Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Chas_P]

Perhaps

 

However, I think that's far more likely that you're desperately sucking up to

one of the few long standing members of the forum who doesn't routinely

brand you a racist.

No Richie. I just meant that I truly enjoy Ken's musings. They give me something to think about. You and your cohorts, OTOH, give me something to laugh at. Please keep up the good work.

[mycroft]

Second hit for "libertarian right to life".

 

As I said, I can't think this way. And it's not quite what I was saying (which sometimes is Very Good! I'm glad I don't understand libertarianism!)

 

"True Libertarians" don't seem to mind driving on the roads for free and not stepping in the garbage, and all the rest of the things that their "stolen property" pays for, oddly enough. So I'm agreeing with you there.

[kenberg]

Second hit for "libertarian right to life".

 

As I said, I can't think this way. And it's not quite what I was saying (which sometimes is Very Good! I'm glad I don't understand libertarianism!)

 

"True Libertarians" don't seem to mind driving on the roads for free and not stepping in the garbage, and all the rest of the things that their "stolen property" pays for, oddly enough. So I'm agreeing with you there.

 

I will use your link to explain why I believe discussing libertarian philosophy, and often philosophy in general, is a trap.

 

If I have a right to life, you are obliged to see to it that I remain alive. Thus, you become a slave of mine. I can order you to keep me alive, and you are legally obligated to obey me. I will then in effect have kidnapped you, enslaved you, but that is an obvious rights violation.

 

No. Or rather, I disagree. You (any "you") having a right to life means that I should butt out and let you have your life.

 

Or is that what it means? And there is the problem.

 

Instead of discussing practical matters we get into an abstract and mostly unproductive discussion of the meaning of a phrase. Probably few people think that I have an obligation to donate a kidney to someone in need, although I suppose an argument can be made for it. Do I have an obligation to at least call the police if I see an assault in progress? A moral one certainly. but these are rare matters and getting into the philosophical details distracts us from more pressing questions such as vaccine mandates. Some people have reasonable medical reasons to be cautious about a vaccine. Questions are asked about this before we are given the shot. Some people have religious objections. What should we do about that? There are various specific questions that are important, and we should not let ourselves get distracted by linguistic matters.

 

I don't like people telling me what t do and I have no great interest in telling other people what to do, but sometimes I think both of these things are needed. We need to practice restraint. That's enough of a guide for most decisions that I make. At times I of course have to balance competing values. I have never found philosophy to be much of a help. I can't recall ever saying "Golly, I really have to go back and see what Kant says about this".

[Winstonm]

I will use your link to explain why I believe discussing libertarian philosophy, and often philosophy in general, is a trap.

 

 

 

No. Or rather, I disagree. You (any "you") having a right to life means that I should butt out and let you have your life.

 

Or is that what it means? And there is the problem.

 

Instead of discussing practical matters we get into an abstract and mostly unproductive discussion of the meaning of a phrase. Probably few people think that I have an obligation to donate a kidney to someone in need, although I suppose an argument can be made for it. Do I have an obligation to at least call the police if I see an assault in progress? A moral one certainly. but these are rare matters and getting into the philosophical details distracts us from more pressing questions such as vaccine mandates. Some people have reasonable medical reasons to be cautious about a vaccine. Questions are asked about this before we are given the shot. Some people have religious objections. What should we do about that? There are various specific questions that are important, and we should not let ourselves get distracted by linguistic matters.

 

I don't like people telling me what t do and I have no great interest in telling other people what to do, but sometimes I think both of these things are needed. We need to practice restraint. That's enough of a guide for most decisions that I make. At times I of course have to balance competing values. I have never found philosophy to be much of a help. I can't recall ever saying "Golly, I really have to go back and see what Kant says about this".

 

I don't understand how you Kant see this my way.

[Chas_P]

. I have never found philosophy to be much of a help. I can't recall ever saying "Golly, I really have to go back and see what Kant says about this"

And then there was Socrates, but let's not go there.

