EastIndiaCompany

EastIndiaCompany https://www.dailykos.com/news/EastIndiaCompany News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Mon, 27 Jan 2020 04:51:54 +0000 Mon, 27 Jan 2020 04:51:54 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) The most dangerous and violent narcotics cartel the world has ever seen. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/9/22/1696301/-The-most-dangerous-and-violent-narcotics-cartel-the-world-has-ever-seen <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/20/politics/donald-trump-african-leaders-rich/index.html" target="_blank">President Trump, addressing African representatives at the UN</a>: <blockquote> “I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich, I congratulate you.” </blockquote> To many observers, this remark sounded a whole lot like neo-colonialism. Colonialism was not kind to colonized peoples, and there’s no reason to believe neo-colonialism will be. Especially when leaders of major military powers have “friends” trying to make money in far away lands. Here’s an example from another century. The British East India company was one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Interestingly, its charter permitted it to wage war. It maintained a mercenary army and engaged in equal parts trade and conquest. In 1757, the company’s mercenary army <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey" target="_blank">defeated the nawab of Bengal</a>, gaining control over the region. Bengal was attractive to the company since it was the primary source of opium, which the company traded to great profit. In a sense, you could say the East India company was a narco-cartel that took over an entire state, Bengal, with a population of 30 million people. Of course, it helped that there were backed by the military might of the nascent British empire. This is what Betsy Devos’ brother Erik Prince <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/08/09/inside-erik-princes-secret-proposal-to-outsource-the-war-in-afghanistan/" target="_blank">thinks should happen in Afghanistan</a>, with Blackwater/Academi playing the role of the East India Company. Except it’s already been done, with predictably terrible results. In 1770, the east Indian regions of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa suffered a terrible famine, while the company exercised control over the region. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=BOHnCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA201&vq=bengal&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">10 million people starved to death</a>, though some studies indicate the death toll may have been as high as 15 million. Death rates in some towns were over 60%, and for the region as a whole, 33-50%. In comparison, the better known Great Famine of the 1840s (in another British colony, Ireland) caused 1.5 million deaths. Reports of the Bengal famine of 1770 reached Britain swiftly. The company and its agents were severely criticized in several quarters. Among others, Adam Smith wrote about the company’s policies in Bengal: <blockquote> The great fortunes so suddenly and so easily acquired in Bengal and the other British settlements in the East Indies, may satisfy us that, as the wages of labour are very low, so the profits of stock are very high in those ruined countries. The interest of money is proportionably so. In Bengal, money is frequently lent to the farmers at forty, fifty, and sixty per cent, and the succeeding crop is mortgaged for the payment. As the profits which can afford such an interest must eat up almost the whole rent of the landlord, so such enormous usury must in its turn eat up the greater part of those profits. (In their transactions with the inhabitants of India, the British substituted violence for trade; and the price at which they bought or sold was often very different, therefore, from the value of the market. They took what they wanted at their own price, and it was by this violence that they drained the country of its wealth.) — <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=kiZFAAAAYAAJ&dq=adam%20smith%20wealth%20of%20nations&pg=PA153#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations</a> </blockquote> Yet, almost two hundred years later, during WW-2, another British government would stoke another famine in Bengal, <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html" target="_blank">killing 2 or 3 million people</a>. The great famine of 1770 was triggered by a failed monsoon the prior autumn. A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders" target="_blank">decade of predatory tax harvesting</a> by the East India company had depleted the savings of rural Bengalis and Biharis. The company had raised land taxes over the prior decade, sending the proceeds back to shareholders in London. When the monsoon failed in 1769, many now impoverished Bengali families had no way to buy food. The company’s officers had stolen their savings via extortionate “taxes”, often employing violence and torture. The company’s policy of replacing food crops with opium likely exacerbated the famine. <a href="https://thewire.in/85592/currency-famine-1770-bengal-india/" target="_blank">Smallpox broke out</a> among the starving survivors. <blockquote> In a pattern familiar from the more