You do realize that the various mechanisms meant to prevent southern blacks from voting during Jim Crow were often not specifically race-based, either right? I mean, laws such as the poll tax and voting tests in generally did not state anything about black people voting. They were broad and general, as to be in compliance with the reconstruction amendments of the constitution. Doesn’t mean that they weren’t aimed at stopping black people from voting, but that they didn’t explicitly state that they were about stopping black people from voting…
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Ok, I don’t see how this is relevant. If the state obliges drivers to be licensed, then the state needs to reasonably maintain offices that issue licenses. It doesn’t matter how expensive someone perceives it to be: the obligation for people to be licensed to drive makes the office a priority. Government is not a business.
If the state obliges a license or ID for voting, then the state has an unequivocal obligation to maintain those offices reasonably close by so folk can vote.
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Jesus, thank you. Can we print that on giant billboards, especially overwhelmingly white and conservative ones across the country. Because people lately seem to think that the government is a corporations, when it clearly isn’t.
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Nobody 'round here is going to buy that. It is very much a business, and government business makes a lot of wheels turn around bases in particular.
Like Hill Air Force Base. More civilian workers than military now. And very classified stuff in many cases. And on the other end of the valley, we’ve got that NSA datacenter!
Gov is business here.
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Christ what a clot of assholes!
- How much more progress would America’s racial harmony have made if there weren’t a multi billion dollar political party deliberately creating racial conflict?
I ask because the republicans have worked tirelessly to keep poor whites from realizing that they and poor blacks have a common enemy in the rich and corporate America.
Along with turning the rejection of science into part of people’s identity, these greedy leeches have significantly held back human progress for over half a century.
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Ugh, why did I let my curiosity goad me into clicking that link. I had been heretofore very happy to be blissfully ignorant of the Hi-Fi murders. You own me a unicorn chaser.
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Apologies! You can have your choice of anything in the gif bank thread.
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“Government is not a business” (with the attendant priorities of business, which is what I mean) is kind of incidental to “Government is good for business.”
Which, of course, is completely true.
I disagree. It functions in a completely different way than a corporation, as it should, even when providing employment. Jobs =/= business… running to turn a profit for it’s own sake, usually in order to enrich shareholders is a business.
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Oh there’s plenty of that going on around here as well…
Likely because of the government’s relationship with private contractors. The government itself is not a business, no matter how much neoliberals want to make it so.
All I’m saying is that the difference here is academic. Sure, maybe ‘shouldn’t be business’.
But is/isn’t? That’s regional at best.
Example: DC.
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I get your point, but we need to keep hammering away that the two are not the same, or shouldn’t be. I’m not sure we can say that enough, because it’s literally the only thing that comes out of the rights mouth any more… if only we ran the government like a business. Then you get Trump.
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Just the other day, I came across an essay arguing that from 1973 on, the US military was structured as a mini-social-welfare state, in order that sufficient recruits would be attracted, and these sorts of policies continued way into the late 1990s. Having never been in the military, I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but it was an interesting read.
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Based on how our military markets itself to recruits, and what they stand to gain or lose based on that decision, I have to agree. Disquieting though that is.
Right, but it’s still not a business.
Also, Aeon always has interesting stuff, don’t they. Thanks for the link, I’m gonna try and read that soon.
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I’ve noticed that too, but also that it’s mixed in some times with veiled religious stuff. The “big questions” it purports to address sometimes seem to include “Could God maybe actually exist?” etc. Sorry I don’t have a specific example; just not sure yet if that site passes the smell test.
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I’m working my way through that article now (welfare states in comparison was my favorite class as an undergrad…) And it’s pointedly critical of the coalition of reagan’s militarism and conservative christians, even putting “family values” in scare quotes. So that at least smells pleasant, even if it turns out to be covering some more subtle moldy smells in some corners…
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Thanks, good to hear, and I do see a lot of intriguing subjects there. My sense is that they mix in some pretty lefty stuff at times, but they’ll also run pieces by people like Roger Scruton, yikes. Maybe they’re trying to be ecumenical? (ha) Or perhaps the sneakily religious strain I’ve detected comes from one of the founders, who “has a background in finance and graduate qualifications in psychology and comparative religion.” I’m probably not being fair; I know I can be oversensitive to seemingly intellectual arguments for the validity of superstition.
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