Tuesday Open Thread

17 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. The New Democratic Party: Governing Lightly, Building Boldly

   To Win Again, Democrats Must Rebuild from Principle – Not Programs

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   1. This was well written, but ultimately if we don’t find a way to address the out of control wealth concentration (and the way this wealth equals power) on this planet then no amount of freedom and abundance messaging is going to mean a thing. I suppose it could lead to winning some elections, after which the new Liberalism 2.0 party in power can continue to service financiers, billionaires, and the transnational capital class to the detriment of the remaining 8 billion of us. 

      If I sound cynical, I am. Tweaking around the fringes of our hyper-capitalist economic system is going to be ineffective. Eventually enough people will rise up or enough people will drop completely out of the economy that the entire system will crash. Maybe something better will await us (or more likely our grandchildren) on the other side, assuming of course the planet is still habitable.

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      1. Teddy Roosevelt took on Rockefeller and the other oligarchs. And won. I think the federal government, with the support of the elecorate, can break up the oligopolies.

         But we need to elect people who will do this. And can get the people behind them. And the present Democratic Party isn't set up to do either.

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         1. Perhaps, but we won't get there by railing against regulation while financiers and private equity continue to drain the life blood from the working class. The problem is the concentration of wealth and the sytems that encourage it. Abundance messaging against zoning regulations and long permitting timeframes is going to fall completely flat. Or maybe the messaging will work, but the solutions will not. Not to mention that in the era of a transnational capital class, tinkering with the levers of the US government is completely innefective in protecting the lives and livelihoods of the masses of humanity world-wide.

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            1. My concern is the present incantation of the Democratic Party won't get us there.

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               1. Incantation refers to magic. In some cases, a few magic words accomplish unbelievable things. In others, a few words repeating the same "Dems suck and I know how to reform the entire party" theme accomplishes literal nothing.

                  There were more antitrust actions filed during the Biden administration than under T Roosevelt. Different times and players, very obviously. Biden (a Democrat) nominated and got appointed an FTC chair in Lina Khan who was very focused on antitrust and consumer protection. Zero Democratic senators voted against her appointment. In 2025, she was replaced by a Trump loyalist, oddly enough. I believe Burly spoke a lot of truth above about the challenges of dealing with out-of-control corporate wealth/value accumulation, so I won't repeat them, but I will say expecting a party with no levers of governmental power to fix a system as entrenched as what we have right now is at best severely unrealistic.

                  I don't want to be super-harsh right now, but I just read a blog post saying Dems are going to have to proclaim their support for capitalism, and I think therein lies a rub – there are lines beyond which support for capitalism enables or excuses capitalistic excess, of course in varying degrees. To fight it will require the boring old regulations, laws, and enforcement. It's a battle that's much older than Marx and Lenin, but I can tell you which modern political party is more likely to pass or support legislation to attempt reining in capitalistic excess and it ain't the T**mpistas. It doesn't have a chance in heck of passing, but here's a modern example from the brief summary of S. 130 from 2025 sponsored by Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat: 

                  To reform the antitrust laws to better protect competition in the American economy, to amend the Clayton Act to modify the standard for an unlawful acquisition, to deter anticompetitive exclusionary conduct that harms competition and consumers, to enhance the ability of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the antitrust laws, and for other purposes.

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                  1. I think the Democratic Party should state in enthusiastically supports free enterprise with the appropiate regulation that keeps it competitive & insures safety. That will get what, 75% approval?

                     I don't think I have the solution. I have suggestions but I acknowledge they may be wrong.

                     I do think the party needs to radically change. The Democratic Party pre FDR was nothing like the Democratic Party post-FDR. The Democratic Party pre Civil War was nothing like the reconstituted Democratic Party (~ 10 years after the Civil War).

                     So I do believe we need to start over from what are the fundamental basics of the party. That's not policies, that's what are the fundamental that any policy then suggested must be within.

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                  2. I'm glad you mentioned Lina Khan, who was doing an amazing job. It seemed to me pretty likely that VP Harris was going to replace her in any case, as her own billionaire donors were not happy with that whole anti-trust situation. And therein lies my fundamental belief and the source of my nearly unshakable cynicism – the Democratic party is courting billionaires to the exact same extent that the Republicans are.