[pilowsky]

On the other hand, a little bit of philosophy goes a long way.

I used to play at a club where one of the players wore a Jumper that was gold in colour and had the brand name, Kant.

When I commented that he seemed to be taking comfort from the golden wool I was met with a surly expression.

[kenberg]

On the other hand, a little bit of philosophy goes a long way.

I used to play at a club where one of the players wore a Jumper that was gold in colour and had the brand name, Kant.

When I commented that he seemed to be taking comfort from the golden wool I was met with a surly expression.

 

Golden wool? The reference is not something I recognize. I remember encountering a sentence, reading Kant, that had two semi-colons and a colon. I decided ok, I have some time, I am not getting up from this chair until I unravel this. Still, it didn't change my life.

 

I looked up some Kant quotes. eg

 

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt”

 

I am not sure I completely understand this but I like it.

 

[Winstonm]

Golden wool? The reference is not something I recognize. I remember encountering a sentence, reading Kant, that had two semi-colons and a colon. I decided ok, I have some time, I am not getting up from this chair until I unravel this. Still, it didn't change my life.

 

I looked up some Kant quotes. eg

 

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt”

 

I am not sure I completely understand this but I like it.

 

Or to paraphrase, the sound of one hand claptrap trying to figure out the compound squeeze

[y66]

An enduring traffic jam at the Port of Savannah reveals why the chaos in global shipping is likely to persist by Peter S Goodman at NYT

 

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Like toy blocks hurled from the heavens, nearly 80,000 shipping containers are stacked in various configurations at the Port of Savannah — 50 percent more than usual.

 

The steel boxes are waiting for ships to carry them to their final destination, or for trucks to haul them to warehouses that are themselves stuffed to the rafters. Some 700 containers have been left at the port, on the banks of the Savannah River, by their owners for a month or more.

 

“They’re not coming to get their freight,” complained Griff Lynch, the executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority. “We’ve never had the yard as full as this.”

 

As he speaks, another vessel glides silently toward an open berth — the 1,207-foot-long Yang Ming Witness, its decks jammed with containers full of clothing, shoes, electronics and other stuff made in factories in Asia. Towering cranes soon pluck the thousands of boxes off the ship — more cargo that must be stashed somewhere.

 

“Certainly,” Mr. Lynch said, “the stress level has never been higher.”

 

It has come to this in the Great Supply Chain Disruption: They are running out of places to put things at one of the largest ports in the United States. As major ports contend with a staggering pileup of cargo, what once seemed like a temporary phenomenon — a traffic jam that would eventually dissipate — is increasingly viewed as a new reality that could require a substantial refashioning of the world’s shipping infrastructure.

 

As the Savannah port works through the backlog, Mr. Lynch has reluctantly forced ships to wait at sea for more than nine days. On a recent afternoon, more than 20 ships were stuck in the queue, anchored up to 17 miles off the coast in the Atlantic.

 

Nearly 80,000 containers jam the port, 50 percent more than usual.

 

Such lines have become common around the globe, from the more than 50 ships marooned last week in the Pacific near Los Angeles to smaller numbers bobbing off terminals in the New York area, to hundreds waylaid off ports in China.

 

The turmoil in the shipping industry and the broader crisis in supply chains is showing no signs of relenting. It stands as a gnawing source of worry throughout the global economy, challenging once-hopeful assumptions of a vigorous return to growth as vaccines limit the spread of the pandemic.

 

The disruption helps explain why Germany’s industrial fortunes are sagging, why inflation has become a cause for concern among central bankers, and why American manufacturers are now waiting a record 92 days on average to assemble the parts and raw materials they need to make their goods, according to the Institute of Supply Management.

 

On the surface, the upheaval appears to be a series of intertwined product shortages. Because shipping containers are in short supply in China, factories that depend on Chinese-made parts and chemicals in the rest of the world have had to limit production.

 

Daily business updates The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox.

