Ten things you can do instead of obsessing over who's going to be President next year

After some conversations I've had with the Biden faithful, I've concluded this: there are two crises. There's a national crisis right now, to be sure, with high unemployment, a lot of eviction, and COVID-19 running rampant throughout America. But then there's also a crisis in the brains of the President-obsessives.

The Trump true believers, a shrinking class indeed, cannot be persuaded because they think that "Antifa" or whomever is making their glorious President look bad. They thus live in a fantasy world of panic and hysteria, imagining nonexistent enemies every time they go out to practice on the firing ranges. The Biden faithful, lacking any interest whatsoever in their committee-chosen candidate, must create fantasies about their candidate (usually combined with excuses for their candidate, ready-made for whenever someone brings up who Joe Biden really is). The Biden faithful are a more complex bunch; their more complex complex results in the sort of campaign Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti discuss below:

But none of this theatrical prop has anything to do with the horrific reality of the physical world, nor does it have anything to do with the real Joe Biden. It's also rather irrelevant to the actual political situation, in which Joe Biden's sure path to political victory is to hide in his basement while Donald Trump destroys his own political chances. Campaigning for Joe Biden will not change this formula, since neither the Bernie-Sanders created fantasy about Joe Biden nor the real Joe Biden will improve the situation of the real Joe Biden. Oh and be sure to give that $5 you were going to give to the homeless woman to the Biden for President campaign fund. I'm sure it will look nice next to the donations of the billionaires. What's that slogan?

prayer.png

But if you ask the Presidential-election-obsessives, their number one concern is one of who you are voting for when you vote for President. They typically can't be bothered with a wide variety of discussions, say, of problems neither a second-term Donald Trump nor a first-term Joe Biden will fix. Remember Joe Biden's promise to rich donors that everything would remain the same? Yeah, that. Why is it, you ask, that Nina Turner compared voting for Joe Biden to "eating half a bowl"? Yeah, that.

Just to conclude this thought, here's a reflection. Some of you may be asking this question: why can't I do anything about the fact that both candidates in the Presidential election are (to give it a euphemism) seriously sub-par and that the result is, therefore, out of my hands? The answer is simple, my friends. You can't do anything about it because it's been that way for the past nine cycles and nothing was done then, either.

Oh and as for what these problems are that won't be solved? Let's start with this one. Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, a Brit journalist, has recently dug up research (peer-reviewed by Nature magazine) showing that it's overwhelmingly likely that there will be a civilization-wide collapse if we don't change direction. Moreover, recent behavior of our Congress, in both its (D) and (R) manifestations, ought to have revealed its priorities: more for the rich, peanuts for everyone else. And to show you what that means in context, here's Richard Wolff:

So in honor of the act of moving on from the great parade of Presidential propaganda, here is a list of ten things you can do instead of obsessing over who's going to be President next year.

1) Join Earth First!

Any recent observation of the alternative social media in the US will have noted that many organizations which claim to be for the public interest are in fact part of what Jane Hamsher called the "Veal Pen" -- basically it's that if they are to retain their foundation grants they must refrain from taking political positions that the foundation granters don't like. Earth First! is an environmental organization that is not part of any "Veal Pen."

2) Join the Movement for a People's Party

This is an attempt to create a new major party in the United States. It won't be gearing up with any degree of seriousness until after the November election. You could also join the Green Party or at least get to discussing how we're going to do something other than ride the Two-Party System to our ultimate dooms.

3) Create a Food Not Bombs local

Food Not Bombs is an anarchist "organization" which provides free meals to anyone who wants one, creating solidarity where for the most part free-meal-providing is a matter of charity, of provision coming from the rich to the poor. FNB should be very important in the coming months. I've been the go-to for a Food Not Bombs local before; I can go over it carefully for people who want to do it.

4) Join the Democratic Socialists of America

This is an organization of socialists who, it seems, will settle for social democracy in a pinch. You can see that they support Medicare for All, which Joe Biden does not support.

