Democrat Leverage Quotes

The final form of leverage is brand new—the most democratic form. It is: “products with no marginal cost of replication.” This includes books, media, movies, and code. Code is probably the most powerful form of permissionless leverage. All you need is a computer—you don’t need anyone’s permission. [1]

When Nixon resigned over Watergate, it provided all the leverage Hayden and his activists needed. The Democrats won the midterm elections, bringing to Washington a new group of legislators who were determined to undermine the settlement that Nixon and Kissinger had achieved. The aid was cut, the Saigon regime fell, and the Khmer Rouge marched into the Cambodian capital. In the two years that followed, the victorious Communists killed more Indochinese than had been killed on both sides in all 13 years of the anti-Communist war.

Everything that is wrong with the inner cities of America that policy can affect, Democrats are responsible for: every killing field; every school that year in and year out fails to teach its children the basic skills they need to get ahead; every school that fails to graduate 30 to 40 percent of its charges while those who do get degrees are often functionally illiterate; every welfare system that promotes dependency, condemning its recipients to lifetimes of destitution; every gun-control law that disarms law-abiding citizens in high-crime areas and leaves them defenseless against predators; every catch-and-release policy that puts violent criminals back on the streets; every regulation that ties the hands of police; every material and moral support provided to antipolice agitators like Black Lives Matter, who incite violence against the only protection inner-city families have; every onerous regulation and corporate tax that drives businesses and jobs out of inner-city neighborhoods; every rhetorical assault that tars Democrats’ opponents as “racists” and “race traitors,” perpetuating a one-party system that denies inner-city inhabitants the leverage and influence of a two-party system. Democrats are responsible for every one of the shackles on inner-city communities, and they have been for 50 to 100 years. What

Work must be refused and reduced, building our synthetic freedom in the process.136 As we have set out in this chapter, achieving this will require the realisation of four minimal demands: 1.Full automation 2.The reduction of the working week 3.The provision of a basic income 4.The diminishment of the work ethic While each of these proposals can be taken as an individual goal in itself, their real power is expressed when they are advanced as an integrated programme. This is not a simple, marginal reform, but an entirely new hegemonic formation to compete against the neoliberal and social democratic options. The demand for full automation amplifies the possibility of reducing the working week and heightens the need for a universal basic income. A reduction in the working week helps produce a sustainable economy and leverage class power. And a universal basic income amplifies the potential to reduce the working week and expand class power.

Secrecy, however, came at a cost. Every Democratic senator greeted the announcement with euphoria, except for one. Kyrsten Sinema learned about the agreement on the floor of the Senate, when Republican senator John Thune mentioned it to her. And she instantly unleashed her fury on Schumer. In fairness, Joe Manchin knew that the legislation would needle her. Over the past year, the pair struggled to suppress their rivalry. They both enjoyed being the fiftieth senator, the vote on which their party’s agenda depended. It was the point of maximum leverage—and it came with the plaudits of tycoons, who cheered them for spoiling the Democratic agenda. Despite

Innovation by users tends to be widely distributed rather than concentrated among just a very few very innovative users. As a result, it is important for user-innovators to find ways to combine and leverage their efforts. Users

While the bill would not directly make doctors government employees, it would force them to sign a “participation agreement” to be eligible to receive government payments. This agreement, says Smith, would require the doctors to accept the government fee as full compensation for their services, allow the government to inspect their books, and accept government regulations in the future. With no bargaining leverage, doctors would have to comply to continue in their profession. Such is the world of a government-imposed monopoly.

The final form of leverage is brand new—the most democratic form. It is: “products with no marginal cost of replication.” This includes books, media, movies, and code.

their heels,” Priebus said. “Put all the chips on the table. And then slowly but surely pick off each chip individually.” It could be a person, a policy, a country, a foreign leader, a Republican, a Democrat, a controversy, an investigation—Trump would try to leverage anyone, by any means, and at times he would succeed.

Le Pen’s recipe for success was closely watched by fearful French democrats as well as by his emulators abroad. The FN focused intensely on the immigrant issue, and its ramifying related issues of employment, law and order, and cultural defense. It managed to bundle together a variety of constituencies and positioned itself to become a broad catch-all party of protest. It refrained from appearing to threaten democracy directly. When it won control of three important cities in southern France in 1995 and another in 1997, as well as 273 seats in regional legislatures in 1998, it acquired a capacity to reward its militants with office and force mainstream parties to treat with it. While there seemed little likelihood of its winning a national majority, the FN forced mainstream conservative parties to adopt some of its positions in order to hold on to crucial voters. The FN’s strategic leverage became so important in some southern and eastern localities that some conservatives with narrow margins allied with it in the local elections of 1995 and 2001 as the only way to defeat the Left. These successes at bundling constituencies, gratifying the ambitious, and forcing mainstream politicians into alliances moved the FN firmly into the process of taking root—Stage Two. In December 1998, however, a quarrel between Le Pen and his heir apparent, Bruno Mégret, divided the movement and drove its vote back down below 10 percent. Despite this setback, Le Pen rode a groundswell of resentment against immigrants, street crime, and globalization back to a shocking second-place 17 percent in the first round of the presidential elections of April 2002. In the runoff with incumbent president Jacques Chirac, however, Le Pen was held to 19 percent by a groundswell of French revulsion

Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan become case studies on how the foundations of democracies are shaken to their roots by elected officials, who establish themselves as czars, emperors, and sultans masquerading as democratic presidents. Yes, they continue to reign over countries that are democracies in name only. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people is weaponized against those who dare challenge the ruling establishment. The rise of white Christianity during the second half of the twentieth century was purposely designed to be nondemocratic. Paul Weyrich, known as the “founding father of the conservative movement,” the architect of the Heritage Foundation, and a leader of the Moral Majority, made it perfectly clear he was against the democratic principle of one person, one vote. During his address at the seminal Religious Right gathering in Dallas during the fall of 1980 he said, “I don’t want everybody to vote…. As a matter of fact, our leverage in elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”34 In other words, when nonwhites vote, white Christians lose, so we do not want those people voting.