#politics

See tagged statuses in the local bookrastinating.com community

The Democrats are throwing one helluva fun party at their coronation convention. Some folks are criticizing them for it, but some folks will criticize anything.

FWIW I’d rather work my ass off to support the folks having fun then I would the folks trying to spoil not just fun, but life, for the rest of us.

Economics is certainly not a harmless science. In fact, it's not a science at all. It is a tool created by humans, a tool that can be used for good or for evil.

The following is from page 32 in a new book I just read called Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism, by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison…
_____________________________

It is highly misleading to describe neoliberalism as “free market economics." In many ways it's quite the opposite.

Neoliberalism is the tool used by the very rich to accumulate more wealth and power. Neoliberalism is class war.
_____________________________

📖 https://bookshop.org/p/books/invisible-doctrine-the-secret-life-of-neoliberalism-peter-hutchison/20673134

Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America

"If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States, what will that look like? If he chooses to contest an election result? If he decides that democracy is over-rated? This isn’t sci-fi. It’s literally three months away."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/inciting-rioters-in-britain-was-a-test-run-for-elon-musk-just-see-what-he-plans-for-america

"In , the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The owner of a platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite . Britain’s 2024 summer were ’s trial balloon.

He got away with it."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/inciting-rioters-in-britain-was-a-test-run-for-elon-musk-just-see-what-he-plans-for-america

Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American
==

Rounding up . Lists of “friendly” sheriffs. Debating assassinations.

Internal messages reveal AP3's journey from Jan. 6 through the tumultuous lead-up to the 2024 .

One member predicts: “It’ll be decided at the ammo box.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-secret-ap3-militia-american-patriots-three-percent

On its 50th birthday we might ask how successful has the Health & Safety at Work Act been?

well in 1969 there were 323,000 workplace deaths & injuries.... top from 168,000 ten years earlier.

In 1974, the there were 2.9 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers; by 2023-24, it was down to 0.42 per 100,000 representing 138 work-related deaths.

Now that looks like success.... not Health & Safety gone mad, but workers & their families saved from tragedies!



https://theconversation.com/the-uks-health-and-safety-at-work-act-is-50-heres-how-its-changed-our-lives-235794

The US state of Utah releases its first list of banned books.

«They want to make it so that if one or two parents or school board members don’t like a book, they can easily take it away from every single resident in the state.»

Well beyond merely ironic to use democracy as the delivery vehicle for a policy of tyrannical rule by minority.

I also have come to think it not coincidental that our plutocratic overlords are devising schemes like this, which I see as the political analogs of leveraged buyouts, which also allow one power beyond what seems like should be their rightfully earned means, distorting the natural checks and balances of a market, democracy here being the marketplace of ideas.

A number of recent political moves have had this shape, not least of which the capture of the Supreme Court and really brazen exploitation of its power …

Content warning The misogynistic and racist hate campaign against a cisgender Algerian boxer