Count me as perplexed. I couldn’t understand why Credo Mobile had issued a petition in support of having Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida serve as the sole Democrat on the House Select Benghazi Committee. So, I read the petition.
The request is straightforward:
We urge you to appoint Florida Representative Alan Grayson as the sole Democratic member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Benghazi, or appoint no one at all.
Approximately 20,000 people have signed this petition. But, why?
As I began reading the rationale, I saw that Credo Mobile correctly identified to problems with the committee. But I was looking for the logic behind Grayson being the sole Democratic member of the committee.
I never found that logic. I was told that Grayson is an accomplished litigant and that he excels at questioning witnesses and that he has a tough skin and doesn’t care what the right-wing media says about him. I was given examples where he has been effective in televised hearings. But I was also told the following:
With limited power, House Democrats cannot afford to cede this committee room to Republicans, who will use televise[d] hearings to parade their Benghazi myths unimpeded by any respect for facts, responsibilities to reach the truth and in a manner completely unhinged from reality.
Let’s accept that argument as true. The Democrats cannot afford to completely boycott the proceedings. Then why does the argument for Grayson conclude by asking me to “Join [Credo Mobile in] urging Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to appoint Representative Alan Grayson as the sole Democratic member of the Select Committee to Investigate Benghazi”? Why does the language of the petition asked Pelosi to appoint Grayson and Grayson alone, “or appoint no one at all”?
The premise of their argument is that the Democrats can’t afford to appoint no one at all. That’s off the table. But they make no effort to explain why Grayson should be the only appointee. If not Grayson, surely someone else rather than a situation the Democrats can’t afford. So, why just Grayson?
They don’t say.
They could have made an argument for this. Maybe appointing only one member would send a signal that the proceedings are a sham without totally ceding the floor to the Republicans. And maybe there is no one else besides Grayson who could do the job of standing up to Republicans on the committee. But I shouldn’t have to make Credo’s argument for them.
For me, Grayson is singularly ill-suited for this task. He is rightly seen as an intemperate firebrand, prone to over-the-top language. He’s a bomb-thrower who excels at warming the cockles of outraged liberals’ hearts, but the press looks askance at his antics. In his first term in Congress, he took no heed of the makeup of his district and neglected constituent services in favor of making headlines. He was totally destroyed in his reelection campaign.
Sending Grayson in to trade bombs with the Republicans on the Benghazi committee is basically an endorsement of bomb-throwing, which would give the committee’s tactics a legitimacy that they don’t deserve. He would also be outnumbered on the committee 7-to-1, which leads me to suspect that Credo is overestimating his skills and ability to come out the winner in a war of public perception.
Winning the war will require not just a strong performance in the hearings, which few people will watch, but a strong performance in the coverage of the hearings. Picking someone that the media respects would be a good start.
Personally, I am not prepared to accept the premise of this petition, which is that the Democrats must appoint at least one person to the committee. But I outright reject the idea that the Democrats should only appoint one person. And I doubly reject the idea that that one person should be Alan Grayson.
I don’t oppose Grayson serving on the committee along with four other Democrats, but I cannot support him serving as the only Democrat.
Throwing bombs at the select committee? I’m not one to advocate violence, but that’s not bad idea. Maybe we could hire the libyans to do it.
I don’t think there should be any democrats on the committee. I also think everyone subpoenaed to testify should tell the committee, politely, to go away. They should be in contempt of congress… congress is contemptible. It’s time for some civil disobedience. Democrats should start up a legal defense fund for the victims of this kangaroo court.
I think Grayson should be on the committee. I also think a couple of second and third term (fairly new) Democrats should be there, too. It’s going to be ugly, gut-churning work, the kind of stuff a fullback does on a football team. But also the kind of work that has to be done if the team is to succeed.
Yeah, it’s not fun being the lead blocker on running plays, taking on linemen and linebackers who outweigh you by 25 to 75 pounds. But that lead block is what can spring the runner for a big gain. Fairly new congresspersons who want to make their bones and move up the leadership ladder might want to get on this committee and do the glamorless task of monkey-wrenching the Republicans’ kangaroo court.
As an aside, Booman says that Grayson is regarded as an intemperate firebrand. Yet the likes of Louie Gohmert of Texas or Michele Bachmann of Minnesota are considered presidential timber (or at least vice-presidential timber) by some media outlets that really should know better. I wonder why there’s such a perception discrepancy, particularly when Grayson often turns out to be right – though right at an inconvenient time – while Gohmert and Bachmann are buffoons through and through?
