The Elizabeth Warren Thread
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The Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro will not rule out direct payments to African Americans in reparation for the legacy of slavery – a stand that separates him from his 2020 rivals.
“If under the constitution we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/10/julian-castro-reparations-descendants-slaves
“Please dont think like that. There are far more people that follow this forum than you apparently imagine. There are a great many visitors here just lurking. Some who only occasionally contribute, like myself, still read and enjoy the posts. This should be reassuring to posters. They are being read despite appearances.”
We should not be too concerned that more party members don’t visit the forum. Our primary aim surely is to ensure that more and more workers who are not yet members gain access to genuine socialist ideas.
At any one time there will be 50+ guests visiting the forum and up to 1k in 24 hours.
An interesting snippet. We have just received a Summer School booking from two people with whom we have had no previous contact. It would seem their interest may have been generated as a result of visiting the forum.
The Wall St candidate is yet to emerge within the Democrat hopefuls.
However, Big Business has a reserve to parachute into the race if need be
“…Joe Biden is poised to come to the rescue of the corporate political establishment — at a time when, in the words of the [New York] Times, “the sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats.” ….”
The problem is not the rider, the problem is the horse. They can elect Cochise or Geronimo and they will do the same job like any other president
Beto O’Rourke to run for president. The former Texas congressman confirmed Wednesday that he will enter the 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Who the hell is Beto O’Rourke? In fact why am I wasting our cyberspace to mention the name of this obscure non-entity again?
Some ammunition for Dave’s anti-Amazon speech at next month’s Party Conference:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8610116/911-calls-amazon-warehouses-workers-suicidal/
On the other hand:
They are not evidence that Amazon workers experience suicidal episodes more often than other American workers, in or out of a warehouse.
i.e., conditions in other companies’ warehouses may be no different.
“On the other hand:
They are not evidence that Amazon workers experience suicidal episodes more often than other American workers, in or out of a warehouse.
i.e., conditions in other companies’ warehouses may be no different.”
Quite possibly, but they’re not the ones with whom we’re currently being asked to share a bed.
I have already pointed out that nonentities can become presidents, ALB.
He is likely to garner the anti-radical Democrat vote
Oily Beto
“…O’Rourke wants to be everything to everyone. To take a look back at his career, that’s an invitation he’s extended to the fossil fuel industry. With just about 11 years to begin rapidly transitioning the US off of fossil fuels – per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – an O’Rourke presidency is not a risk the US or the world can afford to take… his six-year record in Congress – representing a solidly blue district – included siding with Republicans more than his fellow Democrats did, including on some key climate votes
Dave, more for your speech at Conference — a 20-page Marxist analysis of Amazon as a new capitalist business model (signaled by a lurker on this forum — thanks):
Wages and working conditions are discussed on pages 14-16. From this it appears that working conditions as very bad (as generally in such warehouses):
Various reports, whether authorised or not by the management, compiled in warehouses and by Amazon managers, show that the working conditions in force in this company are comparable, equivalent, to those experienced by the majority of proletarians in the advanced countries in industry or largescale distribution. The physical strain, in particular in the little-mechanised warehouse-factories where the pickers walk 10 to 15 kilometres per day and where, conversely, the packers experience long periods of standing in one place, the duration of work, the repetitive tasks at a frantic rhythm imposed by the machines, the surveillance and the permanent pressure from the managers, is accompanied by a company patriotism based on a culture of always producing more. The big boss, the big cheese of Amazon who is the centre of everything, Jeff Bezos, promotes an ideology of “high standards of quality” and a “customer orientation” with slogans such as “You make history” (“Work hard, have fun, make history” plastered everywhere). Yet the average time served in the company is no more than a year.
As to pay, it could be worse as Amazon pays its workers a bit above the minimum wage:
Concerning its wages policy, Amazon tends to pay slightly above the minimum wage in force in the states where it is established. For example, in 2018, Amazon stated that permanent staff would get €12.22 per hour starting salary, in Germany, and €14.31 in Spain. In the UK, the basic wage in the company is £9.50 per hour (£10.50 in the London area). In France, Amazon refuses to apply the collective labour agreement in force in logistics, preferring its own scale which starts at 2.79% above the SMIC (minimum wage). In 2018 the management granted a wage increase of 2.8% to all employees in warehouses in France. In the US, Amazon has stated that it pays employees working full-time in warehouses (250,000 people) at the rate of $15 per hour on average (special payments and bonuses included)
I’ve got to concede Alan, that you might have picked a winner there. It’s not just the Grauniad but the other papers that have been highlighting him. Texas is a big state (population nearly 30 million) and he seems to be well known there, more than some of the UK political non-entities (population not much more than twice that of Texas) we have been discussing are known here, the one called Ummana or something like that for instance. So, it could possibly be “All Hail to President O’Rourke” but, as Marcus keeps reminding us, it’s the horse not the rider that’s the problem.
The elephant in the room is Joe Biden.
He is cleverly “biden” his time.
Wall St is still to declare their preferential candidate, someone who will be as generous to it as Trump but in their view not as difficult to keep under rein as Trump is proving to be, (to continue Marcos horse and rider analogy.)
On the stump with Gabi
“…Our family, our friends, our neighbors are dealing with things that we shouldn’t have to be dealing with in this country. We’re in a place where we have a government that is not of the people, by the people and for the people, but rather a government that is controlled and influenced by self serving politicians, greedy corporations and those special interests who can afford to buy their seat at the table as laws are being made.Who pays the price? We do. Who suffers as a result? We do. Who is left behind? We are…We must change our foreign policy, the way we are relating to different countries and build those relationships based on cooperation, not conflict and work towards this future where we are getting rid of nuclear weapons rather than building more of them. To build this future we need to take those trillions of dollars being spent on wasteful regime change wars and a nuclear arms race. We need to take those dollars and bring them to serve the needs of people here at home, to make sure that we have health-care for everyone, to make sure our kids have a great education and a great future, to invest in a green, renewable energy based economy that serves us today and for generations to come…”
As Bernie begins to lose ground in the polls, others step up delivering his message which is perhaps the reason he is not as popular as before. He is now just one voice among many.
On the stump with Warren
“…I believe we need a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every American citizen and to make sure that vote gets counted. We need to put some federal muscle behind that, and we need to repeal every one of the voter suppression laws that are out there right now. We need to make sure that every vote counts….Come a general election, presidential candidates don’t come to places like Mississippi. My view is that every vote matters, and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College, and every vote counts…”
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