Shocker: It’s not rich conservatives who run the world:
There you have it: A wealthy Democratic donor admits he funds candidates to improve his bottom line. And yet I hear from the Senate floor no denunciations of his attempts to buy American democracy, no labeling of him as un-American. I have not received a piece of direct mail soliciting donations to fight David L. Cohen’s hijacking of the political process, nor do I wake up every day to investigations of the Cohen political and charitable network. Why?
It’s a rhetorical question, of course.
[Monday-morning update]
Related thoughts from Ed Driscoll.
With a dual party system did you expect anything else? Some people support either party others support both.
The FCC should impose net neutrality rules so Comcast would stop extorting protection money from companies like Netflix. They should also open up more competition to Comcast by allowing Google, municipal utilities, or others to compete with their monopoly.
So the job creators are actually Democrats?
No, not net. They destroy, or prevent from being created, many more than they “create.”
Quick sic the IRS, DOJ, and FEC on Tea Party groups. Money is corrupting politics.
Stories like this emphasize how hollow Democrat’s rhetoric is. Democrats don’t have problems with money in politics. They have problems with money that doesn’t flow through their pockets.
This should be a national story on the front page of every newspaper and leading every national news broadcast the same way that a family values Republican caught in an affair would because of the hypocrisy.
I see the author lumps Elon Musk in with the baddies.
Well, he is, in that he’s rent seeking for his various businesses.
I would like to rent a Dragon, please. 🙂
Question would anyone call the 152 billionaires in china:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number_of_US_dollar_billionaires
Conservative?
What about 111 in Russia.
Democrats are statist
“In political science, statism is the belief that the state should control either economic or social policy, or both, to some degree. Statism is effectively the opposite of anarchism.”
No, anarchism is just another form of Statism. Whether no has government or not does matter.
The idea government controls anything is joke. States are means of oppression- whether it’s Castro
or Obama which billionaires may or may not have bothered to buy.
The opposite of Statism is liberty- whether it’s Monarch in England or UN this is Statism.
Progressive are totalitarian- they are no threat to the “big people”, they a threat to the “little people”.
It is the US government that prevented the too big to fail, fail. That Obama got fee for his services, it not a matter, it was the people who actually paid for it. It’s people who are getting low economic growth and a lawless government- or Obama’s brand of anarchy.
The opposite and only opposite of Statism is libertarian, small government, with less power at federal level [or UN] and a constitution, which limits the power of government.
Why would billionaires care about limiting the power of government- they can go elsewhere
and politicians want to serve them.
No, anarchism is just another form of Statism.
Heh, you sound like those idiots who say atheism is a form of religion.
Trent, the 7th Day Adventists who keep asking to come and talk to me, to save my soul, are less persistent, and far less annoying , than many atheists in Portland trying to “deprogram” me. Among other things, the Adventists are willing to accept that I am not a scriptural literalist, and yet I am religious. The narrow view, of what my religion “must” be(scriptural literalist, or non-religion as the only 2 choices), within the atheist community, is their greatest stumbling block.
Like gbaike, I have, for years, seen whole groups of people here who firmly believe themselves to be anarchists, right down to the black bandannas at demos, who strongly support Obamacare. In fact, many want to go beyond it, straight to single payer. Anarchism here has been slid away from being against the State, by the distraction of being against any large industry, or anything that defends that industry. If the State is attacking or undermining industry, the anarchists here really cannot get up enough of a head of steam to have 1/00th the number of people we get at TEA Party rallies.
If I understand anarchism, 19th century Anarchism is probably closest to the 21st century Green Party platform.
You all know the expression, “If we repeal ____ we will have anarchy!” I don’t think traditional anarchism means Libertarianism or government-is-the-root-of-all-evil Conservatism. Rather, it favors forming local communes-collectives-unions-governing councils over a powerful centralized government.
I think the modern-day Taliban is probably closest to the system the Anarchists had in mind. It is all very decentralized and “democratic” and local-government directed, but there is a common ideology that directs these local units to work towards a shared vision. By “our” standards, the Taliban are not democratic at all and rather repressive, inforcing rigid dress codes, gender segregation, proscribing education for women, but these views are enforced by this shared vision and a strong local governance rather than a central authority.
As you suggest, the anti-1-percenters are probably anarchist in their leanings, only they have been unable to get their “stuff” together.
“You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
(not so much directed at you, Tom, but at people in general)
an-arch: without a ruler.
The Taliban is not in any way anarchy. A rigidly imposed theocracy is damn near the opposite of anarchy.
Neither are the buffoons in the Occupy movement or the anti-globalization movement representative of anarchy. The words chaos and anarchy are not synonyms.
Similarly, rule-by-warlord is not synonymous with absence-of-ruler. Somalia may be chaotic and violent, but it isn’t anarchy.
Instead, anarchy is best viewed as an idealization for purposes of first-order approximation, akin to the “frictionless surface” in Physics. That is, it’s an intellectual shorthand which can not exist in the real world.
Most people live most of their lives without a government minder telling them what to do every waking moment. If your only interaction with the government is the DMV and the tax man, and you’re living the rest of your life without being ruled by someone, then you’re a practicing anarchist most of the time and a minarchist when necessary. But no society has been or will ever be an anarchy.
About the closest one could get would be a minarchy, and even that contains the seeds of its own destruction.
For some people it sure seems to be.
For leftists intentions and beliefs trump results and consequences. Affirmative Action is based on the intention and belief of righting the wrongs of racial segregation and discrimination. Does it matter if it works? Does it matter if it results in additional problems in racial inequality? (For example, by papering over the huge deficiencies in inner city schools by bending college admissions to make the sub-par educations given to minorities less noteworthy. Or by depressing the number of asian students allowed into top tier colleges.) To hard core leftists it doesn’t matter.
Or consider labor laws. There are lots of laws around full time / part-time employment, with the 40hr work week as the basis of the division and laws designed to force employers to give certain benefits to “full time” workers. Does that help the working poor? Nope, it just causes employers to limit entry level / low-skill jobs to “part time” status. And then if workers want to save up money to get ahead they have to work multiple jobs. On balance such regulations are regressive more than progressive, helping those who need the least help and hurting those who need the most. Do hard core leftists care? Not at all, the regulations aren’t the problems, it’s those evil employers not doing what they should who are the problem.
You see that pattern again and again. Leftists still haven’t figured out the law of unintended consequences, and may never do so. Just look at the massive slow motion trainwreck that is obamacare. It’s a nightmare that has not and will not improve access to or cost of health care. But it was based on the best intentions, so it must be good.
That’s why it doesn’t matter if some Democrats or multi-billionaire robber barrons. As long as their underlying beliefs are pure, they get a pass for almost any of their bad actions.