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Grok posted some antisemitic posts on X praising Hitler and the holocaust.

Several posters here regularly post links to X, which they claim is a reliable source of news.

Personally, I don’t believe in coincidences.

I wonder if Musk will claim that Antifa was behind it?


Gifted article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/technology/grok...

Grok should work for Momdani. Or the Squad.

No worries - o]i'm neutral on those people.


ps: As predicted - no Sheeple opnion on Momdani. At best it'll be milquetoast and non committal and that too will require more Sheeple prodding.

ps: As predicted - no Sheeple opnion on Momdani. At best it'll be milquetoast and non committal and that too will require more Sheeple prodding.

They ALL want him to win. They love the idea of Sticking It To The Man. Power to the people!

Of course, when the stupid ideas that they all cheer for piledrive New York into the ground, they'll all claim they never supported the guy. It's how the left rolls.

They ALL want him to win. They love the idea of Sticking It To The Man. Power to the people!

I, for one, don't particularly want him to win - although I wouldn't particularly want either Adams or Cuomo to win, either. I think many of Mamdani's topline proposals are pretty lousy and/or are promises he has no ability to keep. Free buses are a terrible idea from a basic transit perspective, state-run groceries are a terrible idea even from the perspective of the people he's putatively trying to help, and rent control has a pretty poor track record of delivering affordable housing to more people. I don't think he's got the resources to deliver on his public housing promises, and he is unlikely to get Hochul to provide him either with the resources or the higher taxes that he would need in order to pull that off.

I, for one, don't particularly want him to win - although I wouldn't particularly want either Adams or Cuomo to win, either. I think many of Mamdani's topline proposals are pretty lousy and/or are promises he has no ability to keep. Free buses are a terrible idea from a basic transit perspective, state-run groceries are a terrible idea even from the perspective of the people he's putatively trying to help, and rent control has a pretty poor track record of delivering affordable housing to more people. I don't think he's got the resources to deliver on his public housing promises, and he is unlikely to get Hochul to provide him either with the resources or the higher taxes that he would need in order to pull that off.

Thanks for that.

BTW - your basic legal lesson about how courts can only rule on what's in front of them actually made it into a Supreme Court concurrence :). Did you see that?

Extreme wealth inequality increasingly drives people to seek socialist solutions to the problems created by an unrestrained capitalism.

This evolution of the New York City voter is simply following that pattern.

And it’s going to spread nationwide as the BigBastardBill begins extracting even more wealth from those who have not to line the pockets of those who already have.

Seems to be a repeating pattern in US history.

Heretofore, we’ve had the peaceful mechanisms to effect needed change. Those peaceful methods were called “elections”.

Now we have a president threatening NYC with some sort of takeover if the candidate he doesn’t like wins the elections.

I, for one, don't particularly want him to win - although I wouldn't particularly want either Adams or Cuomo to win, either.

As a complete outsider, I see Mamdani as a "leftover" choice. With the current state of the GOP, no Republican is going to win in NYC. Cuomo represents all that is wrong with the Democrats today. Old. Out of touch. Baggage from previous elected positions. None of the other Democratic Party candidates resonated with the voters. Mamdani at least represents some kind of change. Younger. Decently eloquent. New ideas - even if they aren't great or feasible. At least he's thinking differently.

After eliminating all the candidates New Yorkers didn't want, Mamdani was the one left over.

--Peter

state-run groceries are a terrible idea even from the perspective of the people he's putatively trying to help

About the idea of "city-owned grocery stores" from Mamdani, it’s well to understand that the reality of food deserts in poor neighborhoods,
raising the cost of being poor, is well documented. Food deserts are just another failure of unregulated capitalism.
The problem is real and his proposal is at least a step toward addressing it.
I believe gov't needs to step in where the private sector fails and higher food prices for poor people is a market failure.
Mamdani never suggested city-owned grocery stores was the only solution. But he is open to possible solutions that haven’t been tried before.

About the idea of "city-owned grocery stores" from Mamdani, it’s well to understand that the reality of food deserts in poor neighborhoods,
raising the cost of being poor, is well documented. Food deserts are just another failure of unregulated capitalism.
The problem is real and his proposal is at least a step toward addressing it.

Is it, though? A step towards addressing it?

The research on the effects of introducing a new supermarket into a food desert don't really support the idea that it will change any of the things that presumably it's targeted towards addressing. People in the area generally still buy the same types of foods that they did before. IOW, the "food desert" is a symptom of people's food purchasing habits in an area, not the cause of it - supermarkets can't survive in those areas because their customers won't buy the mix of products that a supermarket provides, not the other way around.