Ok, first, no news outlet, not even FOX, thinks that Louie Gohmert is presidential timber.
And I don’t think too many people took Michele Bachmann seriously either, although she did win the Iowa Straw Poll, so she had to be covered as someone with at least a snowball’s chance in hell.
I carefully avoided comparing Grayson to those clowns because, while he may resemble them in some superficial ways, Grayson is attached to reality. However, throw them all together in a mud pit and they all look the same. Covered in mud.
I think the logic runs “If there’s going to be a media circus, at least make sure (1) it’s a two sided media circus and (2) no Vichy Democrats are on the committee.”
I think that in an of itself does not constitute a strategy.
Grayson’s approach has been to rally the troops by being as outrageous as the Republican crazies in order to get Democratic talking points before the media. That is now IMO a less effective tactic than it was in the late Bush administration. For all sorts of Democrats, politicians have cheapened talk with failure of actions or actions that fail to serve the public.
Only demonstrable action in the public interest will turn that around. And demonstrable action takes consensus and power, neither of which seem to exist in Congress any more.
Still, surely you don’t want a Vichy Democrat to lend “bi-partisan” to the accusations? I say, “Yes, better no one rather than a LieberDem”.
With all that, maybe someone other than Grayson will serve. But someone used to a bar fight, not Marquis of Queensbury. Grayson IMHO would be admirable.
“it’s a two sided media circus and (2) no Vichy Democrats are on the committee”
Yes, it will be a media circus. And no Vichy dems allowed. But can’t we find a few more dems with some fire in their bellies? Grayson makes outrageous comments like ‘hurry up and die’ but that may be exactly what we need. Does anyone really think the republicans are NOT going to make fact free talking points out of this? Why do we bring one person to fight this battle?
This sort of nonsense is evergreen.
I remember the palmy days early in Obama’s first term when the hot argument at DemocraticUnderground was whether the true progressive position was to dump Obama and run a Democratic ticket in 2012 of either Grayson/Weiner or Weiner/Grayson….
Grayson wants to mug for the camera and feed his ego. It’s not like Credo is a mastermind of strategy or anything. And we’ve learned that pretty much anything the far left wants is the opposite of what would be effective. Like Nancy Pelosi would even listen to this silliness. She’s too smart for that.
I hope she listens to my Rush Holt idea though
as I constantly remind conservative zeroes, math is not on their side.
Seven times zero (what the average con brings to the table and usually is) equals zero.
http://grayson.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/slate-labels-rep-grayson-most-effective-member-
of-the-house
Civility is way overrated in my book. The “turn the other cheek” philosophy of the all too timid dems has gotten them what but their faces slapped off, and time and again? Just compare the tear-filled apology Durbin was compelled to make during the Bush admin for his GITMO/gulag comparison versus all the turds smeared on BHO.
The only thing I agree with here is that the net result could likely be more proof that the idea of a “liberal” media is as much a myth as BHO/HC let those people die for political gain or somesuch BS.
And what about the alleged political goals assigned to “never mentioning terrorists” and variations on that theme? Can that be legitimately compared to the Bush turdline of “they hate us for our freedoms” that scored him so many political points despite being the falsehood it was?
It’s the repug madness that needs to “hurry up and die”, and before Durbin and since we’ve seen how effective the highbrow stuff has been at curtailing it, no? Oh that’s right, we’ve seen nothing but an escalation in their madness and the impunity with which they share it, no?
They need to be shamed/embarrassed, and he’s the man for that job. America needs a “Network Moment” on this issue, and should that occur we’d likely have him to thank for it whether he was accompanied by a bunch of hand wringing sissies or not.
Look, if the beltway political media have a bias, it is in favor of everyone just finding a way to get along and do something. Whatever that thing is doesn’t seem to matter. Who is to blame for people not getting along doesn’t seem to matter, either.
In their minds, Louie Gohmert is a problem. But so is Anthony Weiner and Alan Grayson. They don’t like bomb-throwers, even if partisans in both parties do.
Since the beltway political media will serve as the most important judge in this instance, convincing them that this is a one-sided farce is going to be harder with Grayson being to sole face of the Democrats.
once you accept that “the beltway political media will serve as the most important judge” there is no way to win. Those people are very very well paid to be on the Republican side and they will stay there.
with certain obvious exceptions, I think that is totally inaccurate.
