GOP. Rep Keith Self quotes Goebbels

@BohemianBabe And Hitler did some good things.

It really doesn't cost them much to throw Nazi stuff out in the open and it helps far more than it hurts.

Plus, its consistent, like rewriting history to paint the Civil War as not all about slavery, saying that Mueller totally exonerated Trump and proved that Russian interference was a hoax. Again, the big lie really works, and while the Nazis didn't invent all this stuff, they were famous for it.

The same people who have a thing for Hannibal Lecter have a thing for Hitler. Is it serious sociopathy or sociopathic joking?

Does it matter?

@BohemianBabe


Gee, Boo-Boo, not so long ago you were regaling me with what big fascists the Tankie Soviets were.

Oh, wait, I forgot... they weren't real communists, were they, Boo-Boo?

@Thinkerbell Communism is stateless. So yeah, the Bolsheviks weren't communist, they were Authoritarians that used left-wing imagery. Much like the BSW.

@BohemianBabe


Translation: a pipedream.

@Thinkerbell Yes, I said I don't think any form of Anarchy could work. Government will always exist in some form, so we should have the most democratic form of government, which is Socialism.

But the fact remains that the Bolsheviks weren't communist. Neither were the Nazis, even though the AfD Fascists will claim they were.

@BohemianBabe

And nothing inherent in Socialism would prevent a Socialist government from becoming authoritarian either. There will always be a Nomenklatura as long as there is a government.

That's why Bernie has always been at such pains to identify himself as a "democratic" Socialist (while busily making himself a multi-millionaire, like practically everyone else in Congress).

@Thinkerbell Any government can become authoritarian. But the more democratic a government is, the less of a chance it will become authoritarian.

Bernie understands that most Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that Socialism is what the Soviet Union and Maoist China had. So he differentiates himself. But yeah, "Democratic Socialism" is redundant. Socialism is inherently democratic.

Also, Bernie has been fighting for decades to get the government to raise his own taxes so that everyone can have healthcare. He's really the wrong person to accuse of hypocrisy.

@BohemianBabe

Bernie has nothing to fear from higher taxes. As an insider, he would be careful to exempt himself from their effects, like the rest of his colleagues.

@Thinkerbell Yes, he'll pass a bill that says we have to go back to how we taxed rich people in the fifties, but you're exempt if you're a hundred years old and have crazy hair.

@BohemianBabe

And practically no one in the 50s actually paid those maximal tax rates, as there were plenty of loopholes.

Meanwhile, "soaking the rich" made good political eyewash.

@Thinkerbell Absolutely not true. If nobody paid them, then Republicans wouldn't have cut them.

I do enjoy the irony here, though. For decades, the Right has idolized the fifties as America's golden age. But at the time, y'all would have claimed we were living under Socialism.

@BohemianBabe

Kennedy cut the high rates because the national debt had mostly returned to pre-WW2 levels.


And it stayed under control until 2010, then the bottom fell out. 🙄

And the 50s were a golden age because most of the US's natural economic competitors were recovering from WW2, from which the US emerged relatively unscathed.

@Thinkerbell If nobody was paying those taxes, why bother cutting them?

America being the only democratic superpower, and getting to rebuild Europe, did cause an economic boom. But without those taxes, the money would have just sat in the bank accounts of the 1%, which is what's happening now. An economy stays health when money is in circulation, but that doesn't happen as much when money is being horded.

@BohemianBabe

Why cut them? To move investments out of tax shelters and stimulate the economy. It was KENNEDY and JOHNSON who did this.

"The United States Revenue Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88–272), also known as the Tax Reduction Act, was a tax cut act proposed by President John F. Kennedy, passed by the 88th United States Congress, and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The act became law on February 26, 1964.

Kennedy proposed the bill on the advice of Keynesian economist Walter Heller, who believed that temporary deficit spending would boost economic growth. The act was initially blocked by Democrats like Senator Harry F. Byrd, but Lyndon Johnson was able to guide it through Congress after the assassination of Kennedy in November 1963. The act cut federal income taxes by approximately twenty percent across the board, and the top federal income tax rate fell from 91 percent to 70 percent. The act also reduced the corporate tax from 52 percent to 48 percent and created a minimum standard deduction."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1964

Keynesian economics 101, Boo-Boo.

@Thinkerbell Bernie Sanders's net worth is around $3 million which is in step with a man of his age who makes $175k per year, has cumulated 3 houses and has written books. If he's on a get rich quick scam he's not doing it well.

@JonLosAngeles66

No, he's not doing it nearly as well as many of his colleagues, but he's very comfortably set for life, if not in the top 1%, then easily in the top 10%, maybe even the top 5%.

He used to grouse about the "millionaires and billionaires," until some reporter pointed out that Bernie himself was a millionaire.

After that, he only groused about "the billionaire class," which conveniently excluded his Senate colleagues who might only be worth a few hundred million. 🤣

@Thinkerbell
But you said nobody was paying those taxes anyway. So which is it?