepared to deal with every Tom, Dick, and Jane replying to your comment to argue every little thing then you should give up commenting cause people are gonna argue no matter what. It’s how ideas get around.
Don’t forget, Cuomo was also ready to give Amazon $3 billion in incentives to build their sweatshop HQ in Queens, and AOC led the charge to kill the deal. Why should NYC pay such an exorbitant amount to a Sociopathic Oligarch for the privilege of exploiting their citizens? Let him use his own money to exploit his workers.
I don’t think we need to have an either or mentality. We need to break out of the idea that things need a perfect, direct ROI. That just reinforces financial overlords to do layoffs and to favor capital and the rich.
$700M in free busses could open up a world of happier people, access to better jobs and better Healthcare through better access.
There is more to ROI than direct financial returns, and we have to get out of the language of the venture capitalist. You say that it is “just generally improving the quality of a society”. That IS a return on investment. And it’s more important in my mind than a financial gain. We need to start treating happiness like it’s something worth pursuing. We say money can’t buy happiness, but then base all our decision making on money like it’s the key to everything.
I think I worded it wrong. I completely agree with you.
There is more to life than ROI. People need to realize that. We can do so much better for everyone.
please stop replying to this comment with counterarguments,
“I want to be anti-transit but not get pushback.”
Short sighted ROI - only businesses create ROI? Residents do not? Would decreased accidents, decreased cars on the road, increased resident satisfaction not also create ROI although not as easy to measure as a business balance sheet?
Yes of course they would, please read the edit
If you want to be fair, you’ve got it completely backwards. Tesla wasn’t going to be bringing in much in the way of actually paying proper taxes or treating the residents well but we have actual real-life examples of free bus experiments boosting the local economy.
It’s not even about being nice for the residents, though that is obviously a major positive, it’s just the only smart thing to do. It’s literally stupid as hell to not at least try it from a financial perspective and the only thing that stops people is because it would be a kindness.
You’re just trying to be intellectually honest here, by recognizing that in theory subsidies are supposed to bring jobs and economic benefits to a region, whereas public transit is seen as a cost center. And I think you’ve been sufficiently rebuked on that point.
Anyway, upvoted because I appreciate the attempt to engage conservative fiscal policy on its own terms. It’s easy to frame it as “rich people good, poor people bad,” but occasionally we need to debate the internal logic of it so we can properly pull back the curtain and see it for what it really is, which is in fact “rich people good, poor people bad.” You started that debate, and as a result the consensus here feels more like a good-faith rebuttal and less like a sarcastic shot from the hip (which my original post definitely was).
Only replying because of the edit.
If free busses get more people to more store to spend more money, that won’t provide an ROI?
Holy crap have they STILL not had that election yet?
The election cycle for mayor of New York is taking something like three times longer than that of a General Election in most countries, and because most talk shows are filmed in NYC the rest of the world has been getting a wildly disproportionate amount of coverage on it. I should not know this much information about the election of a city I’ve visited twice ever.
The US is stuck in a perpetual election cycle. As soon as somebody is elected we have to start thinking about the next election.
This is not a normal election. This is a unique moment in recent American history. While the MAGAs are forcibly dragging us into Fascism, we finally have a viable Progressive candidate for a major office. Not only that, but it’s the kind of office where Progressive policies can actually be tried out, and proven to work, or not.
Not since FDR, have we had an opportunity like this, and we need it as badly now as we did back then. .
Smaller city, but don’t forget about Omar Fateh in Minneapolis too. He won the DNC nomination against corporatist Frey and the DNC rolled back their nomination after the fact.
There are fights like this happening in more than just New York. It’s important to keep that in mind.
it’ll be a major wakeup call for progressives across the country too, about how weak establishment-dems grasp really is, that they can lose NYC to a actual self-described socialist.
the GOP died to a personality cult in 2016, the old guard dem’s can be swept aside just as easily if they continue trying to campaign on “returning to normalcy” (read, blatant unsustainable ratfucking).
I don’t know what you’re expecting. The election day hasn’t changed. It’s the first Tuesday in November, always has been and, barring anything extremely unconstitutional from certain spray tanned individuals, it always will be.
The day hasn’t changed but they aren’t wrong that US election campaigns start reeeeally early compared to a lot of other places.
But America bad, remember? Can you believe America, taking a long time to elect officials?
Clearly we need a European style democracy where the people vote for parties A B and C and then A and C win and form a government with X Y and Z so that there’s a Frankenstein government that literally nobody voted for. It’s more democratic, you see.