extensively documented famines of the nineteenth century, peasants tried to sell their possessions, even the plows and bullocks they would need n teh future to till their fields. In desperation they ate their seed corn, then turned to eating grass, leaves, and bark. Children were sold to anyone who would buy them: some survived the famine only as slaved in European and Indian households. There were reports, as so often when the intensity of India's famine passed beyond normal comprehension, of hungry people driven to the extremes even of cannibalism; "There were persons who fed on forbidden and abhorred animals, nay the child on its dead parent, the mother on her child." Large numbers died of starvation or disease before they could find relief or because they were too worn out and malnourished to absorb the food they received. Mortality was greatest among agricultural laborers, poor peasants, and artisans (cotton and silk weavers, lime workers, and the like), with Bihar and western Bengal suffering most. Only toward the end of 1770 did the drought and famine abate. — <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CcBeuxeWHhEC&lpg=PA81&ots=i9CMJF39Dq&dq=bengal%20famine%201770%20granaries&pg=PA81#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">David Arnold: Hunger in the garden of plenty</a> </blockquote> As it happens, killing a third of your labor force isn’t a good thing for any enterprise, even a narco-cartel with a side business in tax harvesting. Opium production fell after the famine, and the East India company came under immense financial stress. Since many members of parliament held East India company stock, it wasn’t difficult to convince them to pass laws to bolster the firm’s finances. <blockquote> The Company created a powerful East India lobby in Parliament, a caucus of MPs who had either directly or indirectly profited from its business and who constituted, in Edmund Burke's opinion, one of the most united and formidable forces in British politics. It also made regular gifts to the Court: “All who could help or hurt at Court,” wrote Lord Macaulay, “ministers, mistresses, priests, were kept in good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds' nests and attar of roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas.” It also made timely gifts to the Treasury whenever the state faced bankruptcy. In short, it acted as what George Dempster, a stockholder, called a “great money engine of state”. — <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21541753" target="_blank">www.economist.com/...</a> </blockquote> By 1773, the company had successfully lobbied the British parliament to grant it a monopoly on opium production in Bengal. That would solidify the company’s position as the largest producer and dealer of hard drugs in the world. The East India company used the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=iekF9X3OwwMC&lpg=PA94&ots=9xusKFpMDt&dq=east%20india%20company%20land%20taxes%20bengal&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">land taxes extracted from peasants</a> to buy opium. Since it had a monopoly, it could control prices. The opium was then sent to China, to be traded for Chinese tea. And this is where the opium trade intersects with American history. Goaded by the directors, Parliament passed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Act" target="_blank">Tea Act of 1773</a>. This legislation was meant to further bolster the company’s finances by allowing it to export tea, under preferential terms, to the American colonies. If this is beginning to sound familiar, it should. The Tea Act led to the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. If 10 million Bengalis hadn’t been starved to death by an opium cartel owned by British lords, this country might not have thrown off the colonial yoke when it did. Let’s talk about this tea which American revolutionaries gleefully dumped into Boston harbor. With their monopoly on opium production, the East India company had solved one of its biggest dilemmas. Thus far, British merchants had to scrounge up gold and silver to buy Chinese goods. But if they could get enough Chinese people hooked on opium, that would serve as currency. And since they controlled production and prices, let’s just say it was a good deal. Over the course of the 18th and early 19th century, the East India company increased its opium exports to China manyfold. At the turn of the 19th century, the Chinese government moved to make the opium trade illegal. British merchant-pirates resorted to smuggling to continue the trade. The Chinese government’s attempts to restrict opium imports were largely ineffective. By the 1830s, a large portion of the population (perhaps as high as 20%) was using opium. The Chinese government sought to restrict the trade even further. Faced with a direct threat to their lucrative opium-tea trade, British naval forces and the armies of the East India company joined together to wage war on China. British forces fighting alongside the East India company’s mercenary army won the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War" target="_blank">First Opium War</a> of 1840-42. Casualties on the Chinese side (both civilian and military) were in the tens of thousands. British forces engaged in <a