That's the real problem with this kind of proposal. These "food deserts" are usually fairly well supplied with certain kinds of foods - after all, food is a necessity, and even unregulated capitalism is pretty good at supplying things people have to buy. It's just that they're the sort of foods you find in convenience stores, dollar stores, and the like. These are foods that are unhealthy if they form the entire basis of a diet, which is why health experts discount them and wish that low-income people would eat a lower proportion of them. But....they are non-perishable, cheap, require little to no time or equipment or other ingredients to prepare and make tasty. Which is part of why they end up making up a larger proportion of food purchases of lower-income folks, who can ill afford spoilage, often have limited access to cooking equipment or methods to make other kinds of foods easily, have limited free time and/or social capital for cooking, have smaller housing (and thus less space for cooking and storing food, especially perishable food) and are oft-times buying the cheapest calories with much of their food budget.

Which is why a grocery store is probably not a great vector for trying to change this dynamic. It's a very visual thing to do - a really big thing that someone can stand in front of at a ribbon-cutting - but far less effective at actually making changes than trying to address the factors described above, which have almost nothing to do with what food is being sold in the neighborhood.

IOW, the "food desert" is a symptom of people's food purchasing habits in an area, not the cause of it - supermarkets can't survive in those areas because their customers won't buy the mix of products that a supermarket provides, not the other way around.

"Food deserts" are also driven by shoplifting and the fact that store owners can't keep them profitable, even if they're the only store around.

"Food deserts" are also driven by shoplifting and the fact that store owners can't keep them profitable, even if they're the only store around.

Do you have anything to support that? It seems incredibly unlikely. Food deserts aren't devoid of retail altogether. They're not even devoid of food retail. They just don't have supermarkets. And the sorts of products that supermarkets sell are particularly ill-suited to resale after shoplifting (they tend to be inexpensive, bulky, sometimes perishable, subject to damage if compressed or pushed into something, and fungible commodities). The products that aren't like that are still sold in food deserts, just in different stores. It's hard to see why supermarkets would be susceptible to shoplifting to a materially different (and greater) degree than other stores in a way that it would be a factor in causing these kinds of food deserts.

Do you have anything to support that? It seems incredibly unlikely. Food deserts aren't devoid of retail altogether. They're not even devoid of food retail. They just don't have supermarkets.

Sure:
https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/04/11/walm...

The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years. The remaining four Chicago stores continue to face the same business difficulties, but we think this decision gives us the best chance to help keep them open and serving the community.

Many stores lose money in low income areas - crime being one factor - and other stores in the chain have to pick up the slack. As for these 4:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11965589/...

...it's not just Wal-Mart:
Major retailers in the US have been forced to shut down stores due to millions of dollars in losses as rampant theft plagues big box stores across the country.

This week, Walmart announced it will shut down four of its stores in Chicago just weeks after America's biggest employer shuttered its only stores in Portland.

It comes as shoplifting reaches alarming levels and other large retailers, including Target, Macy's and Best Buy, are now making good on threats to shutter outlets if petty crime was not lowered.

In 2021 retailers lost a combined $94.5billion to shrink, a term used to describe theft and other types of inventory loss. And organized retail crime incidents soared by 26.5 per cent in the same year, according to the 2022 National Retail Security Survey.

Here are some estimates for Target:
https://apnews.com/article/target-first-quarter-ea...
Target said theft is cutting into its bottom line and it expects related losses could be $500 million more than last year, when losses from theft were estimated to be anywhere from $700 million to $800 million. So that means losses could top $1.2 billion this year. The company said it’s seeing an increasing number of violent incidents at stores as well, but does not want to close stores and is expanding security and locking up some items.

What does $1.2Bn in losses mean for them? Let's look at their income statement:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TGT/financials/

If we take ~$4Bn to be their average net income, then a loss of $500M/year represents 12.5% of their overall profit. That's a lot of money to have walk out the door. Literally.

And the sorts of products that supermarkets sell are particularly ill-suited to resale after shoplifting (they tend to be inexpensive, bulky, sometimes perishable, subject to damage if compressed or pushed into something, and fungible commodities).

Al, al, al. My friend.

Oh, you have so much to learn about street culture and open air markets!

Bottles of Tide are item #1 for most "Street entrepreneurs". It's so bad that at most Seattle-area stores they have to lock up their detergent aisles.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/...

