US Elections 2020

[MrFanti]

Interesting coverage the last 2 nights...

[Stavros]

i'm not even really dwelling on the moral side of this, I just believe its really simple, if you owe somebody, pay them. theres nothing more american than that, we've always been capitalists. not being sure about what the implementation would look like is never a good reason to not do something. if the father is dead, pay the son. and so on and so forth. my thoughts on this are exceedingly simple. maybe i'm being naive but there has to be a reasonable way to do this, something that accommodates both families, whether it be paid installments or a cap on how much you have to pay back based on your current net worth. Money is amoral, i'm not talking about uprooting a familys way of life to punish them, I don't think anybody wants that. But if the families of those who owned slaves aren't paying the bulk of reparations, then whose gonna pay it? Your average white citizen? lol yea right. there isn't a direct precedent for this, but analyzing what america did with native americans could provide some insight. Honestly if i were white and I knew my family benefited from slavery I would take the initiative myself and make it right. My thoughts on this issue are also informed by everyday american life. e.g. I've worked hard to get my credit score to a good place but i still get calls from debt collectors about shit that they forgot i paid already. A friends father passed away and he still gets mails in his fathers name about old credit card balances. My point is, money doesn't die, debt doesn't die, we are reminded of this every second of every day, and with technology being what it is, everything is quantified, records don't get washed away. now more than ever it wouldn't be difficult to apply the same vigor to collecting old debt from slavery as they do to collecting debt from student loans.

I'll end with this, both you and Stavros have alluded to a kind of futility in reparations ability to erase racism in america. I can't speak for all blacks, i'm not al sharpton, but I can tell you that nobody I know thinks fixing racism in this country is even a remote possibility anymore. We haven't for a long time, even the most optimistic Black people I know. At this point, we just don't want our kids to get shot in the street like dogs, or run down by white supremacists trying to make a point, or shot in the back by police officers. Lol the standards are pretty low. I should honestly just be happy that neither of you are denying that slavery happened. For a while now, I've thought that Malcolm X's idea of giving a state or states to blacks was probably the right way to go, as sad as it is to say. In any case, The MLK dream has been dead for a while now and nobody I know even cares that much, its just watching unarmed people get killed by people who are supposed to be protecting them thats getting old. Getting killed over traffic violations. But i'll digress. At the end of the day, Reparations is really just about people getting what they're owed, its the principle of the thing. Like how The Dude just wanted his fucking carpet back. And I would support it, no matter the circumstance, if the roles were reversed, if blacks owed whites in some alternate reality, if humans owed aliens(in the future) if mice rose up and demanded damages for all the experiments we did on their relatives, I would support reparations for mice. If you provide a service for someone, you should get paid for it, from now until the end of recorded civilization, time shouldn't be a factor as long as time exists because Money does not die.
P.S. Ive gotta thank you Stavros, I burst out laughing when you wrote "White people were denied the opportunity to work on the plantations". I hope you let me quote you on that, I've never heard it put quite that way before.

Thank you for locking horns on this subject. It appears to be tangential to the thread on the 2020 election, though Joe Biden has said he is sympathetic to the Reparations movement (see the FT link below), any further action being dependent on the practical ways of doing it.

It is most definitely a moral issue, as the judgment being made is that slavery was wrong, that it was in economic terms hugely beneficial to a few but resulted in the exploitation of the many. Part of the problem lies in identifying those who benefited, not just the families in the 'South' but the traders who purchased slaves and shipped them from Africa via Britain to the Caribbean and the US -but also the investors, such as the Banks, the Corporations and, of course the Church of England. The final judgment is that to make the wrong right, compensation should be paid, some have suggested, not to individuals, but in the form of community investment in the Caribbean and the UK to improve opportunities, thus-

"Prof Beckford, who teaches at the Queen’s Foundation Birmingham, advises UK business beneficiaries to apologise, publish historic records and engage in a “restorative process”. This would include financial support for Caribbean nations and black community groups"
https://www.ft.com/content/945c6136-...0-a80d944bb0b8

As I said before I am not sure how any of this is to be calculated, though the FT article above offers figures. I think the wider problem is that Slavery was not just a phenomenon limited to the Southern States of the US or the Caribbean, given the extent of slavery all the way through Central America to Brazil. And why I also understand the localized campaign in the US, which is something Americans must sort out, slavery in the US, be it British America or the US, was so important to the growth of the British economy in an age of 'Enlightenment' and Industrial Revolution, ought American campaigners be asking beneficiaries in the UK to pay their share if they have the money, with Benedict Cumberbatch's sincere apology for his family's links to the trade being sufficient in his case (see the FT article)?

