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“ s. Sure, the left talks about rhetoric, but it also fights for higher wages, civil liberties, healthcare, affirmative action, investment in education, workers

“ s. Sure, the left talks about rhetoric, but it also fights for higher wages, civil liberties, healthcare, affirmative action, investment in education, workers' rights, and voting rights.” I don’t think the person you are replying to would agree with you about affirmative actions being a good thing. Other than that, the left is super repressive of free speech which is the only civil right left to win , detrimental to wage growth and worker rights by supporting unlimited immigration, bad for education by siding with teachers unions, manipulative when it comes to voting to the point when half of the country does not believe in elections. The right simply does not exist in the institutional level at this point, all they can do is whine about excesses of the left

chriswarbo 6y ago
> the left is... manipulative when it comes to voting to the point when half of the country does not believe in elections I disagree with essentially everything you're saying, but how on Earth can you write that with a straight face? I mean, five seconds on Google gives me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Donald_Trump#2016_Presidential_election_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Donald_Trump#Voting_by_mail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Donald_Trump#2020_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona... Many elected Republicans are still lying about the election results. How is that 'the left' being 'manipulative when it comes to voting'? Not to mention the slew of disenfranchisement policies being drawn up by Republicans at the moment. > The right simply does not exist in the institutional level at this point, all they can do is whine about excesses of the left Erm, what "left" are you referring to? US politics is a battle between Pepsi vs Coke https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
- tekknik 6y ago
  > Many elected Republicans are still lying about the election results. So we have voter IDs and secure voting? Did you miss the part about lack of confidence in voting? If we don’t have voter IDs how is the right lying? Or are you just trying to reaffirm the narrative?
  - EGreg 6y ago
    Because having voter IDs is not the only or even the main thing that the right — a very vocal minority of the right, by the way — had an issue with. There were a lot of conflated FUD about voting machines doctored videos shipments of empty votes observers turned away disappearing ink The funny thing is that Trump’s own appointed people, including Krebs who we cite here a lot, but also Barr and others admitted that there was not nearly enough evidence of fraud to overturn any election result in any state. And even funnier is how FOX and NewsMax debunked themselves and now chase the My Pillow CEO and others off their show for suggesting there was voting machine fraud — because they got cease and desist letters and warnings. https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/02/03/newsmax-mike-lindell-2020-election-orig.cnn-business https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/02/03/newsmax-mike-... After all, this is really easy to check. The irony for me was Texas suing the other states and then West floating a trial baloon to secede from the union (great form, West!) because they accused the other states of vote manipulation... this from a state that works hard to close HUNDREDS of poll places in Democratic areas ahead of the election to keep the state voting Republican, in blatant violation of the Voting Rights Act (neutered by the supreme court). And no one sues Texas in federal court for that. For Republicans, mail-in ballots were the end-run around their extensive efforts to close polling places and require voting IDs and other ways to tip the balance in their party’s favor. If people can just vote from home then all that effort to drive an hour and stand in a long line will be unnecessary! So they aren’t being totally honest about their FUD being nonpartisan either.
    - tekknik 6y ago
      The second dem to tell the right what the problem they have is. When are you people going to open your ears? You think ignoring the problem will work?
      - EGreg 6y ago
        I just want to be clear – I said it is a small, vocal minority on the right. Most of "the right" rejected the MAGA conspiracy theories and stopped supporting the FUD. As I have pointed out, even a lot of the mainstream right-wing media has started to "deplatform" people who continue speaking about this "problem". The Supreme court and other courts have thrown out 98% of all the cases, after applying rules of standing and evidence [1]. After all that money came in to campaign promising to "fight for every LEGAL vote to be counted", Giuliani never even applied to the supreme court. A lot of it seems to have been about taking in massive amounts of money (up to 1 billion dollars) from faithful Trump voters via the campaigns. Giuliani distanced himself from Sidney Powell who actually wanted to go to the supreme court, seemingly in order to not share the large sums of cash coming in from MAGA supporters. Also, I am not "a dem". You assume too much. And btw, many people on the right, including social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, are also very critical of the Republican leadership. Here is far more information about why[2]. 1. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-pennsylvania-elections-us-supreme-court-5cc6aee8c328c7bb1d423244b979bcec https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-pennsylvan... 2. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-believe-Republicans-are-evil/answer/Gregory-Magarshak https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-believe-Republicans...
