They did it once, then did it again and not only is it still just a fine, the fine didn’t even go up. Given inflation since then, the fine actually went down in real terms.
In a two party system, populist movements grow when the opposition party is failing (or is perceived as failing) people. Alternatively, both parties can fail the people before one becomes populist.
The two party system has failed Americans. But now that the republicans have created a populist movement, the failure of democrats to properly serve many people causes them to be pulled by populism. It doesn’t help that the culture war lets absolue horseshit issues fly by without actual basis in reality, since that fuels the fire without actually having to do the hard discussions about policy.
The MAGA movement is a “third way” that formed because the paths forward shown by both democrats and republicans seemed to lead to nowhere for many people.
I don’t think this is a cancer, I think this is a horrendous feature of the design of a representative democracy under capitalism (at least, in the American sense)
Capitalism will crush people while trying to wring every bit of profit out of them, and in a capitalist democracy, the state supports capitalism.
Representative democracy leads to unaccountable representatives. They still need to get re-elected if they want to (or they could just serve capital and dip), but with all the dogmatism caused by political parties, the hierarchy of the parties protecting the politician, and the benefits of having corporate sugar daddies, especially media corporations, they can get away with enriching themselves at the expense of Americans, while still having decent odds at reelection.
Further, people in power, for whatever reason gave this tendency to build their power, usually at the expense of those without it. The state gives itself new powers and new toys at the expense of everyone else. Fear of terrorism gave us some of the most draconian laws on the books, such as the patriot act, which has not been repealed whenever there has been an opportunity to. The police got afraid of the people, and bought themselves guns, counterinsurgency training and tools from a foreign apartheid state, armored cars, and raises. The supreme court went from writing itself into existence to giving the president near legal immunity, rolling out the red carpet for the authoritarian state to become an even more authoritarian state.
When you mix these tendencies together, its no wonder why this state has failed. And while it hasn’t failed everyone, the nature of capitalism leads to a pretty large exploited class ripe for exploitation. And this populist movement is ready to take advantage of that, between those primed by culture war drivel, economic suffering, or seeing their demographic and/or class lose power in some way.
This populism isn’t a cancer on an ailing democracy.
It is a symptom of a failing democracy, unable to sustain itself from the structure of itself.
I agree with your overall points, but populism is not exclusive to two-party system. Much of Europe, with many countries having a multiparty, proportional representative parliaments, are experiencing populism as well. We see the rise of far-right AfD in Germany, National Rally in France and Sweden Democrats to name a few.
A huge chunk of the most virulent MAGA are successful. Whatever their reasons, “The Democrats failed them” is only something they’ve been told, not something that really happened, because they were never failed.
You don’t need to be downtrodden to feel like a party is failing you. Considering life is getting harder for so many lower and middle class people, a lot of people are feeling worse than they did 10-15 years ago. This is where people have been failed by both parties.
I mentioned that there are people who are feeling like they are losing their position in society. Some people are simply bigoted and are upset at seeing minorities get visibility, some are upset that christianity is less prevalent among Americans. I don’t think either of these reasons is valid, though, fuck the old hierarchies.
The issues faced by Americans in the rural south are completely different than the ones faced by Americans on the east or west coasts. We basically live in separate worlds. Republicans failed them, but to think the democrats didn’t is silly. For example, a lot of people live in rural areas, where the police would take an hour to get there if someone was being attacked by someone or some animal. Guns are a bit more necessary in places like this than they are in a big city.
Granted, I think the media’s lies is the biggest cause of the populism. And holy shit does right wing media spew lies at an incredible rate.
If he didn’t name them directly, they won’t understand he’s talking about them. There’s a lack of intellect and critical thinking there. That’s why it works in the first place.
We don’t need Boeing for for passenger jets. We need them for, well let’s just roll out the list.
AH-64
CH-47
V-22
F-15
F-18
C-17
KC-46
T-7
And I’m getting tired of copying things from their Wikipedia. It goes on into drones and missiles too. So this isn’t about the foreign competition, it’s about keeping a part of our defense industry marginally competitive with Boeing and Lockheed both kicking around.
So there is the market capitalist solution of breaking them up and letting the pieces compete with each other, or the socialist solution of nationalizing them.
If this goes on, how do you know any of those airframes aren’t as much of a sham as the 787?
I was at the UCSB shooting in 2014. I remember the surreal sound of gunshots. They sounded like nothing I would expect. So many lives and families were destroyed that day. The years later, a bar in my community was shot up, destroying even more lives.
I’m sad how often these occurrences are and that we’ve gone blind to them.
Being monopolistic does not mean you have no competitors, but that you are big enough to adversely affect the free market so that you can’t be competed with.
So yeah, it counts, and so does Apple for example.
More specifically, the government got Enron but the PR campaign waged by corporate lobbyists is directly responsible for the milquetoast prosecutions since then. They actually got a majority of Americans to believe the government was at fault for people losing their jobs and pensions. The pensions that were already embezzled. And the jobs that were already getting cut because the embezzling was starting in on the corporation.
Boeing made $76B in revenue in 2023. This is slightly more than 1 day’s revenue for them ($210M / day) or a bit more than 10 days profit for them ($21M / day). They will keep doing what they’re doing, but increase their spending on a PR campaign to improve their public image.
This plea deal helps them quantify the cost of safety lapses, which they didn’t have before. Now they know that they’ll only get fined a tiny bit, they know that it’ll be worth it to cut further corners if that helps them sell maybe 5-10 more planes in total.
Exactly. This is like if you charged the average person $1 for causing a major motorway accident.
It's a joke of a fine in the face of Boeing's profits - basically telling them they can get away with severe and wreckless disregard for human life in return for just over a week's profits.
No it isn’t, you were just replying to someone saying that it’s slightly more than their daily revenue (equivalent to a person’s income before taxes and spendings)…
This is an absolute god damn failure. Merrick Garland is a spineless, neutered, impotent, milquetoast, coward and that’s exactly how history should remember him.
What I said was in the first sentence. Biden named him attorney general precisely for his milquetoast qualities. He didn’t want anyone controversial - someone who might get some real shit done.
So to be completely blunt, Biden is the reason we have an attorney general with no teeth. I actually think Biden has been a great President overall, but that decision was one I disagreed thoroughly with.
He was originally nominated for SCOTUS by Obama to be that centrist pick.
But he was hired by Biden as AG after having that opportunity permanent denied him, embarrassingly and publicly, with the thought being that he’d be ready to pursue the types of people that used his legacy as a pawn with vigor. When he was nominated, general thought back then was that he may be ready to pursue his work with more intention as a result of what had transgressed.
If not for the Obama nomination and SCOTUS denial I would agree with you, but there was supposed to be more to him after having endured the gop’s horseshit, when in any other time in our history he would have just been a rubber stamp approval. Garland probably would have been a good Supreme Court Justice for the same reasons he’s a horrible failure as AG.
Isn’t a company at least responsible for the safe operation and training of human drivers? Wouldn’t it be the same for the training of self driving cars?
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