• @[email protected]
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    1282 years ago

    We didn’t deserve Carter. We still don’t. He’s a better category of human than nearly all of the politicians we have at the moment.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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      702 years ago

      That is why the Democratic party drastically changed its primary rules after Carter was elected (to make them less democratic, and to give establishment elite party members more power).

      They tried to tighten the collar on the public even more when Occasio-Cortez primaried an establishment Democrat.

      The left-wing of the Democratic Party, including President Jimmy Carter, are the red-haired stepchildren of the party, and they’ll never let us forget it.

      There are more secret fascists than it appears who will Hail Hydra when Secret Hitler makes his appearance.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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        62 years ago

        Didn’t the rules change because Hubert Humphrey got snubbed by the DNC just flat out ignoring the primary results in states that had them?

        • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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          22 years ago

          Hubert Humphrey got snubbed by the DNC just flat out ignoring the primary results in states that had them?

          I didn’t know this and am eager to find it. Was it during the 1968 election against Nixon?

          • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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            12 years ago

            I don’t quite remember, all I personally have off the top of my head is that it was the major contributing factor to the chicago DNC riots, and an overhaul of the nomination rules to appease the folks who called fowl.

            Think “the superdelegates will only vote if a majority candidate isn’t found in the first round ballot” but I think it was actually even bigger when it happened.

      • Franzia
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        72 years ago

        The Democratic party tried to primary AOC 3 times afterwards, too ☠️

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
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    2 years ago

    Yeah he helped create it. The first US president to begin to embrace neoliberal ideology and fictitious capital. Set the path for Ronald Reagan to bring in neoliberalism proper. And armed the Mujahideen, which lead to the crisis in Afghanistan. This is equivalent to Eisenhower warning everyone about the military industrial complex.

    • @[email protected]
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      122 years ago

      Had to scroll all the way down for this comment. The only response to this article should be : “Thanks for making this happen”

    • ChonkyMarmot [none/use name]
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      82 years ago

      It’s frustrating. They say good things when they are removed from power. He sounds like a good person, but he was not a good president. Obama will probably gradually come around to this kind of talk when he gets older too. He recently all but admitted middle class decline due to concentration of wealth was responsible for the rise of MAGA. Don’t know if he will ever admit that drone “assassinations” he was in charge of were war crimes (assassinations in quotes because more than half the time the intelligence wasn’t even correct).

  • @[email protected]
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    62 years ago

    Too bad this guy wasn’t in a position to do anything about that back when that started happening.

    That was sarcasm

    • @[email protected]
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      92 years ago

      I think people really overestimate the power that the president has, realistically when it comes to these sweeping systematic changes the only thing the president has is veto power. Otherwise you just have to hope that everyone else in congress and the supreme court do what you want them to do

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        I think people really overestimate the power that the president has

        Yeah, the billionaires are the ones who really run everything

  • @[email protected]
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    142 years ago

    Yeah, that’s true. I also remember a time when the CIA was doing their dirty work down in South America while Jimmy Carter was in office. Dude isn’t as great as everybody thinks he is

    • @[email protected]
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      132 years ago

      I’d love to know which president had the CIA stop everything they were doing.

      What was his name… I can’t think of it…

    • floppade [he/him]
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      72 years ago

      I’m an idiot, so I don’t know if this is a sensible take. However, coming from a place of political strategy, I’m not sure a lot of presidents can out-maneuver military much. Presidents have term limits and military personnel don’t. Both for understandable reasons to be clear. However, it sets up a dynamic where one knows the ins and outs like the back of their hand and the other is like a substitute teacher with a class full of CIA operatives.

    • @[email protected]
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      182 years ago

      Jimmy Carter may have not have been a great president and the US government may have sone some shitty things while he was in charge, but he is probably the most upstanding American president of the last half century. Pretty much everyone after (with maaaybe the exception of Obama) has been of lesser character.

      Which, now that I’ve written it out, sounds really sad. The best the country could do was Jimmy Carter, who … wasn’t great.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 years ago

        Dude, Obama ordered more drone strikes than any president before him. Just because he was a good speaker and charismatic doesn’t make him a good person.

        • Zorque
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          162 years ago

          How many drone strikes did Truman order? How about Garfield? Maybe a metric of “Everyone who came before” isn’t very good for technological advancements like that.

        • @[email protected]
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          52 years ago

          Note the maybe, but whatever. Tell you what. Name one post-carter president who was better than Carter. Dude doesn’t have to be good, just better than Carter.

    • Grammaton Cleric
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      102 years ago

      The president doesn’t control every government branch like a marionette puppeteer 😅

    • Bone
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      232 years ago

      Dude sold his company before becoming president. More ethics to this one than you’ve given credit.

  • Theblarglereflargle [any]
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    232 years ago

    It’s insane to think this guy, who was a pastor, lost the Christian vote to the cheating twice divorced Reagan

    • Cethin
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      2 years ago

      It’s very clear what the evangelical vote actually is for. They also largely voted for Trump over Biden, who’s a Catholic.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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        52 years ago

        That one like half makes sense because evangelicals are obviously protestant and Trump is nominally protestant, but he is literally the fakes Chsitian to ever live. He is the kind of fake Christian you would only see in Christian media aimed at kids. I hate orange man bad “humor” but his saying “Two Corinithians” to an audience of Christian university students and faculty will live rent free in my head until I die.

    • silent_water [she/her]
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      62 years ago

      it was a concerted strategy on the part of the republicans who made anti-abortion policy a cornerstone of their platform while convincing pastors to preach about how it was a sin.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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    222 years ago

    It’s a feudal system of corporate lords with a priesthood of economists, politicians, and lawyers.