But the situation at the port of Savannah attests to a more complicated and insidious series of overlapping problems. It is not merely that goods are scarce. It is that products are stuck in the wrong places, and separated from where they are supposed to be by stubborn and constantly shifting barriers.

 

The shortage of finished goods at retailers represents the flip side of the containers stacked on ships marooned at sea and massed on the riverbanks. The pileup in warehouses is itself a reflection of shortages of truck drivers needed to carry goods to their next destinations.

 

For Mr. Lynch, the man in charge in Savannah, frustrations are enhanced by a sense of powerlessness in the face of circumstances beyond his control. Whatever he does to manage his docks alongside the murky Savannah River, he cannot tame the bedlam playing out on the highways, at the warehouses, at ports across the ocean and in factory towns around the world.

Interestingly, they don't seem to have a way to schedule arrivals other than to queue them up offshore. If ships could book and trade arrival slots, it would allow them to time departures and increase or decrease cruising speeds to their advantage. So, not just a pandemic thing. It looks like a primitive logistics management thing.

[Winstonm]

An enduring traffic jam at the Port of Savannah reveals why the chaos in global shipping is likely to persist by Peter S Goodman at NYT

 

 

Interestingly, they don't seem to have a way to schedule arrivals other than to queue them up offshore. If ships could book and trade arrival slots, it would allow them to time departures and increase or decrease cruising speeds to their advantage. So, not just a pandemic thing. It looks like a primitive logistics management thing.

 

The only thing that will stop a bad ship is a good ship with a gun - GOP slogan.

[Winstonm]

The non-excitement of important considerations:

 

It's now becoming clear that U.S. policy changes needed to make the global minimum tax a reality will likely be in the big bill that Democrats hope to pass via reconciliation. On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told ABC News she fully expects this to happen.

This comes after more than 130 nations reached a deal Friday to participate in a minimum 15 percent levy on corporations to stop the "race to the bottom" among nations competing for multinational corporations.

[kenberg]

An enduring traffic jam at the Port of Savannah reveals why the chaos in global shipping is likely to persist by Peter S Goodman at NYT

 

 

Interestingly, they don't seem to have a way to schedule arrivals other than to queue them up offshore. If ships could book and trade arrival slots, it would allow them to time departures and increase or decrease cruising speeds to their advantage. So, not just a pandemic thing. It looks like a primitive logistics management thing.

 

Yes, and maybe something else. Let's assume Lynch is a capable guy. But he is also a cog. No insult intended, that's just the way the world is now. Reading the article (I read the rest of it as well) I got the feeling that nobody really has a grip on things. I hope they work this out.

 

Becky and I were chatting earlier. She had ordered some clothing online w/o thinking anything about where it came from etc. That was two weeks ago so she was trying to figure out what happened. As near as she can tell, it has not yet made it out of China.

 

When I was young, corn had to get from the farm to the table, maybe even from Iowa to Minnesota. Things are more complicated now.

[Winstonm]

Yes, and maybe something else. Let's assume Lynch is a capable guy. But he is also a cog. No insult intended, that's just the way the world is now. reading the article (I read the rest of it as well) I got the feeling that nobody really has a rip on things. I hope they work this out.

 

Becky and I were chatting earlier. She had ordered some clothing online w/o thinking anything about where it came from etc. That was two weeks ago so she was trying to figure out what happened. As near as she can tell, it has not yet made it out of China.

 

When I was young, corn had to get from the farm to the table, maybe even from Iowa to Minnesota. Things are more complicated now.

 

We needed to replace our refrigerator- almost impossible to find what we needed in stock. Most had over 2 months order delivery times,

[Chas_P]

Becky and I were chatting earlier. She had ordered some clothing online w/o thinking anything about where it came from etc. That was two weeks ago so she was trying to figure out what happened. As near as she can tell, it has not yet made it out of China.

I get your drift. Back before July 4th I ordered a shirt advertised on Faceneck that I liked the looks of; it was an American flag motif and supposedly coming from Las Vegas. I got it three weeks later....from China. Later I ordered some driving moccasins advertised on Faceneck that I liked the looks of supposedly coming from the UK. I got them five weeks later....from China. Both products were fine; I'm happy with the shirt and with the shoes. I guess the moral of the story is.....if you want something made in the USA and you want it quickly, don't order it on Faceneck.