- honkdaddy 6y ago
  Do you recall in 2016 when the mainstream left told Americans (without any factual basis) that Russians had hacked and stolen the election? That Trump was "Not Our President" and never will be? The only difference between that lie and the one peddled by Trump and the ilk is that the GOP was confident (delusional?) enough that they brought it to the Supreme Court.
  - jeromegv 6y ago
    There's a big difference between partisans doing that, and an actual president claiming the election is stolen for months, asking his supporters to march on the Capitol to deny the rights of voters to have their vote confirmed, calling state officials to ask them to "find votes", etc. You said it, they brought all of that to courts, which means it was entirely supported by the full establishment of the party, not just a fringe part of it. The fact you can't even see the major difference makes me think you are clearly looking at just one side.
    - honkdaddy 6y ago
      But it wasn't a fringe part of it, that's the precise problem. On May 16, 2017, Nancy Pelosi tweeted "Our election was hijacked. There is no question." Is Pelosi considered a fringe part of the Democratic Party now?
      - headhuntermdk 6y ago
        The left didn't storm the capital
      - chriswarbo 6y ago
        I think that's an apples-to-oranges comparison (no pun intended). It would be fairer to compare the Democrats' allegations about Russia to the Republicans' allegations about China, i.e. accusations that Biden is anywhere between a useful-idiot-for to an outright-puppet-of the CCP. AFAIK the Democrat position has been that, for both elections, the voting/counting mechanisms have withstood targetted attacks by state actors, and in both cases gave overall tallies which correspond to the electorate's choices, within an acceptable margin of error (I'm stopping at the tallies, to avoid the separate debate regarding the electoral college versus the popular vote). Some Democrats also allege foreign interference with the electorate's choices, through widespread misinformation and propaganda. As an extreme example, fewer people may have voted for Trump if Russian troll farms weren't claiming that Clinton harvests child organs (or whatever Q-adjacent bullshit was spreading around Facebook at the time). It's perfectly consistent to make that claim, whilst also claiming that those lie-induced Trump votes were subsequently collated and counted correctly towards the totals. AFAIK the Republican-led investigation found the Democrats' position to be essentially correct, that there were targetted attacks on infrastructure, and misinformation/propaganda attacks nudging the electorate towards Trump. No evidence of collusion was found, i.e. that Trump was working for foreign adversaries, or foreign adversaries were working for Trump, or they were coordinating ahead of time. That would (of course) have been even worse, but the lack of (evidence of) such collusion doesn't make the idea of foreign adversaries weaponising US voters for their own ends any more palatable. In short, choosing positions/policies/rhetoric that is useful to adversaries is not itself criminal; it could simply be naivety or coincidence. Yet knowing that a candidate's positions/policies/rhetoric is useful to adversaries would be pertinent information for voters.
cafard 6y ago
Free speech is the only civil right left to win? Fear not, then, when the state legislatures get around to the Equal Rights Amendment maybe they can spare a thought for ratifying the First Amendment. It has waited long enough. The right does not exist in the institutional level? Has anyone told Mitch McConnell about this, or Justice Thomas?
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  The last "right-wing" move I have seen in recent history was Trump's nerfed-ban of critical race theories. I do not remember any culturally significant initiatives produced by McConnell or Justice Thomas or anyone else on the right. The only true "right-wing" issue they still talk about is abortions.
  - k4c9x 6y ago
    They're extremely active on the voting "issue", in a very "right-wing" way.
Theory5 6y ago
You're blaming "the left" for distrust in voting? I don't know where to begin...
- panzagl 6y ago
  If you believe only officially identified US citizens should vote, the left started attacking decades ago. Also, there was a strong 'Trump stole the vote' campaign 4 years ago, similar to the current narrative pushed by Trump supporters.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I agree with you that it's not strictly a "left" issue - and certainly the recent election in the US had the "right" bringing up voter fraud. But it's important to remember the "left" raising flags about fraud in the 2016 election, and primary. Everything from harping on the legitimacy of a candidate that lost the popular vote, "not my president" protests, accusations of voting machine fraud, primary delegate issues, conflating gerrymandering with federal elections, etc... In general, it seems whichever side loses is increasingly blaming "unfairness" to generate more outrage to de-legitimize winners of the election. ...rather than trying to appeal to more voters. We're all losers in this situation because it is the voting system that keeps us from killing each other.
  - baseballdork 6y ago
    My only issue with this comment is that it seems to discount the idea of "unfairness" in our elections. Yes, in a federal election the districts don't matter. However, as we can see right now, the state legislatures that are elected via those districts can drastically change the landscape of a federal election within their state. The republican legislatures are moving en masse to "prevent fraud" in a way that seems to be directly aimed at making it more difficult to vote[1]. Appealing to more voters is hard when fewer people are able to vote. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-february-2021 https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voti...
