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AHHH! The beauty of Socialism unplugged!

Willamena

Just me
Premium Member
Hardly.

"The Inca society was rigidly constructed along hierarchical lines of power and privilege. The Incan ruling class, below the Inca Sun-god king, provided the membership for the bureaucratic administrators, the military officer corps, the priests and scholars. Beneath them were the Inca peasants, herdsmen and artisans; they also were used to settle newly conquered lands to assure Incan dominance over the defeated populations. And below them were the slaves, which according to Inca legend had originally been condemned to death, but out of mercy were reprieved from extermination to be lowly laborers in perpetual bondage."

I'm not sure I would call that "pretty good" along with their child sacrifices. Then again,
None of this has anything to do with socialism...
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Miss Socialist AOC says we should be sharing equally and the rich have enough. Translated, "I WANT MORE MONEY AND I WANT TO TAX YOU MORE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN"

Socialism never works.

AOC Wants Congress to Get a Raise So They'll Stop Taking Bribes from Lobbyists - Big League Politics
US Congress members: A look at perks and pay
Are you planning on one day learning what the word "socialism" means? Or will you be content just to go on using it incorrectly to score whatever points you seem to be seeking?
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Just some information....

$174,000

As of 2019, the base salary for all rank-and-file members of the U.S. House and Senate was $174,000 per year, plus benefits.Mar 2, 2019

Source...

How Much Do Members of Congress Really Get Paid?
Since that number has not changed in 10 years, 174000 is 2019 dollars is about $142,000.

Whether you consider that a decent salary for them or not is, of course, a different matter.
 

Terry Sampson

Well-Known Member
Far be it from me to change anybody's mind, but ...

From Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's book: "How Democracies Die" (2018):

"In Venezuela, for example, Hugo Chávez was a political outsider who railed against what he cast as a corrupt governing elite, promising to build a more “authentic” democracy that used the country’s vast oil wealth to improve the lives of the poor. Skillfully tapping into the anger of ordinary Venezuelans, many of whom felt ignored or mistreated by the established political parties, Chávez was elected president in 1998. As a woman in Chávez’s home state of Barinas put it on election night, “Democracy is infected. And Chávez is the only antibiotic we have.”

"When Chávez launched his promised revolution, he did so democratically. In 1999, he held free elections for a new constituent assembly, in which his allies won an overwhelming majority. This allowed the chavistas to single-handedy write a new constitution. It was a democratic constitution, though, and to reinforce its legitimacy, new presidential and legislative elections were held in 2000. Chávez and his allies won those, too. Chávez’s populism triggered intense opposition, and in April 2002, he was briefly toppled by the military. But the coup failed, allowing a triumphant Chávez to claim for himself even more democratic legitimacy."

"It wasn’t until 2003 that Chávez took his first clear steps toward authoritarianism. With public support fading, he stalled an opposition-led referendum that would have recalled him from office—until a year later, when soaring oil prices had boosted his standing enough for him to win. In 2004, the government blacklisted those who had signed the recall petition and packed the supreme court, but Chávez’s landslide reelection in 2006 allowed him to maintain a democratic veneer. The chavista regime grew more repressive after 2006, closing a major television station, arresting or exiling opposition politicians, judges, and media figures on dubious charges, and eliminating presidential term limits so that Chávez could remain in power indefinitely. When Chávez, now dying of cancer, was reelected in 2012, the contest was free but not fair: Chavismo controlled much of the media and deployed the vast machinery of the government in its favor. After Chávez’s death a year later, his successor, Nicolás Maduro, won another questionable reelection, and in 2014, his government imprisoned a major opposition leader. Still, the opposition’s landslide victory in the 2015 legislative elections seemed to belie critics’ claims that Venezuela was no longer democratic. It was only when a new single-party constituent assembly usurped the power of Congress in 2017, nearly two decades after Chávez first won the presidency, that Venezuela was widely recognized as an autocracy."

"Venezuela had prided itself on being South America’s oldest democracy, in place since 1958. Chávez, a junior military officer and failed coup leader who had never held public office, was a political outsider. But his rise to power was given a critical boost from a consummate insider: ex-president Rafael Caldera, one of the founders of Venezuelan democracy."