href="https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/opium_wars_01/ow1_essay03.html" target="_blank">extensive looting and destruction of art works</a>. The Qing dynasty government was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/02/opium-war-julia-lovell-review" target="_blank">forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking</a>. It granted British merchants free access to numerous Chinese ports, and ceded the island of Hong Kong to Britain. British merchants <a href="https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/opium_wars_01/ow1_essay01.html" target="_blank">resumed distributing thousands of tons of opium</a> to China every year. The loss and burden of making reparations to Britain weakened the Qing dynasty and helped spark the Taiping rebellion. That bloody civil war cost 20-30 million lives and the First Opium War is seen as a seminal event in Chinese history. The government and the company were severely criticized by some in Britain for initiating this war. Famously, this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-secret-history.html" target="_blank" title="">included the future Prime Minister Gladstone</a>, who had seen <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jYmFAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA78&dq=William%20Gladstone%20opium&pg=PA78#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank" title="">his sister turn into an opium addict</a>. <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16681673" target="_blank" title="">Opium was widely available in Britain</a> and Europe at the time, most commonly sold as laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol. Those treating addiction among their friends and family were appalled that their government would wage war on Chinese administrators trying to do the same. Their criticism remained laughably ineffective when there was so much money to be made via drug-dealing. In 1856-60 the British government fought a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War" target="_blank" title="">second opium war</a>, seeking to renegotiate the terms of the earlier treaty. A key demand was lifting all restrictions on the opium trade. The British also sought to expand the coolie trade. This <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/11/25/247166284/a-history-of-indentured-labor-gives-coolie-its-sting" target="_blank" title="">system of indentured servitude</a> took Indian and Chinese laborers and placed them on Caribbean and South American plantations to grow commodity crops. It has <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/ihrc/news-events/other/coolie-trade-19th-century" target="_blank" title="">been called near-slavery</a>. The “coolies” were often kidnapped from their homes or transported after being given false assurances. US traders participated in this human trafficking, most often by selling <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1860/04/21/news/the-american-coolie-trade.html" target="_blank" title="">Chinese laborers to Cuban plantation owners</a>. Lincoln eventually signed a law <a href="http://library.uwb.edu/Static/USimmigration/1862_anti_coolie_law.html" target="_blank" title="">outlawing the coolie-trade</a>. Over their four year campaign, British and French forces defeated the Chinese army and navy. It’s worth noting that they were aided by the US armed forces. A naval vessel, the USS San Jacinto was actively engaged in the conflict. Can you imagine the response if the armies and navies of Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan lay siege to the port of Los Angeles, demanding the unfettered right to sell heroin and cocaine to Americans? Yeah, that’s probably what most Chinese people thought about it. There are dozens of interesting stories about these events. Tales of colonization and its impact on peoples across the world. Stories of narco-privateers sailing under the British flag who enjoyed the protection of the world’s most powerful navy. There’s that one time the US navy fought alongside dealers and smugglers of hard drugs. The tragic history of a famine that killed ten million living, breathing human beings, just like you and me. There’s the story of Chinese and Indian leaders who sought to protect their people and countries from colonization. Are you likely to see a mainstream movie about any of this? Not really. Hollywood is too busy rehabilitating Georgian and Victorian era aristocrats with period pieces that showcase their tastes in clothing and leisure activities. We are treated to sympathetic movies about the madness of George III, Victoria and her Scottish servant, Victoria and her Indian servant, Victoria and her German consort-prince, Young Victoria, Old Victoria, Middle-Aged Victoria. What should we learn from this? That the desire to absolve and gloss over runs deep? If so, it means thirty years from now, perhaps sooner, we’ll all be watching bio-pics about Trump’s lovable forgetfulness and his unlikely friendship with Ben Carson. — <a href="https://twitter.com/subirgrewal" target="_blank">@subirgrewal</a> | Cross-posted at <a href="http://www.notmeus.org/2017/09/the-most-dangerous-and-violent-narcotics-cartel-the-world-has-ever-seen/" target="_blank">NotMeUs.org</a> rss@dailykos.com (subir) 1770 AbrahamLincoln AmericanRevolution Bengal Bihar BostonTeaParty