applegrove
applegrove's JournalMy Dad was a lobbyist for Trucking companies and truckers in Ottawa.
When the government wanted to regulate dangerous goods his clients wanted him to stop it or at least minimize the regulations. My dad hit is limit of what he was willing to do and pushed back. They pulled the financial support for the trucking trade association he managed. He hired consultants to write booklets and put together kits on the new regulations. He then sold the kits back to truckers. They decided to keep him on. Thing is he was in the running for becoming the lobbyist for the beer industry in Ottawa when he got into lobbying. He decided to go for Trucking because he would feel guilty selling beer in a recession. Now here he was paying salaries out of his own pocket, I think, because some truckers can be MF***ers. He would have been better off working with the beer industry. We knew the people who got that job with the beer industry and they had free samples. LOL! My dad's background was with the Liberal Party where he was in charge of having teas with rich old Liberal women to fundraise. The Liberals were in power so he had his pick of where to lobby. He mentored a young environmental lobbyist who became the leader of the Green Party in Canada too.
You did a good thing. It is not easy to blow the whistle in a situation like that. Know that you have saved lives. Quite the cap to a long and principled career.
The Democrats need to do a map of all the things a great majority want or are
afraid of then come up with policy that nails that demographic. Kind of like Republicans and revived critical racial history and how they tied it to parents being unhappy at their kids not being in school these last years. Like beanie babies. When they came up with that, the concept was something that cost $5, that kids could be addicted too (and parents) and that could be placed near the checkout. The fact that they ended up being stuffed and baby and animals came later.
The good news is the MAGA populist base has to be fed red meat so neither
one will be able to tack to the middle. There base will want to be affirmed as racists/commie hating rugged individuals constantly. If the 2024 candidate for the GOP tries to quiet the feeding frenzy during the election Democrats can step in a feed the base with saucy memes. I'm thinking things like: "Barbara Streisand, Biden supporter, is a known thespian in LA" or "Trump is a sweetheart" and and him quote Bambi using Bambi's voice in a meme". Because that is what neighbours do.
The base will demand that Trump or DeSantis be nasty so they can re-affirm their toxic relationship. DeSantis nor Trump will not be able to tack center if they keep being pulled back into MAGA world.
De Santis is running as a strongman, ruthless, ***hole. Dem need
to put a deep fake video of DeSantis smelling in a cartoon bush and ending up nose to nose with Thumper from Bambi.
This is the type of thing that is common in places with lack
of good wages and exploitation instead of real liberal leadership at the top. If US goes autocratic it will be everywhere because everyone will be powerless except for the oligarchs who can buy it.
It boils down to people like Manchin getting election dollars and
pac support from outside donors, not locals. So he is beholden to them not his people who vote for him. With enough money he can win those votes by snowing them.
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Member since: Mon Feb 7, 2005, 03:14 AMNumber of posts: 118,813