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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over!
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3461
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to Piwin)
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quote:
Are you at all worried about the legal battles that seem to be gearing up? Is there any chance this could end up in a Trump victory or is it just sensationalistic games to pander to their base? Peter and Ramzi asked the same question above, Piwin, and I will repeat my response here. For all practical purposes it is over. The Trumpsters are hoping to have some court cases, and already have filed several that have been rejected by the courts. None of the cases appear to be substantial enough to affect the outcome. For example, one case was about "observers" being allowed to stand six feet away from the counting rather than ten feet. Nevertheless, it will not be "official" until the Electoral College vote is officially certified by a joint session of Congress. On January 6, 2021 at 1:00pm, The sitting Vice President, acting as the Senate president, will preside over a joint session of Congress to read aloud the certificates cast by the electors representing all 50 states and D.C. in alphabetical order to finalize the vote count. If no members of Congress object to any of the certificates in writing, the Senate president officially certifies the selection of the president-elect and vice president-elect. I find it both ironic and poetic justice that that milquetoast, obsequious toady Mike Pence, in his role as Senate president, will certify the results. I think you can take it to the bank that Biden and Harris will be our next president and vice president. Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 10 2020 18:24:38
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Brendan
Posts: 357
Joined: Oct. 30 2010
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
The bloated public sector (which was most of the economy; a private sector hardly existed!) Bill, if you insist on yank-splaining the political history of other people's countries, try not to write easily-checked rubbish. The private sector was always bigger than the public sector in the UK, even in the post-war period when public investment boomed and some major areas were nationalised. Here is some data: "In the early 1960s, public corporations employed almost nine percent of the labour force, and total public sector employment reached 27 percent." This is from WHY HAS THE PUBLIC SECTOR GROWN SO LARGE IN MARKET SOCIETIES? THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUDENCE IN THE UK, C. 1870–2000 Based on an Inaugural Lecture for the Chichele Chair in Economic History, presented at the University of Oxford, 13 November 2001 AVNER OFFER, All Souls College, Oxford. I'm not asking you to buy Prof Offer's argument, but we can probably rely on the numbers. 27% may be too much or too little, but it wasn't exactly squeezing the private sector out of existence. Looking at GDP, you get more like 40% in the public sector in that period, which is big but still not the majority. Even in the post-war period, most of the economy was in private hands. This doesn't debunk the overall thrust of your story, because yes, Thatcher did indeed come along and privatise a lot of big public bodies that by then probably were due a kicking, but honestly, if you're going to sound forth with such confidence you need to do better. And if you tell this story while skipping over the ballooning unemployment of the 1980s, well, you're not telling it straight. And Richard, it wasn't a brief experiment, it was the cross-party consensus of the post-war years, rooted in a common wartime experience of effective large-scale state action. Labour and Conservative governments alike tried to plan for peace as they had planned for war. Yes, it broke down, but the idea that an economic model that lasted for 30 years and gave us the NHS and mass higher education was some sort of fleeting dalliance with lefty nonsense won't do. I realise that I'm seizing on relatively small details here, but I think you're both due a reminder that you're writing about places where people live, who can read what you're writing and roll their eyes at it. I wouldn't dream of writing here about the political histories of France, Spain or the USA. I don't know nearly enough. I might shape my curiosity into a question, though.
