Don’t forget that GWB is one of the people responsible for the post-911 over-reaction that allowed all of this to happen.
True, true. But I could argue there was someone even more responsible than Bush…
In 1995, Biden introduced the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act, which contained proposals that were later recycled into the 2001 Patriot Act.
He also helped write the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which he argued was a precursor to the Patriot Act.
Yeah, but they’ll miss and then that’ll be a distraction from stealing the midterms
Wasn’t that deemed illegal back in 2021 by the Chinese Courts?
And didn’t it kick off a wave of labor protests? The lie flat movement?
China is not communist in any form anymore
Just a planned economy governed by it’s native population with a public policy centered on general social welfare.
Nothing Communist about this at all, no sir.
And before someone says “but they execute billionaires”, they only execute billionaires that get in the way of other billionaires’ profits
That’s certainly the American spin. It’s actually double-plus capitalism when you prosecute plutocrats. Because a rules based national order promoted domestic growth. And that’s… bad?
Anyway, don’t ask about their social housing, public education, public health care, and public mass transit. That’s Not Real Communism!
Who gets to originate the claim on property? Who gets to set the price and collect on the sale?
I merely pointed out that not all ‘rent is bad’, ‘landlords are evil
I think we’re a bit beyond good and evil.
Renting isn’t bad. Capitalism isn’t bad. Abuse of these things is bad.
Sure sure sure. Love the sin, hate the sinner.
the word “investors” is deliberately lumping together individuals, and institutions/corporations, in an obvious attempt to trick people into thinking that category is comprised entirely of the latter.
Corporations are people, my friend.
Underhanded semantic maneuver.
Is ownership less virtuous in a partnership than a sole proprietorship somehow?
Can you tell me why renting land/a home is different than any other object that can be owned?
For starters, you can’t own much if you don’t own land. So it becomes a prerequisite for accruing any other objects.
If you’re locked out of owning land, you’re locked out of owning anything.
it seems like land owners (or “speculators”, if that’s the correct term now 🤷♂️) prohibit access to everyone except for tenants
Speculators (or, “land owners”, as you’re calling them) aren’t required to host tenants. They can leave their property vacant without regard to social need.
And landlords can evict tenants for any reason or no reason at all - or raise rents so high that an eviction is inevitable.
A question you need to ask is why the landlord possessed the land to begin with. What allows a landlord original access to property?
Should hotels be illegal too?
If they’re monopolizing the housing market, absolutely.
What if you cannot afford to buy a house
There are 16M vacant homes to distribute among around 770k homeless people. With such an enormous housing surplus, why is the clearing price for a housing unit so far above a new prospective buyer’s budget?
You posit that people can’t afford to buy homes without asking why homes are unaffordable.
Investors accounted for 25.7% of residential home sales in 2024.
The ability to live somewhere that otherwise would have been reversed?
The land speculators do not provide access to the tenant, they prohibit access. That’s what inclosure is. You’re blocking people from the land on pain of injury and death.
I can live here, and nobody else.
Until the state decrees otherwise, sure.
But if I decided to rent my home out and they paid me rent, they could live here instead!
There are three people and three houses. How do you decide which of the three people owns all three houses and which of the other two pay that first person rent?
Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University academic who orchestrated the harvesting of Facebook data
Aleksandr Kogan (born April 6, 1986) is a Moldovan-born American scientist
Education University of California, Berkeley (BA)
University of Hong Kong (MA, PhD)
:-/
The chief executive of Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, is a former Soviet oil minister who has said the strategic aims of Lukoil are closely aligned with those of Russia. “I have only one task connected with politics, to help the country and the company. I’m not close to Mr Putin, but I treat him with great respect,” he told the New York Times.
In 1990, Alekperov was appointed deputy minister of the Oil and Gas Industry of the Soviet Union and became the youngest deputy energy minister in Soviet history
At this time, Western oil companies began actively seeking partners in Russia. During a visit to British Petroleum facilities in the United Kingdom in 1990, Alekperov personally headed the Russian delegation at the negotiations. Rondo Fehlberg, an executive at BP, told NY Times that Alekperov took control of the agenda during that 1990 trip, sternly asking the BP executives to explain how a modern oil company should be set up.
…
During at least three meetings in Turkey and London in 2014 and 2015, executives associated with Alekperov’s firm Lukoil allegedly questioned persons at the Alexander Nix associated firms SCL Group, which is closely associated with Aleksandr Kogan, and Cambridge Analytica, which is closely associated with Steve Bannon, who supported Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for President of the United States, and Robert Mercer, who supported Ted Cruz’s campaign for President of the United States, about how United States election data about American voters could be used to target them according to Christopher Wylie
…
In 2000, Lukoil acquired the distribution and marketing operations of American oil company Getty Oil. This resulted in the control of a network of gas stations in the United States, as well as the first time Lukoil entered the American oil market.
In September 2004, ConocoPhillips purchased a 7.6% stake in Lukoil for about $2 billion. According to some commentators, the sale of this deal was planned before in a personal meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and ConocoPhillips’ president and CEO, James Mulva. After the auction, Lukoil and ConocoPhillips announced the creation of a strategic alliance. Later, the American company increased its stake to 20% in Lukoil and sold to the Russian company part of its network of gas stations in the United States and Western Europe. The two oil companies also agreed to jointly develop an oil and gas field in the northern Timan-Pechora area of Russia (Komi Republic) and intended to secure the rights to develop the West Qurna Field in Iraq, one of the country’s largest.
Hey look there’s more…
The EU’s gas love-in with Azerbaijan is a gift for the Russian oil giant Lukoil
Lukoil gas station rebranded BP
UK extends sanctions exemption for Lukoil Bulgaria subsidiaries
Oh what a tangled web we weave.
one hour later
“Okay, here’s another $200, but you’re not allowed to keep beating me in Smash.”
