@memeorandum@universeodon.com2025-10-29 21:40:58
Virginia House Advances Democratic Plan to Counter GOP Gerrymandering (Jen Rice/Democracy Docket)
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/virginia-house-advances-democratic-plan-to-counter-gop-gerrymandering/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251029/p124#a251029p124
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social2025-10-31 15:30:23
@Dragofix@veganism.social2025-10-29 19:15:15
Report finds dangerous mercury levels, highlights mislabeling in shark meat sold in EU https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/report-finds-dangerous-mercury-levels-highlights-mislabeling-i…
@UP8@mastodon.social2025-10-30 22:06:23
🫱🏽🫲🏿 How Anti-Corruption Can Be a Winning Issue for Democrats
#politics
@cdarwin@c.im2025-11-30 17:10:42
Virginia Democrat flips seat in state legislature by taking on datacenters
John McAuliff won against a Republican by focusing on something affecting all his constituents:
the cost of energy
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/n
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-12-29 20:01:06
A look at the rift in the Democratic party over AI and data centers, as pro-business Democrats oppose the fiery, anti-AI politics of the progressive wing (Calder McHugh/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/12/28/ai-j…
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-30 10:05:59
The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol
@cdarwin@c.im2025-11-30 17:41:32
Trump’s defense secretary,
Pete Hegseth, said Monday that
the Pentagon will investigate Mark Kelly,
a Democratic senator from Arizona and retired Navy officer,
for his role in making a video reminding service members of their duty to disobey unlawful orders.
In targeting Kelly
-- and another prominent Democratic critic of the administration,
Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia,
-- the Defense Department has been co-opted into the president’s norm-shatte…
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-30 12:59:11
The American Democratic Party, and the concept of "Democratic Socialism" within the US, comes largely from an authoritarian political tradition where the state offers services in exchange for the population allowing elites to continue parasitize the system. Then it is critical for Liberals to consume and destroy popular mutual aid, because real mutual aid undermines their carrot.
Democrats tend to imagine that anarchists want to destroy "all the good things" that governments do. The reality is that we want to build those good things ourselves so that we can reject the offer of those same good things, less well managed, with all the bad things attached.
Anarchists want to build pro-social systems (what if we didn't *need* snap, but just made sure everyone was fed?) while eliminating anti-social ones (do we really *need* to kidnap children, or could we just kind of stop doing that?).
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-31 16:17:35
Omar Fateh,
the son of Somali immigrants and a democratic socialist,
is a leading candidate in the mayoral race in Minneapolis
and seeking to unseat incumbent Jacob Frey.
Fateh made history in 2020 by becoming the first Muslim and first Somali American to be elected to Minnesota’s state Senate.
Fateh has run for mayor on a platform advocating for rent stabilization,
raising the minimum wage
and reforming how the city handles public safety.
“…