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Date Nov. 10 2020 18:30:00
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Mark2
Posts: 1883
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to Ricardo)
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The effort to squash the underground economy has been going on for some time, and on various battlegrounds. The state of California recently passed AB5, which made employees out of many people that have always been considered independent contractors. Writers, musicians, and uber drivers were included. There was a lot of push back, including the 200 million dollars uber and lyft spent to fund a proposition exempting their drivers from the law. I'm surprised they won. I wish I had 200 mil to spend to rescind every law I don't like. Some others were exempted as well, even without spending a fortune. This was an effort to have employers withhold taxes, nothing more. The government knows you guys pocket that hundred bucks for playing a restaurant gig and they want their pound of flesh. So, they pass a law saying you are now an employee of the restaurant, club, etc. On a different front, I recently visited the Federal reserve building where the feds store, make, and burn cash. One thing I learned was the reason they no longer circulate bills larger than one hundred dollar bills is to combat money laundering and drug dealers. Thirty million in hundreds takes a fair amount of space. Also, many institutions no longer accept large cash payments, such as for mortgages. This is to squeeze people who most likely don't pay a whole lot of taxes. Wonder if you can still stroll into a dealership and buy a lambo for cash. I don't know. I had not realized obamacare put a spotlight on people in that way but if so I'm not surprised. I'd say trump's chances of remaining in office are about the same as Lloyd Christmas closing the deal with Mary. quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo quote:
It's not that they would not benefit from an expansion of ACA or Yeah, that’s another fun thing that neither side seems to understand. Obamacare main function was to force people in USA, poor or wealthy drug dealer/ mobster alike, to FILE taxes (ie pay tax or go back on grid if they had under table dealings unreported, but mainly poor that couldn’t afford to pay), or get sick and die at some point drained of funds. A nice bottleneck situation so gov can see what people owe what in terms of tax, so they could collect it much easier. Pretty ingenious actually, but keep in mind a lot of people where happier before that making cash under the table for certain things and spending it on the doctor of their choice. It felt more like “freedom” to those people. Imagine being a poor person that had not been able to file tax in years due to preexisting health and struggle to make ends meet...hurray for Obamacare I can now get coverage ....oh, but wait....back tax gamble could mean owing thousands just in penalties...Ill keep paying for my insurance now and deal with taxes later....then a nice little letter in the mail...”you are no longer ACA compliant and have no insurance”....
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Date Nov. 10 2020 21:29:49
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3461
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to Brendan)
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Brendan, you make very good points, and I plead guilty to exaggerating when I stated, "a private sector hardly existed." In doing so, I violated one of my core beliefs, i.e., precision in language matters. Mea culpa. If I may say as a Yank, however, I closely followed events in the UK out of interest in the mid to late-1970s and beyond, and one thing I was very glad to see was Thatcher reining in the Miners' Union after she became Prime Minister. Arthur Scargill (known as "Red Arthur") and the Miners' Union had the British public by the throat, literally holding it hostage to their demands. As I mentioned above, I was assigned to the American Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Scargill would take his vacations at Varna, on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast while dropping in on his friend Todor Zhivkov, the president of Bulgaria. In those days, we in Western Embassies referred informally to Bulgaria as the 16th Soviet Republic, as it followed Soviet policy without question. Scargill apparently approved of such a policy. I would note, however, that Bulgaria owed its independence from the Ottoman Empire to Russia, who prevailed in the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War. Regarding Thatcher, I have met and discussed her tenure with Brits who very much approved of her policies, and others who really disliked her and her policies. It will be interesting to see how historians ultimately place her in the line-up of British Prime ministers. It is probably still too early to come to a categorical conclusion. I am reminded of Nixon's 1972 visit to China. Henry Kissinger had a long discussion with Zhou En-Lai who was probably Kissinger's intellectual equal. When Kissinger asked Zhou En-Lai what effect he thought the French Revolution had had on world history, Zhou En-Lai replied, "It is too soon to tell." Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 10 2020 21:59:07
