Green Party candidate Cornel West owes more than half a million dollars in taxes and child support: Records
Green Party candidate Cornel West owes more than half a million dollars in taxes and child support: Records
Green Party candidate Cornel West currently owes about half a million dollars between unpaid taxes and unpaid child support, according to tax records.
ABCnews
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The 2 party system is horseshit, but this is your recurring reminder that the greens are not worth your vote.
Any party serious about affecting change does so at the local level first. The fact that the greens consistently try to get attention with symbolic candidacies at the national level while being fuck all out of touch with school boards and local politics paints them as diva opportunists at best and bad faith progressive spoilers at worst.
This is coming from someone who agrees with most of West's platform at face value
You know who was involved with the Green Party back in the early 2000s? Kyrsten Sinema.
I mean, you don't even need to go that far back. 2016 green presidential candidate Jill Stein literally rubbed elbows with Putin and Mike Flynn in 2015
she went there to confront Putin.
lol
this isn't a rebuttal. it's an appeal to ridicule.
Oh I understood the tone and it made me laugh. Sorry you got downvoted tho
Lemmy's great because downvotes don't matter
How'd that go?
poorly: she didn't have a translator
So she's grossly inept? She didn't consider how she would actually talk to him? I don't want someone like that in higher office.
he can speak English. he just refuses to do it in public
Running for president as a 3rd party is like proposing marriage to random strangers instead of, y’know, dating people. We all know you’re doing it for attention because it’s not going to work.
except when it has worked...
Even Teddy Roosevelt didn't get it to work.
Which is... never. At least for presidential elections. I can't speak for the marriage proposals.
The Republican party didn't appear out of nowhere in 1860 to win a presidential race. They were formed in 1854 and supplanted the Whig party entirely before the 1860 election. It was a majority party throughout the north before it won a presidential race — it wasn't a "third party."
Likewise, Democrats replaced the Democratic-Republican party in much the same way that republicans replaced the Whig party, and had been a major party from its very beginnings. Literally in their first election there were only two parties running!
There are only three other parties that have won the presidency: Federalists (there from the inception of the party system), Democratic-Republicans (ditto), and Whigs (major party years before first electoral win). There's been no "third party" that has ever won the US presidency. All three have the same story as democrats as starting off in an election with just two parties.
I'm a green party supporter (not in the US) and couldn't agree more. I support the greens as much as I can to help spread environmental awareness, but if the election looks like it will be close, I vote for the party most likely to defeat the conservatives.
what if all the parties except greens are conservative?
They aren't. And it's disingenuous to assert otherwise.
They're neo-libs which is better because the conservatives are fascists.
But they're both evil. Just a matter of degree. Hence us voting for the lesser of the two.
voting for evil is bad
edit: people downviting me prefer to vote for evil
It's not great but we have to be pragmatic unfortunately.
And it's pretty shitty honestly that what the neo-libs have going for them is at least we're not fascists.
Need a strong third party and ranked choice voting.
What we actually have going for us is the largest period of sustained peace and prosperity in all of human history.
Sustained peace? You're joking right?
Also, prosperity for who?
You know most life on this planet is going to have a very hard time the next ten years.
Neo-libs pretend to be the left to get the working class to forget classism. But they're at best centrists who are more concerned about keeping the 'peace' (Obama drone strikes I'm looking at you) so the corporate power brokers can continue to 'prosper'.
But, at least you're not a fascist.
Exactly, I don't enjoy voting that way but do so out of necessity.
Neoliberals aren't evil - we're just correct.
The type of response I would expect from the GOP tbh
That's because your life is informed more from social media than real life.
We're the normal people.
name one that isn't
Do you know the first thing about the Democratic platform? It's not perfect - and they're not perfect - but I have a trans kid, and they're the ones who want him to have rights and be treated like a human being. They're also the ones who want to raise taxes on the rich to fund social services. They're also the ones who accept the demonstrable reality of climate change. They're also the ones who resist efforts to put religion into schools and government.
Are they as left as I wish they were? Nope. But they're not conservative, either, at least not most of them.