"Venezuelan politics was long dominated by two parties, the center-left Democratic Action and Caldera’s center-right Social Christian Party (known as COPEI). The two alternated in power peacefully for more than thirty years, and by the 1970s, Venezuela was viewed as a model democracy in a region plagued by coups and dictatorships. During the 1980s, however, the country’s oil-dependent economy sank into a prolonged slump, a crisis that persisted for more than a decade, nearly doubling the poverty rate. Not surprisingly, Venezuelans grew disaffected. Massive riots in February 1989 suggested that the established parties were in trouble. Three years later, in February 1992, a group of junior military officers rose up against President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Led by Hugo Chávez, the rebels called themselves “Bolivarians,” after revered independence hero Simón Bolívar. The coup failed. But when the now-detained Chávez appeared on live television to tell his supporters to lay down their arms (declaring, in words that would become legendary, that their mission had failed “for now”), he became a hero in the eyes of many Venezuelans, particularly poorer ones. Following a second failed coup in November 1992, the imprisoned Chávez changed course, opting to pursue power via elections. He would need help."

"Although ex-president Caldera was a well-regarded elder statesman, his political career was waning in 1992. Four years earlier, he had failed to secure his party’s presidential nomination, and he was now considered a political relic. But the seventy-six-year-old senator still dreamed of returning to the presidency, and Chávez’s emergence provided him with a lifeline. On the night of Chávez’s initial coup, the former president stood up during an emergency joint session of congress and embraced the rebels’ cause, declaring:

It is difficult to ask the people to sacrifice themselves for freedom and democracy when they think that freedom and democracy are incapable of giving them food to eat, of preventing the astronomical rise in the cost of subsistence, or of placing a definitive end to the terrible scourge of corruption that, in the eyes of the entire world, is eating away at the institutions of Venezuela with each passing day.

"The stunning speech resurrected Caldera’s political career. Having tapped into Chávez’s antisystem constituency, the ex-president’s public support swelled, which allowed him to make a successful presidential bid in 1993."

"Caldera’s public flirtation with Chávez did more than boost his own standing in the polls; it also gave Chávez new credibility. Chávez and his comrades had sought to destroy their country’s thirty-four-year-old democracy. But rather than denouncing the coup leaders as an extremist threat, the former president offered them public sympathy—and, with it, an opening to mainstream politics."

"Caldera also helped open the gates to the presidential palace for Chávez by dealing a mortal blow to Venezuela’s established parties. In a stunning about-face, he abandoned COPEI, the party he had founded nearly half a century earlier, and launched an independent presidential bid. To be sure, the parties were already in crisis. But Caldera’s departure and subsequent antiestablishment campaign helped bury them. The party system collapsed after Caldera’s 1993 election as an antiparty independent, paving the way for future outsiders. Five years later, it would be Chávez’s turn."

"But back in 1993, Chávez still had a major problem. He was in jail, awaiting trial for treason. However, in 1994, now-President Caldera dropped all charges against him. Caldera’s final act in enabling Chávez was literally opening the gates—of prison—for him. Immediately after Chávez’s release, a reporter asked him where he was going. “To power,” he replied. Freeing Chávez was popular, and Caldera had promised such a move during the campaign. Like most Venezuelan elites, he viewed Chávez as a passing fad—someone who would likely fall out of public favor by the time of the next election. But in dropping all charges, rather than allowing Chávez to stand trial and then pardoning him, Caldera elevated him, transforming the former coup leader overnight into a viable presidential candidate. On December 6, 1998, Chávez won the presidency, easily defeating an establishment-backed candidate. On inauguration day, Caldera, the outgoing president, could not bring himself to deliver the oath of office to Chávez, as tradition dictated. Instead, he stood glumly off to one side."

(Continued)
 

Terry Sampson

Well-Known Member
Continued from #87:


"Hugo Chávez was elected by a majority of voters, but there is little evidence that Venezuelans were looking for a strongman. At the time, public support for democracy was higher there than in Chile—a country that was, and remains, stably democratic. According to the 1998 Latinobarómetro survey, 60 percent of Venezuelans agreed with the statement “Democracy is always the best form of government,” while only 25 percent agreed that “under some circumstances, an authoritarian government can be preferable to a democratic one.”

"The judiciary may also be deployed for constitutional hardball. After opposition parties won control of the Venezuelan congress in a landslide election in December 2015, they hoped to use the legislature to check the power of autocratic president Nicolás Maduro. Thus, the new congress passed an amnesty law that would free 120 political prisoners, and it voted to block Maduro’s declaration of a state of economic emergency (which granted him vast power to govern by decree). To fend off this challenge, Maduro turned to the supreme court, which was packed with loyalists. The chavista court effectively incapacitated the legislature by ruling nearly all of its bills— including the amnesty law, efforts to revise the national budget, and the rejection of the state of emergency—unconstitutional. According to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, the court ruled against congress twenty-four times in six months, striking down “all the laws it has approved.”

