alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
“my ideas help the working class.”
Your ideas postpone socialism to the never-never land of the far off future in a far away land. How does that help?
You might deny it but the WSM is intent upon making a socialist society an immediacy.
While you procrastinate over promoting capitalist policies, the WSM puts forward the socialist proposition for our fellow-workers to debate and discuss. We try to determine the election issue and not let the ruling class determine the agenda.
LT, as been pointed out, the WSM advocates the use of the ballot to win political power and control over the State machine so that socialism can displace the capitalist system.
The use of the ballot to prop up a pro-capitalist politician and his party is a wasted vote.
A greatly admired socialist once said “it is better to vote for for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”
He criticised his fellow-workers for voting for the Republican Party or Democratic Party, as both were political organisations of their masters, the employing, owning class.
And even now, people like yourself advocate the exact same the folly of doing that.
There cannot be an independent party of the working class developed when at each election, working people are instructed to always vote into office the least awful alternative. Don’t you comprehend that fact.
You also lose any leverage to influence a candidate when you declare in advance of any election, no matter what you have done in the past or what you say or promise now, i will give you my vote unconditionally.
Yes, LT, there has been a long hard painful and often bloody struggle to obtain the vote and i am not going to give mine away so very cheaply as yourself.
And as been mentioned, on many of the local ballots were referendums on various initiatives and reforms. There may have been an instance where a socialist refusing to mark a vote for Biden but was inclined to cast a ballot directly for or against any of the propositions.
And as for your predictive powers, LT, we note that Trump has gone done the constitutional and the courts legal route to challenge the result and not as you and others warned, instigated a coup or an insurrection to stay in power.
And you, LT, continue to be an apologist for Biden. Something i expected from the lesser evil proponents when their evil prevails. It will be the same in the future every time Biden reneges on a promise. Have you forgotten all the Republicans who spoke at his Democratic nomination and how much time was generously allotted to them. He has already telegraphed the way he intends to go…to the right. Don’t you understand anything about Marx and his theory of the State? The US government is nothing more than the board of directors of America Inc. and the president is its CEO.
Biden failed to convince any Trump voter from 2016 to swing to his side. Even Trump’s African-American and Latino vote rose since 4 years ago. He got over half the white male and white female vote.
You are sweeping such harsh stark facts under the rug, hoping the problem goes away.
Like all those media political pundits, you see only one electoral cycle, it is a myopic view.
You believe that by succeeding in making a symptom disappear, it means the disease has gone. You are mistaking remission of the cancer as a cure.
And don’t lecture me about healthcare, i live precariously without any medical cover whatsoever. I don’t face bankruptcy – i face death – if something serious happens to me. I know much better than yourself the value of a free health service at the point of delivery, something you are happy enough to relinquish for political expediency in your supplicating support for Biden.
Glen Greenwald expresses what some of on this forum have been saying and what LT has been in denial about
“There is nothing done by the Trump administration that can be rationally characterized as a radical aberration, some dramatic break, from U.S. tradition. Quite the contrary: none of Trump’s actions and policies are in some new universe of savagery, lawlessness, or radicalism when compared to those who preceded him in power…When it comes to lawlessness and authoritarianism, what are the actions and policies of the Trump administration that compete with, let alone dramatically surpass, these radical seizures of unchecked power by the administrations which preceded him?”
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/no-matter-the-liberal-metric-chosen
And Greenwald directly addresses an earlier point made by LT
“Indeed, Trump was able to campaign on, and then implement, escalated bombing campaigns that killed large numbers of civilians because the bipartisan framework had been laid over the prior two presidencies that empowered that.”
So are you proposing that Sanders and AOC should stop demanding M4A and that they should not be exposing how Bidencare falls short.
Because that is what you are saying, LT. Give Biden a free ride.
You are too happy to accept half-measures. Some would accuse you of political cowardice because you are asking us to let Biden get away with every compromise and concession that he feels he has to make.
Biden’s pro-corporate plan is for more subsidies in the ACA in order to make it profitable for insurance companies to provide affordable coverage. He proposes to cap premiums, but it means little when insurers can simply increase deductibles or co-payments, instead.
Under a public option, private companies can create insurance plans targeted to healthy and young populations. They WOULD appear to be more cost effective because they will ONLY apply during the low-cost lifetime of the patient. Once a patient becomes chronically ill, Insurance companies can raise premiums so that it becomes impossible to afford them, and then people will move to the public option.
Because the public option will be biased towards less healthy people, its costs will be higher, and it will give the appearance that the public option is less cost-effective than the private option. This in turn, can be used as evidence that the government is ill suited to provide healthcare, thus reducing the widespread support of an universal healthcare coverage.
The public option would have no co-payments for primary care, but Biden’s plan is silent on other out-of-pocket expenses. And any public option will inevitably be burdened with the sickest and costliest patients. Only a single-payer system can contain costs by controlling drug prices and reining in administrative overhead. Despite promises to do so, Biden’s plan offers no way to end what’s called surprise billing.
