City & State (10/10/19) describes DSA as “centered on the yuppies and hipsters who have typically grown up in the suburbs and more recently moved into these [urban] neighborhoods after college. “
When Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the congressional “Squad” (Independent, 11/4/20), it was more evidence that the small socialist voting bloc wasn’t simply left-wing, but racially diverse—with two new Black members joining two other African American representatives (one a Somali immigrant), a Puerto Rican and a Palestinian American.
Looking at socialist victories in New York state politics this year, we again see a crop of newly elected officials that represent a real rainbow coalition with a working-class message created to cut across racial boundaries (The Nation, 12/22/20). (Disclosure: This writer is a member of DSA in New York City.)
And yet, over and over again, corporate media repeat the accusation from establishment Democrats and conservatives that the ascendant socialist movement is made up of “gentrifiers.” Far from representing the toiling masses, the theme goes, today’s socialists are white, well-off interlopers, sipping their lattes while reading Karl Marx at the coffeeshop that pushed out the neighborhood bodega.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Caucus chair, told the New York Times (12/23/20) that socialist politics were ascending “particularly in neighborhoods where Black and Latino residents are being gentrified out of existence,” and that the “socialist left is in part tied to gentrifying neighborhoods,” and thus marginal in citywide politics.
This is hardly the first time anti-socialist Democrats in New York have used the gentrifier label against electoral insurgents, and had the label unquestioned in the media. Politico (11/13/20) was one of many publications to repeat a claim by city lawmaker Laurie Cumbo that socialist challengers were agents of gentrification, having earlier written (8/8/19) that “political insiders say gentrification has played a role” in socialism’s electoral success, because it is “ushering in younger, white voters that skew more liberal than traditional homeowners.”
City and State (10/10/19), which covers local and state politics around the country, likewise used the gentrification claim against DSA, saying that blue-collar voters had “suspicion of the white people with canvas New Yorker magazine tote bags who arrived in the neighborhood five years ago and now seek to change its political leadership.”
The claim that socialists and progressives represent elite culture and are untethered to the working-class has been long a common one in right-wing media. Recall, for example, a cartoon in the libertarian magazine Reason (12/2/11) that portrayed Occupy Wall Street demonstrators as well-off cosmopolitans who exploit non-workers.
Today, those media use that canard against the ascendant socialist left. City Journal (Fall/20), the flagship publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute, described DSA as “a party of young, well-to-do neighborhood newcomers, sometimes dubbed gentrifiers.” The “Trumpism without Trump” journal American Affairs (Summer/20) dismissed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 congressional primary upset victory, saying without citation that it was fueled by a “few thousand Twitter-conscious gentrifiers who populate Astoria,” although the magazine provides no citation backing up this claim.
The centrist press, establishment Democrats and the right have different aims, but accusations of socialist gentrification bring them together. City Journal and American Affairs wage a cultural war, evoking a right-wing vision in which socialism exists only in universities, where the children of the elite are taught to hate America and Christianity, while Johnny Lunchbox in Anytown, USA, puts his faith in a marketplace that’s anchored in God and country.
For Jeffries, the Times, and City and State, meanwhile, fighting socialism is a complex defense of the role real estate titans play in mainstream Democratic politics. The real estate industry is one of the most powerful and influential business sectors in New York City; insiders joke that it is to the city as oil is to Texas. One of DSA’s most universal features, meanwhile, is its stance against landlords and rising rents.
The Real Deal (6/18/19), organ of the real-estate industry, sees DSA members not as gentrifiers but as rent-control advocates.
Zohran Mamdani was a “foreclosure prevention housing counselor” before his election to state assembly this year, according to his official biography. The Real Deal (6/18/19), the city’s main real estate journal, called Julia Salazar, a socialist state senator from Brooklyn, the “bane of the real estate industry” for her tenant advocacy, particularly her push to make it harder for many landlords to evict tenants (Gothamist, 2/11/20). “On every single issue, where gentrification plays a role, NYC DSA has been staunchly fighting against gentrification,” Salazar told FAIR in a phone interview.