- itsoktocry 6y ago
EGreg 6y ago
Both the left and the right engage in suppression of free speech in different ways. I mean when McCarthyism, Hoover’s FBI and COINTELPRO were repressing leftists left and right, sabotaging political campaigns and careers, this was considered a national security issue. I mean, until Bernie Sanders, no politician openly called themselves a socialist. This is recent. Are there any open atheists in US politics? Just curious https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/07/the-right-has-its-own-version-of-political-correctness-its-just-as-stifling/?outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/07/...
- RobAtticus 6y ago
  >I mean, until Bernie Sanders, no politician openly called themselves a socialist. This is recent. Eugene Debs?
  - EGreg 6y ago
    Dude was in office in the 19th century... wonder why the large gap lmao
zzbzq 6y ago
Heritage Foundation? Rand Corporation? Cato Institute? American Enterprise Institute? The institutional right is unimaginably huge and well-funded. Half of them even have "institute" in the name.
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  what were the policies/results produced by these money sinks within last few years?
  - zzbzq 6y ago
    All the policy since they source most of the ideas and especially political strategies. Since the early 2000s they ("they" now extending beyond just the think tanks listed previously) directly control the media by sourcing/compiling news for all major sources, so they basically control all political opinion. After a brief respite from their influence on social media, they seem to now do a pretty good job of influencing the influencers there as well.
  - neon_electro 6y ago
    Preservation of the status quo?
  - BeefySwain 6y ago
    Massive corporate tax cuts? The end of Net Neutrality?
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Heritage Foundation: starting with Reagan and encouraging the right's obsession with smaller government, was a large advocate for us going into and staying in Iraq, and was a major influence on Trump - at least 66 foundation employees worked in the administration and advised Trump who should be in his administration, including advocating for Mick Mulvaney when other Republicans were pushing against him. After his loss, they hired three of Trump's immigration team. They have also promoted the voter fraud claims about 2016 and 2020 elections, saying that it was "rampant", and also are heavy deniers of climate change, the Clean Energy act and Kyoto Agreement. AEI has been a little less controversial, although they've also leaned heavily on politicians about climate change, and their biggest funders are/were the Koch brothers. Notably, they were one of the earliest predictors of the 2008 housing crisis, though their focus (while not entirely incorrect) was about the causing effects of government banking, rather than private sector greed. The Cato Institute is another organization founded and funded by one of the Kochs. The Cato Institute has lobbied hard for the deconstruction, outsourcing and privatization of the USPS (to recent great success), NASA, TSA. They have lobbied for the abolishment of minimum wage and in the absence thereof have fervently pushed for not increasing it (which hasn't happened since 2007 - legislation-wise, though the last increase went into effect in early 2009). It opposes overtime regulation and of all things, child labor prohibition (thankfully this hasn't gained much traction). It is one of the biggest opponents of universal health care, and of campaign finance reform. In 2006 it helped Republicans propose a Balanced Budget Veto Amendment. It also strongly criticized the tobacco settlements. Interestingly enough, the Cato Institute also supported striking down state laws against homosexuality, and the Federal Marriage Act (which would have prohibited same-sex marriage).
headhuntermdk 6y ago
How is affirmative action a bad thing?
- kempbellt 6y ago
  Affirmative action biasedly lifts up minorities over others. It looks noble on the surface, but realistically creates more of the same problem. When I applied to college, I (and all of my friends), knew that ticking any non-white ethnicity box on the application made you more likely to get accepted. I don't know that any of us did, but it was very well known that you could game the system this way. It made acceptance into college less about your academic merit and more about your ethnicity (or ability to use ethnic bias to cheat the system) - aka, more racism.
  - headhuntermdk 6y ago
    Affirmative action is here for a reason. If there wasn't systemic racism in hiring, there would be no need for it. What affirmative action is supposed to do is to ensure that your race isn't a determining factor in not getting hired for a job that you are qualified for. The Rooney Rule in the NFL wouldn't need to be a thing if being a black coach in the NFL meant statistically you had a greater chance of getting fired or not being hired at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule
    - tremon 6y ago
      What affirmative action is supposed to do is to ensure that your race isn't a determining factor in not getting hired for a job that you are qualified for. No, that's wrong. If that were the goal, it would simply be made illegal to ask about race (or race-proxy) on college application forms. Affirmative action is meant to artifically boost the number of college graduates from a selected set of underrepresented backgrounds. If it weren't the goal, this blind recruitment trial wouldn't have been immediately canceled: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...