5) Join your state Medicare for All organization

It appears that if we get Medicare for All, it will be coming to the states first. My organization is Health Care for All Oregon; you may have to find yours through the Physicians for a National Health Program website.

6) Join your local evictions protest

If it can happen in New Orleans it can happen anywhere.

7) Grow your own food

If you don't have land of your own with which you can grow your own food, you should take up guerrilla gardening in your local vacant lot. It's not going to replace what you buy from the local supermarket, but if a lot of people do it we can be the next Havana. Here's a good place to start discussing how to do it.

8) Create a "Time Dollar" system

The one I know about is the Echo Park Time Bank; but the general idea is that a community starts its own "money" system in which participants exchange hours of labor with each other. This results in friendly mutual aid arrangements which do not involve subordination to corporations, landholding elites, or governments.

9) Just get in the streets

I'm sure you'll find something to protest. It's not like there isn't anything out there. There is, of course, Black Lives Matter, a very important cause. Or you might be able to start with the August 3 action to demand safe schools.

10) Educate your friends about alternatives to capitalism

There are many ways and many things to read. A lot of why we are in this mess is that people, especially American people, cannot envision another way of doing things except through capitalism, in which everything starts by soliciting money. Well, a lot of people don't have money. So we're going to need different ways.


I'm sure none of this precludes voting for Joe Biden. Do it if you want; don't waste a lot of time on it. It's not worth all its pageantry, and time's a'wastin'.

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Cassiodorus's picture

include them below.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Cassiodorus

and even those of us without, might consider taking action to secure our local water supply. Or, more realistically, take actions that will make it more likely our water supply will be secure. By which I mean, present, drinkable, and not owned by Nestle.

My mom recently gave some money to an effort by a local conservation group to buy up the headwaters of a creek and a couple of springs. Florida has, I think, the largest number of freshwater springs in the world.

In my alternate universe, very few people live in Florida year-round, and large swaths of it are set aside as, to put it in capitalist terms (sorta) a water production facility for the nation. Because water is automatically profitable, whether you make money by selling it or not.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cassiodorus's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal by Omar el-Akkad's dystopian novel "American War." Set in the year 2075, it predicts continued climate change and a revisited Civil War. In el-Akkad's future, Florida is under water except for a detention facility on one of the keys. South Carolina is a quarantine zone.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

earthling1's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
The Bush Clan have bought up one of the worlds largest aquafiers in Paraguay just to save for all their fellow Americans.
Good Americans,they are.
s/

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@earthling1

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Pricknick's picture

Because I'm not

obsessing over who's going to be President next year

I like to think it's a minority but who am I to care less?
Presnuts are only figureheads. Much akin to busts of long dead presnuts.
Nothing more.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

@Pricknick judging by what little I'm on social media, the voices of vote blue no matter who seem the loudest. Just this morning I read a "Biden wasn't my first pick either, but shut up and vote for him" post from someone who I do respect, even if I know he's too smart for this game.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

In the case of my boyfriend, it's because he is desperate (genuinely) to get rid of Trump.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Look into how your city's police-force budget is allocated. Join in the "defund", or hell "abolish", movements that may have already started up where you are. Here in Eugene, we have White Bird Clinic and their CAHOOTS group that take a good number of the police calls for domestic and mental health issues. Do your police have a corporate funded slush fund? Who is being protected and served by your city's police? etc.

There is a huge body of literature on defunding and abolishing police that I've only recently become aware of.
Mariame Kaba, who blogs at Prison Culture and tweets @prisonculture, is a good follow to learn more if you are interested.
Thanks Cass. Enjoy your writing.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@peachcreek And yes.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Shahryar's picture

I'm amused by the settleforbiden.com website.

But I don't see how I can settle for him when, given the opportunity to blast the federal response in Portland, instead says "violent" protesters should be arrested and tried.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@Shahryar You should vote for anyone else who's on the ballot in November.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Shahryar

Um...

