2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

[kellyb]

What money? Are you assuming there's any left after Donnie and the Plundering Herd finish their term? How big is the deficit going to be? "Deficit"... you can look it up in the Big Book of Republican Issues Pre-2017. It's alphabetically between Corruption and Free Trade.

No, I just looked it up again, and it's between Corruption and Family Values (aka, having sex with a porn star while your third wife is caring for your newborn.)

 

[Lambchops]

So Bernie, since Omar is not runnning and AOC is constitutionally barred (too young).

Ah, if we are talking POTUS candidates, then yes of course. My bad, I forgot what thread we are in.

 

[acbytesla]

Compensation for what?

Slavery, segregation, separate but not equal, discrimination. Shall I go on?

 

[Brainster]

Slavery, segregation, separate but not equal, discrimination. Shall I go on?

To be paid by whom? The slave owners are presumably all dead. I can assure you that my ancestors never owned slaves; my grandparents all came over on the boat, most of them from Ireland. We're kind of waiting on our reparations from Great Britain for the potato famine.

 

[acbytesla]

To be paid by whom? The slave owners are presumably all dead. I can assure you that my ancestors never owned slaves; my grandparents all came over on the boat, most of them from Ireland. We're kind of waiting on our reparations from Great Britain for the potato famine.

Ahhh, there's the crux of the problem. Nobody wants to pay. As also someone of Irish heritage, I understand that opinion. But we are American citizens, aren't we?

America was built on the backs of slaves and racist discriminatory laws and culture. Do you agree with that? If the government deprives you of your property, don't we compensate you for it? And if you pass away, wouldn't we compensate your heirs?

 

[Brainster]

Ahhh, there's the crux of the problem. Nobody wants to pay. As also someone of Irish heritage, I understand that opinion. But we are American citizens, aren't we?

America was built on the backs of slaves and racist discriminatory laws and culture. Do you agree with that?

No. I believe slavery was an evil system and nothing good came out of it. Researchers who've looked at economic growth have come to the same conclusion: slavery actually held back the South.

If the government deprives you of your property, don't we compensate you for it? And if you pass away, wouldn't we compensate your heirs?

Which government deprived them of their "property" (a curious euphemism for freedom).

 

[acbytesla]

No. I believe slavery was an evil system and nothing good came out of it. Researchers who've looked at economic growth have come to the same conclusion: slavery actually held back the South.

You'll have to provide citations for that.

Even given the debatable efficacy of slavery as an institution there are many a family fortune as well as quite a few universities that African Americans would not be allowed to attend yet were built with varying amounts of slave labor. These include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia UNC, University of Virginia, Georgetown and others.

Then there is Washington DC itself which was chiefly constructed with significant slave labor. This includes the roads and many buildings including the White House and the Capitol Building.

You can pretend that this didn't happen but it did.

Which government deprived them of their "property" (a curious euphemism for freedom).

Yes it is. But when you steal one's liberty you are stealing their property and much more.

The United States did from 1789 to 1865. But it's not just the institution of slavery that the nation should consider making amends for, it is the hundred years of institutional racism that came after which in many ways was just as bad.

Whether you acknowledge it or not, a great theft was committed against African Americans, one which total restitution can never be fully made. One which has resulted in making almost a permanent underclass.

 

[SezMe]

Researchers who've looked at economic growth have come to the same conclusion: slavery actually held back the South..

You'll have to provide citations for that.

My recollection is that the economic rationale is that with slavery, the South had no incentive to improvise new, cheaper approaches to labor and, worse, no incentive to diversify. Cotton is King! rang true too long. One of the major factors in the South's defeat in the Civil War was the North's diversified industrial base.

 

[acbytesla]

My recollection is that the economic rationale is that with slavery, the South had no incentive to improvise new, cheaper approaches to labor and, worse, no incentive to diversify. Cotton is King! rang true too long. One of the major factors in the South's defeat in the Civil War was the North's diversified industrial base.

It wouldn't surprise me at all that Is true. But it is irrelevant in my mind. These people freedom and more germane to this discussion the fruits of their labor was taken from them. There were no estates for their heirs to build upon.

But consider this. I just read about Craig Coley who spent 39 years in prison for a double murder he did not commit. He was just awarded 21 million dollars. He's 71 now. Now just imagine generations of people like Mr. Coley being the prisoners of others and forced to work.

Now Brainster can accurately argue, that the US government never owned any slaves. (Or did they?) But can we really say that the US government wasn't a co-conspirator when it comes to the crime of slavery and institutional discrimination?

So don't tell me that reparations is some kind of "freebie".

 

[kellyb]

Right before the civil war, the wealth in the south was mostly held in the slaves themselves, since the transatlantic slave trade had been banned, and the slave territories were expecting to expand westward.

There was actually an economic "bubble" in the value of slaves: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3743211?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents http://exiledonline.com/the-one-per...of-us-slavery-feudalism-la-da-da-dee-dee-dee/

 

[acbytesla]

Right before the civil war, the wealth in the south was mostly held in the slaves themselves, since the transatlantic slave trade had been banned, and the slave territories were expecting to expand westward.

There was actually an economic "bubble" in the value of slaves: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3743211?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents http://exiledonline.com/the-one-per...of-us-slavery-feudalism-la-da-da-dee-dee-dee/

Thats interesting and shameful at the same time.

 

[kellyb]

Thats interesting and shameful at the same time.