I would like to take issue with your last two points. People in Europe vote knowing a coalition government is the outcome, meaning many people did in fact vote for Frankenstein’s Monster. Also, with the coalition, more people are represented in the government, meaning a wider range of opinions and subjectively more democratic.
I guess getting one party that got 30% support having all the power is more democratic…
Americans love drama. The more they can draw out their soap opera elections, the better the ratings.
I hope he wins, though. The Dems need more people like him.
NYC having 1/5 the population of Canada in a much more concentrated area put it into perspective for me
relative to our provincial/federal election cycles, it makes sense to me
Both political parties love the socialist boogyman routine lol. They cannot resist spinning this in the media.
You know how in the debate, the moderators posed this, “what if tech company A” wants to come or leave or etc.
Am I the only one in NYC who doesn’t want the big tech companies? If Facebook or Google were going to leave NYC, I would be all for it. All the big corporate tech bros make this place worse, not better- they enshittify everything they touch.
Small tech, yes, big tech- or fucking “AI company with too much money doing some dotcom-like stupid product” - no.
Also - one edit - Facebook being in the old K-Mart building, somehow makes sense - except K-Mart was better. Somehow saw Phillip Glass there many a time.
I used to go to Venice Beach and admire the semi-quaint and weird vibes the area employed. Since Big Tech moved right next door, I noticed a decreased in diversity and an increase of tech bros ruining the scene. It no longer has the old vibes I once knew, in addition to everything in the area increased in price due to their presence.
American’s fascination with Oligarchs and celebrities is absurd.
Also all the tech company employees could just work from anywhere who cares where they are located
I am tech worker and I try to make my city better, volunteer in a dog shelter, try to use public transport when possible (San Jose doesn’t have the best public transport)
Don’t confuse tech workers to the top earners
I think the “big corporate tech bros” was meant to refer to the bigwigs. “Big” modifying “corporate tech bros”, not “big” modifying only “corporate”. English needs to normalize parenthesis for intra-phrase grouping.
You saw Philip Glass at K-Mart many times? Story time?
Yeah. He’s a super nice guy. I mean- every time I saw him, I just thanked him for his music, especially the string quartets. He probably was like, “oh it’s the guy I see in K-mart who likes my string quartets.” So, maybe he’s not nice, but he was nice to me. I know someone who knows someone who says he is experiencing cognitive decline - so if you want to write him fan mail, now would be the time.
BURRRRRN
Busses, train and subway - make all those free and it will probably be less expensive than keep building more and broader roads and parking + you get less pollution and fewer accidents. 🙌🏻
And people will use them more, getting out and exploring their city, spending money and boosting the economy.
If a fucking MTA pass wasn’t so expensive I would explore NYC endlessly
Exactly. It would be cool to go out on a Saturday morning, and spend the entire day exploring, but you’d end up spending $50 on subway and bus passes. Imagine if you didn’t have to pay for transportation, and that $50 gets spent in restaurants and shops instead?
The Dems are so far right now that a leftist candidate is a breath of fresh air
The chair of the DNC, who has complete and total control of the party…
Has literally been saying for 3 months now that Mamdani is the future of the party, and we need to run more campaigns like his not just the outreach, but actually and specifically running on things that will actually help.people.
If all you hear about “the Dems” comes from billionaire owned media.
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You’re gonna think when the party’s at it’s best, it’s at it’s worst.
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The oligarchs are going to make you a useful idiot in the hopes you depress turnout enough a neoliberal wins.
Please put some more thought into politics. It’s important and we can’t allow both parties to throw basic logic out the window. The average American should have been able to easily see all this, but they obviously can’t.
We can’t afford to be ignorant right now
Not one leader of the Dems wanted to endorse Mamdani in June
Well yeah, in a few months the far left will probably turn against him like they turn against all politicians. Or he’ll actually do what the far left wants and it’ll be a disaster.
The far left is like asbestos, it can be useful for specific purposes but you want to avoid direct contact with it or you’ll get cancer.
Thank you for posting that. First, I think a celebratory, sharing attitude of “Look what I found” is much better for continuing engagement than using your knowledge as a cudgel to insult the less aware.
Secondly, I’m not sure how you pulled a lot of hope from this Ken fella, he spent most of the interview arguing against the interviewer and dancing around her questions. We like Zorhan because he doesn’t do that, he answers questions straight on, making eye contact and smiling because he is sure of his moral high ground and amused by the gamesmanship.