I guarantee they will not accomplish anything: they want to hold it over you to score votes in perpetuity. they will also continue to take corporate dollars and water down legislation that does pass so it greases the palms of their donors.
Your guarantee is worthless and idiotic. The fact that they're not perfect doesn't mean they aren't 10,000% better in every way than Republicans. Enough of this bullshit "both sides" narrative. I'll stick to the side that isn't trying to take my son's rights away.
the greens are the ones you want, then.
The party the right pays for? No thanks. Pass.
I have bad news about the democrats
the didn't codify roe v Wade. they passed tarp and the patriot act. they fund police and prisons and war. they passed Obama are as a gift to insurance industries. they didn't jail bp executives for deepwater horizon and even paid oil companies for Correxit.
democrats are not your friend: they are the "good cop".
That's all true, but none of that means anything to a trans person who wants to not get their rights taken away, though.
democrat promises mean just as much
they passed [Obamacare] as a gift to insurance agencies
The original single-payer Obamacare failed by one vote so if there were more Democrats elected we would have single-payer health care.
Your weird fantasy doesn't align with reality and this is true at all levels
Democrats?
wrong
Then you've gone too far to the left and lost perspective on the center.
there is a cure for political illiteracy
Says the communist lmao
this is an appeal to ridicule.
Communism is laughable on its own merits
this is the same: a fallacious appeal to ridicule.
Lolz
yet another appeal to ridicule
Thankfully I don't live in that horrible world.
you might be surprised
IMO still better to vote 3rd party than to waste your vote with the blues and reds.
We need to start showing them that we are not shee, just keep voting for them with no changes; Reagan/BushSr/Clinton/BushJr/Obama/Trump/Biden all they did was for the wealthy class not for the working class, do not get me wrong they do throw in crumbs here and there...
Trump admin: passes $1.5 trillion tax cut where 60% of savings go to the top 20% and slashes the corporate tax rate by 40%
Biden admin: passes $1 trillion infrastructure bill, $400 billion in climate funding, $1.9 trillion in COVID aid that temporarily boosted unemployment aid and child tax credit, and first major gun safety legislation in decades, seen here
Demand change. Demand more from the politicians that work for you. Take Biden and all elected officials to account for expiring temporary relief for the lower class. But on many important issues for the lower class there are big differences between red and blue.
Thank you. I get so frustrated with people who say the two parties are the same. They are not, and all you have to do is compare the policy achievements of the Trump and Biden administrations. There are real consequences to choosing Dem over GOP.
Demand change
That's cute, the working class has zero impact on policy
Then how come the Biden administration has been the most progressive in decades when it comes to policy and signing bills?
Because he hasnt, being told hes progressive doesnt make it truth.
No, but passing the most comprehensive green energy bill in history certainly does.
Which means nothing when he's expanded the budget of the worlds largest polluter to almost $1t. And issuing oil leases faster than Obama did, which includes areas in protected wet lands and most of the Gulf of Mexico. The liberal SCOTUS ruled with the conservative ones to kill the Clean Water Act
Joe Bidens approval rate is like 39%
Most people are not impressed, he's too old and out of touch with the people
That poll isn't even from this year.
You don't get it, we don't care for the crumbs.
They don't matter to us, only to you who still vote team blue no matter what.
The real problems will only be addressed when we all band together against the wealthy class, so we need to stop playing their games.
Sure, while you're building your revolution, don't betray your country to the actual freakin' fascists. The Republicans are not the party of big business anymore — that's the Democrats, who have done great things for the capitalist economy. Today's Republicans are the party of hate groups, Nazi street gangs, child abusers, rapists, thieves, and traitors.
I agree with you to an extent, but I also sympathize with the person above. I think it was Noam Chomsky who said this, but if each president after WW2 were brought before the Nuremberg Court, they'd be hanged for war crimes. I think when he said this he stopped at HW Bush, but Id be willing to bet it's true up to now.
This doesn't mean all sides are the same. I'm still going to vote Democrat in a general election, for the most part. But at the end of the day, they still push a globalist free-market ideology, they still promote war, and they still condone the surveillance of the American people, the imprisonment of dissidents and political threats, and the destruction of the environment in the name of profit.
