@edgarblythe,
It makes one wonder if attempted suicide is attempted murder in Texas.
@coluber2001,
Man for man (woman for woman) no government is more effed up than in Texas.
@edgarblythe,
Sadly, Florida (DeSantis) comes up near the top of that list as well.
@Ragman,
Florida makes the list too.
@edgarblythe,
This from PDiddie's blog this morning
The arrest of Lizelle Herrera reverberated across the nation. Not just because we all thought it was about Texas being, you know, but because the law enforcement officials in Starr County are all Democrats, including the DA, whose office would've -- under the usual procedure -- presented a charge of murder to a grand jury for indictment before suddenly deciding the law wasn't on his side. There is a great deal more the public needs to know about this matter, and I suspect it is going to smell very bad.
RGV Democrats are in a world of hurt, it seems.
@edgarblythe,
Scott Braddock
@scottbraddock
While denying a pandemic disaster exists,
@GregAbbott_TX
continues to declare a covid disaster across Texas' 254 counties because the declaration of disaster gives force of law to his executive orders. He's using that nifty trick to do anything he wants with no oversight #TxLege
edgarblythe wrote:
Man for man (woman for woman) no government is more effed up than in Texas.
Texas Tribune
@TexasTribune
· 5h
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called on Gov. Greg Abbott to stop additional vehicle inspections at the border Tuesday. Miller criticized the measure as "economy killing" and said it could leave grocery shelves empty within weeks.
https://bit.ly/37c2Gak
@edgarblythe,
The question is not whether capitalism is waning,
The question is what replaces it.
Any suggestions?
@Leadfoot,
Your persistence has made me read your post. It also has prompted me to unblock you. I like your question.
For starters, I am in the same camp as Eugene V. Debs. A Democratic Socialist. Before you point at the failure of socialism I have to say that Marxism has rarely been given any sort of a chance. It isn't what the USSR once had and it isn't what China has. Those two authoritarian states are not particularly democratic. I believe in allowing industry to prosper and make profits, just not go tax free and receive huge chunks of free tax money whenever they claim to need it.
Traditionally whenever a state starts on a socialist route the US works to destabilize the government and install dictatorships, which is why they usually fail.
@edgarblythe,
edgarblythe wrote:
Texas Tribune
@TexasTribune
· 5h
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called on Gov. Greg Abbott to stop additional vehicle inspections at the border Tuesday. Miller criticized the measure as "economy killing" and said it could leave grocery shelves empty within weeks.
https://bit.ly/37c2Gak
Trucker blockade snarls U.S.-Mexico border over Texas order
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/13/trucker-blockade-snarls-us-mexico-border-over-texas-order.html
Opinion
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s vision for the internet is dangerous nonsense
Robert Reich
Robert Reich
Musk now faces no limit on how much of Twitter’s stock he can buy. He’ll buy as much as he needs to gain total control
Musk advocates free speech but in reality it’s just about power.
Elon Musk advocates free speech but in reality it’s just about power. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters
Tue 12 Apr 2022 06.31 EDT
306
The Russian people know little about Putin’s war on Ukraine because Putin has blocked their access to the truth, substituting propaganda and lies.
Years ago, pundits assumed the internet would open a new era of democracy, giving everyone access to the truth. But dictators like Putin and demagogues like Trump have demonstrated how naive that assumption was.
At least the US responded to Trump’s lies. Trump had 88 million Twitter followers before Twitter took him off its platform – just two days after the attack on the Capitol, which he provoked, in part, with his tweets. (Trump’s social media accounts were also suspended on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and TikTok.)
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These moves were necessary to protect American democracy. But Elon Musk – the richest man in the world, with 80 million Twitter followers – wasn’t pleased. Musk tweeted that US tech companies shouldn’t be acting “as the de facto arbiter of free speech”.
Musk continues to tell his 80 million followers all sorts of things. I disagree with many of his positions, but ever since I posted a tweet two years ago criticizing him for how he treated his Tesla workers he has blocked me – so I can’t view or post criticisms of his tweets to his followers.
Seems like an odd move for someone who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist”. Musk advocates free speech but in reality it’s just about power.
Power compelled Musk to buy $2.64bn of Twitter stock, making him the largest individual shareholder. Last week, Twitter announced that Musk would be joining Twitter’s board of directors, prompting Musk to promise “significant improvements” in the platform.
Sunday evening, though, it was announced that Musk would not be joining Twitter’s board. No reason was given but it’s probably part of a bargaining kabuki dance.
Musk wouldn’t have plopped down $2.64bn for nothing. If he is not on Twitter’s board, he’s not bound by a “standstill” agreement in which he pledged to buy no more than 14.9% of Twitter’s stock. Musk now faces no limit on how much of Twitter’s stock he can buy. He’ll buy as much as he needs to gain total control.