Meanwhile, the New York Post (9/21/20) warned its readers that socialists aim to “‘cancel’ rent,” in order to force landlords to “give up their properties and ‘exit the market,’” allowing the state to “acquire the properties and convert them to public housing.” The paper, owned by the right-wing Murdoch family, worried that the rise of socialist lawmakers would undermine “the real estate industry’s already diminished clout in the Democrat-run state legislature.”
As Salazar said, the idea that DSA members are at the same time both tools and enemies of real estate interests is a “frustrating” and “confounding” contradiction, and it often stems from the fact that many DSA-backed candidates do represent gentrifying districts. Salazar’s north Brooklyn district, for instance, is synonymous with the post-hipster luxury housing boom. “They don’t understand correlation versus causation,” Salazar said of the media and political critics, adding, “In communities that have been experiencing gentrification, DSA is by no means driving the gentrification.”
But Salazar senses something far more cynical: an attempt by DSA’s opponents to inoculate working-class communities against socialism where DSA isn’t yet powerful, miseducating voters by smearing the organization before DSA can make political inroads in those places. “It’s advantageous” to the political establishment, she said, to advance a narrative in places like southeast Queens or East New York, working-class communities that don’t have much DSA presence, that says, “The socialists are gentrifiers and they’re your enemy.”
For Salazar, the gentrifier accusations against DSA from corporate media—and from political opponents who get uncritically quoted in the media—are just a part of politics, but she laments that the establishment political machine may use these remarks to get “Black and brown and working-class voters to vote against their interests,” resulting in “more gentrification and displacement and suffering for those communities.” She added, “That’s what bothers me, because elections do have consequences.”
A race and class breakdown of voters’ choices in those gentrifying districts might prove instructive, don’t you think?
Yes, but that would prove the point of the ones Paul is attacking. Just one minute of research points out that Paul went to U of MI. There’s a picture of him in front of his nice house with his wife and kid. He’s EXACTLY like the person he says socialists are not. Nothing wrong with any of the above except he tries to deny it.
Paul, maybe you ought to give advice to others how you accomplished what you did. You feel guilty of your wealth? Give it away. Get in there and really struggle.
Thanks for proving his point, tim. I don’t think you quite understood Jim’s point.
Geez I mean do you really think that 1) Paul is somehow rich from a series of reporting and editing jobs, 2) That journalism or criticism of journalism isn’t itself a form of getting in there and really struggling or 3) anyone standing in front of a house also owns it? (the bank usually owns most peoples’ houses until they’ve paid off their 30 yr mortgages).
You’re using the same stupid argument that has been deployed against socialists and Democratic Socialist independents like Bernie Sanders. As soon as they make some money, suddenly their points become invalid. Yawn.
He’s exactly like the person (singular) he says socialists are not? Where do you get off making that judgment on the basis of a picture, especially when you read his work going back to the early 2000s in college?
At least have the courage to stop hiding the fact that you carry water for rent seeking capitalists behind a facade of someone who actually cares about regular people and minority communities.
Tim,
Q: What’s the difference between Capitalism and Socialism?
A: In Capitalism, man exploits man, in Socialism it’s the other way around.
That’s not my house lol
“without any citation”
oh hai!
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/alexandria-ocasio-cortez/industries?cid=N00041162&cycle=2020
Fake AOC (fAkeOC),
The link you posted backs up what Ari was pointing out; how there is more going on than first appearances would lead one to believe.
Going off just the campaign contributions column on that page you linked to, individuals from the ‘Real Estate industry’ donated $211 K to Rep. AOC’s campaign, a pittance compared to the contributions she received from other sectors
Apparently there are AOC supporters in the Real Estate Industry. So what? Does this mean those contributors are de-facto “gentrifiers”? Not at all. I suggest you go back and reread that part in the article about “correlation not being equal to causation.”
Unfortunately for you curmudgeons and Leftist purity testers, there are tenants rights organizations whose firm falls under the category “real estate industry”.
The other thing I never hear from the Socialism cancellers, is what about real estate companies, who are pro-Socialist?
Has anyone even looked up the ratio of property owners versus renters and leasers in so-called “gentrified” neighborhoods?
Maybe I missed it, but the Open Secrets link does nothing to convince me that Representative Ocasio-Cortez is a “gentrifier.”