Their bias is not towards Republicans. It’s towards comity and moderation. The press is utterly unconvinced that the hearings have merit.
Their bias is not towards Republicans.
So why are Republicans always on the Sunday gabfests? How often do they have Cranky McSame, or Mini-me, on and not a Democrat? Look at this weekend. Yeah, Sanders or Warren will never get asked to come on but they don’t even have Schumer or some other scumbag Dem on.
Because the media is terrified of being called liberal, so they overcompensate by putting on Republicans disproportionately.
well, they should strive more mightily to make sure that theatre of the politically and otherwise absurd like this never occurs.
And that’s why I say or at least alluded to in my previous remarks, that the “beltway media” needs to be exposed for what it is, which is hardly “liberal” other than in the way they liberally spread their their “both sides do it/he said/she said” manure.
I don’t get the “one must always play nice” philosophy regardless of the issue or circumstances, and particularly in the defense position against the bullies he’d be in. Can he possibly say anything worse than what can be found in the many editorials I’ve read on the matter of the explicit and implied kind? His “hurry up and die” comment for example, is nothing more than the result of their policies whether they wanna accept and acknowledge ownership/responsibility of it or not, as the recent studies on the needless deaths to be attributable to the refusal of some states to expand medicaid show.
ANd if the beltway media can’t figure out who is almost exclusively responsible for inaction in the halls of congress, who in the hell besides them cares what they think? If anything, they share the responsibility for that inaction by not making it clear enough to the electorate who does own it.
So far, notes Jamison Foser of Media Matters for America, “The news media’s coverage of the stimulus debate has consisted largely of repeating false Republican spin and pontificating about which side has been making their arguments more successfully (all the while ignoring the media’s own role in aiding the GOP).” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caryl-rivers/fdr-obama-and-their-enemi_b_171448.html
ANd who are all these “partisans” that love this kinda stuff, a subgroup of partisans like you that grow weary of theirs being drug through the mud daily and even more weary of their wouldbe champions being derided by rightwingnut lowbrows and “liberal” highbrows alike? The dem base in majority numbers I’d bet, aren’t gonna give a proverbial rat’s ass what the beltway media has to say about Grayson, and if anything in this instance, it would likely only confirm what they already know and feel about them.
I’d take any truth-telling, Tourette’s Syndrome-suffering rhetorical warrior that raises awarenesss with such efforts over a collection of sheep whose idea of a denunciation is “baah” when it should be “bah”, accompanied by a humbug. The only ground gained by dems playing nice most of the time is that occupied by disenchantment and assorted other negative factors we could well see manifested this fall.
I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this. Imo as long as the repub party is saturated with liars and crazies to the extent that it is, we need more Alan Graysons, not less, to assist in making their shortcomings the narrative focused on. Anything significantly less is the enabling found in silence imo, and really a disservice to those who any pol presumably sought office to help and serve. That’s why the enthusiasm remains low on the dems side — because they far too often see either sickening timidity that’ll never bring them what they want,or collusion making their lack of fulfillment a certainty. BHO would appear to be understanding this given the detectable change in his ways of “dealing” with them rhetorically of late.
And equating Grayson to a Gohmert is nonsense no matter who does it.
agree completely. they should put one person, Rush Holt, on the committee. every time the media has to explain who he is … it’s called two birds with one stone
A libruul and a scientist?
The guy practically runs the ClimateChangeMythTM all by himself!
no I was thinking both that Benghazi is nonsense and the importance of climate change – kind of a twofer if Rush Holt is appointed because they would have to say something about him.
so what I was trying to say – excuse the opacity – He would be the type of low key rational guy who wouldn’t participate in a shouting match, but just his being there is a statement that they’re wasting time on Benghazi and not spending time on climate change that needs to be addressed
Low key and rational.
Yeah, I said libruul.
🙂
Pardon my French but “Fuck the Beltway Media.”
and that’s why we always lose these games
We may not like the beltway media but they are the referees that many people watch outside of us who follow politics closely.
Maybe instead of saying “fuck them” we find a way to use their tendencies to our advantage instead, after all we’re supposed to be the smart ones. Right?
“Maybe appointing only one member would send a signal that the proceedings are a sham without totally ceding the floor to the Republicans.”