Yeah, it's a ghastly sort of surreal to think about. The southern slaveowners were some of the wealthiest people in the history of the world for a second there:

https://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0322/032230.html

Natchez: in 1850 half of the millionaires in the US lived here

https://westpointcivilwar.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/natchez-ms-the-richest-city-in-america-in-1841/

Natchez had more millionaires per capita than any other in the United States. The townsfolk liked to say it was cotton that brought the money, but for Rumble it was much costlier: The blood of the slaves who worked the fields and the souls of those who ruled over them.

It wasn't just the cotton creating the wealth - it was more little 12 year old girls being a monetary investment version of the proverbial "goose that laid the golden egg", since they were the ones who would be able to make a dozen more slaves over the course of a couple of decades, to populate the Western territories with slaves according to the Dred Scott decision. Long before Wall Street had digital "futures" markets, the literal futures of children's children were being calculated and monetized on slave auction blocks.

And right after the civil war - also almost unknown history, same place:
https://www.disclose.tv/devils-punc...ands-died-has-been-erased-from-history-313544

America’s hellish concentration camp: The Devil’s Punchbowl
Following the end of the Civil War, there was a mass exodus of former slaves from the southern plantations. These men, women, and children migrated north in the hopes of building new lives for themselves. The migration of former slaves was deeply unacceptable for the former Union soldiers who were bitterly disappointed about the outcome of the brutal war and decided to take their revenge. The most brutal example of this was in Natchez in Mississippi.

Natchez experienced an enormous influx in its population following the conclusion of the war, with the vast majority of the new inhabitants being former slaves. In response, the local people built an encampment at Devil’s Punchbowl and rounded up all of the black people and forced them to enter. Once they were there, they walled off the area and refused to let them out.

Inside the Devil’s Punchbowl, the former slaves endured even more hellish conditions than they had experienced on the brutal southern plantations. Thousands of men, women, and children perished because of exhaustion and starvation.

Little 3 minute TV blurb worth watching on the Devil's Punchbowl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoRaXHrsfYo

 

[acbytesla]

Yeah, it's a ghastly sort of surreal to think about. The southern slaveowners were some of the wealthiest people in the history of the world for a second there:

https://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0322/032230.html

https://westpointcivilwar.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/natchez-ms-the-richest-city-in-america-in-1841/

It wasn't just the cotton creating the wealth - it was more little 12 year old girls being a monetary investment version of the proverbial "goose that laid the golden egg", since they were the ones who would be able to make a dozen more slaves over the course of a couple of decades, to populate the Western territories with slaves according to the Dred Scott decision. Long before Wall Street had digital "futures" markets, the literal futures of children's children were being calculated and monetized on slave auction blocks.

And right after the civil war - also almost unknown history, same place:
https://www.disclose.tv/devils-punc...ands-died-has-been-erased-from-history-313544

Little 3 minute TV blurb worth watching on the Devil's Punchbowl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoRaXHrsfYo

I'm not sure I want to.

In many many ways it was as bad or worse for African Americans after slavery was abolished which seems hard to believe. To start with, they had little but the clothes on their backs. Most with little or no education and no place to go. Living among a population that resented them and their new found freedom.

What followed was institutialized racism and discrimination and a legal system designed against them. Consider the vagrancy laws where newly freed slaves were arrested, imprisoned and force to work because they didn't have jobs. For years, the governments in the South basically created another kind of slavery where blacks were arrested for all kinds of petty crimes imprisoned for which they were billed for their accommodations and forced to work to pay those bills.

 

[Belz...]

As with Obama, it's not the national origin that's the real problem. She's black.

Only if you go with the one drop rule.

 

[The_Animus]

Donated $5 to Andrew Yang. I haven't decided who my preferred candidate is yet as it's way too early for that. I do want to see him included in the debates though

 

[angrysoba]

Donated $5 to Andrew Yang. I haven't decided who my preferred candidate is yet as it's way too early for that. I do want to see him included in the debates though

I think he definitely has an issue worth getting an airing. At least he seems to have a genuine interest in policy unlike some others who come up with ideas just to get noticed.

 

[dudalb]

No matter what you call it, the idea is a huge loser for the Dems. Imagine what the GOpers could do with that idea. I hope the Dems let that sink into oblivion.

This.
I also could argue is it fair to hold someone responsible for something their great great great grandaddys did?

 

[dudalb]

Careful you are getting dangerously close to blackface territory.

Who is the anti-establisment Dem right now?

I think, if you check his positng history, Lambchops does not like
A:The United States or
B.Anybody to the left of Pol Pot or Mao Tse Tung.

 

[dudalb]

To be paid by whom? The slave owners are presumably all dead. I can assure you that my ancestors never owned slaves; my grandparents all came over on the boat, most of them from Ireland. We're kind of waiting on our reparations from Great Britain for the potato famine.

Hell,forget the British. Our ancestors ( I'm of Irish descent also) were probably discriminated against in the United States as well (No Irish Need Apply,etc). I want my damn reparation money from the US!

 

[dudalb]

Meaningless discussion. You know that any talk of reperatations will die away as the election gets closer.
Harris will redefine reperatations to the point where it becomes meaningless.
It's the same old routine: early on appeal to the more extreme elements in your party to get their support in the primaries, and then move as rapidly to the center as possible in the general election and hope people forget all the extreme things you said in the primary season.