chriswarbo 6y ago

> the left is... manipulative when it comes to voting to the point when half of the country does not believe in elections I disagree with essentially everything you're saying, but how on Earth can you write that with a straight face? I mean, five seconds on Google gives me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Donald_Trump#2016_Presidential_election_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Donald_Trump#Voting_by_mail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Donald_Trump#2020_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona... Many elected Republicans are still lying about the election results. How is that 'the left' being 'manipulative when it comes to voting'? Not to mention the slew of disenfranchisement policies being drawn up by Republicans at the moment. > The right simply does not exist in the institutional level at this point, all they can do is whine about excesses of the left Erm, what "left" are you referring to? US politics is a battle between Pepsi vs Coke https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020

tekknik 6y ago
> Many elected Republicans are still lying about the election results. So we have voter IDs and secure voting? Did you miss the part about lack of confidence in voting? If we don’t have voter IDs how is the right lying? Or are you just trying to reaffirm the narrative?
- EGreg 6y ago
  Because having voter IDs is not the only or even the main thing that the right — a very vocal minority of the right, by the way — had an issue with. There were a lot of conflated FUD about voting machines doctored videos shipments of empty votes observers turned away disappearing ink The funny thing is that Trump’s own appointed people, including Krebs who we cite here a lot, but also Barr and others admitted that there was not nearly enough evidence of fraud to overturn any election result in any state. And even funnier is how FOX and NewsMax debunked themselves and now chase the My Pillow CEO and others off their show for suggesting there was voting machine fraud — because they got cease and desist letters and warnings. https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/02/03/newsmax-mike-lindell-2020-election-orig.cnn-business https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/02/03/newsmax-mike-... After all, this is really easy to check. The irony for me was Texas suing the other states and then West floating a trial baloon to secede from the union (great form, West!) because they accused the other states of vote manipulation... this from a state that works hard to close HUNDREDS of poll places in Democratic areas ahead of the election to keep the state voting Republican, in blatant violation of the Voting Rights Act (neutered by the supreme court). And no one sues Texas in federal court for that. For Republicans, mail-in ballots were the end-run around their extensive efforts to close polling places and require voting IDs and other ways to tip the balance in their party’s favor. If people can just vote from home then all that effort to drive an hour and stand in a long line will be unnecessary! So they aren’t being totally honest about their FUD being nonpartisan either.
  - tekknik 6y ago
    The second dem to tell the right what the problem they have is. When are you people going to open your ears? You think ignoring the problem will work?
    - EGreg 6y ago
      I just want to be clear – I said it is a small, vocal minority on the right. Most of "the right" rejected the MAGA conspiracy theories and stopped supporting the FUD. As I have pointed out, even a lot of the mainstream right-wing media has started to "deplatform" people who continue speaking about this "problem". The Supreme court and other courts have thrown out 98% of all the cases, after applying rules of standing and evidence [1]. After all that money came in to campaign promising to "fight for every LEGAL vote to be counted", Giuliani never even applied to the supreme court. A lot of it seems to have been about taking in massive amounts of money (up to 1 billion dollars) from faithful Trump voters via the campaigns. Giuliani distanced himself from Sidney Powell who actually wanted to go to the supreme court, seemingly in order to not share the large sums of cash coming in from MAGA supporters. Also, I am not "a dem". You assume too much. And btw, many people on the right, including social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, are also very critical of the Republican leadership. Here is far more information about why[2]. 1. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-pennsylvania-elections-us-supreme-court-5cc6aee8c328c7bb1d423244b979bcec https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-pennsylvan... 2. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-believe-Republicans-are-evil/answer/Gregory-Magarshak https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-believe-Republicans...
honkdaddy 6y ago
Do you recall in 2016 when the mainstream left told Americans (without any factual basis) that Russians had hacked and stolen the election? That Trump was "Not Our President" and never will be? The only difference between that lie and the one peddled by Trump and the ilk is that the GOP was confident (delusional?) enough that they brought it to the Supreme Court.
- jeromegv 6y ago
  There's a big difference between partisans doing that, and an actual president claiming the election is stolen for months, asking his supporters to march on the Capitol to deny the rights of voters to have their vote confirmed, calling state officials to ask them to "find votes", etc. You said it, they brought all of that to courts, which means it was entirely supported by the full establishment of the party, not just a fringe part of it. The fact you can't even see the major difference makes me think you are clearly looking at just one side.
  - honkdaddy 6y ago
    But it wasn't a fringe part of it, that's the precise problem. On May 16, 2017, Nancy Pelosi tweeted "Our election was hijacked. There is no question." Is Pelosi considered a fringe part of the Democratic Party now?
    - headhuntermdk 6y ago
      The left didn't storm the capital
    - chriswarbo 6y ago
      I think that's an apples-to-oranges comparison (no pun intended). It would be fairer to compare the Democrats' allegations about Russia to the Republicans' allegations about China, i.e. accusations that Biden is anywhere between a useful-idiot-for to an outright-puppet-of the CCP. AFAIK the Democrat position has been that, for both elections, the voting/counting mechanisms have withstood targetted attacks by state actors, and in both cases gave overall tallies which correspond to the electorate's choices, within an acceptable margin of error (I'm stopping at the tallies, to avoid the separate debate regarding the electoral college versus the popular vote). Some Democrats also allege foreign interference with the electorate's choices, through widespread misinformation and propaganda. As an extreme example, fewer people may have voted for Trump if Russian troll farms weren't claiming that Clinton harvests child organs (or whatever Q-adjacent bullshit was spreading around Facebook at the time). It's perfectly consistent to make that claim, whilst also claiming that those lie-induced Trump votes were subsequently collated and counted correctly towards the totals. AFAIK the Republican-led investigation found the Democrats' position to be essentially correct, that there were targetted attacks on infrastructure, and misinformation/propaganda attacks nudging the electorate towards Trump. No evidence of collusion was found, i.e. that Trump was working for foreign adversaries, or foreign adversaries were working for Trump, or they were coordinating ahead of time. That would (of course) have been even worse, but the lack of (evidence of) such collusion doesn't make the idea of foreign adversaries weaponising US voters for their own ends any more palatable. In short, choosing positions/policies/rhetoric that is useful to adversaries is not itself criminal; it could simply be naivety or coincidence. Yet knowing that a candidate's positions/policies/rhetoric is useful to adversaries would be pertinent information for voters.