Is she a politician who is being forced to submit to outdated and obsolete 20th century parliamentary rules? You bet. But I wouldn’t go calling her a sell out or “gentrifier” for that.
I couldn’t care less about how much money Paul makes. But he cares how much I make (if it’s above a subjective number). That is the difference between me and socialists. Class warfare is all they care about. What happens is: once they gain power, all of the wealth then moves to those in power. Capitalism distributes wealth unequally and without caring. Socialism caringly distributes poverty to the masses and wealth to the few.
I have no problem with landlords. Tenants usually don’t have the discipline to save. Show me a tenant in a $2000/month house who doesn’t have a cell phone, a relatively new car, cable television, goes out to eat, and drinks Starbucks. It’s all about choices. Want to own? Give up things that aren’t necessary and save. Buy a very crappy house if that is all you can afford. Fix it up. Sell it. Move to a better neighborhood. It all starts with giving up non essentials. That is the best piece of advice I can give somebody who no longer wants to rent.
You’re telling them to upend the system. The system is why things are the way they are. I’m saying the system is fine. it’s bad personal choices that cause some to be haves and others to be have nots. You’re saying the government will take care of you (if only we had a better government). I am saying take care of yourself. No government will take care of you as well as you will take care of yourself. Make better decisions.
That is where we differ.
Tim,
“That is where we differ.”
Well, I disagree. I don’t think we have very many fundamental differences. Everyone has the need to be loved, everyone has the need for food, clothing and shelter.
Assuming you live in the world’s richest nation, the U.S., it is obvious you choose to keep having a homeless problem, and you keep choosing to ignore the poor and working class.
We haven’t had an actual government sponsored program in the U.S. one specifically drafted whose aims are directed at the needs of the People in almost 100 years.
Where we differ is you do not want to learn that you may be wrong. You do not want to view information that runs contrary to your beliefs. Case in point: can you even name five books you’ve read about the labor movement, or can you name five independent news sites, whose bias doesn’t slant far right?
A lot of the way you think has been molded to fit a corporatist narrative, plain and simple. I don’t care how old you are, it’s never too late to take a closer look at the other side, what are you afraid of, that you might be wrong?
I don’t read books on silly ideas that have failed. Yes, to the news sites. I read them every day. NY Times, FAIR, NBC, CNN, Allsides, and Yahoo. All left wing (except Allsides). Can you name five right wing news sites you read daily?
I hear your side every day. How many right wing friends do you have? The best man in my wedding is a leftist. I went to a poker game he threw. NONE of them knew a right winger. They were all interested in my perspective. That is the bubble that your side lives in.
You have been indoctrinated by teachers and the media since you were a kid. It isn’t novel that you are on the left. It is novel that I am not. Luckily, I majored in engineering. We don’t get indoctrinated in engineering school – no time for silly things like that. The only college on most campuses with an equal number of right and left wing professors.
Tim,
I don’t watch TV, nor do I read for-profit newspapers. In my opinion, the U.S. journalism system is devoid of legitimacy, it is wholly bankrupt and bust of any perspective from members of the population writ-large, ie; wage earners, the poor, the oppressed or the incarcerated, etc. So no, I consider the U.S. for-profit press lacking in credulity.
I go to FAIR, and other independent sites I’ve listed for you before, for reporting considered “News”.
Yes, I have plenty of “right-leaning”, or “conservative” friends, relatives and coworkers. There are even people in my Trade Union who hypocritically voted for Trump, so you got it wrong there (whatever you—sight unseen—keep assuming about me).
How you know your system of belief is devoid of any basis for legitimacy, is look where it has no practical application in life, and does not hold up to the rigors of empirical existence.
You faux libertarians don’t have a single place on Earth, to point to as an example of a thriving country with zero government.
Your “small government” nonsense is nothing but a dog-whistle phrase for gutting social services and you know it.
LOL:
“You’re telling them to upend the system. The system is why things are the way they are.”
Which system are you talking about? The one implemented by FDR to help white workers through massive government assistance? The retirement pensions that baby boomers still enjoy while they sold off the manufacturing economy to China and the third world and financialized the US and Europe? Medicare?
Nobody is talking about upending any system except reforming and re-organizing the way we are policed, making Medicare universal or lowering the age to 18 (or people not covered by a parents’ insurance policy) and ensuring that all people, not just the very rich have a real shot in this country.