[pilowsky]

Where things are made is a significant issue - Here's a graphic showing where cars are made - the USA makes 5.5% of the cars in the world but has 4.25% of the world population.

I suspect this means the USA imports a lot of cars given that much of the population in the world don't buy new cars.

Here's a geo map of world car manufacturing (thank you worldometer) - ABout a third of the cars are made in China.

In 2020 Chinese customers bought 25,311,070 cars and US customers bought 14,452,890. (Statista).

[pilowsky]

The location of the machines that make processors for computers is an even bigger problem.

[Winstonm]

The location of the machines that make processors for computers is an even bigger problem.

 

The bigger problem is when the machines rise up against you (yes, Arnold, I’m looking at you).

[Winstonm]

An enduring traffic jam at the Port of Savannah reveals why the chaos in global shipping is likely to persist by Peter S Goodman at NYT

 

 

Interestingly, they don't seem to have a way to schedule arrivals other than to queue them up offshore. If ships could book and trade arrival slots, it would allow them to time departures and increase or decrease cruising speeds to their advantage. So, not just a pandemic thing. It looks like a primitive logistics management thing.

 

As it turns out, John Galt is a truck driver.

[y66]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-11-2021

 

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post today ran op-eds from Republicans or former Republicans urging members of their party who still value democracy to vote Democratic until the authoritarian faction that has taken over their party is bled out of it.

 

In the New York Times, Miles Taylor and Christine Todd Whitman wrote, “We are Republicans. There’s only one way to save our party from pro-Trump extremists.” Taylor served in the Department of Homeland Security and was the author of the 2018 New York Times piece by “Anonymous” criticizing former president Trump. Whitman was governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001, after which she headed the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush.

 

Taylor and Whitman note that “rational Republicans” had hoped after Trump’s defeat that they might take back the party, but it is clear now, they write, that they are losing the party’s “civil war.” But while they originally hoped to form a new party, they now agree that the only way to stop Trumpism “is for us to form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year—including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats.” To defend democracy, they write, “concerned conservatives must join forces with Democrats on the most essential near-term imperative: blocking Republican leaders from regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives” and the Senate.

 

They call for Republicans to put country over party and back moderate Democrats, while also asking Democrats to concede that “there are certain races where progressives simply cannot win and acknowledg[e] that it makes more sense to throw their lot in with a center-right candidate who can take out a more radical conservative.”

 

At the Washington Post, Max Boot takes an even stronger stand: “I’m no Democrat—but I’m voting exclusively for Democrats to save our democracy.” Boot is a Russian-American specialist in foreign affairs who identifies as a conservative but no longer supports the Republican Party. He writes: “I’m a single-issue voter. My issue is the fate of democracy in the United States. Simply put, I have no faith that we will remain a democracy if Republicans win power. Thus, although I’m not a Democrat, I will continue to vote exclusively for Democrats—as I have done in every election since 2016—until the GOP ceases to pose an existential threat to our freedom.”

 

Boot singles out the dueling reports from the Senate Judiciary Committee about the nine ways in which Trump tried to pressure then–acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to back his claims of election fraud. The Democrats on the committee established these efforts with an evidence-based report, only to have the Republicans on the committee, led by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), respond that the president was simply trying to promote confidence in the election results and that since he did not ultimately replace Rosen with another lawyer who promised to use the Justice Department to challenge the election—after the other leaders of the Justice Department threatened to resign in a mass protest—he did not actually abuse his office.

 

Boot writes, “It is mind-boggling that a defeated president won’t accept the election outcome…. What is even more alarming is that more than 60 percent of Republicans agree with his preposterous assertion that the election was stolen and want him to remain as the party’s leader.”