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to Brendan)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Brendan And Richard, it wasn't a brief experiment, it was the cross-party consensus of the post-war years, rooted in a common wartime experience of effective large-scale state action. Labour and Conservative governments alike tried to plan for peace as they had planned for war. Yes, it broke down, but the idea that an economic model that lasted for 30 years and gave us the NHS and mass higher education was some sort of fleeting dalliance with lefty nonsense won't do. I certainly didn't mean to imply that the wartime coalition government and the postwar Labour governments were "brief experiments." I was in fact impressed by the wide support among my friends and work mates for Labour, even when they were beginning to become unpopular. In the post above I conceded my Labour friend's claim that the U.S. political parties in 1976 didn't present a real choice from a British perspective. My friends filled me in on the history of socialist thought and action, reaching back to the 19th century, though I wouldn't claim a detailed understanding of it. The intended burden of my post was the abuse of the word "socialism" in the overheated political rhetoric of the USA, and the unlikelihood of any appearance of actual socialism in my country. By the time I began to spend a few months' time out of the year in the U.K. the Labour Party had existed for nearly 70 years. Its antecedents existed during at least the latter third of the 19th century. However in view of my family's greater or lesser involvement in English public affairs for more than five centuries up to the time of the Glorious Revolution, I'm not quite ready to say that socialism has been one of the longer running currents in British political history. RNJ
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Date Nov. 10 2020 23:21:00
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kitarist
Posts: 1718
Joined: Dec. 4 2012
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to Schieper)
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Please don't spread Russian/Trumpian propaganda. The "Heritage foundation" did its darnedest to find voter fraud over MORE THAN 40 YEARS of elections. Out of more than 3 BILLION ballots cast, they were able to find only 10 cases of in-person impersonation and 41 cases of non-citizens attempting to vote or voting. Then they padded it with another ~1000 supposed cases by counting things like voter intimidation, election insiders, wrong address (but all voted just once), improperly assisting absentee voters, etc. apparently because it was too embarrassing to present a 51/3,000,000,000 ratio (though 1100/3,000,000,000 is not much better) - 0.000000017 - a number so small as a probability as to be incomprehensible. For example, it is over 100 times MORE LIKELY that the very next US-born baby will become US president. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: You will not find any upfront info on who any of these people voted FOR. That's because most of the cases are Republicans committing the offence. They (HF) even admit it, in a different 'report' : "Heritage Foundation experts have long pointed out that voter fraud is not particular to one party or ideology. [..] In fact, The Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud database contains many examples of fraud perpetrated by people on the political right." Mmm-hmm. I am sure all of you knew it is not a partisan issue. I mean, the HF is practically shouting it from the rooftops, which is why you do not have the wrong impression that it is overwhelmingly democrats committing it; right? See this for actual facts including a link to excel file with all cases classified by category: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/Report_HeritageAnalysis_Final.pdf
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Konstantin
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Date Nov. 11 2020 3:42:14
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to estebanana)
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During the very rapid progress of Bush v. Gore through the Florida courts and the U.S. Supreme Court I was on vacation in Brazil. The Brazilian papers had daily articles, but not much detail. On the plane back to the USA I read the free copy of O Globo they gave me. If you have a moderate command of Spanish and have heard enough Portuguese, you can read it. O Globo stated the result, and ridiculed the U.S. TV networks for going on the air without having read the full SCOTUS decision, consequently stumbling around making fools of themselves for several minutes on live TV. Ever since then I have believed that the Florida recount was stopped by a 5 to 4 decision, with "conservative" justices constituting the majority. Many Democrats groused about a Republican SCOTUS "giving" the election to Bush. Preparing to write something about the current election, i decided I'd better be sure what happened in Bush v. Gore so I looked up some accounts of it. Turns out what I had believed for 20 years was not the case. One of the Bush team's main arguments was that the way Florida was going about the recount violated the "Equal Protection" clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Gore had requested recounts only in certain counties. This subjected the overall Florida electorate to different legal criteria for handling their votes. SCOTUS agreed with this argument 7 to 2. There were other elements to the SCOTUS decision, some which gained only 5 to 4 support. But the 7 to 2 vote was enough to stop the recount and award the election to Bush. The point of all this? For 20 years I believed what some Democrats said about Bush v. Gore, which was not actually the case. What Trump is trying to do now is to plant a false narrative that this election was stolen from him by fraud. It remains to be seen how successful he will be, but 20 years from now there will still be quite a few people who believe that's how it went down, even if Trump loses every single "legal" challenge. RNJ
