The Philosophy of Liberty – On Liberalism

https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-liberty-on-liberalism/

@progressivepolitics

…he had set forth important tasks and ways for better sprucing up the city as an area for the study tour of revolutionary battle sites and a tourist area, including those of pushing ahead with the road and railway construction, taking measures for the protection of the ecological environment and forests and additionally building hotels and hostels, in keeping with its changed living environment.

The US could take some pointers on proper construction planning from Comrade Kim Jong Un.

The case for employee-owned companies

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-the-case-for-employee-owned-companies

In the sidebar, it asks for recommendations such as reading lists. I propose that David Ellerman's work be included in the reading list. He makes a unique argument in favor of workplace democracy

@progressivepolitics

Thirty years have passed since President Kim Il Sung, founder and eternal leader of the dignified Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and benevolent father of all the Korean people, passed away.

Kim Il Sung Was the father of progressive policies and helped his country escape the imperialist grasp.

Green Party candidate Jason Call has posted a thread on X. The key points are:

~ The duopoly is going all out to deny third party voices this year

~ The Stein campaign has qualified for Federal Matching Funds, but Congress robbed the fund and Treasury is refusing to pay us $270,000. It is unconscionable and unprecedented….

~ What are Federal Matching Funds? When you file your taxes each year, you’re asked “do you want $3 to go to the Presidential Matching Fund?”

~ It is essentially a fund reserved to help campaigns be more competitive against the flood of big money interests

~ The Jill Stein is the only campaign (other than Mike Pence, no longer active) that has met the threshold for this funding

~ And while the FEC has said we qualify for the match - a payment of $270k at this point - we are being denied that payment

~ Here’s what we are being told: Since the duopoly candidates have rejected that funding for the last 16 years, that $3 per IRS filing grew to over $400 million

~ And this year, Congress decided to “appropriate” those funds for other uses. They took $320mil and gave it to the Secret Service…

~ They took $25mil and gave it to the Justice Dept. They took $55mil for “election security” (ironically securing elections from 3rd parties it seems)

~ Right now we are being denied our earned primary matching funds because there is a “shortfall”

~ What we have earned amounts to 1.5% of what’s in the fund. And they are saying there’s a shortfall? Here’s their reasoning:

~ “We need to wait until the major parties have their convention so we will know if they are going to apply for the funds” Excuse me?

~ Use of matching funds for the general election takes priority over use of funds for the primary, but the only campaigns that can qualify for those funds are the duopoly campaigns

~ The two major parties have not used matching funds for 16 years due to the imposed spending limits

~ But this year, Congress robbed the fund (and if you are a taxpayer and have checked that $3 box, you should be righteously pissed off about this misappropriation)

~ And the Treasury is saying “sorry, we don’t have the money, we might need it for the general”

~ But understand this is a political hit. Congress appropriated that money right when we were messaging that we were about to hit the threshold.

~ The FEC is not the responsible party here. They qualified us, said we were good to go. This is coming from higher up, politically motivated to shut down our traction

~ And it has. It has stifled our momentum. This, and the bullshit lawsuits to keep us off the ballot

~ Democrats say they are defending democracy, but this is how they are doing it. Political trickery and lawfare

~ They are limiting the choices of voters when voters (not BlueMAGA of course, they are cheering on the chicanery) are fed up with the garbage forced on us by the duopoly

~ The Green Party takes no corporate money. We are following the rules. And the playground bullies are continuing to rig the system for the war machine and other corporate interests

~ This is not democracy. It is not justice.

I know people will say anyone, but realistically, if you could hand pick our next President, who would you choose? Who do you think could win?

At 70, and with a list of endorsements from centrist Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Latimer is far from the exciting prospect Bowman was four years ago. He is, however, a vocal advocate for Israel – in the final debate between the pair he declined to criticize Israel, something Biden has previously done – who visited the country before launching his campaign against Bowman in December. He has won the support of Aipac, and was endorsed by the Jewish Democratic Council of America in March.