Of course that will all involve some pain to certain groups and corporations, which is what you really mean by “upending” the system. But what we’d be doing is really just going back to what was already in place before the Republicans and later Democrats began selling bits and pieces of the system off to the highest bidder and not looking back.
If you want socialism, you are for upending capitalism. That is the system that will be upended. The article was effectively about socialism.
Tim:
Nowhere in the article or the comment(s), was anyone advocating for a Socialist agenda.
Further, what you claimed:
“If you want socialism you are for upending capitalism.”
This is patently false.
There are plenty of examples of countries who have hybrid Democratic-Socialist systems, who btw are fairing much better with the pandemic than we are, and all of the ones I list still use capitalism, in their socialist-capitalist hybrid economies:
Brazil, Turkey, Armenia, Slovenia, Serbia, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Netherlands, Iceland, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland and Ireland, Portugal, Tunisia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Croatia, Moldova, Luxembourg, Greenland.
Tim,
Are you for or against the idea workers hould be payed a fair and living wage? Are you for or against workers having the right and unimpeded legal ability to form a trade union? Are you for or against Medicare for All?
If you seriously think rampant income inequality, constant bail outs for the rich and nothing for the poor, are caused by “have nots” personal choices, and not from a rigged system, you are being dishonest and lying to yourself and others.
What you say sounds fine if the rules of the system weren’t rigged to begin with. It’s true there are some poor people who live beyond their means, but there are way more greedy ass rich people who are not paying their fair share
Fox News, and Wall Street Journal sure has done its job with you.
I mean, they have you actually believing that everything falls to personal responsibility. Wow. I guess you’d say the same about the pandemic too, huh?
This is how toxic the for-profit media system is; it has actually convinced people like you Tim, in believing that government bears no responsibility whatsoever in protecting its population during a global pandemic.
I am for two parties to privately negotiate whatever wage is acceptable to both. I am against some arbitrary number forced upon both parties by somebody who thinks they know better. Why not $20/hour? Why not $50/hour? Why not $100? Your $15 is arbitrary. What is good in SF is NOT good in Santa Fe. I have a farm. There are locals that would love to pick up some extra cash helping me out on my farm. I won’t hire them because the work isn’t worth $15/hour. I’ll do it myself for that much. A guy who wants a little extra money for Christmas now cannot get it because some do gooder made up some arbitrary number to “help” him. Never mind the employment laws and insurances that I have to carry because of laws passed to “help” the little guy. There are now laws that say I must carry a retirement plan if I employ somebody. I just want a guy to swing a hammer for a day. Now, I have to pay him $15.00/hour and provide him a retirement plan? Do you have any idea how long it takes to set one up and then manage it? I have to have workers’ comp. I have to carry health insurance for him. I have to write up an agreement. I have to fill out an I-9. I have put him on my payroll and carry him all year. At the end of the year, I’ll send him a W2. I’ll have to answer questions to the workers’ comp folks. I have to worry about being sued. I have a day’s worth of work. He just wants to earn some extra money to pay a bill or buy something for his kid. Some bureaucrat has prevented that transaction by making it too stifling. Yet, out there is some voter who wants to “help” that man.
I am against trade unions as I am against monopolies. I am against Medicare for All. I am for personal responsibility.
I am against bail outs for ANYONE – rich or poor.
I am against government mandated masks, government mandated company shut downs. Who is the government to tell a restaurant owner that he cannot make a living? There is NO scientific proof of restaurants spreading the virus. It’s easy to shut somebody down when you collect a monthly guaranteed salary. Democrats should have been against restaurant shut downs. How many millions of lower income people lost their jobs? I have no idea where you stood on that. Since you’re for the little guy, I’ll assume you called your representatives and told them to help out the waiters and waitresses and allow them to work. The government didn’t do a good job at all with the pandemic. Yes, personal responsibility is what it’s all about.