Fascism is already here. It's the corporations (the rich) who hold power, and both neoliberals and conservatives work to uphold that dynamic so they themselves can maintain power.
I agree with you to an extent, but I also sympathize with the person above. I think it was Noam Chomsky who said this, but if each president after WW2 were brought before the Nuremberg Court, they'd be hanged for war crimes. I think when he said this he stopped at HW Bush, but Id be willing to bet it's true up to now.
This doesn't mean all sides are the same. I'm still going to vote Democrat in a general election, for the most part. But at the end of the day, they still push a globalist free-market ideology, they still promote war, and they still condone the surveillance of the American people, the imprisonment of dissidents and political threats, and the destruction of the environment in the name of profit.
Fascism is already here. It's the corporations (the rich) who hold power, and both neoliberals and conservatives work to uphold that dynamic so they themselves can maintain power.
Noam Chomsky should stick to linguistics because it's the only thing he's good at.
People to the left of Biden sitting the election out/voting 3rd party will have one practical outcome: helping to elect Trump, who is about to go on trial for trying to overthrow the government.
I would love to live in an America where Biden is the rightmost option instead of the leftmost. That’s not where we are, and if we want to get there we can’t let fascists near the levers of power.
the only people who help elect trump are people who vote for trump
You might not “care for the crumbs,” but with your attitude, that’s all you’re destined to get.
They are happy with their chains, they gotten so used to them they take comfort in their presence.
They settle for crumbs when they have the power to take the whole damn loaf
Crumbs are for peasants.
we're gonna bang together against normal people
You'll get less than 10% of the vote.
We need ranked choice voting first. Funny how it's something both Democrats and Republicans can unite over why it's bad, confusing, whatever...
Some democrats don't like RCV (see the DC thread from the other day), but many do. NYC has RCV, and I assure you it didn't get there without democrats supporting it. So does Maine.
RCV wouldn't work well for presidential elections as they are anyway, because it's a two-stage election. What would RCV mean in an individual state? Pretend a 3rd party is in contention in that state but has no chance nationally. Candidates A and B are the major parties, and C is our third party. If the results are C=40, A=35, B=25, and B's support transfers to C, and C's support would transfer to C, does that mean B should be eliminated so C can win the state, or should C be eliminated (because they won't win any other states) and B should win the state? There's no obvious answer and it just invites more of a clusterfuck.
RCV is great for popular vote elections, which is what everything else is (mostly... there's... I think it's Mississippi governor?) and what the presidential election should be.
Popular vote first, RCV second.
B got the least votes in the first round, so B is dropped. I don't see what the problem, here, is
The problem is that it depends on how you assess it. There are two, both perfectly valid, ways to look at this.
The way you're looking at it is you see it as a state-only contest. B got the fewest votes, B's votes go to C, C wins the state. The end. From an administrative level this is the simplest approach. I don't feel any need to expand on this assessment as you're in favor of it and seem to grok the principles behind it.
The other, equally correct, way to look at it is to assess this as a national contest. In that case, C is the one that actually gets the fewest votes because they have 0 electoral votes in any other state. C is incapable of winning, so C would be eliminated in the first round of the state level contest. After all, one of the points of RCV is to eliminate the impact of spoiler candidates that cannot win. With that in mind, it'd be dumb to design an RCV system that increases the impact of a spoiler candidate that cannot win.
The issue with the first interpretation is the risk of magnifying the impact of a spoiler candidate who cannot win. The issue with the second interpretation is the sheer administrative difficulty (if C were competitive in multiple states then each state needs to take into account how other states are doing their RCV process, etc.). Both flaws would be unlikely to matter >99% of the time, but that one time the flaw would matter could lead to a constitutional crisis or less dangerously result in fundamental dislike of RCV systems. That one time might also become more likely if voters feel more comfortable voting for third parties due to this system.
The problem here is that both systems are fair, logical, and valid; they also each present major issues in edge scenarios. That's why it's important to go for a popular vote first. That way the election is one election, which RCV is explicitly designed for. The current two layer 51-elections that lead to another election that we have for the US presidency is basically a nightmare scenario for an effective RCV system.