Much of the money has been spent on attacking Bowman. The UDP has invested $14.5m in the race – $9.8m of which has gone towards knocking Bowman, and just $4.8m on promoting Latimer.

If Bowman is defeated, there is a potential impact beyond just politics in the Middle East. Some younger, progressive Democrats feel that the primary campaigns against Bowman and other Squad members could drive young voters away from the Democratic party.

Distressingly, the opinion leaves breadcrumbs for [anti-abortion] activists to follow next time—and sets up some roadblocks to keep progressive activists out. For example, Kavanaugh writes that plaintiffs who aren’t actually affected by a given regulation, like the AHM, can still “thread the causation needle” if they show that the parties who are regulated “will likely react in predictable ways that in turn will likely injure the plaintiffs.” The Court also clarified that an organization does not have standing merely if it “diverts its resources in response to a defendant’s actions.”

Why does this matter? The diversion-of-resources argument comes from a landmark 1982 case called Havens Realty Corporation v. Coleman, in which a fair housing organization sought to sue an apartment complex for its refusal to rent apartments to Black “testers”—people who posed as potential renters to test compliance with the law. The Court ruled in Havens Realty that the organization, although it wasn’t actually trying to rent apartments, nonetheless had standing to sue, in part because the realty company’s actions forced the organization to use its limited resources to ferret out illegal discrimination.

Kavanaugh’s opinion declines to extend standing to the AHM under Havens Realty. But he also goes out of his way to call Havens Realty an “unusual case” that the Court “has been careful not to extend…beyond its context.” If this language signals that the Court is looking skeptically at future diversion-of-resources claims, that could be bad news for civil rights groups trying to use the courts to enforce the law.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240614122724/https://ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/abortion-pills-case-time-bomb-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine/

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240614122241/https://theappeal.org/tough-on-crime-rates-record-low/

When the House passed legislation to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in April, it included a new provision that Senator Ron Wyden described as “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” Concern over the provision mounted in the Senate and threatened to derail the law’s renewal. Anxious to secure reauthorization before Section 702 expired, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Senator Mark Warner, promised to work with other senators to narrow the provision in subsequent legislation.

To his credit, Senator Warner has made good on that promise; but the cure that SSCI has chosen is nearly as bad as the disease. The committee has created a dangerous new form of “secret law,” in which the legal parameters for surveillance—rules that bind not only the government, but private parties—are themselves classified. There is a much better solution available: Congress can legislate both responsibly and openly, as long as the administration declassifies certain information that is already in the public domain.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240614115258/https://www.justsecurity.org/96638/secret-law-overbroad-surveillance-authority/

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240613113801/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/biggest-lie-trump-biden-2024-voters.html

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240613115802/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/13/influencers-biden-tiktok-ban/

The Fair Representation Act has been re-introduced in Congress. This bold solution can stop gerrymandering and make Congress work for every American. 

The Fair Representation Act can solve partisan gerrymandering, make every congressional district competitive, and encourage politicians to represent all of us instead of just their base. It does this by combining three reforms: 

• Multi-member districts. In three- or five-member districts, nearly every voter will elect a candidate they support. Voters like Massachusetts Republicans and Oklahoma Democrats will be represented in Congress. Gerrymandering will become nearly impossible.

• Ranked choice voting for all U.S. House and Senate elections. RCV frees voters to support their favorite candidates, and encourages candidates to reach out to more voters for second-choice support. When RCV is used in multi-member districts, it is a form of proportional representation.

• Uniform rules for congressional redistricting 

The Fair Representation Act can be passed without a constitutional amendment. It truly has the potential to transform our political system and create a more inclusive and deliberative government which respects and empowers all voices.

It doesn’t make any sense to me that leaders of countries can declare war with total immunity from its violence, unless they’re actually fighting themselves, which in most cases they are not.

They have nothing to lose when they declare war, so why should they be allowed to put all of us at risk?

How can the Laws of War be changed to hold politicians accountable for their actions and make them think long and hard before engaging in wars? Maybe alternatively, all politicians including the president/PM/leader should have to serve in the military as well.