And this is from 2012! It's gotten much worse since then:
Earlier this week, The Daily's M.L. Nestel wrote that Tide liquid laundry soap appears to have become a favorite target of shoplifters around the nation, who are jacking the product from store shelves in bulk, then selling it on the black market. Thieves simply load up shopping carts full of the bright orange bottles, then bolt out the door. One con in Minnesota appears to have liberated $25,000 worth of the stuff in 15 months before he was eventually arrested. Meanwhile, police in Prince George's County, Maryland have taken to calling Tide "liquid gold." According to the Associated Press, officers there say that drug dealers have started urging their clientele to pay with Tide bottles in lieu of cash.

By why Tide, of all things?
Criminals tend to pilfer products that are small and expensive -- razor blades, infant formula, gift cards, teeth whitening products, cosmetics, and over-the-counter medications, for instance. While it's a little bulkier than most of the items on that list, a bottle of Tide would seem to make a good target because it's a leading brand, everybody needs it, and it's pricey; one bottle can cost up to $20 retail, and it allegedly sells on the street for between $5 and $10.

Plus it's chemically stable to store and never goes bad. What's not to love?

Plus it's chemically stable to store and never goes bad. What's not to love?

Exactly. That's the point.

Food deserts aren't devoid of retail or food stores. There's plenty of places in food deserts where you can buy Tide. What is lacking in food deserts are places that sell the sorts of products that distinguish grocery stores from convenience/bodega/drugstores. Generally speaking, that's not packaged goods like Tide or other shelf-stable products. It's fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and poultry and meat, and other mostly fungible unpackaged foods.

So you wouldn't expect shoplifting in an area to be what causes a food desert, because the things that are missing from food deserts are things that are less amenable to profitable shoplifting than the things that are still in the food desert. If the food desert still has plenty of places that are selling Tide, but is missing places that sell broccoli and zucchini, it's pretty unlikely that high rates of shoplifting Tide are what has caused this situation.

Food deserts almost certainly aren't caused by shoplifting.

So you wouldn't expect shoplifting in an area to be what causes a food desert, because the things that are missing from food deserts are things that are less amenable to profitable shoplifting than the things that are still in the food desert. If the food desert still has plenty of places that are selling Tide, but is missing places that sell broccoli and zucchini, it's pretty unlikely that high rates of shoplifting Tide are what has caused this situation.


That's not how retail theft accounting works. They don't look at theft in the detergent section and say, "Let's not offer detergent because it's bringing the entire store down,". They amortize the theft across the rest of the items.

Once the losses add up to a point where the store is no longer able to be 'hidden' among the other stores, it gets shut down. Once it goes it takes the rest of the products with it.

Food deserts almost certainly aren't caused by shoplifting.

Stores close because they don't make money, period. They already operate on razor thin margins. If we go back to our Target example, to earn their ~$4Bn average they have to bring in $105Bn. That's a net margin of <4%. So something that knocks another 12% off their net income is a big deal to them.

That's not how retail theft accounting works. They don't look at theft in the detergent section and say, "Let's not offer detergent because it's bringing the entire store down,". They amortize the theft across the rest of the items.

Once the losses add up to a point where the store is no longer able to be 'hidden' among the other stores, it gets shut down. Once it goes it takes the rest of the products with it.

Sure, but again that doesn't explain the differential impact of theft of these items. If it's things like Tide that are being stolen, that affects all the stores that sell things like Tide - not just grocery stores. In fact, we would expect the grocery stores to do better than other stores, because a larger proportion of their goods are things that are less susceptible to shoplifting: the stores that sell entirely prepackaged shelf-stable products would suffer more, because their entire product line would be more subject to shoplifting.

To make this simple - is there anything that you're aware of that has documented that shoplifting causes (or even contributes to) food deserts? Not store closures as a general matter, but food deserts specifically?

Food deserts" are also driven by shoplifting and the fact that store owners can't keep them profitable, even if they're the only store around.

Do you have anything to support that?

Of course he doesn’t. He just pops off and says any idiotic thing that comes into his mind. There’s a lot of that going around, and I take it as proof of the old saying that any damn fool can grow up to be President here.

Dope1: Many stores lose money in low income areas - crime being one factor...

Funny, though, that your linked statement from Walmart doesn't contain a single word about 'crime'.


Dope1: Nestel wrote that Tide liquid laundry soap appears to have become a favorite target of shoplifters around the nation...

Huh.

'Around the nation' doesn't sound like a problem limited to -- or largely only occurring in -- food deserts.

But, yeah, sure, gotta' be poor Blacks robbing Walmart blind.