  • edric
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    2462 years ago

    I still don’t understand how lobbying is legal. Like, it’s straight up bribery.

    • HooPhuckenKarez
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      2 years ago

      Lobbying is supposed to be making your case to a politician, and hoping they vote/propose a bill/etc. With that interest in mind. You yourself are allowed to lobby your congress critters…technically.

      • SokathHisEyesOpen
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        452 years ago

        We’re allowed, but without a fruit basket stuffed with money they’re not going to listen.

        • @[email protected]
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          152 years ago

          They’re surprisingly not that expensive to buy though, 10k will get you pretty much whatever you want…

          • SokathHisEyesOpen
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            72 years ago

            I wonder if I could use $10k to get a law passed that every company needs my safety manual in their business that I totally had professionally bound and didn’t print at Kinko’s.

          • JJROKCZ
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            52 years ago

            The majority of Americans don’t have 10k unneeded liquid cash

            • @[email protected]
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              32 years ago

              No, but a bunch of Americans together have 10k, it just so happens that it’s just the conservative ones who figured it out.

          • themeatbridge
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            172 years ago

            $10k will get you access, but you won’t convince a politician to do something that will cost them all of the other $10k checks they get from special interests.

            Like if you wanted to buy a senator in order to get some earmarks for your development projects, you could probably get that buying a table at a fundraiser or two. But if you want them to pass legislation supporting unions or reducing the influence of money in politics, you’d basically have to bankroll their whole campaign because they wouldn’t raise another dime.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 years ago

      If lobbying were illegal, that would mean all of the organizations that fight for justice lose their voices too.

      Lobbying isn’t bribery, it’s persuasion

    • @[email protected]
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      462 years ago

      The lobbying is not the problem. The donations that sway opinions are the problem. If it was entirely unrelated to donations and the congress person was just hearing out all sides of an issue, that’s a good thing.

      • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
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        202 years ago

        If donations did not affect outcome, no company would donate.

        Even when a legislator’s decisions are unaffected by lobbying, companies still control legislation by ensuring legislators who earnestly believe in legislation that favors the corporations over the people get elected.

        This is how Biden sided with banks and the prison-industrial complex for half a century yet didn’t have enough money to fund his son’s cancer treatment without selling his house until Obama paid off his medical debt.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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        42 years ago

        Donations aren’t to sway opinion they’re to maintain a stock of dependent politicians who already agree with your position but who also need your funding to stay in office

      • silent_water [she/her]
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        52 years ago

        “hearing out all sides” somehow invariably turns into siding with whoever controls the most capital - I wonder how that happens.

    • SokathHisEyesOpen
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      1152 years ago

      Because the people who decide what is legal are the people who benefit from it.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      If you ever called or wrote a letter to your congress person about an issue you cared about you were a lobbyist when you did that.

      The problem is not lobbying, the problem is pay-for-play. Something like 80%-90% of candidates who spend the most money end up winning their election. Our politicians are owned by wealthy corporate interests who fund their elections. The solution is to get money — especially corporate money — out of politics.

      There are a number of policy proposals that might limit the power of money in our politics, federally funded elections, regulations for how much air time each candidate gets, perhaps bring back the fairness doctrine, just to name a few.

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        Yeah but there’s a difference between making one phone call and your job being to convince people to do things they would never do otherwise.

      • @[email protected]
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        102 years ago

        The “tea party”/freedom caucus are literally groups funded by the Koch brothers. The entire “movement” existed because they willed it to be with their money.

        “Americans for prosperity” is Koch manipulating politics through who they fund to run.

    • floppade [he/him]
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      192 years ago

      In theory, it’s partially meant to educate politicians who cannot be experts on everything in a world where information exponentially grows, but this system has clearly been intentionally used to abuse power.

      • @[email protected]
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        92 years ago

        Met a dude in 2015 who was a lobbyist for Boeing in DC. I heard he made 750k a year back then. He must be a really good educator!

        • floppade [he/him]
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          42 years ago

          And I know lobbyists who are just regular people who looked up the process and did it. I’m not advocating for it, just giving context.

          There are other examples of programs and policies being used in this way. Now, to me, the question is whether or not they are intended to easily abused by design. I don’t have the knowledge to say one way or another. However, as previously stated, it’s obviously being used as a bribery under another name.

        • @[email protected]
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          42 years ago

          I used to work for a lobbyist on the hill, doing line standings. I would get paid to stand in line for hearings and committees and then the lawyers would come relieve you right before the hearing. Sometimes they wanted you to camp out the day before the hearing, and usually there were other line standers and it would be a circus, lots of fun.

  • asg101 [none/use name, comrade/them]
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    192 years ago

    Oligarchy is baked into the U.S. constitution. Only rich (land-owning) White Males had any say. The Senate (mostly wealthy) has a permanent veto over any real power sharing. Oligarchy is nothing new in the USA, they have just added window dressing to make people THINK it ever was a democracy.

  • @[email protected]
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    92 years ago

    And yet people will still get upset at you, if you express any viewpoint not in line with a party line. Guess the oligarchs are winning.

  • blazera
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    212 years ago

    The initials, the carpentry, the advocations for peace and against extreme wealth. You’d think a certain group would like this guy.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      They did, but they changed their minds… or they had their minds changed.

      While the three leading candidates (Reagan, Anderson and Carter) were religious Christians, Carter had the most support of evangelical Christians according to a Gallup poll. However, in the end, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority lobbying group is credited with giving Reagan two-thirds of the white evangelical vote. According to Carter: “that autumn [1980] a group headed by Jerry Falwell purchased $10 million in commercials on southern radio and TV to brand me as a traitor to the South and no longer a Christian.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election#Campaign