[kenberg]

A fair number of conservatives have expressed dismay over Trump,. But few Republicans who are currently serving terms in Congress are doing so. The following occurred to me:

 

When Trump was pushing hard n the Justice Department to support his efforts to overturn the election, at one point a large number of those employed there, surely from both parties, threatened to resign. These people could reasonably be called "ordinary people". Maybe better paid than the average person, but not rich, not "elite", whatever "elite" means, just people. They put that all on the line in the defense of democracy. I would like the media to interview each and every Republican in Congress and ask them what they think of the courage displayed by these workers, ask if they acknowledge the importance of that, and then ask these elected officials how they live with themselves. How do they explain their choice to remain silent when speaking to their children? Perhaps some of them think that Venezuelans, or maybe Venusians, somehow stole the election for Biden. But most don't. When they speak on "background" rather than for the record they say that they don't. It's way past time for them to speak clearly and for the record, to be quoted with their name attached.

[barmar]

A fair number of conservatives have expressed dismay over Trump,. But few Republicans who are currently serving terms in Congress are doing so. The following occurred to me:

 

When Trump was pushing hard n the Justice Department to support his efforts to overturn the election, at one point a large number of those employed there, surely from both parties, threatened to resign. These people could reasonably be called "ordinary people". Maybe better paid than the average person, but not rich, not "elite", whatever "elite" means, just people. They put that all on the line in the defense of democracy. I would like the media to interview each and every Republican in Congress and ask them what they think of the courage displayed by these workers, ask if they acknowledge the importance of that, and then ask these elected officials how they live with themselves. How do they explain their choice to remain silent when speaking to their children? Perhaps some of them think that Venezuelans, or maybe Venusians, somehow stole the election for Biden. But most don't. When they speak on "background" rather than for the record they say that they don't. It's way past time for them to speak clearly and for the record, to be quoted with their name attached.

It's not going to happen.

 

I heard Elizabeth Warren being interviewed a few days ago. She was asked whether GOP Senators admit privately behind closed doors that they don't believe Trump's lies, and she said that this is common. But few of them will say it in public. It's just too dangerous to them politically.

[PassedOut]

This essay from Salon takes a hard look at how Donald Trump's appeal to large segments of the US population fits into the arc of our history. The article contains a link to a 1988 article by Bill Moyers about LBJ:

 

I was a young man on his staff in 1960 when he gave me a vivid account of that southern schizophrenia he understood and feared. We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

 

Some years later when Johnson was president, there was a press conference in the East Room. A reporter unexpectedly asked the president how he could explain his sudden passion for civil rights when he had never shown much enthusiasm for the cause. The question hung in the air. I could almost hear his silent cursing of a press secretary who had not anticipated this one. But then he relaxed, and from an instinct no assistant could brief -- one seasoned in the double life from which he was delivered and hoped to deliver others -- he said in effect: Most of us don't have a second chance to correct the mistakes of our youth. I do and I am.

Of course Trump has always been a con man, stealing from the contractors who worked for him, from the taxpayers, from those who signed up for his "university," and from those who send money to him now to promote stealing the next election for him. When Romney ran against Obama, Trump advised his campaign to echo the claim that Obama was not really born in Hawaii in order to attract the moron vote. Trump is--to use his own word--scum. But he knows, as did LBJ, how to get people's votes while picking their pockets.

 

As I've mentioned before, I had the valuable experience in the late 1960s of living with my first wife in an otherwise all black neighborhood, including when Dr. King was shot and our entire neighborhood was closed off by the National Guard. I'm still in touch with three of the folks I spent time with then, and each of them is, as a human being, worth more than a thousand Donald Trumps--and the same holds true for Trump's sycophants.