cafard 6y ago

Free speech is the only civil right left to win? Fear not, then, when the state legislatures get around to the Equal Rights Amendment maybe they can spare a thought for ratifying the First Amendment. It has waited long enough. The right does not exist in the institutional level? Has anyone told Mitch McConnell about this, or Justice Thomas?

AzzieElbab 6y ago
The last "right-wing" move I have seen in recent history was Trump's nerfed-ban of critical race theories. I do not remember any culturally significant initiatives produced by McConnell or Justice Thomas or anyone else on the right. The only true "right-wing" issue they still talk about is abortions.
- k4c9x 6y ago
  They're extremely active on the voting "issue", in a very "right-wing" way.

Theory5 6y ago

You're blaming "the left" for distrust in voting? I don't know where to begin...

panzagl 6y ago
If you believe only officially identified US citizens should vote, the left started attacking decades ago. Also, there was a strong 'Trump stole the vote' campaign 4 years ago, similar to the current narrative pushed by Trump supporters.
koheripbal 6y ago
I agree with you that it's not strictly a "left" issue - and certainly the recent election in the US had the "right" bringing up voter fraud. But it's important to remember the "left" raising flags about fraud in the 2016 election, and primary. Everything from harping on the legitimacy of a candidate that lost the popular vote, "not my president" protests, accusations of voting machine fraud, primary delegate issues, conflating gerrymandering with federal elections, etc... In general, it seems whichever side loses is increasingly blaming "unfairness" to generate more outrage to de-legitimize winners of the election. ...rather than trying to appeal to more voters. We're all losers in this situation because it is the voting system that keeps us from killing each other.
- baseballdork 6y ago
  My only issue with this comment is that it seems to discount the idea of "unfairness" in our elections. Yes, in a federal election the districts don't matter. However, as we can see right now, the state legislatures that are elected via those districts can drastically change the landscape of a federal election within their state. The republican legislatures are moving en masse to "prevent fraud" in a way that seems to be directly aimed at making it more difficult to vote[1]. Appealing to more voters is hard when fewer people are able to vote. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-february-2021 https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voti...
itsoktocry 6y ago

EGreg 6y ago

Both the left and the right engage in suppression of free speech in different ways. I mean when McCarthyism, Hoover’s FBI and COINTELPRO were repressing leftists left and right, sabotaging political campaigns and careers, this was considered a national security issue. I mean, until Bernie Sanders, no politician openly called themselves a socialist. This is recent. Are there any open atheists in US politics? Just curious https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/07/the-right-has-its-own-version-of-political-correctness-its-just-as-stifling/?outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/07/...

