One step closer to the total corporate capture of the Federal government.
I guess folks here in the US will need to get really involved in their state politics. What won't be done at the Federal level, will have to be done at the state level, I suppose.
They certainly can, but they don't have to. The problem is the experts who are slow, or unwilling to change their theories and ideas, even as real world events expose those theories as incomplete, at best.
Many mainstream economics experts did not see the great recession coming. They were blindsided by it. Did those experts humble themselves and try to figure out how they had such a significant blind spot? No, most did not. Most just wrote it off as an anomaly and doubled down on their theories. This was a massive mistake, because the great recession was a major contributor to the US becoming the politically chaotic country it is today. Being a good governor, and being good at winning elections, are both served by officials and experts who are willing to admit when they are wrong and make the necessary changes.
It's easy to lose a war when you choose not to fight.
One of the best and worst things about the Democratic party is that they listen to experts. They are technocrats, through and through. This is honestly a great thing, most of the time. It's good to listen to public health experts, or climate and environmental experts, etc. What's not so great, however, is when the experts get it wrong. The technocrats end up following them because that's what technocrats do, they listen to experts, or they are the experts themselves.
The political science and economic experts in the US have been suffering from chronic hubris ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This hubris has infected the Democratic party. The political science and economic experts aren't learning from their mistakes, and thus neither are the Democrats. Those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
Mark Zuckerberg's mentor is Peter Thiel, a man who believes that corporations should seek monopoly power, because "competition is for losers." Peter Thiel is also a mentor to JD Vance. He, and I'm sure Zuckerberg and Vance as well, see Trump as a useful idiot. Trump is their avenue to taking control of the Federal government.
While law enforcement does not believe Thompson's killing is part of a trend targeting health executives, the attack underscores the vulnerability of these high-profile executives.
Yes, very vulnerable people. I mean, not as vulnerable as an elderly cancer patient who's been denied care, or a working class family driven to bankruptcy by medical debt, but, you know vulnerable to righteous retribution. Except, they're not really even vulnerable to that, since they have the resources to pay for private security.
When we built our home a few years ago, we made sure that everything in the house was electric: no gas water heater, no gas stove, and no gas central heating. Our heat pump works phenomenally well, our electricity bills are very manageable, and we don't have a gas bill, at all. It's great, I highly recommend it.
He'll likely be convicted, and he'll likely spend most, if not all of the rest of his life in prison. It's an incredible sacrifice he's made. That takes immense bravery. I only wish more people were that brave.
That's nearly 2/3 of Americans, a pretty strong majority. Those other 38% of Americans can go fuck themselves, right along with the corporate oligarchs they worship.
Fossil fuel companies actively suppress anything that stands in their way and within a generation or two, it will begin costing human lives by greater and greater magnitudes until the earth is just a flaming ball orbiting third from the sun. Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn't possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense.
These companies don't care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?
Higher education is too expensive. Not everyone can afford it. Also, some people can't go to school full time because they need to work. I know some people would say these people should be able to do both, but that doesn't work for everyone. If you're someone who got a degree while working full time, good for you, but I've tried working full time and going to school and I found it to be really difficult. If there comes a point where people decide they have to choose between school and work, well, school is going to lose every time because school doesn't pay the rent.
There's am awful lot of medium size companies staffed by regular every day people for every fat cat evil corporate overlord.
The only reason that medium sized company exists is because it hasn't yet had the opportunity to grow into a behemoth, or it hasn't yet been taken over by one. But that's the goal of every firm, small, medium, or large: ever increasing profits, over all else, even over human well being. Some firms are just better at achieving that goal, often because they were first into an industry. These massive corporations didn't start out massive, they grew from much smaller firms. The executives at giant corporations aren't exceptionally evil, they've just demonstrated enough acumen for increasing profits to catch the eye of some giant corporation's board chair (that and maybe they both went to the same business school and play golf together). And since ever increasing profits is the goal of every firm, every firm has to try and capture as many markets as possible, and that means the small and medium sized firms will be captured eventually, unless they are able to grow into a massive corporation themselves.
Witty, clearly reading from a script and dressed casually, defended his industry against accusations it refuses people vital coverage saying “we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or unnecessary care.”
The oligarchs, and the "journalists" who run their propaganda media outlets, can all cram it up their ass.