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0 pointsEarthIsHome5y ago0 comments

> at the federal level, there are two chambers of Congress and the Executive.

Changing anything for the benefit of the masses through electoral politics may never happen again or will be too slow. The last time two times the US had aligned executive and legislative branches were the first two years of the Obama and Trump regimes. So much changes between elections that there's no way we can fix it through electoral politics, and we must find another way.

We cannot vote our way out of the immediacy of a pandemic or a constitutional crisis or an environmental disaster. Voting is just too slow help the masses.

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onecommentman5y ago

There was an episode of Monty Python I remember. The premise was that in the late 1960s Hitler and his cronies, under assumed identities, were staying at an English boarding house in Minehead, Somerset planning "to get the band back together" via some local election. The TV audience could see through the ruse, but the other residents of the hotel were oblivious. The scene I remember was Mr Hilter ranting from a balcony to a few scattered locals. The bunting was red, don’t remember was the insignia was. As a local yokel was staring up blankly at Mr Hilter’s Germanic rant about the sovereignty of Taunton, Hilter’s crony, Ron Vibbentrop, sidled up to the yokel and, as an aside, told the yokel "He’s right, do you know that?"

Don’t know why, but that just popped into my head...

throw0101a5y ago

> The last time two times the US had aligned executive and legislative branches were the first two years of the Obama and Trump regimes.

And Obama managed to pass healthcare reform (ACA, "Obamacare", national Romneycare).

If Binden gets in, and the Democrats can control Congress (the Senate is if-y), then I would hope they do something about climate change (carbon pricing?) as it is an existential threat.

There's also the need about dealing from all the COVID fallout, but that a lot there could be done via the competent running of the government. Infrastructure needs spending and that would entail Congress, so that may be a #3 priority.

EarthIsHomeOP5y ago

> And Obama managed to pass healthcare reform (ACA, "Obamacare", national Romneycare).

If the best that the Democrats could do while controlling the executive and legislative was pass a Republican health insurance plan, we're in deep trouble. It should be clear by now that neither party passes anything that will materially better the working class and the toiling masses.

> There's also the need about dealing from all the COVID fallout, but that a lot there could be done via the competent running of the government. Infrastructure needs spending and that would entail Congress, so that may be a #3 priority.

All this presumes that the problem is competency. The problem is that none of these things are profitable. In a system that runs on profitablity, there is no room for services that lose money.

If you look through the lens of profit, I argue that the people who are running the government are competent in enriching themselves and those corporations that prop them. Both parties oversee the direct transfer of wealth from the masses to the few. For as much (or little) we pay in taxes, the masses do not benefit as much as the überwealthy do: we do not have a significant safety net, we have no housing, no healthcare, no security. Everything that is required to live costs money. This affects the masses more than it affects the wealthy, because the wealthy can afford anything. I would like to add that Obamacare is insurance and not healthcare, so it still costs the poor a significant portion of the little wealth they have.

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