RobAtticus 6y ago
>I mean, until Bernie Sanders, no politician openly called themselves a socialist. This is recent. Eugene Debs?
- EGreg 6y ago
  Dude was in office in the 19th century... wonder why the large gap lmao

zzbzq 6y ago

Heritage Foundation? Rand Corporation? Cato Institute? American Enterprise Institute? The institutional right is unimaginably huge and well-funded. Half of them even have "institute" in the name.

AzzieElbab 6y ago
what were the policies/results produced by these money sinks within last few years?
- zzbzq 6y ago
  All the policy since they source most of the ideas and especially political strategies. Since the early 2000s they ("they" now extending beyond just the think tanks listed previously) directly control the media by sourcing/compiling news for all major sources, so they basically control all political opinion. After a brief respite from their influence on social media, they seem to now do a pretty good job of influencing the influencers there as well.
- neon_electro 6y ago
  Preservation of the status quo?
- BeefySwain 6y ago
  Massive corporate tax cuts? The end of Net Neutrality?
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Heritage Foundation: starting with Reagan and encouraging the right's obsession with smaller government, was a large advocate for us going into and staying in Iraq, and was a major influence on Trump - at least 66 foundation employees worked in the administration and advised Trump who should be in his administration, including advocating for Mick Mulvaney when other Republicans were pushing against him. After his loss, they hired three of Trump's immigration team. They have also promoted the voter fraud claims about 2016 and 2020 elections, saying that it was "rampant", and also are heavy deniers of climate change, the Clean Energy act and Kyoto Agreement. AEI has been a little less controversial, although they've also leaned heavily on politicians about climate change, and their biggest funders are/were the Koch brothers. Notably, they were one of the earliest predictors of the 2008 housing crisis, though their focus (while not entirely incorrect) was about the causing effects of government banking, rather than private sector greed. The Cato Institute is another organization founded and funded by one of the Kochs. The Cato Institute has lobbied hard for the deconstruction, outsourcing and privatization of the USPS (to recent great success), NASA, TSA. They have lobbied for the abolishment of minimum wage and in the absence thereof have fervently pushed for not increasing it (which hasn't happened since 2007 - legislation-wise, though the last increase went into effect in early 2009). It opposes overtime regulation and of all things, child labor prohibition (thankfully this hasn't gained much traction). It is one of the biggest opponents of universal health care, and of campaign finance reform. In 2006 it helped Republicans propose a Balanced Budget Veto Amendment. It also strongly criticized the tobacco settlements. Interestingly enough, the Cato Institute also supported striking down state laws against homosexuality, and the Federal Marriage Act (which would have prohibited same-sex marriage).

headhuntermdk 6y ago

How is affirmative action a bad thing?

kempbellt 6y ago
Affirmative action biasedly lifts up minorities over others. It looks noble on the surface, but realistically creates more of the same problem. When I applied to college, I (and all of my friends), knew that ticking any non-white ethnicity box on the application made you more likely to get accepted. I don't know that any of us did, but it was very well known that you could game the system this way. It made acceptance into college less about your academic merit and more about your ethnicity (or ability to use ethnic bias to cheat the system) - aka, more racism.
- headhuntermdk 6y ago
  Affirmative action is here for a reason. If there wasn't systemic racism in hiring, there would be no need for it. What affirmative action is supposed to do is to ensure that your race isn't a determining factor in not getting hired for a job that you are qualified for. The Rooney Rule in the NFL wouldn't need to be a thing if being a black coach in the NFL meant statistically you had a greater chance of getting fired or not being hired at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule
  - tremon 6y ago
    What affirmative action is supposed to do is to ensure that your race isn't a determining factor in not getting hired for a job that you are qualified for. No, that's wrong. If that were the goal, it would simply be made illegal to ask about race (or race-proxy) on college application forms. Affirmative action is meant to artifically boost the number of college graduates from a selected set of underrepresented backgrounds. If it weren't the goal, this blind recruitment trial wouldn't have been immediately canceled: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...