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Date Nov. 11 2020 21:45:45
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3461
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Today is Veteran's Day in the US (I believe the Brits and others still call it "Decoration Day") and it means something to me, as I served for several years in the US Air Force in intelligence before joining the State Department and US Foreign Service. Additionally, since retiring from the Foreign Service, I consult with a Defense Department contractor, injecting foreign policy scenarios into military exercise simulations. I mention the above because President Trump makes a big show of “supporting” the military, but in fact he has been not only dismissive, but downright ugly when dealing with our forces. You may remember at the American cemetery in France when Trump was with Defense Secretary Mattis, and Trump’s comment about the thousands of American dead. He says to Mattis: “What was in it for them?” These were troops who were fighting their way across France engaging the enemy and died so Trump could make such a crass, ignorant statement. Jeff Goldberg, writing in the "Atlantic" magazine last month, had an article in which he described a well-known incident where Trump was invited to the Pentagon’s secure room (the “Tank”) to receive a briefing. The Joint Chiefs and others, including then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, were all there. Trump interrupted the briefing and called the military, practically all of them "four star" generals, “losers” and “babies.” He “lectured” them saying they didn’t know how to “win” wars. Rex Tillerson, the then-Secretary of State, to his credit, broke in and told Trump, “That’s not true Mr. President, that is just not true.” Trump left, and Tillerson uttered his now famous statement, calling Trump a "f*cking “moron." And a f*cking moron he surely is. Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 12 2020 1:13:19
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kitarist
Posts: 1718
Joined: Dec. 4 2012
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Gore had requested recounts only in certain counties. This subjected the overall Florida electorate to different legal criteria for handling their votes. It was a bit different/more involved than that. You make it sound (maybe just by the arrangement of sentences) like it was Gore's fault for causing a different standard (i.e. in chosen counties vs. the rest) for counting votes by only choosing some counties - the ones with many disputed ballots. The different standards for counting votes were a Florida state feature of their electoral system; every county had its own ballot design, rules, etc - which is what the Supremes were referring to. But of course it was just an excuse - by that same argument, none of the Florida votes would be constitutional (unless a full recount by a uniform standard is done) because they were ALL counted (disputed or not) differently in ALL Florida counties. So both the Gore counties and the rest of the counties had different standards; nothing to do with Gore's choices. Furthermore, by the same SCOTUS argument, since there is no federal standard for a presidential election, all the votes for president in all states are technically unconstitutional (it IS crazy that the US does not have a non-partisan national election commission and uniform standards to handle all aspects of presidential elections). Secondly, the most egregious action was that the SCOTUS halted the recount then issued opinion, but did not issue a remedy (e.g. recount under a state-uniform standard) because they said there was no time to complete the recount (that THEY stopped several days before that opinion). But this Dec 12 state deadline was in conflict with another part of the state law re: rules for recounts that would easily take more time for a manual recount in very populous counties or statewide. In such cases one looks at legislative intent, and it is clear that the law did not intend for nonsensical outcomes and gaming of the law that halts the electoral process itself. So the SCOTUS pretended that the Dec 12 deadline itself had to be honoured even when resulting in an unfinished state electoral process, effectively choosing a court winner rather than a winner by the votes of the people. In retrospect, however, Gore should have asked for a complete manual recount of all votes in all Florida counties from the get-go - not just of the four with many disputed ballots - though I am sure the length of such undertaking likely figured in their request (wrongly). Now, we do know what would have happened, as several large media organizations undertook careful counting of all ballots under several scenarios, post-factum: Gore would have won under any uniform standard (from most restrictive to most permissive) as long as all ballots from all counties were counted. Bush would have won as long as ballots from just the counties Gore requested a recount for, were counted. So, if the recount were allowed to proceed, Bush would have been the winner (provided Gore did not then ask for a all-counties manual recount). But an actual all-vote Florida recount under any standard would have handed Florida to Gore as the legitimate winner.