What “improvements” does Musk have in mind for Twitter? Will he use his clout over Twitter to prevent users with tens of millions of followers from blocking people who criticize them? I doubt it.
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Will Musk use his clout to let Trump back on? I fear he will.
Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an “uncontrolled” internet. That vision is dangerous rubbish. There’s no such animal, and there never will be.
Someone has to decide on the algorithms in every platform – how they’re designed, how they evolve, what they reveal and what they hide. Musk has enough power and money to quietly give himself this sort of control over Twitter.
Musk talks about freedom of speech but his real power is freedom of reach – reaching 80 million Twitter followers without accountability to anyone (including critics like me) – and enough money to buy himself a seat on Twitter’s board.
Musk has never believed that power comes with responsibility. He’s been unperturbed when his tweets cause real suffering. During his long and storied history with Twitter he has threatened journalists and tweeted reckless things.
In March 2020 he tweeted that children were “essentially immune” to Covid. He has pushed cryptocurrencies that he’s invested in. When a college student started a Twitter account to track Musk’s private plane, Musk tried and failed to buy him off, before blocking him.
The Securities and Exchange Commission went after Musk after he tweeted that he had funding to take Tesla private, a clear violation of the law. Musk paid a fine and agreed to let lawyers vet future sensitive tweets, but he has tried to reverse this requirement.
He has also been openly contemptuous of the SEC, tweeting at one point that the “E” stands for “Elon’s”. (You can guess what the “S” and “C” stand for.) By the way, how does the SEC go after Musk’s ability to tweet now that he owns Twitter?
Billionaires like Musk have shown time and again they consider themselves above the law. And to a large extent, they are.
Musk has enough wealth that legal penalties are no more than slaps on his wrist, and enough power to control one of the most important ways the public now receives news. Think about it: after years of posting tweets that skirt the law, Musk was given a seat on Twitter’s board (and is probably now negotiating for even more clout).
Musk says he wants to “free” the internet. But what he really aims to do is make it even less accountable than it is now, when it’s often impossible to discover who is making the decisions about how algorithms are designed, who is filling social media with lies, who’s poisoning our minds with pseudo-science and propaganda, and who’s deciding which versions of events go viral and which stay under wraps.
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Make no mistake: this is not about freedom. It’s about power.
In Musk’s vision of Twitter and the internet, he’d be the wizard behind the curtain – projecting on the world’s screen a fake image of a brave new world empowering everyone.
In reality, that world would be dominated by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science or the common good.
That’s Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. And the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth. For the rest of us, it would be a brave new nightmare.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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@Leadfoot,
Good to hear from you edgar.
I would agree that most critics of socialism don’t actually know what it is, and so it never has been successful. I’m not sure most advocates know either, from the Soviet Union to the hippie communes of the 60s/70s, they all balled it up.
Not to turn this into a sermon but I haven’t studied Marx that much. But Christ (if properly understood) pointed to a type of society where ‘socialism', for lack of a better term, would be the optimal condition for sentient beings to live under.
Where I differ with Marx and others is their belief that socialism itself would bring about the change in man necessary for it to work. Unless a man or woman understands themselves as an individual I don’t think socialism would work by simply imposing it.
The necessary change in the individual is no small potatoes. JC called that process 'being born again'. Unfortunately, most people think that means being 'super religious', and that includes the religious. They envision socialism as a benevolent dictatorship. Christ advocated for a society where no dictator was necessary.
And I agree that the US should stop playing god with the other nations of the world. We are no longer a shining example of how to govern.
@Leadfoot,
Socialism has to learn from the Soviet debacle how to repress the agents of industrial and military, but also to stifle the greedy who turn a blind eye. If it can't we are doomed to a path of extinction in my view.
Introducing in stages, such as Roosevelt pushed would likely be most successful. If his universal health care had been put through, for instance, I believe you would face an insurrection to attempt to privatize it. Convenient to those opposed, he died soon after making it known he was readying such a proposal. Truman apparently didn't seriously consider it. He possibly lacked the clout anyway.
@edgarblythe,
I may be overestimating the cognizance of the people in suggesting an insurrection should the politicians allow privatization of the proposed socialized medicine. There should already have been an uprising over the incremental privatization of Medicare, but not much more than an uncomfortable stir has occurred thus far.
edgarblythe wrote:
Introducing in stages, such as Roosevelt pushed would likely be most successful. If his universal health care had been put through, for instance, I believe you would face an insurrection to attempt to privatize it. Convenient to those opposed, he died soon after making it known he was readying such a proposal. Truman apparently didn't seriously consider it. He possibly lacked the clout anyway.
@edgarblythe,
You’re probably right. They’re like the frog in the pot being slowly heated to a boil. They’ll be cooked by the time they notice anything wrong.
@Leadfoot,
I don't want to be right but I have no choice in the matter.