Obviously. And by appointing a bomb-throwing, it makes that even clearer. If you appoint a Very Serious Representative, or a Gang of Reasonable Four, it utterly undermines the point
People are seriously debating an online petition?
Eyeroll.
The only impact this or any Credo petition has is to gather names for Credo to market to. In this respect, it’s the same as any other online petition from any other group, candidate, or company.
The chance that this petition will have any impact whatsoever on Democratic House leadership is nil. But here we are, talking about Credo. Funny how that works.
It must be Saturday.
Go with music. 🙂
I do wonder why Booman sounds so worked up.
Booman writes:
Translation:
This is some sad shit.
Really.
Take a look at what all of your polite, centrist neo-libs have done so far, Booman.
They have failed!!!
Time for some new blood.
On the floor, if necessary.
AG
It actually means something, but your casually promiscuous overuse has worn it down to the paraphrasable semantic equivalent of “poopyhead.” An ineffectual pseudoradical jerkoff squealing NEOLIBERAL! has about as much impact teabagging goober squealing COMMUNIST!
And rightly so for in this instance, unlike so many others, both really do do it.
Indeed. And you could have added that maybe those who call themselves leftists but long ago dumped working class consciousness for an ideological salad with croutons of dudebro terror should hesitate to accuse others of being “centrist”.
I live in a mixed-race, working class neighborhood…Kingsbridge, in the Bronx…I have working class economic problems and I make my living as a musician playing for and teaching mostly working class people. I live “working class consciousness.” Anyone who defends what this nation has become over the past 50+ years…DemRat and RatPub administrations being equally at guilt…defends a system that is rigged at the highest levels against the working classes. I fail to understand how anyone cannot see this glaring truth. The evidence is right in front of anyone who cares to look. It is in Detroit; it is in Newark, it is in every large and small Rust Belt city and town across this nation; it is in the failing agriculturally-based small towns and it is now attacking the supposed “middle class” suburbs as well.
50+ years of economic imperialist war and 50+ years of failure to be able to pay the massive bills for those wars have broken this country.
And you are attacking someone who wants all of that to change? Including the absolutely false platforms upon which people like Obama run?
Get Real.
AG
And yet you have incessantly urged us to back politicians who are enemies of the working class, such as Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul:
That’s right: poverty wages are ‘tough love’ that we will just have to learn how to live with, and he seems perfectly fine with that. Sounds really working-class friendly, I suppose if one is taking the right or perhaps wrong narcotics.
So yeah…you can blather about your half-century plus experience as being the great champion of the working class, and yet for someone who has supposed to have lived it, well, you sure have a funny way of showing it.
To everyone who is not AG, hold out for the real thing.
We to be forced to tighten out belts eventually, Don. The U.S. can no longer sustain its ever-increasing debt. This can either happen through the kind of starvation that comes from a total collapse like the one in the U.S.S.R…I was in Moscow for a couple of weeks, a year or so after the collapse. It was awful. Lines around the block for bread and other staples; each family or living group had to have one member whose entire job it was to wait on lines for food. And that was in the most prosperous city in that vast country. What people went through in the boondocks was even worse. Bet on it.
Or we can voluntarily pull ourselves out of the position into which we have been driven by the Deep State rule under which we have lived since the JFK coup.
That vid you showed?
He’s right.
Wages…and costs as well…have been artificially inflated by the money printing that has been done in order to somehow prop up a burst-balloon economy. One way or another there is going to be a reckoning here. There is no way around it. I wish that there was, but as long as the corporate-owned UniParty system is firmly in place here the profit taking will continue.
AG
Arthur, wage and price increases have been very low for all the recent years the Fed has stepped on the gas with its quantitative easing and other money-printing policies. How does that jive with your claim that wages and prices are dangerously inflated?
Name one Paul policy position which helps working people regain their economic footing.
You mean my grocery bills haven’t doubled over the last 7 years or so? My gasoline isn’t about twice as expensive on the average from as it was in 2005 from 2011 to the present?
Oh.
Great.
I’ll review my perceptions.
Like this!!!
Riiiight…
AG
As we can see, this does not represent a doubling of our grocery prices. Because no, grocery prices have not doubled nationwide in the last 7 years.
It is likely that prices of goods have been driven higher because of the higher transport costs caused by rising gas prices. However, I see no evidence to justify a claim that gas prices have risen because of Fed policies.