Carribean China CoolieTrade EastIndiaCompany Famine GreatBengalFamine GreatIrishFamine History HongKong India Ireland KingGeorgeIII Opium opiumwars Recommended TaipingRebellion Victoria _1696301 Fri, 22 Sep 2017 15:21:49 +0000 The Price of Profits: Marketplace Questions the Unquestionable https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/19/1540357/-The-Price-of-Profits-Marketplace-Questions-the-Unquestionable <a href="http://www.marketplace.org" target="_blank">Marketplace</a>, a radio show focused on economic matters, teamed up with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com" target="_blank" title="">Business Insider</a> to question a fundamental tenet of the modern world economy. It has become gospel that <a href="http://features.marketplace.org/priceofprofits/" target="_blank" title="">the sole responsibility of a corporation is to maximize profits for its shareholders</a>. But it turns out that is a recent conviction and one that has not always been the case historically. Maximizing profits over all other considerations comes with costs. The series explores how we got here, the history behind it, and the consequences. This video is the introduction to the series. <div class="dk-editor-embed embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9 center-block"> <div class="remove-embed-content">x</div> <a class="iframe_placeholder youtube dk-embed" href="//youtube.com/watch?v=IkA6FWI--q4" data-height="281" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/IkA6FWI--q4" data-width="500">YouTube Video</a></div> <a href="http://features.marketplace.org/priceofprofits/" target="_blank" title="">Take a look (and a listen) to the series.</a> It’s a wide-ranging look at one of the major fundamental assumptions underlying the way the modern economy is supposed to work. The audio links are especially content rich. (Listen to what happened to IBM.) The different chapters of the series explore how it all ties togther. I’m pulling out some excerpts here; there is much more at <a href="http://features.marketplace.org/priceofprofits/" target="_blank">features.marketplace.org/...</a> CHAPTER 1: THIS ECONOMY IS DIFFERENT <blockquote> For many people, it feels like the wheels have come off the American Dream. Wages are stuck. The once sure-fire step up, a college degree, is becoming unaffordable. Jobs a family can plan a future around can seem scarce. Much of the angry passion this election year stems directly from these concerns about Americans’ personal economies. </blockquote> CHAPTER 2: CORPORATE AMERICA <blockquote> ...The corporation had been a legal entity just right to serve the world’s first mass market, the United States, in the early 1900s. It owned itself, but could raise huge sums by selling stock. It could invest in giant projects like steel mills and car factories because it could live forever. The corporation thrived on efficiency of scale. It rewarded size. By 1930, the economist Gerald Davis writes in “The Vanishing American Corporation,” just 200 companies held half of all corporate assets. By 1970, just two dozen employed one of every 10 workers in the U.S. Now, skip ahead that baby boomer’s lifetime, to today. A lot has happened to corporations. </blockquote> <div class="dk-editor-embed embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9 center-block"> <div class="remove-embed-content">x</div> <a class="iframe_placeholder youtube dk-embed" href="//youtube.com/watch?v=qMtk6of1mK4" data-height="281" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qMtk6of1mK4" data-width="500">YouTube Video</a></div> This <a href="http://features.marketplace.org/timeline-shareholder/" target="_blank" title="">Timeline shows how the way corporations have functioned in society has changed over time</a>. Increasing shareholder value was not always <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Prime_Directive" target="_blank" title="">the Prime Directive</a>. CHAPTER 3: SHAREHOLDER VALUE <blockquote> Listen to business news on cable TV, and you’ll hear bankers, fund managers and CEOs talk about a corporation’s legal responsibility to <a href="http://www.marketplace.org/2016/06/08/world/profit-shareholder-value" title="">“maximize shareholder value.”</a> The idea that the product of a corporation is profits is gospel. It’s taught in business school. But it’s not true. “Just pick up the Supreme Court case, Hobby Lobby, decided just a few years ago,” said <a href="http://www.marketplace.org/2016/06/09/economy/price-profits/shareholder-value-myth">Lynn Stout</a>, a Cornell law professor and the author of “The Shareholder Value Myth.” “Read the majority opinion, where Justice Alito says, ‘Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else.’” </blockquote> emphasis added CHAPTER 4: COMPANIES BUY THEMSELVES <blockquote> ...Publicly owned corporations today are like sharks: They have to keep moving forward or they die. Wall Street demands ever-higher profits. “Wall Street” is shorthand for not only the big investment banks, but also hedge funds, pension funds, endowment funds and mutual funds. That is, us. Everyone wants the highest possible returns, often without thinking about how they’re gained. Few businesses grow forever. Industries rarely invent what replaces them. Railroads did not invent cars. Newspapers did not