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Konstantin
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Date Nov. 12 2020 2:04:33
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estebanana
Posts: 9385
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to kitarist)
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Yes as a California voter I’m not happy that Montana has 500,000 people and California has 40 million, but each state has the same amount of Senators! Go figure. We know that everything you said is upside down, so the way to remedy is to reconfigure the EC so that electors vote for the winner of the popular vote in their district. That way we change the system to one person one vote with having to amend the constitution of the United States to cease use if the electoral college. You ask why we don’t have a federal central election? That’s a very interesting question, but the US system was set up to give states rights to reject or contest legally federal laws. So sure it’s possible to have a general national election that does not states, but because the electoral college is currently the legal system it has to be challenged. There are two ways to challenge it, amend the constitution or via the Interstate Voter Compact. The later is easier and nearly done. The constitution would have to be further amended to create a federal election system, and with republicans running senate the chances of that happening are like living through being gravitationally pulled into a black hole. It makes sense to have a federal election, the arcane instrument of the EC gets in the way. It’s a legacy system that needs to be stricken down in my opinion, but the counter argument is that republicans wouldn’t ever win the presidency because the popular vote favors liberals not conservatives. So the claim is that it unfair. And despite the fact that the argument is a logical fallacy, you’ll get aggressive responses from conservatives if you point that out. Simply put, one person, one vote excludes conservatives from winning the White House ( which is fine with me) so it’s not popular with republicans.
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Date Nov. 12 2020 6:22:58
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mark indigo
Posts: 3625
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
In my opinion, Margaret Thatcher’s policies were, by and large, good for Britain. Prior to Thatcher’s election, Britain had descended to the level of a Third World country. It had a GDP lower than Italy’s at the time. Inflation was running at over 20 percent. The bloated public sector (which was most of the economy; a private sector hardly existed!) was feather-bedded with far too many employees who were inefficient, creating a drag on the economy, like barnacles on the hull of a ship. Productivity was low. The British Miners’ Union held Britain in a stranglehold, and the British public was held hostage through Union demands and strikes. As a result, in the mid and late 1970s, Britain for a while went to a three-day work-week, there were power outages and brownouts, erratic heating, and garbage littered the streets. Meanwhile, the leader of the Miners’ Union, Arthur (“Red Arthur”) Scargill would take vacations on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria and visit his friend, Bulgarian Communist leader Todor Zhivkov. (I was assigned to the American Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria at the time and noted his presence.) When Thatcher assumed the position of Prime Minister, she privatized much of the inefficient and unproductive state sector and, as a result, it became more efficient and productive. GDP went up. She reined in the Miners’ Union that had been the source of so many of the problems facing the British, from forcing the three-day work-week to the power outages and lack of heating. Using monetary policy, Thatcher raised interest rates and reined in galloping inflation. And, of course, when Argentina invaded the British territory of the Falkland Islands, she sent the British fleet and forces to repel the invading Argentine forces, defeating them and reclaiming the Falklands. As a result of Thatcher’s policies, Britain became competitive again and assumed its place as a vibrant, respectable, medium-sized political and economic player on the world stage. This post took me aback because it is extremely one sided. Dubbed the "Iron Lady" Thatcher was widely hated and despised, not only during her time as PM but until her death (there were street parties). She oversaw the dismantling of coal mining, heavy industry and manufacturing, destroying in the process the close-knit working class communities and local economies that depended on those jobs. You may argue that those policies were economically necessary, but the social and human cost of those policies was devastating. As Brendan pointed out, they caused mass unemployment, and the Falklands war was widely seen as a convenient smokescreen to distract from problems at home and "unite" the country.... There is a whole list of things of a similar nature, turfing the mentally ill out of hospitals onto the streets in the "community care" programme, the massive rise of homelessness, inner city riots in a number of major cities caused by poverty, deprivation and "over-enthusiastic" policing (what we would now call systemic racism and racist policing), etc. etc. the list goes on. She famously said "there is no such thing as society" and she was often portrayed as having empowered selfishness and greed - this was the era of the rise of the Yuppie.
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Date Nov. 12 2020 8:25:19
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3461
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (in reply to mark indigo)
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quote:
This post took me aback because it is extremely one sided. Dubbed the "Iron Lady" Thatcher was widely hated and despised And yet, Margaret Thatcher won three elections in a row (1979, 1983, and 1987) and held the position of Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, a total of 11 years. She was a polarizing figure, but her electoral history demonstrates there were plenty of voters who agreed with her policies and programs. I stand by what I have written. I have discussed Thatcher with many Brits over the years, especially during her years in office, and a majority of them supported Thatcher's policies, although a significant minority did not like her. Without having conducted a formal study, I would say that the Brits I talked to mirrored the electorate in the UK regarding their views on Thatcher. Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 12 2020 13:50:46
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