Inflation.
Print money when you cannot pay your debts…money lacking sufficient real world production backing to make it legitimate…and every dollar begins to lose its worth.
Inflation.
Remember pre-Nazi Germany after the settlements regarding WWI tanked its economy?
Wikipedia (Emphases mine):
Slightly different reasons and certainly different circumstances, but this is a process that is starting to apply here as well.
The U.S. borrowed huge sums of money in order to fund its foreign adventures because it had sold its industrial production might down the river to countries that would work for much, much less. It simultaneously expanded its welfare state to stop the suddenly seriously financially challenged working classes from actively revolting. When the 2008 financial collapse occurred, it simply started printing money to “bail out” the very people who had supported those foreign adventures and industrial sell-off in the first place. One more disaster is all it is going to take to set a hyperinflationary system in motion.
There it is.
Deal wid it.
AG
The retail price of gasoline and Weimar Germany? You actually think you’re proving something here? You’re not totally wrong about the situation, but the idea that Paulism is the answer is deranged. I mean, here we’ve got Rand Paul wailing and gnashing his teeth over the national debt, and here we’ve got him calling for gargantuan tax cuts. Do you see the problem here?
And as far as the price of gasoline, I don’t know why you don’t care about climate change, but in truth the price of gasoline should be much higher than it is. Are you a denier, or what? A Rand Paul presidency would be catastrophic for the environment, since it would be all about gutting the EPA and fracking and Keystone XL and doing fuck all about the real crisis we’re facing here.
On Weimar, I think you could make a stab at “totally wrong” in the sense that the hyperinflation was over in 1924 and it was in the dreadful deflation of the Great Depression that German conservatives bit their tongues and invited Herr Hitler to form a government in the hopes of staving off socialist revolution. Which they succeeded at, of course. The kind of inflation we need (which the Fed and Obama have been trying and failing to spark over the last years because of the congressional and media idiots who are still worried about 1922) is bad only for creditors (if by “bad” you mean slightly decreasing their out-of-control profits).
That’s funny, he doesn’t seem to have read any part of the Wikipedia article except what he bolded. Because it does mention some minor differences between the US in 2014 and Weimar Germany. I’m going to emphasize this as emphatically as I can, because it’s somewhat important:
And:
But yeah, other than that and a few other things it’s exactly the same.
I wrote:
I stand by that statement.
AG
Yes, a couple of differences indeed. On the other hand if you follow Paul père and fils they should have had a big advantage over us in that everybody was still on the gold standard, right?
Here is the full content of the link that you included.
Do you disagree with this statement?
Why?
Do you like the way the IRS works now?
If so, you are totally without hope.
How about this one?
Yup.
It’s a shell game. The rubes can’t understand the system, so they get taken off.
That makes sense. It’s the PermaGov way. massive, badly functioning bureaucracies serve to camouflage the real deal.
So does that. More PermaGov sham and scam.
I would like to see the numbers, but a flat tax…combined with a huge reduction in federal spending (especially regarding overseas military adventures)…would work. At the right numbers, of course.
Again…numbers. But if the numbers worked, who would oppose these things other than people who make obscene profits off of our truly insane taxation system as it stands today?
Oh.
I forgot.
He’s a wailing, gnashing freakazoid.
Sorry.
Nevermind.
Yore freind…
Emily Litella.
So, AG, let’s talk about the tax policies the Paul movement favors. Not just the opposition to the overly complicated tax codes (which are created by Congress, NOT the IRS), but the massive tax cuts which the Pauls favor.
How do these tax cuts, and the massive spending cuts and magical economics which are required for the Paul budget to balance, serve the progressive movement? You love talking in great detail about other aspects of Paul policies- spend some time on this subject.
I have an idea, let’s talk about what I actually said. I didn’t say the Internal Revenue Code is perfect the way it is, I said Rand Paul is proposing a gargantuan tax cut. Is he or is he not? And if he is, will this make it easier or harder to balance the budget?
Where in the linked website does he propose a tax cut/ I don’t see it anywhere. Tax reform? Sure. Tax cut?
Nowhere.
Here is what he does say:
Followed immediately by:
He also says:
So there is no guaranteed “tax cut” here. What is implicit in this series of statements…and many others that both Pauls have made over the past years…is that:
1-The federal government is too big. Way too big. Thus, way too expensive. Way too wasteful as well, not least due to its massive bureaucracy.