Father Time has caught up to me, and as such I can't follow any discussions anymore. I've been reduced to just pumping out snark because that's all the game I've left.

Sorry to hear that. I guess Time comes for us all, doesn't it?

Funny, though, that your linked statement from Walmart doesn't contain a single word about 'crime'.

No, the next articles does as do the estimates in the other links.

Which you didn't get to, because you're too busy trying to inject RAAAAAAAACISM into the thread.

Time for another firmware upgrade, ChatNPC. Your old version has bugs in it.

This week, Walmart announced it will shut down four of its stores in Chicago

Dope, the smaller Walmarts don't carry food, and there are a few of those around in SoCal. So it's quite possible the stores in Chicago didn't carry food. In SoCal I had to drive a ways to get to a Walmart with food. There were cheap grocery stores but the type and quality of produce was limited. We know about the shoplifting, but we also know they admitted they overstated the shoplifting. Food deserts is a new name, but the problem has been around since the early 1800s I think.

I, for one, don't particularly want him to win - although I wouldn't particularly want either Adams or Cuomo to win, either. I think many of Mamdani's topline proposals are pretty lousy and/or are promises he has no ability to keep. Free buses are a terrible idea from a basic transit perspective, state-run groceries are a terrible idea even from the perspective of the people he's putatively trying to help, and rent control has a pretty poor track record of delivering affordable housing to more people. I don't think he's got the resources to deliver on his public housing promises, and he is unlikely to get Hochul to provide him either with the resources or the higher taxes that he would need in order to pull that off.

You don't "particularly want ... Adams or Cuomo either", but given the challenge Mamdani presents to the billionaire backers of the Clintonite wing of the democratic party you pretty much have to hope one of those two clowns win. As for Mamdani's policies, putting them on the agenda is a victory in itself. Hegemony is the power to determine the possible and impossible. Of course the capitalist class, and the clowns who apologize for them, have no answers for the poverty and inequality they thrive on, and of course they think the ideas of a socialist are impossible. The idea of public investment in public goods, like transit, makes no sense to capitalists who intend to profit from the private for profit provision of transportation as a private good. Tesla agrees with you, free public transit is a terrible idea from a basic capitalist perspective on transit. No private profit to be made from such a public good, and no way to make it work without forcibly investing the private capital of billionaires in public goods. Even if the idea seems absurd, discussing it publicly challenges capitalist hegemony in our political discourse. If fascism can be made palatable for contemporary political discourse, why not socialist ideas as well. The discussion shouldn't start with the impossibility of these ideas but rather it should start with what is necessary to make them work.

Not Trump can no longer be the mantra of the democratic party.

The idea of public investment in public goods, like transit, makes no sense to capitalists who intend to profit from the private for profit provision of transportation as a private good.

You misunderstand the criticism.

Making buses free is the opposite of public investment in transit. It's disinvestment. The NYC bus system collects just under a billion dollars a year in bus fares. If you eliminate the bus fares, you are slashing the transit budget by a billion dollars.

Now, you're slashing the transit budget by a billion dollars for a cause that progressives find symbolically nice - but it's still slashing the transit budget by a billion dollars. And considering that the total NYC transit budget is just under $20 billion, and the bus portion of that is only about $6-7 billion, that is a huge reduction in the funds available for running buses.

So this is terrible for bus service. And for NYC transit service in general. The customers get more money in their pockets, but the transit agency now has significantly less money for operations. Which means they have to cut service more than they otherwise would. Worse, those cuts have to come at a time when usage will rise more than it otherwise would have - because now it's free. And you end up with non-destination riders who get on the bus just to have somewhere to go. So you'll have more riders, and fewer resources to provide them service.

So the system degrades for everyone. It's free, but it's worse.

So the system degrades for everyone. It's free, but it's worse.

I would assume that someone has crunched the numbers, and come up with an appropriate means of filling the gap (likely more taxes on either property or the wealthy...which helps the poor whom are more likely to use the buses in the first place).

I would assume that someone has crunched the numbers, and come up with an appropriate means of filling the gap (likely more taxes on either property or the wealthy...which helps the poor whom are more likely to use the buses in the first place).

There's no reason to assume that. Mamdani hasn't said anything at all about providing any additional funding to backfill the loss of revenue - and a billion dollars is a lot of money, even relative to the very large budgets that NYC transit has already (it's the biggest in the country).

Plus, the same analysis holds. If you have a billion dollars a year that could be put into transit, put the billion dollars into transit. Make the public investment. Improve head times, reliability, service coverage, and safety and security on the system. Get more people to use the system by making the system more valuable and useful for the riders.