On of the reasons I think Reparations is stupid is because we cannot undo history, and the attempts to repair the damage often look feeble and lacking in sincerity. We cannot pretend the Roman Empire never happened, though the irony is that most people here tend to think the Romans left Britain in better condition than it was when they arrived. We cannot undo the British Empire, but in some cases, we can actually perform small acts, even if they do not really 'bring closure' to something whose significance endures today.
For example, there has been a long and tedious debate about the 'Elgin Marbles', so called because Lord Elgin brought them back from Greece to park them in the British Museum -if paintings stolen by the Nazis can be returned to the families who owned, them, why not the Marbles? In 1897, the British retaliated against the people of Benin, who objected to White marauders trying to subject their Kingdom to Queen Victoria's Empire, by destroying as much as they could of Benin's cultural treasures, and looted the rest, the Benin Bronzes sitting if not alongside the Elgin Marbles, on another floor of the British Museum -should they be repatriated?

I supported the Rhodes Must Fall because it is actually irrelevant if there is a Statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oriel College, but I don't have much time for statues of people anyway. The irony in Oxford, is that Rhodes House, which opened in 1928 is not only one of the most beautiful libraries I have done research in, it is the place to go if you want to study Slavery, and the British Empire in Africa and the Caribbean, and so far, nobody has suggested either closing it down or re-naming it because it is funded in part by the Rhodes Trust, that inherited the vast wealth Cecil Rhodes made from Diamonds in South Africa (think De Beers) and minerals in the two Rhodesias named after him (Zambia and Zimbabwe today). Whether or not one can calculate how much money was made by Rhodes or anyone else in the pillage of Africa, or the British in India, or Australia, I just don't see Reparations as a practical issue that makes sense. It is to me at worst a form of revenge and punishment, as it was for Haiti and Germany; at best a fad, though I note that I used to see Selma James on demos in London in the 1970s with her pamphlets on 'Wages due Lesbians' which has since morphed into the movement associated with Wages For Housework, including Black Women for Wages for Housework, and they probably would have had a stand in Milwaukee this week had the Democrat Convention taken place.

Two final points: yes, it might sound daft to say white people were denied the right to work on plantations, but think in terms of the geography of labour in British America and the US, and ask why it is that, with the exception of California, the whitest States are in the Mid-West, the Plains and the North-East, with the bizarre fact that the most intense political BLM protests appear to be taking place in Portland, one of the Whitest cities in the USA. Then ask when and why did Black people move to California?
Working class immigrants and Americans were shut out of the South because of slavery, and though they took advantage of the seasonal/migrant work opportunities in 'the west', they did not become rich out of it, and were also exploited, so how much better off than the slaves were they in financial terms? It is a complex story, but to defend my remark, again, ask yourself how does the geography of labour translate into the geography of race in America?

Lastly, slavery did not end. One form of it did. Capitalism is rooted in slavery -wage slavery- and for as long as we cannot live without money, we shall never be truly free as human beings. That is why socialism must abolish money, and it is why, when you put this to so-called Socialists, Trotskyists, even some 'left-wing' Anarchists, you can see them get very anxious. 'After the revolution' is another common response.

As with the British Labour party, the Democrats are committed to managing capitalism better than the Republicans, that is the bottom line. I think it is probably what most Americans want. The best you can hope for in the next 4 years if they win, is reform of health care. It seems to me to be the most urgent issue on the table.

So I don't doubt Reparations will be on the agenda in the US, but I don't know how it can be done, and what its purpose is, when the fundamental issue of equal opportunity for all is surely the most obvious policy framework that can be established in so rich a country.

[MrFanti]

This is truly sad....The BEST DEMOCRATIC candidate (IMHO)for Office of the President of the United States....given 'the hand' by her own party...

Tulsi Gabbard Says the DNC Didn't Even Ask Her To Speak
https://reason.com/2020/08/20/tulsi-...-her-to-speak/

[MrFanti]

Speaking of Democrat TULSI GABBARD, here's a stance of hers that's very close to this forum:

Only Tulsi Gabbard Wants to Decriminalize Sex Work, but Other Dems Show Signs of Progress on the Issue
https://reason.com/2020/02/10/only-t...-on-the-issue/

[Stavros]

From the man who abandoned his wife and children -a role model for all Americans, or just like his Dad? - and the other day criticised the new Barbie doll (!)...

""Biden has promised to take that money back out of your pocket and keep it in the Swamp," Mr Trump said, adding: "That makes sense, considering Joe Biden is basically the Loch Ness Monster of the Swamp. For the past half-century, he's been lurking around in there."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53884591

-So four Republican Presidents were part of- maybe they created?- the Swamp -Nixon, Reagan, GH and GW Bush -is that why the Republican Party of Lincoln, Hoover and Eisenhower is now the party of one man, the PoT?

As for Loch Ness, is it not time to lay the Monster that does not exist there to rest, and restore the reputation the Loch has for its natural beauty?