I don't know why I'm surprised.

I guess it's right in line with "shoot them in the leg."

What's really surprising is that "Biden" manages to be consistent at all, given that he clearly has a serious problem.

What's truly depressing is watching good, smart people make the argument for voting for a clear figurehead.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

This election is already lost, UNLESS a third-party dark horse pulls off a miracle. Shouldn't electioneering for one be an option on your list? Someone else on here said something good about now being the time to raise hell for "NEITHER" and capture national attention for a couple months like Occupy and the Floyd riots managed to do.

I can no longer support Black Lives Matter; it certainly made sense in 2014 (I like to say it is, as stands, 'the last thing in American politics that actually made sense'), but it appears to have since been coopted by corporate opportunists, devolutionary pseudointellectuals, punchbowl-soiling "allies", and straight-up nationalists (if it weren't for their despicable hypocrisy regarding "white" nationalists, and the greater-evil track record of the feds in general, I otherwise wouldn't have a problem with Trump-Team investigating "black" nationalists; nationalism is evil, period).

The conclusion I have reached as a degree-bearing student of history, psychology, natural history and more is that group identity is the enemy. Race = racism. Gender = sexism. "Community" (and I acknowledge there's some semantics here) takes people's natural altruism, which can and should shine as far as starlight, and fences it in to the point of becoming ingrown and festering. People the world over are circling the wagons right now, and that is very human, but not coincidentally, it is also a mammoth MISTAKE. The frontier of real progress in the 21st Century should be the phasing-out of collective identity. Much like (or unlike) the cyanobacteria that originally gave our planet's atmosphere its oxygen content, Humanity must evolve if it is to survive the Anthropocene.

"In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

in favor of more individualism, I agree.

The poisonous nature of individualism--at least when turned into a religion--has been overwhelming me lately.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal I'm seeing less individualism now than I've ever seen in my life.

You seem to be (and I'm surprised to hear this from you) falling for the grand fallacy of the Cold War: Capitalism is NOT individualism, and never was. The 20th Century misstep of ceasing to differentiate between mind and matter is also a factor. What scares me so bad is that people are operating on bedrock assumptions and illusory "knowledge" that seem inescapable if you're raised with them but just don't hold when those of us fortunate enough to grow up "ignorant" of them show up. I think Christianity has inflicted something like epistemological genocide on the world that has left people with a mutilated understanding of how morality works, and only recently had we begun to escape it...but that process is being sabotaged again now.

Altruism is born of egotism. Classical (unlike Christian) mythology understood that - and autistic people like myself are living proof. I greatly fear the anti-autistic backlash I've been seeing since circa 2014. Few if any are more vulnerable than we, ESPECIALLY since we don't have a simple, linear place in a hierarchy. We're aberrations. We contradict the prevailing belief system - and that's where it starts to feel like a Dan Brown novel.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

is that Americans have a strong tendency to believe that everything that happens to a person, happens because of their individual character. This creates all kinds of ugliness, like the false idea of meritocracy, a complete lack of ability to even see, much less analyze power, and an annoying habit of interpreting electoral politics entirely through the personalities of whoever is running.

It's not that individual character doesn't have an impact on what happens, but the general assumption in this country seems to be that nothing else does. Therefore, if we want meanness and bigotry and insane policy to stop, we get rid of Trump who is cruel, bigoted and advocates for nuts policy a lot of the time (although I'm not sure he really has policy views, exactly; it all seems to be a kind of Passion Play about him, in his and his supporters' minds). The idea that maybe there's more to our policy problem than the individual character of Trump (or, really, any politician) is so far off the radar that if you try to talk about it, most people 1) glaze over, or 2)look confused and then bring the discussion back to the character of Trump or whoever; again, I'm not saying politicians' characters have *no* effect on what happens, but acting like everything that happens arises out of the bad or good characters of politicians, media, or some set of voters (deplorables, Bernie bros,etc.) is not only incorrect, but tends to be toxic.