Also research Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica Ltd. (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was founded in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intelligence company and self-described “global election management agency” SCL Group by long-time SCL executives Nigel Oakes, Alexander Nix and Alexander Oakes, with Nix as CEO. Cambridge Analytica was hired by a variety of political actors, including the Trinidadian government in 2010 and the 2016 presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
Nigel John Oakes (born July 1962) is a British businessman, and the founder and CEO of Behavioural Dynamics Institute and SCL Group
Alexander James Ashburner Nix (born 1 May 1975) is a British businessman who was the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica
Alexander Waddington Oakes (born November 1968) is a British businessman, and the co-founder and an executive of Behavioural Dynamics Institute and SCL Group
So, I’m seeing a country’s name come up over and over again. But it’s not Russia.
The firm maintained offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C.
Cambridge Analytica (SCL USA) was incorporated in January 2013 with its registered office being in Westferry Circus, London and consisting of just one staff member, director and CEO Alexander Nix (also appointed in January 2015).[13] Nix was also the director of nine similar companies sharing the same registered offices in London, including Firecrest technologies, Emerdata and six SCL Group companies including “SCL elections limited”.[14] Nigel Oakes, known as the former boyfriend of Lady Helen Windsor, had founded the predecessor SCL Group in the 1990s, and in 2005 Oakes established SCL Group together with his brother Alexander Oakes and Alexander Nix; SCL Group was the parent company of Cambridge Analytica.[15] Former Conservative minister and MP Sir Geoffrey Pattie was the founding chairman of SCL; Lord Ivar Mountbatten also joined Oakes as a director of the company.[12] As a result of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Nix was removed as CEO and replaced by Julian Wheatland before the company closed.[16] Several of the company’s executives were Old Etonians.
Yeah, I’m seeing a whole lot of Brits show up in this article.
Rent isn’t theft. It’s payment for a service.
What service does the land speculator provide to the tenant? The landlord doesn’t develop the property, that’s the builder. The landlord doesn’t maintain the property, that’s done by contractors. The landlord doesn’t secure the property, that’s done by the state. The landlord often doesn’t even finance the property, as the property is inevitably mortgaged and underwritten by banks one step removed from the title holder.
Quite literally, the only thing landlords do is collect the check and transfer portions of it onward. They are, at best, payment processors. And even this job is routinely outsourced to a third party.
There are benefits to renting.
There are lower institutional barriers to renting than to owning, largely resulting from the artificial shortage of public land and public housing. Rents are the consequence of real estate monopolization and public malinvestment. Once the landlords themselves vanish, the “benefits” of renting vanish with them.
And not all landlords are rich people.
There’s an old joke Donald Trump likes to tell, back in the 90s when he was underwater on his personal holdings. He’s driving through Lower Manhattan in a limo with his daughter and he points out the window to a homeless man. Then he quips, “I’m $800M poorer than that man”. To which his daughter replies, “If that’s true why are we in a limo while he’s out on the street?”
I think the situation is more complex than that. These are three expansionist imperial powers in a very loose coalition, perfectly happy to stab the other two in the back if it suits them.
The idea that Putin “owns” Trump is American media fiction. It’s not Devin Nunes sitting in the VP chair and its not Aleksandr Dugin operating as his Homeland Security Advisor. The folks that have their hooks deepest into Trump are 100% American.
Demand for new games will always be up
Sounds heard shortly before an industry crashes.
Trump didn’t nail up a pic of him and natanyahu on the white house wall a few weeks ago
Trump shaking hands with Netanyahu doesn’t Own The Libs. It’s one of those issues Chuck Schumer races Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson to applaud him on.
Besides they can all be in bed together
I don’t think for a second that anyone believes Democrats are in bed with Putin. And the urgency to take the fight to Russia is a major dividing line between MAGA Republicans and Neocon leftovers. (One that Trump was on the other side of as late as 2019)
It would be safer to say Netayahu is in bed with Putin, pulling strings on his behalf, than that the Trump GOP is aligned with Putin directly and not just playing Ukraine and Russia off against one another for their own benefit.
The office of the president is far too powerful
The office of the Republican president is far too powerful.
The office of the Democratic president is impotent and feeble.
Putin is our defacto president
It’s so funny to see the US intelligence services working overtime for sixteen years to do regime change in Russia. And because they keep fucking it up, the presumption is that we’re in Russia’s thrall.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu takes flights out to DC every few years to give joint chamber speeches at our own capital building. He gives his minions in our legislature explicit marching orders, while his affiliates in AIPAC drop billions of dollars into primary and national congressional races, influence peddle to affect judicial appointments, and lobby states to outlaw criticism of the Israeli state, and we’re just like “Oh yeah, this is normal, nothing to see here”.
RawStory: You’re not going to guess who is REALLY behind THE PRESIDENT! And they’re STILL using their WICKED INFLUENCES to CONTROL HIM!
American Pleb: Is it rich people? Specifically, wealthy overseas special interests with ties to the intelligence services?
RawStory: FUCK! We’ll have to FIND SOMETHING even more EXPLOSIVE to try and SHOCK YOU MORE next TIME.
I mean, were you around during the Cuban missile crisis?
Trump’s a total piece of shit, but I do think there’s some serious recency bias.
The Drug War under Reagan, the War on Terror under Bush, numerous tense years during the height of the Cold War - Stalin getting the H-bomb, Egypt closing the Suez, MacArthur getting forced out of North Korea, the Tet Offensive and subsequent protests, epidemics from AIDS to Polio…
Things have been bad in the US on and off for a while.