New York City livery driver Doug Schifter is the latest of traditional taxi and black-car drivers to commit suicide because the disruption caused by Uber and Lyft have driven down prices and increased competition to the point that it’s impossible to make a decent living despite working terribly long hours. I was amazed at the lack of compassion for people like him who find themselves displaced by the whims of capitalism.
I am frequently criticized of being too idealistic and to judgemental when it comes to Democrats. They’re just human beings! They’re doing their best. Why am I so hard on them? But the criticisms that I wage hardly seem like too much to ask. For example, don’t destroy the entire countries like Libya and Syria. Don’t kill hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq. Don’t torture them at Guantánamo. Don’t give massive tax cuts to the wealthy. Don’t hang out with rich people or accept their contributions. This is too much to ask?
The #MeToo Movement has held sexual predators in positions of power who abuse that power to account. Wouldn’t it be nice to also see a similar movement holding predatory capitalists, most of whose victims are women, similarly to account?
Democrats were understandably excited when Alabama elected one of their own to the U.S. Senate last December. Let’s follow up now: how did Doug Jones vote? Spoiler alert: pretty much like a Republican. The point of electing a Democrat if he doesn’t vote like one?
Pundits praised President Trump’s first State of the Union Address for making new moves toward bipartisanship, or at least pretending to reach out to Democrats. But the tone of his speech was too belligerent for liberals to be able to take him seriously.
Although there is certainly a legitimate debate to be had over how much immigration is appropriate, anti-immigration conservatives are often recently disingenuous about the facts. For example, many of them believe that undocumented workers should leave the United States and apply for US residency and citizenship from their home countries. The problem is, for the vast majority of people overseas, there is no procedure whatsoever for them to do so. Similarly, the so-called “dreamers” (children who were brought here with their parents at a young age) don’t have anywhere to go back to because their relatives no longer live in their home countries.
Democrats are always known for their rather spectacular ability to sell out as well as their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But even by those grim standards, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to back off on shutting down the federal government reached a new level. Not only did the Democratic leader agreed to fund president Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico, something that seems really strange considering the fact that the president repeatedly promised that Mexico would pay for it, but Schumer offered $7 billion more than the president even asked.
Although very few people still believe that Donald Trump is a master negotiator, he looked even more stupid than usual when the news broke that in June 2017 he attempted to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. Apparently his White House attorney talked him out of it, which I guess is a good thing, but now he has the worst of both worlds. He gets blamed for firing Mueller without actually being rid of Mueller. Not to mention, Mueller knows what he was up to. Not good.
If I were in charge of the Democrats’ messaging operation, I would run zillions of ads making fun of Trump for asking Congress for $18 billion to pay for his border wall after repeatedly and loudly promising that Mexico would pay for it. Unfortunately, Democrats don’t have the zest for trolling that you need to thrive in today’s political environment.
Amazon.com forced more than 200 cities to bid against each other in a twisted race to the bottom in order to score a deal for cheap taxes and labor for its forthcoming second headquarters. Sure, your city might get 50,000 new jobs. But it can’t be good for labor to have city officials selling out their residents and taxpayers to score the deal.