                     I will vote for the Democrat on the ticket every day of the week, but to the extent that they are beholden to billionaires their success in elections will only serve to slow (or often just mask) our slide into this terrifying oligarchy. We are out of time on so many fronts, and the urgency of the climate crisis adds a lot of finality to this particular political cycle. 

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                     1. I did not know most of this, but good golly was there a lot to take in last election! After doing some "research" (3-5 minutes worth), it seems to me like your suspicion about Kamala is plausible. Mark Cuban of Shark Tank wanted Khan gone, AOC said there would be a war on KH's hands if she dumped Khan, and JD Vance said Khan was doing a pretty good job. Go figure! 

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   Whistleblower Lawsuit Exposes Trump’s Secret ICE Plot

   By Freddy Brewster

   

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   On June 9, following The Lever’s initial reporting on the matter, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis agreed to postpone turning over the immigration information in question until June 23, while the lawsuit described below plays out in state court.

   A new lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of using a secret subpoena to force Colorado officials to ignore state laws and hand over private financial information of residents sponsoring unaccompanied immigrant children. The state’s Democratic Governor, Jared Polis, is demanding that those state officials comply, allegedly under threat of termination, according to court documents reviewed by The Lever. 

   The previously undisclosed Trump administration subpoena was detailed in an explosive new whistleblower lawsuitfiled in state court on Thursday. The alleged subpoena targeting information protected by state privacy laws represents a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown — and the lawsuit’s allegations also prompt new questions about Democrats’ cooperation.

   The suit, spearheaded by one of Polis’s top labor officials, accuses the Democratic governor of actively aiding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and pressuring his employees to violate privacy statutes Polis himself signed into law in 2021 and in May 2025.

   “The Polis directive to collaborate with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is illegal,” states the complaint written by attorneys for Scott Moss, who serves as the Polis administration’s Director of the Division of Labor Standards and Statistics. “It also harms an unknown but potentially large number of state employees, by directing them to commit illegal acts, risking a wide range of professional and personal harms, including personal penalties of up to $50,000 per violation under the legislation Governor Polis himself signed into law.”

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   1. Wait…. Billionaire Jared is not our ally in fighting our slide into oligarchy?

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      1. Apparently there’s still a couple of debugging glitches in his Teddy_Roosevelt.2025 AI simulation module programming?

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         1. hahaha!

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3. First time his own folks have sued him for it? 

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4. Indiscriminate Numbers Games. TPM

   President Trump’s dream of mass deportations has always suffered from logistical and practical obstacles that make the entire exercise part cruelty, part performance, and part salve of his fragile ego.

   It falls to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to keep all the plates spinning, a role he happily embraces, but which comes with the inherent challenge of putting the “mass” in mass deportations.

   And so it was that ICE officials found themselves being berated by Miller in late May that their arrest numbers weren’t high enough and the rhetorical focus on the worst of the worst needed to shift on the ground to focus on all undocumented immigrants, the WSJ reports:

   Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.  

   That kind of indiscriminate enforcement action has had the effect of sweeping up documented and undocumented, citizen and noncitizen, workers and criminals in a Kafkaesque crackdown that was sure to enflame tensions in immigrant and minority communities that were hardest hit.

   The WSJ report on the indiscriminate and aggressive nature of the ICE sweeps is worth your time. No one anecdote captures the entire picture, but repeated over and over across the country, a pattern emerges – and the grievances associated with it.

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5. A question for any former or current military: Gov. Newsom has sued Trump, Hegseth, and the Department of Defense over the use of the military and the federalized National Guard to patrol communities and engage in general law enforcement activities in California. It appears that he has a very good case. He is seeking an ex parte temporary restraining order. If the federal judge agrees and enters the restraining order against Trump and the Department of Defense, what happens if Trump does not comply? If you are a soldier on the ground, sworn to uphold the Consittution and sworn to obey orders from the President, what do you do? What happens if different soldiers make different choices? What happens if the TRO is reversed on appeal? If you complied with what you believed was a correct court ruling, but it later turns out the Supreme Court disagrees, can you be court martialed? 

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6. According to the CIRC Rapid Response network, the National Guard was training in Island Grove Park  in Greeley last weekend. 

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