Deciding whether and where an individual is virtuous--or evil--largely replaces analyses of power in America. That means that whole huge areas of significance disappear from view.

That's what I meant.

I'm guessing you mean more that groupthink is on the march. I agree, God help us.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

we need to make a lot of noise about NEITHER or SOMEBODY ELSE, and work to Break The 2 Party Oligarchy (Slogan/bumpersticker/poster)

Also, join & support, if you haven't already:
ACLU
EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
and support the Internet Archive

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cassiodorus's picture

@enhydra lutris was one of the few organizations that wasn't in the Veal Pen.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Cassiodorus

I ceased to be able to support them.

I don't expect perfection, but there are some issues that are fundamental to the current system retaining power, and other issues that are fundamental to whether or not human beings can survive on the planet. When an organization goes wrong on one of those issues, I tend to part ways with them.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

and become active with one or more of the separation of church and state; atheist/agnostic; humanistic and/or secular groups that are on the rise in this country.

Until we put a stop to the creeping theocracy (heck, not even creeping anymore- it is HERE) that is rampant in our government and military, many of the categories of concern about our world will get mired in superstition and chained to decision making based upon god belief rather than science and reason. Religious belief in this country is what runs our dangerous support of Israel and involvement in middle eastern wars, hampers our movement forward in questions of the environment, squashes human and civil rights, etc.

Just check out the Military Religious Freedom Foundation if you want to have your eyes opened to the insidious take over of our military forces, Pentagon, etc.

The Freedom of Religion Foundation gets thousands of complaints every year about religious incursions into our public schools. Americans United for Separation of church and state does too The Secular Student Society works hard on college campuses and in high schools to protect the rights of unbelievers. Here is a partial list of organizations...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Atheist_organizations

Just as a glaring example of how religious organizations are increasing their influence in our government, look at the distribution of PPP funds. Religious organizations received 7.3 billion in funding from taxpayers, More than 1.4 billion went to Catholic churches, many of which were in bankruptcy because of their involvement in the molestation of children by priests. 655,000 ministers were sent tax dollars to keep them in the pulpit. The Small Business Administration altered its own rules against loans to religious organizations in order to get money to institutions which do not have to fill out 990 tax forms or open their books in any way to allow taxpayer to see how their money was spent. These institutions also are allow to discriminate in their hiring, which used to be a prohibitory condition for receiving tax dollars.

All of this has happened under the watch an with the encouragement of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump and a Congress run by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

With all the major issues we are facing now and have faced over the last 50 years, very few people have realized that the wall of separation of religion and government has been all but destroyed (SCOTUS has played a major part in this). And if anyone knows anything about world history when it comes to religion, they should be majorly alarmed.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

Granma's picture

@Fishtroller 02 would be great, try pointing out to them that freedom of religion will be lost if that happens. You might also point out that many of the first immigrants to this country came here because they wanted to be free to worship as they chose. Catholics came from Protestant countries. Protestants came from Catholic countries, etc. To the best of my knowledge, we have had Muslims, Jews, atheists, agnostics and others from the earliest days of immigration to this country.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Fishtroller 02
be well and have a good one.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Yeah, I just contributed to H2O, Howie in 2020. His politics are very good. Voting for Biden affirms the diabolical shenanigans of Obama in co opting the primary process, and all the spineless "Progressives" who gave in. Biden is one evil dude, he is not your nice grandpa! I'm reading The Untold History of the United States, by Kuznick and Stone. Biden is featured over and over again. He enabled the Iraq war by rounding up enough Democrat votes, the rest is terrible history. He's a neocon, neoliberal and totally sold out to corporate america and the MIC and personally corrupt, e.g. Ukraine and Hunter. Reinforcing this behaviour will guarantee another 20 years of this crap, and more dead people from third world countries all around the world. And the rich open their bottles of champagne and celebrate another victory over the people, while people suffer from no health care and incomes insufficient to survive. To me there is no argument whatsoever to vote for Biden.