LIBERATE LOCH NESS!!

[KnightHawk 2.0]

From the man who abandoned his wife and children -a role model for all Americans, or just like his Dad? - and the other day criticised the new Barbie doll (!)...

""Biden has promised to take that money back out of your pocket and keep it in the Swamp," Mr Trump said, adding: "That makes sense, considering Joe Biden is basically the Loch Ness Monster of the Swamp. For the past half-century, he's been lurking around in there."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53884591

-So four Republican Presidents were part of- maybe they created?- the Swamp -Nixon, Reagan, GH and GW Bush -is that why the Republican Party of Lincoln, Hoover and Eisenhower is now the party of one man, the PoT?

As for Loch Ness, is it not time to lay the Monster that does not exist there to rest, and restore the reputation the Loch has for its natural beauty?

LIBERATE LOCH NESS!!

Donald-Jackwagon-Trump jr is just like his uneducated,unfit,unqualified and malignant narcissist father, stoking fear and division and spreading misinformation about his father's political opponent, because he thinks it will work to get his father re-elected. and the Republican Party is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan,George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush,is now the party of Donald Trump,because they have been enabling and allowing him to do what he wants,he whenever he wants and don't hold him accountable for his actions,and attack anyone who disagrees with their so-called leader.

[MrFanti]

. and the Republican Party is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan,George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush,is now the party of Donald Trump,b.

And...The Democratic Party has lurched so far left, it is no longer the party of Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton

[Stavros]

And...The Democratic Party has lurched so far left, it is no longer the party of Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton

Other than parroting the PoT, you need to explain what you mean by 'far left', given that in the UK we have a different interpretation of the term, Trotskyists, mostly.

The Democrat Party of Roosevelt, if it ceased to hang on to its credentials, lost them in 1968 even though LBJ's Great Society Programme in some of its details was retained by the supposedly free-market, hands-off Govt of Richard Nixon. As Allen Matusow in his study of the 1960s, 'The Unraveling of America' showed, JFK was timid where LBJ was bold, but apart from the single term Carter, which owed a lot to the fall-out from Watergate, every Democrat administration since has been defined by the legacy of Ronald Reagan, so to even think of Clinton in the same vein as FDR is simply wrong, indeed, the critical failure of the Clinton Presidency was that its desperate need to recruit 'Reagan Democrats' allowed it to drift apart from its 'blue collar' base, coinciding with the de-industrialization that was happening in Europe too, where the Labour Party of Keir Hardie and Clement Attlee was taken into a new dimension by Tony Blair, regarded as Margaret Thatcher's natural heir, which is how she saw him. Labour has yet to recover from that fundamental change, indeed, even under Starmer is struggling to re-define itself.

Obama was another timid Democrat terrified of upsetting that now mythical 'suburban middle class' voter, and I see Biden is likely to simply have to reverse much of what has happened since 2016, if he has the balls to do it.
By which I mean, taking the US back into the Paris Climate Change process, reversing and strengthening those aspects of the EPA and environmental regulations which have been cut since 2017, restoring cuts and extending new rights in the Americans with Disabiities Act, with two complex unknowns -nuclear developments in the Middle East, esp with regard to Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE; and with regard to the next generation of conventional and nuclear arms proliferation with regard to the INF and Open Skies agreements.

Is Biden going to return the US Embassy in Israel to Tel-Aviv? I doubt it. Is he going to suddenly discover the novel idea that Palestinians have rights, and force Israel to end its criminal siege of the Gaza District? Nah. What's left about that, or being more critical of the Saudis? What would be 'left-wing' would be to campaign for a nuclear-free Middle East, but that ain't going to happen.

So the question is what is 'left' or 'far left' in the Democrats platform? Not defunding the police, and if police reform does emerge as a major domestic issue, it should be, given the extent to which policing in some cities appears more as a confrontation between the State and the Citizen rather than a partnership in law and order.

What are the Democrats policies on Education, Housing, and crucially, Health? The Labour Government elected in the UK in 1945 created our National Health Service, a 'single-payer' system that Michael Pence has rejected as a model, preferring a 'business' to a 'service' which is what we have in the UK -this is what Pence said, I have highlighted the key word in bold :

"We want a dynamic national, health insurance marketplace that lowers costs, increases quality, and gives more choices to working families."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings...nt-healthcare/

Pence also used the case of Charlie Gard to attack single-payer health care such as the UK, but did so without reference to either the medical needs of the child, or the decisions made by courts of law that upheld the medical decision to terminate the life, a rare and difficult case that cannot be made responsible for the operations of the NHS-
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/18/o...man/index.html

Obama's Afforable Care Act is an example of timid policy making even though it provoked such rage and reaction. And yet-

"Without correcting the fundamental structural flaws in health care financing, overall health care costs will remain poorly controlled. Though our clinical outcomes are mediocre by comparison [1], the average per capita cost of health care in the United States is twice that of other modern nations [2]. Increasingly, these costs are being borne by patients and government, driving personal bankruptcies and ever more austere public policies [3, 4]. Under the ACA, 30 million people will still have no coverage [5], and countless more will have inadequate coverage [1]."
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org...-costs/2012-11

But would a 'National Health Service' in the US be a 'left' or 'far left' policy? Look at the grievous mess the US has made of Covid 19 -without prejudice to a cohort of outstanding health care professionals- and like most people outside the US you might ask if the time has come for a complete overhaul of the health care Business, to create a health care Service. What's left-wing about that?

