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Fun fact! - this is what Ben Stein is teaching in Ferris Bueller's day off.
I heard he became a MAGA though. How ironic.
Not really ironic. The dude was part of Nixons administration. Trump is basically Nixon 2.0. Trumps whole worldview was shaped by Nixon or guys who worked for Nixon.
And then the conservative brain worms convinced him to support the people who did it again.
We can't afford to waste this chance....
There is zero reason to settle for "not trump" we need to use Republican Inaptitude to get a decent progressive in power , there's zero reason to compromise with Republicans after this shit.
They are already trying to setup Kamala for 2028. I have zero faith that the Democrats are going to learn anything from their failure
They are already trying to setup Kamala for 2028.
Who is "they"?
We have a DNC chair that at worst will be impartial.
And Harris has zero chance of winning a fair primary.
The only way a neoliberal can win a primary is if the party hands it to them.
The only way a Republican becomes president, is if the only other choice is a neoliberals.
The only reason the Republicans have the house, is because of "victory fund" bankrupting stat parties.
We really didn't need much, and we got it. Which is why we desperately need to capitalize and move the Overton window as far left as possible while we can
I don't know that there's a 'we' here, as the billionaires run the Democratic Party too and have sued for the privilege of holding undemocratic primaries.
With that said, the SHTA precipitating the historic Senate loss isn't the only historical pattern working against Trump in 2026.
Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden all entered office with control of Congress and lost control at the mid-terms, so it's highly likely that will happen again.
, as the billionaires run the Democratic Party too
No, neoliberals have held the DNC chair for decades. And they did whatever billionaires said.
The current chair of the DNC is not a neoliberal. He used to be Minnesota's state chair, and if he acts like he did then he'll be the most progressive chair we've had in 30 years, arguably 50 years.
The fight over the party already happened and the neoliberals lost.
Don't blame the new guy for what the old guy did
I will believe it matters when I see it, and I'm doubtful 40+ years of masquerading as progressives and ruling as conservatives is going to change anytime soon.
and I’m doubtful 40+ years of masquerading as progressives and ruling as conservatives is going to change anytime soon.
Then it sounds like you're ignorant both of how the DNC works and Ken Martin's history running Minnesota's state party...
The DNC chair is a dictator, he calls all the shots and is accountable to no one. For all intents and purposes the DNC chair is the national party.
It's been less than two months since Martin took over the DNC. Don't blame him for what happened before he had total control.
But seriously, look into what Minnesota has been up to. Loads of progressives and turned a battleground into a solid blue state.
His main concern is winning elections, so he doesn't fight progressives in primaries, because that's what voters want.
This isn't blind loyalty. If I didn't have valid reasons to support the DNC I can assure you I wouldn't be doing it
Really admire your optimism here, but I’m far too cynical on Dems to think this can work without a whole new party to replace them. The Democrat brand is so incredibly tarnished by corruption and disingenuousness.
While you’re right that the DNC chair does hold a lot of power in the party, I struggle to recall a single instance in my lifetime when any dem held real power and leveraged it effectively to benefit the working class.
instance in my lifetime
Because since Jimmy Carter the DNC chair has been further right than the Dem voters base...
And that stopped being true about two months ago
Did it ever occur to you why about two months ago suddenly mainstream media started being ok criticizing Dems?
The oligarchs want us to fail. Because we just won.
Stop doing what theyre manipulating you into doing
Someone has either never seen “Ferris Buller’s Day Off,” can’t remember it very well, or didn’t pay attention. This was covered in class!
Planet Money interviewed the professor who wrote the book from which Ben Stein is reading in that scene.
It is an older episode they re-air periodically. I think this one:
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/11/1218506684/worst-tariffs-ever-update
In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?... raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. Voodoo economics.
I watched this movie 3-4 times and even when reading this, I'm still spaced out.
Ben Stein just has a voice that makes me tune him out.
Such a great voice for comedy. Shame he's anti-abortion, pretty racist, pro-Regan and Trump, weirdly against evolution... So many awful perspectives.
What's interesting is that this boring speech isn't just an actor reading something boring. Stein is a second-generation economist. He has a BA in economics from Columbia University. His father had a PhD in economics and chaired the Council of Economic Advisors under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
His father was apparently well respected by both parties, but the son has gone full MAGA, which is unfortunate.
There is some nuance here. Smoot-Hawley didn't cause the great depression, and there a lot of economists who say it didn't have that much of an effect at all.
Tarriffs can have some useful effects when used for protectionism, diplomatic coercion, or trade barrier reduction coercion. However, Trump's tariffs are way dumber than anything that came before, because he's trying to do all three of these at once. All of these have conflicting effects on each other, and it is literally impossible to design a tariff strategy that can accomplish all three, since raising a tariff for one purpose means that you need to lower tariffs for other purposes. All he's doing by raising across the board is causing instability in the economy and convincing all partners to ditch the US.
This is what is funny for me. I would like tariffs to discourage trade with countries that have less democracy, rights for its citizens, and high income disparity (which unfortunately we are not a paragon of currently) and encourage trade with countries that are the reverse of that.
They also didn't have fox news at that time :/
trump won't for much longer....
Proof yet again that "business leaders" typically don't know shit about shit.
It is all 1000% on purpose.
They intend to ride it out and profit from all of this, and we'll let them due to cowardice and division.
They LOVE massive depressions. They buy up real estate and failing companies cheap with their massive cash reserves.
The so called geniuses of business have a better batting average than the average person but they are still prone to the same fuck ups and emotionally driven foolishness as anyone else. I was reading about the Theranos scam and how many supposed brilliant corporate leaders all threw big money at it without taking the time to investigate it first.
If you have Hulu or sail the seven seas, check out "The Dropout" which is a mini-series about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.
I had never heard of it before but I now just finished watching it after reading your recommendation and it was really great, thank you!
You're welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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