2-Cutting down the size of federal government would put the financial burden of much of what it now oversees on the shoulders of the individual states.
3-Thus much of the funding of “the basic tenets of government” would be a task that the citizens of individual states would have to bear. It would be those citizens…much closer to their own areas’ needs and desires than are the Feds…who would vote on how much tax (and what sorts of taxes) they would pay. State taxes would of course go up…but they would better focused on the needs and desires of the people who live there…and federal taxes would most likely go down.
Would the end result be a “tax cut?” I believe that it would, if the PermaGov’s many adventures on foreign soil were to be successfully terminated. Trillions of dollars less federal tax, right out front. But much of the potential “cut” would really be a redistribution of tax necessities to the states.
Sounds good to me. I’ll gladly pay for the privilege of living in a state like NY, MA, WA, OR or VT rather than pay taxes that support states that are almost totally red and totally backward socially.
You?
AG
Our current set of marginal tax rates are called “progressive” for a reason, Arthur. A flat tax would require a massive tax increase on the poor and middle-class, and a massive tax cut on the rich. This is the flat tax’s chief appeal for the oligarchs. Why do you think the rich are the ONLY class which is clamoring for a flat tax?
Keep on trolling, Brother!
Yeah.
Right.
I suppose this website is also called “progressive” for a reason as well, but I cannot for the life of me see how that label applies here anymore. Ditto the tax codes as passed by Congress and enforced by the IRS. They are only “progressive” in the sense that they continuously become progressively more impenetrable while the .01% become progressively more wealthy and the U.S. flushes progressively further and further down the toilet of history.
“Flat tax” is popularly supposed to mean that everybody pays the same rate. But…as always…the economist noodlers are already splashing around in the fish tank.
From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
HOO boy!!!
Escape hatches galore!!!
I guess that’s why Rand Paul says “I am open to other options as well, but only those that will eliminate much of the complexity and regulation surrounding the current tax code.”
It’s a work in progress. Even if he was elected to the presidency Rand Paul would most certainly be forced to compromise…remain ” open to other options” in his words…in order to deal with Congress. You know…the “Congress” that dare not mention its (
PermaGov) name? So fear not, little pollywog prog. All would not be lost. Your DemRat and RatPub legislators would save you from all of those nasty Paulist de[predations you so fear, just as they have saved you from so much of Obama’s attempts at whatever the fuck he thinks he is trying to do.You claim…in true kneejerk fashion…that the Pauls are enemies of the working man, but you have no idea what they are saying. You have been told to go after them by your opinion makers, and that you do obediently. So it goes. Swim on, little pollyprog, swim on. Soon you’ll turn into a great big PolyFrog.
Just like this one.
Then you’ll be able to practice PolyTics.
For money.
AG
All these words so sweatily produced by Arthur, yet not one word addressing the fact that the rich are the only class which clamors for a flat tax.
The money men appear to understand something Arthur desperately pretends not to understand.
“The U.S. can no longer sustain its ever-increasing debt.”
Yes, it can. The USA is not Greece. Greece uses a foreign currency. The USA owns a printing press, the biggest damn press in the world. Debt means NOTHING!
HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!
I didn’t know you had that keen a sense of humor.
AG
It is a term that has lately been taken to mean, “any economic policy by any party or politician with which I disagree and/or dislike.” Plenty of conspiracymongers on the right use the term with alarming frequency – think of the usual Alex Jones followers, Stormfront neo-Nazi/Confederate vermin, 9-11 truthers, etc. That is one of the joys of the Internet era. Sherry Ortner had a nice little primer on neoliberalism a few years ago that included among other things a nice quick and dirty description of how David Harvey defines the term (my own usage is probably pretty close to that). Back when I was in college, the term I would typically hear or read was “late capitalism.” I could probably use those two terms synonymously and be comfortable.
I found a handy reading list earlier this year (with some more in the comments) that someone was kind enough to share. I wish I had the time and resources to read more, but for those who do, take advantage. I think it is helpful to note that neoliberalism is a rather broad school of thought (for lack of a better way to put it), and that its advocates and practitioners can and do vary a bit in terms of how it is implemented, the amount of upward redistribution of wealth to be required, etc. Tarring practically all Democrats in the US (or Labourites in the UK, or various center-left democratic socialist parties elsewhere) as neoliberals is neither accurate nor helpful in any event.