invent the internet. So there will come a time when a corporation is making money but standing still. What to do? These mature companies need to keep Wall Street invested in them. And this is where investment funds come in and say, raise cash and use it to grow your share price. Profits become these companies’ product. It’s called financialization. </blockquote> CHAPTER 5: SHAREHOLDER VALUE VS. JOBS <blockquote> ...When Wall Street demands ever-higher profits, one way to generate them is, paradoxically, to get rid of assets. Sell that steel mill. Automate those workers, or hire temps in their place. Get all that stuff off the books. As Gerald Davis, the author of “The Vanishing American Corporation,” has written, “Under current conditions, creating shareholder value and creating good jobs are largely incompatible. Companies are job creators only as a last resort.” </blockquote> emphasis added This is possibly one of the most important series Marketplace has ever done. <a href="http://features.marketplace.org/priceofprofits/" target="_blank" title="">Read/listen/watch the whole thing</a><a href="http://features.marketplace.org/priceofprofits/" target="_blank" title="">.</a> Business Insider has a related feature noting that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-earliest-companies-werent-interested-in-their-shareholders-or-making-money-2016-6" target="_blank">corporations once did not make profit their primary concern</a>. It ties in well with a separate piece on the history of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160330-the-worlds-most-powerful-corporation" target="_blank" title="">British East India Company</a> from the BBC that will give you some real perspective on corporations over the centuries. rss@dailykos.com (xaxnar) 401K AmericanPublicMedia BBC Business BusinessInsider Corporation EastIndiaCompany Economy financialization Jobs MarketPlace shareholder shareholdervalue WallStreet _1540357 Sun, 19 Jun 2016 15:10:55 +0000 Capitalism and Rule by Corporation https://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/7/17/1314447/-Capitalism-and-Rule-by-Corporation  A few years ago <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/david/ron-paul-africa-has-famines-because-they-are">Ron Paul</a> made a somewhat controversial statement. <blockquote> Paul told CNN's T.J. Holmes. "If you look at Africa, they don't have any free market systems and property rights and they have famines and no medical care. So the freer the system, the better the health care."</blockquote>  There are several problems with this statement, starting with the fact that Africa is a continent and not a country. It has at least 54 countries with economies ranging from socialism to complete anarchy and everything in-between.    However, what I want to focus on is the assumption that you don't have famines in a capitalist system. rss@dailykos.com (gjohnsit) Bengal Capitalism EastIndiaCompany Famine Recommended Socialism _1314447 Thu, 17 Jul 2014 15:02:30 +0000 Ignorance and the Tea Party https://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/18/921134/-Ignorance-and-the-Tea-Party  IT is amazing how people can say things that seem to them true but are simply false.  What is even stranger is that few care if it is true at all.  The Tea Party and  its self-appointed representatives refer to the events of 1776 as their point of departure as a movement today.  The "Join the Tea Party" ( <a href="https://www.jointheteaparty.us/)">https://www.jointheteaparty.us/...</a> simply identifies itself as being opposed to "liberal insanity" and especially George Soros. Another group, Tea Party Patriots claim they are following the Founders of the American Revolution by pressing their core values on other Americas.  These core values of (http://www.teapartypatriots.org/mission.aspx) are : fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets.  The The Tea Party Nation, they have limited their core values to a pick and chose approach to the Founders' ideals as: " Tea Party Nation is a user-driven  group of like-minded people who desire our God-given individual  freedoms written out by the Founding Fathers. We believe in Limited  Government, Free Speech, the 2nd Amendment, our Military, Secure  Borders and our Country." rss@dailykos.com (niccolo caldararo) AmericanRevolution EastIndiaCompany Monopoly Taxation Tea Party TeaParty _921134 Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:57:50 +0000 India, Tea Parties, and Laissez-Faire https://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/10/919406/-India-Tea-Parties-and-Laissez-Faire  I think a defining moment of the Tea Party movement happened when Glen Beck decided to take on <a href="http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-02-26/opinion/17956791_1_glenn-beck-undo-laissez-faire">Teddy Roosevelt</a>. The quote that Beck focused on for his wrath was this: "We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used."  In Beck's eyes, and in the eyes of the Tea Party followers, T.R. was speaking about some sort of "socialist utopia". Apparently real men defend wealth that is dishonorably obtained and then wasted. It's sort of like defending the right to commit evil. It's really a hard sell for anyone outside of the cult. rss@dailykos.com (gjohnsit) EastIndiaCompany Economics History LaissezFaire Tea Party Teaching TeaParty _919406 Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:27:26 +0000 TEA PARTY SKEWERED IN MONTANA https://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/29/906441/-TEA-PARTY-SKEWERED-IN-MONTANA Our local paper [Bitterroot Star] published my piece on the Tea Party yesterday.  