Decent read
I think Hakeem Jeffries being a piece a shit is part of the problem where prominent democrats keep trying to punish people even an iota to the left of their donors while treating republicans like reasonable people even as the republican media is pushing people to go door to door killing democrats
Good thing I’m not an American then. If I would be an American “I’d be a vote blue no matter who” but also make sure I vote in any primaries I’m able to so I could vote “less corruption” and “left leaning”.
As a European I see politics in the US being a choice between “Classic EU Conservative party” and “Far right populism + authoritarian” but then you manage somehow to get Mamdani, AOC, Gavin Newsom and Bernice which actually look decent. I like that, Trump shit is affecting Europe and shifting the overton window left instead of right would help I think.
Yeah even after seeing how the Republicans were pulled to the far right by a dedicated minority within the party, leftists in the US just scratch their heads about how to move the Democrats to the left. I dunno complain on social media and don’t vote? That’s sure to make a difference!
Meanwhile the right continues to vote Republican every election and the dedicated far right votes in the primaries to control the party.
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The Atlantic did a wonderful job writing up the union of the progressive and populist movements during the early 19th century. Would be nice to see that alignment occur again.
…cuomo is an ass, he lost the primary, but more importantly, he was ousted through legal means, from the governorship…read a history book…
should be cross posted with “fuck billionaires”. Musk could end homelessness in the US and UK, and still have more than half his current worth left. But corrupt politicians are still lining up to give him money.
Friendly reminder that there are far more unused homes in the US than homeless people
Also a friendly reminder that if every US church were to house 2 homeless people, homelessness would be ended.
There is no amount of money that can permanently end all homelessness…
End homelessness = buy everyone a home.
But the point was more about the fact that he could buy every single homeless person in two countries a house, and still have more than half his current wealth. In your desire to be contrarian, you miss the actual point.
You don’t think giving someone a house makes them not homeless? Weird.
No they think giving free houses to someone makes it unfair to them as they think they are the only ones with suffering in life and the “poors” deserve poverty as they don’t work as hard as them.
I often wonder how miserable it must be to bear such ignorance, malice and unkind, distrustful thoughts in someone’s mind.
Well, they didn’t actually say that, it’s just a very common attitude. Given that they said “permanently end homelessness”, id imagine they meant closer to “cash can’t solve the structural issues that cause homelessness: if you give every homeless person a house, you’ll still have people falling through the cracks and ending up homeless”.
If they weren’t saying that, then I am. Obviously a bandaid is better than the “fuck all” currently being done, but let’s not pretend that a billionaire can just fix societal level problems.
Agree on point #1, but on point #2 I lean toward “yes they can”. Billionaires’ constant PR campaigns that they conduct to avoid having their heads chopped off are what normalizes a society where people are okay with looking the other way when confronted with such unimaginable wealth disparities. There are limited resources, and the ones that are being hoarded are what will help. Obviously we the people have to do better, but intrinsic in the discussion of why we suck so much at helping one another is the fact that this culture was crafted and nurtured by the people it benefits.
Hmm, that’s a good point. I’m not sure I’d entirely agree. I think the influence of individuals on the course of history is often exaggerated because it gives a greater sense of control to the affairs of the world.
The theme of society not giving a damn about poor people goes on well before we had anything like the modern billionaire. People were building the notion that they must deserve it into their religion before then. I think people largely have a bias towards the notion of justice in the world, so if you’ve been treated unjustly you must have done something to deserve it, and vice versa.
The people who have benefitted from the notion certainly have done what they can to resist the idea that we can be better, but protecting money is so much smaller than changing societal trends. Keeping yourself balanced on top of the crest of disfunction is trivial compared to changing the wave.Oh agreed. I think we’re talking past each other to a certain extent. I certainly don’t think that we can expect billionaires to ever be the ones to help. Andrew Carnegie’s act of giving most of his stolen money back under very specific directions on how to use it, after repressing wages and worker actions and literally having people killed his whole adult life, is considered a high bar for them. They have an addiction of some sort. I think it’s obvious if you read Carnegie’s journal—he talks early in his career about how his success has been beyond expectations and he’ll only need to work a few more years and then he can just travel the world on that nest egg and be a business consultant. Lol.
But still some disagreements. Religions have been around for a long time, but they’ve come in quite a few varieties. Christianity in most implementations is very top-down authoritarian in nature. I don’t think that’s something “the people” decided on and then elected to hand over autonomy to meritocratic leaders, and I think this is evidenced by the many other religions that do not work the same way, like Earth Lodge religion, Malagasy spiritualism and spiritual warfare, Mahayana Buddhism, or even subsets of Christianity like Quakers that eschewed hierarchy. Unless there is something in our blood that makes certain “races” of people think differently, then it’s cultural. If it’s cultural, then the loudest voices shape it the most.