I have had a Laissez Faire attitude nearly my entire life. Even as a teen. You like your life being “helped” by some bureaucrat in Washington? They know more about what is better for you than you? Those guys did such a great job with SS. Of course, those brilliant guys did such a great job thinking ahead of a baby boom. They (both parties) did such a great job at managing that fund. They did such a great job at the war on poverty. $15T spent and nothing to show for it. The government has messed up most of what it has touched. This has been consistent for 70 years and you want more? They pass thousands of pages of laws each year. You lose your rights. You want more? You break laws every day because you cannot keep up with the laws. You want more? Just one more program. This one they’ll get right? Never mind all of the failures. This time, this program will help. I’ll feel good about myself because I voted for something that will “help” people. Never mind that it won’t actually help them in the long run. This is what you want?
Tim? Or tim?
Are you two the same person? Are you even a real human being? You sound like a fake AI that has been programmed for reactionary alt-right fake right wing fake libertarian talking points and drivel.
See both comments to “tim” below, they are for you too Mr. Fake human, AI
“way more greedy ass rich people who are not paying their fair share” Just what is a person’s fair share? Who defines that? What percentage of my income are you entitled to? Why? What are the exact numbers? Don’t wave your hands. Put down exact numbers and explain why those numbers are correct and numbers +/- 1 above and below are incorrect.
AFTER that, explain why some people get to vote but pay no federal income tax. They get to help make laws that affect me but have no actual skin in the game. Answer that one AFTER you answer the above questions. If you don’t answer the above questions, then I will know you aren’t a deep thinker, but are acting purely on emotion. I can defend a flat tax or a value added tax. You must defend a progressive tax and the exact need for each tier.
Tim,
Thanks for that list of books you’ve read about the Labor Movement, and for listing the non-far-right independent news sources you go to.
In fact do you have a single source other than the inside of your skull for anything you spew?
What proof do you have that people with disabilities “have no skin in the game.”
Other than that, it’s time for you to get a new schtick, write a book already, start your own movement, or go away and Shut The Fuck up.
I don’t read books on the labor movement. Why read fantasy?
I’ve ready many books on economics.
Where did I write that people with disabilities have no skin in the game? Please quote that exactly.
If you aren’t paying federal taxes and you are voting in federal elections that is simply representation without taxation. It is wrong. You should feel the consequences for bad decisions.
You people on the left are so nice.
I noticed you didn’t list what a person’s fair share is by income bracket. Haven’t thought through your tax the rich plan? It is all subjective, envy, and virtue signalling.
Tim,
The fundamental principal is “no taxation without representation” not the other way around.
Your “representation without taxation” happens every day for the elderly, developmentally disabled, children, combat troops, some VFW’s if they were rendered disabled in a combat zone, there are swaths of the population you are including in your initial “48%” lie of a number* that aren’t even old enough to vote.
*its 44% now, get up to speed with your tripe please.
This other crap (I think) you keep bringing up about what methodological system we should use to tax wealthier individuals—which, btw I doubt you’d even be affected—the one that comes to mind is the one we used to use from the end of WWII until the late 1960’s.
From thereafter until present, who foots the majority of taxation drastically shifted to a system putting more of the tax burden on lower income earners.
I don’t have the exact numbers but it was something like 99% of wealth over $400, 000 of annual income, used to be taxed. Bare in mind, those were 1960’s numbers, and back then people had no problem with it, as they likely would not today if we switched back.
The bottom line is that richer people are paying less today then they have historically been contributing. Every economist will tell you this.
You are tripping about something that you will most likely not even be hurt by.
The system as is does far more harm to your economic prospects because of how interdependent all of our livelihoods are on the growing numbers of people in despair and poverty.
The numbers don’t lie, go watch “Capital in the 21st Century”, it’s subtitled so hopefully you don’t object to reading on screen translations from one of the worlds most brilliant economists.
Also, Steven Greenhouse wrote a book titled “The Big Squeeze”, that I think you would like. Explains what we are living through right now.
Check it out or not, it’s a good centrist book about how working class people have been getting squeezed more and more, while the uber wealthy, or top 10% etc, are paying far less, in historical context, and this comes at great cost to the whole system.
Go watch and read and come back and tell me we are doing just fine…pffft!
tim or Tim,
Apparently there are two of you weirdos named “t-i-m.”
You are wrong about me, I have friends across the political spectrum, but very few who talk as nonsensically and uninformed about the world as you two do. This comes from your limited exposure to actual leftist material, and philosophically idealist ideas that you disagree with. ABC and Yahoo news is not going to get you there.