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard

and more dead people from third world countries all around the world

Tried to get my brother-in-law into a VA facility. He is eligible but priority is to combat injuries. All facilities in the Chicago area are full due to the constant stream of casualties from Iraq. That's our young people, many of whom signed up to pay for college.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness to other than Iraq War casualties. (Don't understand why there would be a constant stream of such casualties as there haven't been many active engagements in the past decade.) The VA has recorded 30,313 COVID-19 cases and 2,126 deaths. (Approximately the same number if cases as in the military but far more deaths which would be expected as the VA age range is much older.)

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snoopydawg's picture

@The Wizard

Biden is one evil dude, he is not your nice grandpa! I'm reading The Untold History of the United States, by Kuznick and Stone. Biden is featured over and over again. He enabled the Iraq war by rounding up enough Democrat votes, the rest is terrible history. He's a neocon, neoliberal and totally sold out to corporate america and the MIC and personally corrupt

Bernie knows that everything that he was running on was in response to the legislation that Biden got passed during his 4 decade stint as the best corporate whore in congress. And yet he is out there being very busy as a sheepdawg for the democrats and Biden even as he continues to bitch about them on Twitter daily. No MFA in the DNC platform? During a pandemic and where over 5 million people have lost their health insurance? Of course Bernie has come out against this and is railing at the top of his voice right? Nope.

F'cking sellout who is going to vote for it anyway. He got nothing big by 'staying in the primary so that he could help write the platform' and yet he is just lying down for democrats.

I agree wholeheartedly with Jimmie on what Bernie is doing.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

wendy davis's picture

@The Wizard

i'd been amazed no one had offered that alternative, Wizard. who cares if they won't win? it's at least a way to start to break the duopoly. in their newsletter, i admit to being frustrated that they're running more against Trump, not Biden, but i don't know who creates their newsletter either. angela's on fire, howie, it's hard to tell.

Platform Summary with drop-down menus for each item.

Ballot access.

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lotlizard's picture

@The Wizard  
Much of my new-found respect for the Way of the Bern regulars on Reddit is due to the cool and consistent way they’re holding the line against Biden, VBNMW, and similar neoliberal blandishments.

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These two are brothers by a different mother, backward looking and mentally challenged.

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard
to give a proper Nazi salute.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Cassiodorus's picture

@The Wizard was far better than anything the working class will experience under Biden.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

snoopydawg's picture

To see what really was set up that's preventing any kind of public healthcare system, read this article.

Interpreting the General Agreement on Trade in Services and the WTO Instruments Relevant to
the International Trade of Financial Services: The Lawyer’s Perspective

J. Steven Jarreau

~http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1664&context=...

The problem is particularly severe because health insurance is a financial service.

The same deal and the same traps in it that threaten Medicare and Social Security here are also gradually dismantling the UK’s NHS.

If the UK had gotten rid of its for profit insurance before joining the WTO things would be different now. You cannot have a public service alongside of a commercial one and have the public one be sustainable anymore since the establishment of the WTO.

Anybody who tells you public services that compete with commercial ones in any way can exist as an option outside of some temporary emergency situation is LYING.

Ady, I am sorry, you’ve made a huge mistake if you think any of these proposals can extend the ACA which was an emergency measure in response to the 2008 financial emergency. WTO rules limit them to I think ten years. The only way out is to get out of this agreement which has already led to an incredible number of needless deaths.

Someone should ask the USTR, seriously. “How does the ACA avoid the standstill in the Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services” - If you follow the above link you'll find a bit about the creation of the Understanding on Financial Services and its “standstill clause” Also on the creation of the mess we’re in with the WTO. with regard to healthcare. The jobs and business has been turned into a bargaining chip in international negotiations.

Yes, they put profit over peoples health. In an emergency they can do things to address that emergency as long as they do not serve as a way to evade a country’s commitments under GATS.

