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so how did this thread about the tobacco bill spill over into a space of conservative fantasizing about the early phase of an administration that has not yet happened? it's like you comrades are practicing the art of remainingin opposition. funny stuff.
on the general question: i don't know where on earth anyone got the impression that the american state and the corporate sector are not intimately intertwined, like entirely, like wholesale--what distinguishes republicans and democrats primarily is which factions within the corporate sector they work with. republicans in the main like one sector of defense contractors; democrats another. republicans in the main talk about free markets while practicing a military keynesian approach to economic management; democrats talk more about comprehesive approaches to state interaction with the economy. neither republicans or democrats in fact operationalise "free markets" anywhere, ever. to think in terms of "free markets" is to confuse 18th century political economy textbooks with reality--to think in terms of "free markets" really means you don't understand the first thing about contemporary capitalism--you know, the result of the history of capitalism since around the 1870s. "free markets" are nice nietzchean fantasies, and they function on small scales in limited ways--within overall legal contexts that are state creations. markets and state are intertwined in a wholesale fashion--if you think about it, the only real distinction between republican and democrat approaches is aesthetic--whether you want to see the regulatory functions or not--and ethical--whether you think it's ok for the population which does not hold capital to suffer the consequences of volatility in the economic sphere--and so tactical.
it's pretty straightforward in a framework that looks at actual history and actual conditions rather than at market metaphysics.
the american agricultural sector is extremely heavily subsidized by the state. tobacco farmers, because they farm, receive these subsidies. presumably there was once a space where people ate tobacco.
o yeah---i smoke still---as mark twain said quitting is the easiest thing in the world to do, ive done it hundreds of times.
i support the bill.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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