Who says that an income tax payment is the only measure of a person’s worth in society? I guess students are worthless, “have no skin in the game” and therefore should not vote?
Since when is “return on investment” the only measure of value to an education? Where is your proof that monetary value is the only value to be derived from a college education? I can’t wait to read that one.
What about disabled Veterans of Foreign Wars? They don’t pay income tax, I guess according to you they should not be able to vote?
48% of our population pay no federal income tax. You can point out tiny percentages of the population that MAY not pay. I’ve known plenty of VFWs that pay. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the them do. Typical liberal, point to a tiny percentage, try to get an emotional appeal, and then make a decision for the majority based on the needs of a minority. That is backward thinking. You make a decision based on the majority. 100 confused boys think they’re girls? Ruin girl’s sports. A small percentage of people are disabled, force every company in America to spend upend their architecture for that one day in 20 years the exception needs to visit. Just apply the law without any intelligence. Allow for attorneys to put companies out of business because they fail to meet a simple code. Your need to feel good about yourself does actual harm to well meaning and good people. All for a tiny percentage of our population.
Tim,
Dude you are either a magical thinker, or an irrational extremist ideologue, either way, I see no evidence that you have a capacity to keep things in perspective.
I just looked up that number you claim for percentage of the US population who pays Federal taxes (btw its 44% now, not 48%), and you are obfuscating two huge factors in your alarmist reactionary position:
(The below two numbered paragraphs are from a Forbes article)
1) The likelihood of not paying federal income tax is closely correlated to age: If you are very young or (especially) very old, you are far less likely to pay income tax than if you are working age. Only 11 percent of those age 25-55 do not pay federal income tax while more than 80 percent of those age 75 or older are non-payers.
2) Relatively few people are persistent non-payers. Among those of prime working age who do not pay federal income tax in any given year, nearly one-third will do so for only one year. Almost 6 in 10 will be paying income tax within three years, and just one-in-eight are non-payers for a decade or more.
Also, the percentage of active duty troops, and vets whose pay is tax free goes up in times of war.
I actually served in a combat zone, and the entire time I was there, I paid no Federal income tax. By saying only tax payers get to vote, effectively you are advocating for disenfranchisement of all forward deployed US troops.
Typical extremist ideologue tripe.
I ask again, by what measure of rational logic did you come up with this idea, that only an individual’s paid income taxes should be the loan decider of the only way we have in this country of selecting who rules over us?
If you have no academic methodological sources to back up your shit, you are worse than a liberal who appeals to emotion, you are using what is called “magical thinking”, my man.
Edit:
Second paragraph of “Magical Thinking” post to Tim, should have been “…who pays no Federal income tax…”
I turned the phrase around to make a point. (It doesn’t make my point the other way around.)
Why would you want a person who has no skin in the game to vote?
I most likely have more education and a stronger educational background than you, yet I don’t attack your intellect. Some of us use common sense. It may not be common in your circles.
You mean that people in the bottom quintile don’t stay there that long? I wonder if you use that argument all the time? It is a well worn liberal trope that people at the bottom stay at the bottom. I’ll give you a chance to rephrase that so you can maintain your liberal status.
You are correct, income is not a good lone decider. It is not reasonable to ask those of us who pay far more than the average person to be subject to decisions made by those who are only receiving. What about land ownership? Yes, the current system will not change, Democrats love having power (as do Republicans). The only way Democrats do well is by having victim groups and by handing out goodies. They write checks that the rest of us must cash. (Look at most state pension plans.) Do you have a solution?
Tim,
I see no reason to believe a radically “liberal” agenda will occur in a Joe Biden administration.
There is a caravan headed to the border. No reason to fear open borders when you have health care for all. Those Mexico and Central American countries are not sending us their best and brightest. These are all unskilled laborers. They don’t learn our language. They don’t learn our culture. They don’t add much value, yet those radical liberals want them all to be citizens. Fools. The destruction of our country is coming from within and you support it.
“There’s a caravan headed to the border”
So? Who cares Tim? Caravans have been coming to that border since there was one established.
“Those Mexico and Central American countries are not sending us their best and brightest.”