"This is what happened in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez. Although the first few years of Chávez’s presidency were democratic, opponents found his populist discourse terrifying. Fearful that Chávez would steer Venezuela toward Cuban-style socialism, they tried to remove him preemptively—and by any means necessary. In April 2002, opposition leaders backed a military coup, which not only failed but destroyed their image as democrats. Undeterred, the opposition launched an indefinite general strike in December 2002, seeking to shut the country down until Chávez resigned. The strike lasted two months, costing Venezuela an estimated $4.5 billion and ultimately failing. Anti-Chávez forces then boycotted the 2005 legislative elections, but this did little more than allow the chavistas to gain total control over Congress. All three strategies had backfired. Not only did they fail to knock Chávez out, but they eroded the opposition’s public support, allowed Chávez to tag his rivals as antidemocratic, and handed the government an excuse to purge the military, the police, and the courts, arrest or exile dissidents, and close independent media outlets. Weakened and discredited, the opposition could not stop the regime’s subsequent descent into authoritarianism."

Table 1: Four Key Indicators of Authoritarian Behavior

1. Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game:
  • Do they reject the Constitution or express a willingness to violate it?
  • Do they suggest a need for antidemocratic measures, such as canceling elections, violating or suspending the Constitution, banning certain organizations, or restricting basic civil or political rights?
  • Do they seek to use (or endorse the use of) extraconstitutional means to change the government, such as military coups, violent insurrections, or mass protests aimed at forcing a change in the government?
  • Do they attempt to undermine the legitimacy of elections, for example, by refusing to accept credible electoral results?
2. Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents:
  • Do they describe their rivals as subversive, or opposed to the existing constitutional order?
  • Do they claim that their rivals constitute an existential threat, either to national security or to the prevailing way of life?
  • Do they baselessly describe their partisan rivals as criminals, whose supposed violation of the law (or potential to do so) disqualifies them from full participation in the political arena?
  • Do they baselessly suggest that their rivals are foreign agents, in that they are secretly working in alliance with (or the employ of) a foreign government—usually an enemy one?
3. Toleration or encouragement of violence:
  • Do they have any ties to armed gangs, paramilitary forces, militias, guerrillas, or other organizations that engage in illicit violence?
  • Have they or their partisan allies sponsored or encouraged mob attacks on opponents?
  • Have they tacitly endorsed violence by their supporters by refusing to unambiguously condemn it and punish it?
  • Have they praised (or refused to condemn) other significant acts of political violence, either in the past or elsewhere in the world?
4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media:
  • Have they supported laws or policies that restrict civil liberties, such as expanded libel or defamation laws, or laws restricting protest, criticism of the government, or certain civic or political organizations?
  • Have they threatened to take legal or other punitive action against critics in rival parties, civil society, or the media?
  • Have they praised repressive measures taken by other governments, either in the past or elsewhere in the world?
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Are you planning on one day learning what the word "socialism" means? Or will you be content just to go on using it incorrectly to score whatever points you seem to be seeking?

Yes, there are always the white washed versions. I call it wolves in sheep's clothing.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Since that number has not changed in 10 years, 174000 is 2019 dollars is about $142,000.

Whether you consider that a decent salary for them or not is, of course, a different matter.

Let's use your lower adjusted figure.

Broken down into weekly compensation that's around.... a $2732.00 'entry level' paycheck.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
People don't want to count the perks. I wonder why?
Well there's no question about the 'free' healthcare available through the office of the attending physician for each congressperson in addition to all the weekly moolah.

One could also take a look at their retirement plan which in my opinion is pure gold. Kaaachinnnnggg!!!! Jackpot for life!
 

SugarOcean

¡pɹᴉǝM ʎɐʇS
Socialism proponents in America likely have never lived in a country where Socialism is the rule.
That though is not an excuse. All one has to do is watch the news and take the object lesson of Venezuela and Socialisms failure there. People are fleeing the country and seeking refugee status in nearby countries. Peru, and elsewhere.
And 2020 Presidential candidate hopeful and Socialist Bernie Sanders has yet to comment. Wonder why.
Venezuela remember is oil rich. So why so much trouble? Some say Capitalism, not Socialism. That's just silly.
For those who don't like long videos:


 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Socialism proponents in America likely have never lived in a country where Socialism is the rule.
That though is not an excuse. All one has to do is watch the news and take the object lesson of Venezuela and Socialisms failure there. People are fleeing the country and seeking refugee status in nearby countries. Peru, and elsewhere.
And 2020 Presidential candidate hopeful and Socialist Bernie Sanders has yet to comment. Wonder why.
Venezuela remember is oil rich. So why so much trouble? Some say Capitalism, not Socialism. That's just silly.
For those who don't like long videos:


You know what really gets me?