You are spending the trillions and trillions of dollars on Covid-19 relief packages and the Military Industry of Death and Destruction, can't you even contemplate providing your own citizens with health care free at the time of need from the moment you are born to the moment you die?

The Parrots might trill that the 'radical left' want to abolish borders and cancel all regulations on immigration, but there hasn't been a Democrat admin that did it, and the Biden/Harris one, if elected, is not going to either. Defending the rights people have to seek asylum in the US, or migrate there to find work, is not left wiing, but a basic human right, and it is not that hard to produce a coherent policy that does not encourage illegal immigration and processes genuine cases of asylum, and it isn't left-wing to criticise the filthy languuage that is used to demonize immigrants, though it has been common in the US since the attacks on the Chinese in the 19th century, and that was just one social group.

In fact, the dilemma for the Democrats in reality, is that the Biden/Harris ticket looks tame and timid, a re-run of Clinton and Obama, and while this may be, in practical terms, significantly better than what you have right now, it does not address the fundamentals, such as the future of employment, the future of your staggering debts, and the apparently impossible solutions to gun violence, ie the guns; and Race, which after all, and in so many ways, competes with the Constitution to define the USA.

And if you ask Junior, or Skittles, the Princess Royal or Under-President Kushner, what is your housing policy? Expect a look of either surprise, or panic. Does this so-called Republican Party have any policies it wants to present during its convention, or has it now become just another tv show, one for all the family, featuring the family getting rich off your arse?

[Stavros]

Perhaps someone can inform members of the US Administration -or the members of the family- that 50 years ago there was no trade between China and the US as China was still convulsed by the Great People's Cultural Revolution, and the first open contact between the two took place in 1971 when China and the US played table tennis.

Perhaps someone can rebut the frankly silly, and verifiably bogus claims made by Father and Son-

“Most politicians spend their entire careers in Washington DC and get absolutely nothing accomplished. For example: Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a politician who has been in government for 47 years,” Eric Trump said.
“He is a career politician who has never signed the front of a check and does not know the slightest thing about the American worker or the American business — the engine which fuels the greatest economy the world has ever known,” he said.
https://nypost.com/2020/08/25/rnc-20...or-terrorists/


“For 47 years, Joe Biden took the donations of blue collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses” – laughter from the audience – “and told them he felt their pain – and then he flew back to Washington and voted to ship their jobs to China and many other distant lands. Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing the dreams of American workers, offshoring their jobs, opening their borders, and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars.”
Later, another framing: “We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years. Biden’s record is a shameful roll call of the most catastrophic betrayals and blunders in our lifetime …
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...peech-analysis

And yet, according to the Congressional Record, Joe Biden in his career sponsored 1,071 Bills, and co-sponsored 3,374. Amongst the Bills that make up his 'shameful record call' are-

Crime Victims with Disabilities Act of 2008 (2007-2008 )
Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008 (2007-2008 )
International Violence Against Women Act of 2007 (2007-2008 )
Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act of 2003 (2003-2004)

47 years of nothing? Compared to 4 years of what, in comparison? And who was President when the off-shoring of jobs began? Ronald Reagan.

https://www.congress.gov/member/jose...22Health%22%7D

https://projects.propublica.org/repr...-sponsored/110

[broncofan]

The Republican convention is a joke. It includes speeches by every Trump child, as though they are qualified to weigh in on the direction our country is going in. It includes fear-mongering over mask wearing when we've had the worst response to covid in the entire industrialized world and are falling apart as a country. They have nothing to offer except fear and hatred as their movement is completely bereft of any underlying principles.

I really don't know what it is they're running on. Their only hope is that they convince people that Biden will support anarchy or be in favor of defunding police instead of fighting police brutality but once again that depends on misinformation. There was some suggestion that the Democratic party has strayed too far to the left, but Biden's nomination was a referendum on more radical policies that may be a tough sell for some people in this country. With Biden you get a slightly left of center agenda with a return to normalcy, both in process and rule of law. Even if you're a conservative, the alternative of racism, corruption, nepotism, and dysfunctional chaos in government should not be attractive.