Oh yeah? How in the hell do you know who is in this caravan? Let me see your data Big Dog, on how you know what caliber of people are in this caravan fleeing tropical storm damage?
Put up or shut up.
tim,
Your racist comments about immigrants:
“They don’t learn our language, they don’t learn our culture. They don’t add much value, yet those radical liberals want them all to be citizens. Fools. The destruction of our country is coming from within and you support it.”
You talking about the same unskilled migrant workforce that is doing most of the harvesting of crops in the U.S.?
When you say “our culture” whose culture you talking about wise-ass?
Who are these “radical liberals” you keep talking about? All of you Right Wingers are the ones always creating immigration policy. You have to go back to your boy GW Bush if you want to blame somebody.
Until you have facts and scientifically proven data that backs up your claims, of immigrants having “no value”, you are just regurgitating an old 19th century, racist, nativist talking point.
I see no reason to believe that people with no power wealth and possessions are the ones to blame for all of America’s problems.
You are copying song-and-verse, the exact same blame-game behavior the movie The Big Short predicted. In one of the last scenes before the credits:
‘In the end the Bankers and Wall Street were bailed out to the tune of $12 trillion dollars, while politicians and right wingers blamed immigrants and the poor for all of America’s problems.’
Something like that. But you go ahead, keep on lapping up that Fox News garbage.
tim,
You can fact check your bogus claim by searching “cost of illegal immigrants”
A fact check dot org piece came up when I googled “if we add up all the money spent on immigrants”
Your claim of migrants being the biggest cost to the U.S. system and cause of its internal rot, doesn’t even hold up to a simple search engine query.
Tim
Yeah, yeah, yeah….go ahead blab on about me being a “Liberal”, yet I’m the one attacking intellects. You are a hypocrite and mental sloth.
I asked you to give me a source, or to rationalize why “only tax payers should be allowed to vote”, your answer? Nothing.
More dodging, more spin, more bullshit and magical thinking from “Tim”.
You ask me why I would want people who “don’t have skin in the game” to vote, and I asked you to tell us ‘sorry uninformed libtards’ who DOES NOT have skin in this game, and you (again) ignored my question.
I’m serious “Tim” who in your exhausted fake mind does not have “skin in this game”? Are you incapable of understanding when a question has been asked of you? Typical Artificial Intelligence reply, “sorry I did not understand the question…durrr”
Thanks for the fun A. I. “Tim”, your autocratic definition of what “skin in the game” means was very illuminating. Whatever.
I like socialism , and so did Tom Paine, which is probably why the founders decided to jettison him. : )
Isn’t Social Security a form of socialism? How about Public Parks… and Nation Parks–of course in the beginning in America there was the COMMONS for all, but then CAPITALISM hated that idea AND THE COMMONS SEEMED TO DIE AWAY.
I also support states and business where the employees share in the profits. I go to those kinds of markets a lot. Aren’t pubic schools a form of socialism too, where a kids have a chance to be educated? State colleges are great also. Oh, and I guess that the Humane Society might be thought of as socialism for animals. SOCIALISM seems much more democratic to me. And too. if America really worked for WE THE PEOPLE. taxes was would be much more fair. AND finally, reread the PREAMBLE, and think about which way —capitalism or socialisms best suits the Preamble…I think socialism does. : )
Capitalism doesn’t seem to work for WE THE PEOPLE as well as socialism. does it? ” _
I hear you Wondering Woman (and agree),
The problem though (I think) is twofold here in the U.S.: (1) we have a huge chunk of people in the U.S. right now who are captivated by the ruling elite’s “divide and conquer” agenda.
I’ve been trying now for like three months to get this “A.I.” that calls itself “tim” to see the futility in nihilistic libertarian political dispositions. The fact that there has never been an example in all of history of a successful country with zero governing body, goes right over his head.
(2) Politics has been pushed so far to the right in the U.S. that even what we are now calling “liberal” would have been thought of as conservative one or two generations ago.
The idea that if Bernie Sanders were to run for office in Germany on the same dang plank he did in the U.S., that it would make him a conservative Member of the CDU (the right wing party in Germany), should be the canary in the coal mine singing loudly that something has gone horribly wrong with this experiment we call “one nation.”