Is that people who actually come from socialist countries and try hard to warn the Democrats about their now more than obvious Socialist / Marxist Direction, just gets blown off like they don't know what they're talkin about.

‘Damn socialism, why are you chasing me?’ Chinese-Americans see ghost of communism in Democrats’ leftward turn

That's why I think Socialist Democrats are being consciously intentional and already know what they're doing in willfully setting up yet another socialist regime to forcefully take over the country and control other people's lives for the exclusive benefit of themselves at the cost of freedoms and liberties of others.
 

SugarOcean

¡pɹᴉǝM ʎɐʇS
You know what really gets me?

Is that people who actually come from socialist countries and try hard to warn the Democrats about their now more than obvious Socialist / Marxist Direction, just gets blown off like they don't know what they're talkin about.

‘Damn socialism, why are you chasing me?’ Chinese-Americans see ghost of communism in Democrats’ leftward turn

That's why I think Socialist Democrats are being consciously intentional and already know what they're doing in willfully setting up yet another socialist regime to forcefully take over the country and control other people's lives for the exclusive benefit of themselves at the cost of freedoms and liberties of others.
Well put and I agree.
In my opinion Socialist Democrats, like AOC and Sanders, attach Democrat to their Socialist cause so as to make it sound more benign and not as serious as the historic failure that is Socialism. It makes it sound like it is an evolution of our current Constitutional Republic and Democratic process.
The one's that are all for the rhetoric AOC and BS push concerning Socialism are those who have never experienced a Socialist reality. While they're typically stoner's, gamers, and lazy. And they see the perfect world view people like Abomination Of Congress describe, you know, that "green new deal" nonsense that says they're going to refit all houses to be more green friendly, while everyone will get a paycheck whether they work or not, as their ideal reality.
They can stay home, toke up in those states that are more and more legalizing recreational pot, play video games, laze around, and still have their bills paid.
It's ideal. The perpetual kid living in their parents basement reality. Only with a direct deposit pay check.

Have you ever watched the Millennial mentality that AOC and BS pander to as part of their base when they push Socialism? These clueless people who try and fail to explain what Socialism is when asked?

"Everything is free! Weeee!" Yeah, right.


Bill Maher , who I am no fan of, has even said, don't romanticize Socialism. Maher!

 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
There is the elephant in the room. How do we provide truly affordable healthcare without bankrupting the people paying into the system as the ACA was doing in my state? But we need to do better than we are. The ability to get needed medical care should not be based on a persons wealth. And I don't think anyone should have to file bankruptcy (as many unfortunately have had to do) just because they had the audacity to get sick. IMHO of course.
You want "truly affordable?" Eliminate parasitic 'services', bloated departments and bureaucracy; eliminate waste, buy equipment and drugs at cost or discount. The American health care systems are a Rube Goldberg, with a thousand services with their fingers in the pie. It's a system designed to generate profit, not public service.

Socialize the system and we should be able to create something better and more efficient at a third the cost of our present, mercantile systems. The elephant could be turned into a tapir.
 

David1967

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
You want "truly affordable?" Eliminate parasitic 'services', bloated departments and bureaucracy; eliminate waste, buy equipment and drugs at cost or discount. The American health care systems are a Rube Goldberg, with a thousand services with their fingers in the pie. It's a system designed to generate profit, not public service.

Socialize the system and we should be able to create something better and more efficient at a third the cost of our present, mercantile systems. The elephant could be turned into a tapir.

Well said.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Tell me that wasn't true.

It took Trump to get rid of the insipid mandate that the Socialists try to dress up as a 'tax' enforced and controlled people into purchasing private insurance creating a perpetual state of forced debt on people.

Ignorant much?
Obamacare is hardly socialist program.
A social program no.

Socialist policies yes. A very serious threat to people's freedoms and liberties.
Not following. What are you trying to say, here? What is a threat -- social programs, social policies?
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
There is the elephant in the room. How do we provide truly affordable healthcare without bankrupting the people paying into the system as the ACA was doing in my state? But we need to do better than we are. The ability to get needed medical care should not be based on a persons wealth. And I don't think anyone should have to file bankruptcy (as many unfortunately have had to do) just because they had the audacity to get sick. IMHO of course.
Get rid of the capitalist, for-profit ACA. There are other systems out there.
 
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