If there are people in your community who are genuinely too poor to afford bus fare, then give those people free access - don't give everyone free access. That's what Kansas City ended up having to do when they had to backtrack off of fare-free buses, as their efforts at free buses collapsed in the toxic mix of fiscal problems and looming service cuts that happens when you slash the transit agency's funding:

https://www.kcur.org/news/2025-04-04/kansas-city-w...

Fare-free bus service is a bad idea - not because it's bad for Tesla or private cars, but because it's bad for public transit. Again, PhoolishPhilip had it right - if you value transit, you want to encourage public investment in transit, especially by the people for whom transit is most valuable, the people who ride it.

For a fairly well-written discussion of why this is a bad idea, here's a piece from Slate (generally a left-leaning site and written from the perspective of someone who is very supportive of transit):

https://slate.com/business/2025/07/zohran-mamdani-...

And here's a very nice explanation of why even if you had nine figures of taxpayer money to shift into transit, you wouldn't spend it on making it free rather than making it better:

But is it [zero-fare] the best way to spent $600 million–plus in taxpayer dollars, every year, ad infinitum?

It’s hard to see how that could be the case, particularly given the myriad opportunities to upgrade MTA’s bus service, which is the slowest in the country and not getting faster.

Low-income passengers themselves often say they would prefer speedier and more reliable transit service than one that’s free of charge. Basic math can explain why: If a bus rider makes $20 per hour and their commute takes an average of 40 minutes, reducing their average trip to 25 minutes would save them half an hour per day, worth the equivalent of $10—far more than the price of a round-trip ride.

“Bus passengers want reliability and reduced trip times,” said Eric Goldwyn, program director of the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management. “We can do that with bus lanes, signal prioritization, all-door boarding, and bus stop consolidation.” The MTA could also simply run more buses, reducing wait times that frequently exceed 15 minutes on many lines. All of these moves would cost a fraction as much as going fare-free. New York City’s subway, which moves more than twice as many people as its buses, offers an additional to-do list. The Effective Transit Alliance, a nonprofit, claims that $350 million per year would ensure six-minute service across every subway line, citywide, from dawn to dusk.

If you eliminate the bus fares, you are slashing the transit budget by a billion dollars.

Not if you replace that with funds from elsewhere. My first choice would be property taxes in NYC. Both the residents and businesses in the city would benefit from zero-fare buses. Less expense for commuting workers. Access to more workers for business. Raising a billion dollars that way is probably a small fraction of a percent added to property taxes.

Make it a slightly larger small fraction, call it a transit tax, and use it for other needed transit projects - subway, light rail, commuter parking, etc.

OK - I looked up the numbers. Based on assessed value, the rate would need to be about 0.32% to raise a billion dollars. The total assessed value in the City is roughly 1/5 of the total market value. Based on market values, the rate would need to be 0.067%.

--Peter

PS - The figures I looked up.

$ 311 billion - total assessed value in NYC
$1500 billion - total market value in NYC

Not if you replace that with funds from elsewhere. My first choice would be property taxes in NYC. Both the residents and businesses in the city would benefit from zero-fare buses. Less expense for commuting workers. Access to more workers for business. Raising a billion dollars that way is probably a small fraction of a percent added to property taxes.

I really, really want NYC to do make their bus fares zero.
Because here's what's going to happen: they'll become rolling homeless shelters.

That always does WONDERS for the ridership experience.

You can watch Euro to see how well it works:

"Several European countries and cities have implemented free public transportation, primarily to address environmental concerns and improve social equity. Luxembourg was the first country to introduce free public transport nationwide in 2020. Malta followed suit in 2022, and several cities across Europe have also adopted similar policies."

"Several European countries and cities have implemented free public transportation, primarily to address environmental concerns and improve social equity. Luxembourg was the first country to introduce free public transport nationwide in 2020. Malta followed suit in 2022, and several cities across Europe have also adopted similar policies."

And the buses are a hellscape, amirite?

Yep!
Because we KNOW that European social initiatives transfer 1:1 to the US without any problems,
amirite?

especially by the people for whom transit is most valuable, the people who ride it.

Nope. The people for whom transit is most valuable is BUSINESS, not the riders. Take away transit and business goes bust. Which is why PARKING is also deemed valuable. And so it goes.