I thought Kossacks might enjoy learning what is happening on the fringes of the known world.   For those of you who don't know, the Bitterroot Valley in Montana, where I live, is crawling with rabid anti-environmentalists, UN conspiracy theorists, Limbaugh wingnuts, wolf haters, and assorted right wing crazies of similar ilk. They consistently, in spite of my regular votes to the contrary, elect ultra conservative Republicans to office.  The Bitterroot Star called my opinion piece, "Time for Tea Party to face reality."  Here it is: rss@dailykos.com (leftinmontana) BitterrootValley Corporations EastIndiaCompany Recommended Right Wing RightWing TARP Taxes Tea Party TeaParty _906441 Thu, 30 Sep 2010 01:44:44 +0000 I Want a Public Option ... https://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/12/845526/-I-Want-a-Public-Option But the Democrats we elected do not have the balls to pull it off. Or, they're too busy playing footsie with the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry to care about what we voters want. rss@dailykos.com (Karen Hedwig Backman) BostonTeaParty Citizens United CitizensUnited CorporatePersonHood DickArmey EastIndiaCompany Freedom Works HealthCareReform HealthInsuranceIndustry Pharmaceuticalindustry SCOTUS Teabaggers _845526 Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:39:15 +0000 Coming Attraction- The Primaries, what kind of Candidates do we want? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/20/826850/-Coming-Attraction-The-Primaries-what-kind-of-Candidates-do-we-want Having a House of Representatives and Senate with Democratic majorities is vital and this blog's chief aim. But .............. the type of Democrat that takes that office is of major importance too. We now begin a season of deciding who will best represent the American people from each of our districts (Representatives) and some states (Senators and Governors). So that we can advocate and work to get these people in office, once we decide which ones measure up to what we need. So I suggest we have a conversation about what it is we want in the people that will come to us and ask for our support in the coming campaigns. This is the most likely time we will have to get them to know what is important to us and what they think and are likely to advocate for in any new legislation. It matters what these people understand about our governance.   rss@dailykos.com (socks) Congress Constitution EastIndiaCompany Globalism KingGeorge RevolutionaryWar Rule of Law RuleofLaw Taxation _826850 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:48:03 +0000 Reconciliation? Was that the mandate? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/19/663431/-Reconciliation-Was-that-the-mandate All along I thought it was about change, you know the change we all believe in. Yes, most Americans want less petty bickering and lies from the folks we elected to hold office. Less shouting over each other on the daily TV machine. Less propaganda filtering into our governance. Less ruthless distruction of Constitutional values, especially from those we elect. We never said we wanted to get into bed with the criminals, did we? The change has far more to do with a return to rule of laws based upon our Constitution, treaties, and governance based on the ideas of community having as a goal the perfecting the union for us all. rss@dailykos.com (socks) ConstitutionalLaw EastIndiaCompany Globalism GovernmentPolicy KingGeorgeIII Monopolies noe-con Robber Barons RobberBarons Treaties _663431 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:14:06 +0000 To my hero, Doctor Howard Dean https://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/18/663182/-To-my-hero-Doctor-Howard-Dean This afternoon mcjoan had a diary about your discussion with some of the netroot bloggers, explaining how we need to prioritize (pick our battels) and practice patience in the political field of battle. Much of the premise for your defense of allowing the netroots to be sabatoged by the Democratic leadership's keeping Senator Lieberman, not only within the Democratic caucus, but chairman of commitiee(s) had, IMHO, a flase assumption.     I quote mcjoan's article here:.............."So if you run and get a mandate for reconciliation is your first act to kick this guy out of the party? Well, people of my generation think yeah, damn right we should. But in this new spirit of reconciliation, which is why I think Barack Obama got elected by 66 percent of the under 35 vote, maybe if not (unintelligible) I'm very willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the Senators and to Barack Obama on that one." I ask, was the mandate for reconciliation at all costs, or was reconciliation the point of so much of the mandate? Reconciliation based on principles is my assertion. rss@dailykos.com (socks) EastIndiaCompany George Bush GeorgeBush Globalization HowardDean KingGeorgeIII Mandate mcjoan _663182 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:37:02 +0000