politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
Wow, a hugely wealthy oligarchical capitalist facilitating the rise of fascism?
How completely unpredictable, with no historical precedent whatsoever!
Who could have possibly expected this?!
Certainly not Prescott Bush!
Man... that's one of the things that seems like a conspiracy theory to a great many people, but just actually is true.
Dude literally got caught doing massive amounts of money laundering for literal Nazis during WW2 and by all rights should have been convicted of treason.
Its like how most people don't know that IBM machines enabled the Germans to tabulate and keep track of the holocaust, that their machines spit out the UIDs that were tattooed onto the victims at the death camps....
... I think that 'War is a Racket' by Smedley Butler really needs to be added to the basic K-12 curriculum alongside 1984 and Brave New World...
But oh oops, the Republicans already destroyed our education systems, nevermind.
How much money do these fuckers need before they are content enough to not rat fuck American democracy so they can eek out a few percent more on their billions?
... The answer is infinity.
Capitalism requires constant growth, constant extraction, constant return in investment, constant tendency toward monopolies and wealth disparity until you end up with a neo feudalistic caste society.
You can either attempt to restrain and regulate the system, which we are currently doing a rather poor job of, overthrow the system, which is nigh impossible given the precarity of the average prole, or you can just watch as we head closer and closer to... some kind of hybrid of the handmaids tale and elysium.
... Or, maybe, escape to a slightly less insane foreign country, but you're gonna need a lot of money or a very lucrative skill set as an employee to do that as anything other than an illegal immigrant.
The motto of the Post is literally “Democracy dies in Darkness”, and it was adopted immediately after Trump was elected. It is deliberately positioned as pro-Democrat and anti Trump. I didn’t have a high esteem of Bezos, but I am still disappointed.
Has this f*ing idiot never heard of the Streisand Effect? The fact that they broke a decades long tradition to do this makes a louder thump than their endorsement would have.
Louder to people who know who they're voting for already
Quieter to people on the fence
90% wealth tax is needed
Anyone with over 10 million dollars in wealth should be legally classified as a dragon and anyone stealing from their hoard shall not be punishable under the law.
Not so fun fact: The absolute richest dragons in all of fantasy, excluding Smaug, only have a net worth of several hundred million dollars. A Red Elder Wyrm will have, on average, around 2.5-3 million gold pieces of wealth, with an absolute maximum of 5 million gold pieces. That means that the absolute greediest, and richest type of dragon, by far, only has between 100,000 to 500,000 oz worth of gold.
Smaug being the absolute outlier because he had somewhere between 5 to 10 billion dollars worth of gold.
Now if you are wondering why I'm making a big deal about this, it is because 500,000 oz of gold is only worth about 1.1 billion US dollars. But that is the absolute outlier of the greediest type of dragon that there is. Still only looking at Chaotic Evil Red Elder Wyrms, the average would only be about 3.5 million gold pieces, or a mere 350,000 oz of gold. That's only about $850,000,000 and that is just the most average of the absolute greediest manefestations of greed that our limited minds could imagine. Most dragons would be absolutely fine with between $1,000,000 to $10,000,000. The literal manefestations of greed don't need more than $10,000,000 according to every treasure table.
Those people that have more than 100 million dollars have already passed the greed alignment chart into Chaotic Evil. They are damn near caricatures of dragons at this point.
My favorite is always the Egyptian god deciding to save the equivalent of $10,000 usd every day and never spend a single penny of it back in 10,000 BC and they still don't have as much money as Jeff Bozos.
Maximum wealth law. Once you're worth more than 100 million, 100% of any new income goes to a designated fund for social programs.
100 million is enough money that there is still no real limit to how pampered your life can be, so there's no argument that the rule would hurt anyone.
Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, in his own tweet on the news wrote, “The first step towards fascism is when the free press cowers in fear.”
I don't know if this is the free press cowering, or the free press being bought out by rich people. Either way, it's some bullshit.
Private ownership of a news outlet breaks every definition of "free" in "free press".
A "free press" no longer exists.
Eh.. no? Most free press is privately owned. Just not by billionaires who influence the content.
When Bozos bought it, this was the exact concern, because there is no ethical billionaire. I'm pretty sure he promised to not interfere with the reporting or content. Turned out to be another lying, selfish asshole with more money than he can ever spend... Who could have predicted that? (besides everyone)
This is that "liberal news media" that Republicans keep yammering on about.
The one that's owned by six corporations.
“The most consequential election in our country, a choice between Fascism and Democracy, and you sit out? Cowards. Unethical, fearful cowards,” wrote one reader.
Haha, yep.
If Kamala really wanted to get back at Bezos for this, the best thing she could do is promote union membership in tech and in the press.
It has been Bezos' kryptonite for years, and while I hold zero hope that unions will grow in popularity in the US, having a president push for them might be enough to make big businesses shut up.
She shouldn't be "getting back" at people. That's Trump's MO, and a major part of the reason that makes him so unsuited for the role. She should do what's best for the country. So ultimately I agree she should be pushing for unions.
Bezos is worth so much there is no hope of a single president reigning him in.
It would require a group of countries all going at him at once. Otherwise we are not only stuck with Bezos for our whole life but his children and family will also be unstoppable.
These men should be disrupted. The "move fast and break things" was their mantra. Now they demand nobody move and nothing changes including wealth vectors.
There should be a law for owners of media being kept at arm's length.
Also, cancel your prime subscriptions you cowards!
Anyone who’s still using Amazon and wants to keep democracy is drowning in cognitive dissonance. Amazon is a bigger threat to decent lives for non-millionaires than any single politician, even granting that Trump is a nightmare.
Sigh.
Canceled my subscription.
Just spoke to my parents. Uninterrupted subscribers since '73.
I called them right after canceling my own subscription and they'd already canceled theirs.
I hope Bezos is happy losing 51-year patrons of his paper.
Bezos has tons of federal government contracts. When Trump was president last time he went after Amazon and others he disliked to get their contracts cancelled. Bezos is concerned that if Trump wins, Trump could fuck with his contracts.
That's the reason. It's fucked up and more evidence of why news media shouldn't be owned by fuckhead billionaires. Shameful day in WaPos history. Cowardice. Grovelling to placate Trump for the benefit of the paper 's owner.
Tin foil hat: I am somewhat concerned that our oligarch overlords seem to be hedging in a way that they think Trump might win.
Free press in the USA? LOL, it becomes more and more difficult every time a US oligarch buys a news outlet.
Well that subscription is cancelled
And I just killed my subscription to the post fuck them.
Jeff Bezos killed
Well this should be interesting.
Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris, paper reports
Oh, nevermind.
for years tech bros has been framed as liberal/leftist/team blue supporter. but after years of musk shitposting bullshit and almost not even single one called him out, more and more i have a feeling that they ALL are just magas hiding in the closets, they are not allies at all.
They're mostly self-styled "libertarians", which means they haven't thought anything through, think they know better than all the country's institutions, and just want to be allowed to do whatever they want without consequences. This makes them natural allies of the MAGAs, even if they don't realize it.