[Winstonm]

A fair number of conservatives have expressed dismay over Trump,. But few Republicans who are currently serving terms in Congress are doing so. The following occurred to me:

 

When Trump was pushing hard n the Justice Department to support his efforts to overturn the election, at one point a large number of those employed there, surely from both parties, threatened to resign. These people could reasonably be called "ordinary people". Maybe better paid than the average person, but not rich, not "elite", whatever "elite" means, just people. They put that all on the line in the defense of democracy. I would like the media to interview each and every Republican in Congress and ask them what they think of the courage displayed by these workers, ask if they acknowledge the importance of that, and then ask these elected officials how they live with themselves. How do they explain their choice to remain silent when speaking to their children? Perhaps some of them think that Venezuelans, or maybe Venusians, somehow stole the election for Biden. But most don't. When they speak on "background" rather than for the record they say that they don't. It's way past time for them to speak clearly and for the record, to be quoted with their name attached.

 

You'll have to ask Chuck Grassley about that idea - he's almost 90 years old and still too much a politician not to kowtow to Trumpism.

 

Btw, my understanding is that those at the DOJ who stepped up and threatened to resign were not the political appointees.

Edited October 12, 2021 by Winstonm

[y66]

Big business is overwhelmingly in favor of requiring that workers get vaccinated against Covid-19. A recent CNBC survey of chief financial officers found that 80 percent of them say they “totally support” the Biden administration’s plan to impose a vaccine-or-test mandate on companies with more than 100 workers, and many companies have already announced vaccination requirements for their employees.

 

Yet Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, just issued an executive order banning vaccine mandates in his state. That is, he’s not just refusing to use his own powers to promote vaccination; he’s interfering in private decisions, trying to prevent businesses from requiring that their workers or customers be vaccinated.

 

And on Sunday, Senator Ted Cruz celebrated a wave of flight cancellations by Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, based on rumors — which both the airline and its union deny — that the problems were caused by a walkout of employees protesting the airline’s new vaccine requirements.

 

What’s going on here?

 

Republicans have been closely allied with big business since the Gilded Age, when a party originally based on opposition to slavery was in effect captured by the rising power of corporations. That alliance lost some of its force in the 1950s and 1960s, an era in which the G.O.P. largely accepted things like progressive taxation and strong labor unions, but came back in full with the rise of Ronald Reagan and his agenda of tax cuts and deregulation.

 

Indeed, it wasn’t that long ago that you could plausibly think of the Republican Party as basically a front for big-business interests, one that exploited social issues and appeals to racial hostility to win elections, only to turn immediately after each election to a pro-corporate agenda. That was basically the thesis of Thomas Frank’s 2004 book “What’s the Matter With Kansas,” and it seemed like a good model of the party until the rise of Trumpism.

 

Now, however, Republican politicians are at odds with corporate America on crucial issues. It’s not just vaccines. Corporate interests also want serious investment in infrastructure and find themselves on the outs with Republican leaders who don’t want to see Democrats achieve any policy successes. Basically, the G.O.P. is currently engaged in a major campaign of sabotage — its leaders want to see America do badly, because they believe this will redound to their political advantage — and if this hurts their corporate backers along the way, they don’t care.

 

Just to be clear, corporations aren’t being good guys. They support vaccine mandates and infrastructure investment because they believe that both would be good for their bottom lines. They’re still for the most part opposed to the rest of the Biden agenda, including — unforgivably — efforts to fight climate change, because they don’t want to pay higher taxes.

 

Still, the conflict between the G.O.P. and corporations is a striking new turn in American politics. And I wonder if some corporate leaders find themselves asking, in the privacy of their own minds, “My God, what have we done?”

 

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=116&emc=edit_pk_20211012&instance_id=42646&nl=paul-krugman&productCode%3DPK=&regi_id=59211987&segment_id=71422&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fbe287cd4-5ced-58b8-9640-4d8e4c019437&user_id=2d8b72dd84a9ff194896ed87b2d9c72a

I often wonder if people who reply to trolls on this thread ask this same question.

[kenberg]

I often wonder if people who reply to trolls on this thread ask this same question.

 

Are you wondering here about people who respond to me?

 

My older daughter's favorite bedtime story was The Three Billy Goats Gruff. I have never inquired as to whether the troll was her favorite character in it. Or who the troll might have reminded her of.