So the kinds of things that people want a “public option for” (to prevent them of being milked of all their income by insurance firms, especially families with sick members) ARE NOT POSSIBLE UNDER GATS because that's where the profits are. Those profits and jobs - potentially- are (for foreign countries) one of the benefits of joining the WTO. Particularly because Americans remain so financially unsophisticated.

This will become a hug problem as Americans jobs are offshored and inevitably, US families sink deeper and deeper into unpayable debt. However it will be extraordinarily profitable for banks and insurance companies.

That is the problem, we have a parasitic class who now is entitled to take the profits that are needed to make healthcare available to our people. Why weren't people on top of this situation while the WTO was being established? the only Senator I can find who made a stink about it was Bernie Sanders but the things he said were all so vague and inaccurate - Here he says that the GATT would continue current policies, which was untrue, it represents a creation of a totally new organization to take over the running of services which are 80% of a modern economy. If people wonder why our elected leaders are powerless to fix things like health care that is it.

~[video:https://youtu.be/7ggcU09ww5g]

Watching that video today, its clear that one would have never figured out what the hell he was talking about.

Nor did he make it clear in any way that it blocked all the things progressives need, explicitly. Than and now. It blocks Bernie’s entire platform.

Thats the ugly reality. So Biden wont and cant do anything that violates those rules, nor can Trump.

It takes a literal extreme emergency to get any flexibility and on healthcare it seems to me our flexibility has likely been used up. (Because the financial emergency it was attached to was 12 years ago.

We need to get clarification on this. Instead, people are in some kind of la-la land.

I don't remember much from formation of the WTO but if it's like other trade agreements that allow corporations to sue the US if our laws prevent their profits then it how does it makes sense for this one to not allow universal health care here? I'd think companies would gladly give up paying for our health insurance. But I also think that any company that doesn't pay a living wage should have to contribute to our social programs. This seems to be a no brainer except that they have told congress not to do it. I would cut into their profits and that cannot happen here anymore if it ever did. We are an oligarchy period and I have no idea how to fix that.

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snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

I thought it was interesting but would like to hear what others think about it. Come on give it your best shot...

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Cassiodorus's picture

@snoopydawg It might be worth a go to ask them.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

earthling1's picture

for the candidate with the smallest campaigh chest is the only way to break the cycle.
Weaponize the money!
IMHO

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6 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Anja Geitz's picture

Tell me that I’m the problem with what’s wrong with our electoral politics after I told him that as long as both political parties continue to support defense spending that never requires producing a balanced budget for the public to view that it really doesn’t matter what happens in this election since between climate change and continuous wars, the earth for us regular folk will be uninhabitable in a few decades. At which point, I assured him not to worry about who votes and who doesn’t, because unless Trump cheats better than the Dems do, the blue team will probably “win” the rigging contest this time. He was not amused. But at least his tedious commentary on politics in the break room when I’m around has ended.

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11 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Cassiodorus's picture

@Anja Geitz how all knowledge of history founders before the all-powerful WILL NOT TO KNOW of the Presidentially-obsessed.

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6 users have voted.

"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Anja Geitz's picture

@Cassiodorus

Of politics and the perception of winning. Better to “know” what the winners tell us to know. Can’t have us regular folks actually questioning the motivation of those in power, can we?

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4 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

wendy davis's picture

@Anja Geitz

i'm working on part of that story for tomorrow:

...as long as both political parties continue to support defense spending

although it should rightfully be called the 'Offensive War Military Budget', especially given it's all about Dying Imperial Western Hegemony by now. ha; Pindar's Revenge called them 'Imaginary Enemies' on one of my threads.

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8 users have voted.
WoodsDweller's picture

It will be a senile old white guy who won't nationalize the banks, won't cut the military budget, won't downsize the police, won't do a damned thing to address climate change, won't assure a food supply when agriculture fails, won't build hardened cities to house the survivors, won't defuel and decomission the nuke plants, and won't relocate the population away from the coasts.

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16 users have voted.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@WoodsDweller

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1 user has voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver