DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

The continuing failures of pragmatic democracy

U.S government had four years to deal with the sequester and chose to make a deal that would screw the most structurally oppressed people—it’s not a subjective claim—and then argued about it for a couple of years pretending to worry about “the arrival of the sequester”. One can’t be criticized for suggesting this was the purpose of the sequester all along. To find a way to make harsh austerity a reality without having to take responsibility for it while exploiting the representation of oppressed citizens for profit, both economic and political profit.

motherjones:

VIP State Health Care Exposed, or “GOP Tea Party Hypocrisy of the Day”

Last year, political neophyte Rick Scott spent $73 million of his own money to bring the tea party’s anti-government, pro-privatization agenda to the Florida governor’s office. Today, the former executive pays just $30 a month for health care—and lets taxpayers cover the rest…

Scott and his dependents pay one-fifth what a janitor in the state Capitol pays for health insurance… and less than 3 percent of what a retired state trooper pays for life-saving coverage.

Here’s how he does it.

(Source: Mother Jones)

All you need to know about the Ryan “shared-costs” plan

Well … and that Ryan is a liar who apparently lies all the time about things he claims to know and understand. Folks, austerity measures do not work.

(Source: Peter Orszag, Bloomberg News)

There are a few facts about progressive politics right now that I don’t like. I’m talking progressive conservative and liberal political action, like Paul Ryan’s budget proposal and even the Democrats’ Health Care Reform. One of the most significant dislikes for me is that American progressives seem to think we all have to give up something to get what we want.

We have a government capable of determining what social goods are and how they are different from economic goods. We can regulate social goods and provide protection for them; we can cultivate our social goods without giving up something. We need to determine how to accomplish this outside of the free market. I think such a determination begins with a simple recognition that our social contract is the thing without which personal responsibility, liberty, freedom, pretty much all action would not be possible.

Our social contract is not a religious or anti-religious, capitalist or anti-capitalist, Republican or Democratic agreement. It’s a human concept and it’s universal and a priori. We should treat it as such.