No, I think within Christianity and Christian territories people established themselves as rulers by co-opting the desires of humans to have some greater story such as religion that helps explain their lives. Likewise, I think senses of entitlement and beliefs in justice were co-opted. Reinforcing the notions of justice by constantly emphasizing its importance in your culture explains away many of your despotic actions. It provides a shield that slows the tide of revolt. Your political enemies are simply getting what they deserved; the people starving must be unrepentant sinners. In the U.S., the people who are directly responsible for so many people having less than what’s needed for a comfortable life are able to avoid scrutiny precisely by focusing on how those people deserve so much more. They do! It’s true! They know it, and hearing someone admit it feels very liberating! But listening to those voices allows billionaires and their mouthpieces to coax people into believing in their twisted idea of what society should look like—that instead of being entitled to live a good life, people should be entitled to pursue a great one.
I think the proliferation of billionaires points to a cultural problem, but not a grassroots groundswell of belief in billionaires. Too much of culture is asserted surreptitiously through native advertising in the news and PR in our newsfeeds. We haven’t adapted quickly enough—we still think these voices are our peers. We don’t realize how few voices there are, or how many parrots repeating them.
Stopping the bleeding is typically the first step. If that’s all we do it’s better than nothing
Send like a cool thing to attempt.
Like even if someone still wants to sleep outside, a safe place to store your shit so it stays dry seems pretty dope. A place you can show up to when the temperature drops and your shivering and just sleep at with no strings attached…
Shelter is one of our basic needs, kind of like food and water… Seems like our basics shouldn’t be driven by profit.
If they eliminate fares, it’ll actually be less than 700 million because collecting fares costs money.
Ah I love corporate/oligarch loving politicians being called out
thats why they even allowed eric adams for a while.
So I had to look this up, because that Tesla factory does employee thousands of people, and it manufactures their superchargers, has an AI datacenter in it, and a bunch of desk jobs, so I wasn’t sure what was failed about it.
Originally, it was supposed to be a solar panel manufacturing facility, but that didn’t really pan out. There was a quota to employ a certain amount of high tech manufacturing jobs, which was later changed to just manufacturing jobs, and then just jobs.
So while the factory is there and functional, it’s definitely not what was intended when it was built with certain requirements set on Tesla (or whoever would have won the contract), and what it does now, doesn’t bring in anywhere near the expected economic boost that the original intended plan would have.
So in that sense I’d say it’s definitely a failed project yes. But the factory is there and functional.
Edit: Also looks like their lease is coming up in a few years, and theres opposition to signing a new deal with Tesla.
One might say NYC gave Elon Musk, a white supremacist, a billion dollars to own a factory instead of employing those people in public transit and energy production for the city.
Tesla doesn’t own the factory, NY owns the factory.
How much rent does tesla pay for it?
Nothing, that was the subsidy and requirement for meeting the now heavily reduced quotas.
Their lease is coming up though, and there’s opposition to re-signing it, or at least changing what they pay for rent.
Fucking nothing? That’s absurd.
That’s usually how subsidies work in all industries.
You don’t pay something, or pay a highly reduced rate, in exchange for doing something.
Come to XYZ town and you won’t pay property taxes for 20 years if you build something, or you won’t pay corporate state taxes, or you won’t pay something else.
It becomes a bidding war between states/cities trying to offer the best deal to get the business, because the business will dwarf what they offered you.
The problem in this case is, they built this and offered it expecting an external supply chain to be built that would support the factory in NY, but because the high tech manufacturing jobs never happened, that supply chain never got built, and that supply chain was part of the whole business model and expected economic gain.
Really there would be no conceivable way other than corruption to have a similar lease when they re-sign (if they re-sign) it given that failure. Had the plan worked, that free lease would have been worth it, and Cuomo would be able to declare it a massive win.
Wouldn’t a roughly equal number of jobs be created by spending it on transit?
You spend that amount of money on anything that would generate jobs and it will generate jobs.
Happy I live on this small island. Free busses! But I can also just kinda walk everywhere anyway. Another good thing is I get to skip the dangers of sidewalks and crosswalks. I just walk on the beach, no cars.
I mean, Manhattan is an island!
I’ve never been to New York but according to the book “power broker” Robert mosses blocked off a lot of beach access in New York by building roads designed purposefully to make it inconvenient for busses and pedestrians to access… anything nice really.
Imagine if a decent person stayed in a race running as an independent. We would never hear the end of it. But they take Cuomo seriously.