You can watch Euro to see how well it works

Exactly. They don't do it. Unlike other progressive policy proposals (universal health care, liberal paid parental leave, etc.), fare-free transit is almost entirely absent from Europe. Sure, there are isolated examples - mostly a few smaller countries and cities that have implemented it. But for the most part, every significant European transit system has fares - and almost invariably with higher farebox recovery rates (percent of costs covered by fares) than systems in the U.S. There's a very good reason why they do that. It's very hard to run a solid transit system if you cut yourself off from fare revenues.

UK has it for older folks:

https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-elderly-person-bus-pa...

If you live in England or Wales
In England you can get a bus pass for free travel when you reach the State Pension age.

If you live in London, you can travel free on buses, tubes and other transport when you’re 60, but only within London.

In Wales you can get a bus pass when you reach 60.

UK has it for older folks

Yep. It's very common to provide free service to limited segments of the population. Seniors and students are frequently given free or reduced-rate access, both because they tend to be lower income (very generally) and because they are far more likely to be off-peak users.

There's a very good reason why they do that. It's very hard to run a solid transit system if you cut yourself off from fare revenues.

...and one of those reasons is: crime.

Seattle stopped fare enforcement during COVID. As a result, drug addicts took over the transit system and used them as rolling homeless shelters.

But for the most part, every significant European transit system has fares - and almost invariably with higher farebox recovery rates (percent of costs covered by fares) than systems in the U.S. There's a very good reason why they do that. It's very hard to run a solid transit system if you cut yourself off from fare revenues.

Reminds me of a conversation I had with a British couple about what the government can run and what it can't. Their experience was to privatize the trains - they would run well then. But I asked them about Mussolini making the trains run on time and nothing was forthcoming.

My experience is poor people can afford bus passes, but they need reliable schedules. The buses can make them late for work, and all some managers see is that - that they're late for work. Or they get to the license office with 30 to 15 minutes left instead of an hour left till it closes. Or that the connecting bus is a block away so they run/hustle to catch it, and sometimes miss it. They get caught in crunches and squeezes and no one is sympathetic, because they look and have mannerisms/accents like the poor. It's an easy trap to blame the poor for being poor and therefore they are unworthy.

Making buses free is the opposite of public investment in transit. It's disinvestment. The NYC bus system collects just under a billion dollars a year in bus fares. If you eliminate the bus fares, you are slashing the transit budget by a billion dollars.

You misunderstand the point. You obviously can't cut $1 billion from the transit budget without finding $1 billion to replace it. Tax the f()cking rich. I think the public can find better use of Bezos billions than renting out Venice for his second wedding or sending a hen party to space. Poor people aren't the only source of revenue for public goods. We need to reverse the discourse around taxation and refocus it on public investment. Hedge fund and tech billionaires continue to destroy public goods by privatizing public spaces and defunding public investment through confiscatory tax policy (confiscating public goods by defunding public investments through tax givaways to billionaires). We should be tapping Ackman's billions for the public benefit rather than continuing to let him muzzle academic freedom because he's rich enough to muzzle academic freedom.

The democratic party lost its way in the 1990's when it abandoned the working class in favor of chumming it up with wealthy socially liberal elites. Once the party became dependent on the billionaire money stream it lost the ability to engage in a meaningful discourse around the root problems facing working people in America today--unfettered capitalism and the corresponding concentration of wealth. Not only is a discourse not possible, a political strategy for addressing the causes and consequences of the growing inequality has become impossible for the Clintonite wing of the party. You say so yourself with these ridiculous assumptions about user financed public transit systems.

Get your head out of Clinton's arse and see where the democratic party needs to go if it is to continue to be relevant, and help figure out how it's going to get there in the face of the resistance of organized billionaires. We are witness to a brutal class war in America today. The time for polite resistance is over.

The democratic party lost its way in the 1990's when it abandoned the working class in favor of chumming it up with wealthy socially liberal elites. Once the party became dependent on the billionaire money stream it lost the ability to engage in a meaningful discourse around the root problems facing working people in America today--unfettered capitalism and the corresponding concentration of wealth. Not only is a discourse not possible, a political strategy for addressing the causes and consequences of the growing inequality has become impossible for the Clintonite wing of the party. You say so yourself with these ridiculous assumptions about user financed public transit systems.

Get your head out of Clinton's arse and see where the democratic party needs to go if it is to continue to be relevant,

If Democrats don’t take this to heart, their party will die. Perhaps it will be six months after the Republican Party dies a death from choking on its own nonsense, but the Democratic Party will follow, choking on its own failure to meet the moment-

….and the future will be driven by more extreme voices at both tips of the horseshoe.

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