It IS a state-by-state contest. The electoral votes each state decides to give are decided completely at a state level, and it should be at a state level. Each state has different priorities, different laws, different populations, and are all differently affected by the result of the presidential election, so just because they voted for C doesn't mean each individual state wouldn't have a preference for A over B given a different choice at a state level.
As an example, Kansas may put C as first choice and B as second choice due to their state-specific priorities. Florida may put C as first choice and A as a second choice for whatever their reason may be.
If B gets thrown out in the end, then each state needs to resolve their votes differently to reflect their differences in priorities. It's the most fair.
It is and it isn't, the reasons are in my comment.
The presidential election is decided entirely by electoral votes, and once those are cast then that's that. You cannot just change it to ranked choice unless you change the constitution itself
However, states are free to decide how they want to allot their electoral votes. Considering it is a state-by-state contest by nature, only that interpretation is even feasible. Technically you could do it if every state decided on the same system of RCV, but I highly doubt you could get every state to effectively make it a popular vote decision, considering most states already don't like that idea.
Eh I think it’s more complicated than that. Neither national party is calling for it definitely. And DC Dems are suing to block it in the city. But if you look at where RCV is implemented it’s basically very Democratic cities and independent-streak states like Maine and Alaska. Both of which do have a lot of pressure from viable independent/dem-soc alternatives. It’s also completely banned in Florida, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, and Tennessee. So I would tip the scales slightly towards Democrats here, but I agree it primarily challenges those in power so if you’ve been elected under the current system you’re usually not crazy about it regardless of party. (To be clear I totally support RCV or really anything other that FPtP voting)
You do not understand what I am saying.
This is not a first we need to do this... first we need to do that....
We need to stop voting for the bloods and crips.
Looking at the long term, this will help us win the war on the wealthy class.
Eh, the reform party nearly got it. It can be easier to get local elections after achieving national legitimacy.
Tell that to the Tea Party, the last significant change in voting dynamics we've had as a nation, that won almost entirely at the local level and got fucking destroyed on the national stage.
The Tea Party is what eventually led to the populist surge that backed Trump.
The Tea party movement (which was within the Republican party) was born out of the Reform party and their national fame.
They made no inroads after Hilary vs Trump. They aren't going to see any better opportunity for national legitimacy, and it wasn't enough to make a significant difference. If they want to succeed, they have to start local.
The Reform party had national legitimacy in the 90s, but not much because they didn't win the presidential elections. Then they dissolved.
They need to play the long game. Even if by some miracle they won the presidency, they would have no senators or house representatives. Democrats and Republicans would likely not cooperate. It would be ironic. Greens aren't willing to form a coalition with Democrats despite having so many commonalities, but they'd need to convince Democrats to do so with them if they didn't want to instantly be a lame duck president.
What you do is veto and pass executive orders to show your dissatisfaction with current congress and hope this gets you enough publicity to win seats in midterms.
When has that ever worked? Republicans cannot be shamed into doing the right thing. We have seen this consistently time and time again. You could probably make some inroads with Democrats though.
Nonetheless, that shouldn't be the goal. The goal should be taking the presidency, the Senate, and the House. At the very least, if you're capable of winning the presidency, your party should be able to take a good number of seats in Congress if you have people running. Maximizing that number will make the presidency more successful, and that will require people running for those positions in every state, and most importantly, the support of the third party in cultivating those candidates.
What? I never said shaming into doing the right thing, I said advocating an ideology and hoping others follow it
Again, you might get some Democrats, but you aren't going to get any Republicans. I edited my comment after you posted this I believe, but the general idea of what I'm saying is that you need as many seats in Congress as possible to have a smooth and successful presidency. The goal should not be compromise with Democrats from the outset. It should be having the presidency, House, and Senate.
That requires the party to seriously invest in other races.
Republican voters have jumped to the Libertarian party before, same with Reform party. Generally all the bigger third parties have actually spawned from previously Republican voters.