It is NOT universal coverage. All M4A is wanting is the already existing Veteran Administration health system extended to everybody.
It is shameful someone is willing to support a cop-out
LB, one of our problems is the likes of LT will castigate us when we point out that so-called socialised medicine, such as NHS, isn’t.
Under both Labour and Tory, the NHS was creaking beneath the weight of under-funding, under-specialisation and under-staffing. In France, last year prior to the pandemic hospital staff embarked upon a series of strikes, not just for better pay but for improved working conditions.
The Right were right …death panels existed…it is called NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) which evaluates the cost-benefit analysis of certain medicines and certain treatments.
The Left were right too, that the pharmaceutical industry across Europe has too much influence over health-care.
Many illnesses and diseases have been reduced but others – lifestyle health problems such as obesity and diabetes and mental ill-health – have appeared and the main origin for them is capitalism. Just as we brought smallpox and measles to the New World, we are spreading the “sickness of affluence” to the undeveloped and developing world.
With a few tweaks, now on the Indian based progressive website, CounteCurrents
https://countercurrents.org/2020/11/imagining-the-impossible/
Ummm…LT, who said if i am president and Medicare For All is somehow miraculously passed by Congress, and arrives for my signature in the Oval Office, i will veto it.
Bidencare is a version of Obamacare which itself was a version of Romneycare and they all leave healthcare for Americans ultimately dependent on private insurance corporations profits.
The United States has about 30 million people without health insurance now, down from about 46.5 million in 2010, when the ACA was passed.
Bidencare would cut that figure by a further 15 million to 20 million, an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates.
20 million without any healthcare is seen by you as an achievement, LT
M4A was on the table and Biden refused it…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-healthcare-economy-analy-idUSKBN27H19M
For anybody who is interested, Anarchist Communist Group post-election summary
I think it is a question of definition
A world war of many countries actually suffering the consequences
Or many countries from around the world participating in a war
The Kuwait war was an example had 34 nations involved in some degree or another
And 2003 Iraq Invasion had the so-called “Coalition of the Willing”
There are many alliances happening …NATO IN Afghanistan, OAU France, UK and US in the Sahel…Libya and Syria with foreign combatants …less national and now more international conflicts
Also, we have to consider war by mistake and error, accidental incidents and miscalculated gambles.
Capitalism lays down the conditions for a war to break out but in many cases actual events are not so well planned or premeditated.
What is often said is that war between two full democracies has ended…
Yeah, you are right, ALB.
I was basing it on the vague recollection of this poll
She may not be a professional expert but i think we can take her to be the bellwether of the feelings of the environment activists
As long as we don’t treat the climate crisis like a crisis, we can have as many conferences as we want, but it will just be negotiations, empty words, loopholes and greenwash.”She is also unimpressed with pledges by nations including the UK, China and Japan to reach net zero by 2050 or 2060. “They mean something symbolically, but if you look at what they actually include, or more importantly exclude, there are so many loopholes. We shouldn’t be focusing on dates 10, 20 or even 30 years in the future. If we don’t reduce our emissions now, then those distant targets won’t mean anything because our carbon budgets will be long gone.”
Justice is at the heart of her campaigning, Thunberg said. “That is the root of all this,” she said. “That’s why we are fighting for climate justice, social justice. They are so interlinked, you can’t have one without the other.”
“The climate crisis is just one symptom of a much larger crisis, [including] the loss of biodiversity, the loss of fertile soil but also including inequality and threats to democracy,” she said. “These are symptoms that we are not living sustainably: we have reached the end of the road.”And there we have it encapsulated … her understanding does not go economics of capitalism…that one word is always missing from her opinions
An interesting finding is that someone claiming to be a socialist would be more acceptable as president of the USA than somebody admitting to being an atheist.
We have to be careful of those who wish to smear the left of the Democratic Party such as Spanberger who is, btw, ex-CIA.
It is convenient scapegoat for the Establishment Democrats to blame its Justice Democrats for what was a failure to achieve a landslide with their corporate candidate. The ‘blue wave’ did not materialise. Last time they put the blame on Sanders. And i am not all surprised that the MSM media are echoing Spanberger and Clyburn statements far and wide.
AOC defended herself on CNN
“..not a single member of Congress that I’m aware of campaigned on socialism or defunding the police in this general election,”
On Twitter she said “When it comes to ‘Defund’ & ‘Socialism’ attacks, people need to realize these are racial resentment attacks. You’re not gonna make that go away. You can make it less effective.”
It is exactly as we all expected and predicted to happen. The Democratic Party Left are no longer required – Republicans are – so AOC are being attacked.
But if i recall a few years ago we on this forum were praising Sanders for bringing back the word socialism into the America’s popular politcal discourse
"Progressives have assets to offer the Party that the Party has not yet fully leaned into…Every single swing seat member that co-sponsored Medicare for All won their re-election, and so the conversation is a little bit deeper than saying anything progressive is toxic." –@AOC pic.twitter.com/nGxfVpGWYi
— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) November 8, 2020
AOC positions herself as the “loyal opposition” to Biden
