Elizabeth Warren's aggressive plans to level the playing field for the American economy are drawing heavy fire from billionaires, even ones who acknowledge the system needs to be fixed https://t.co/WCt04LU64N
— CNN (@CNN) November 6, 2019
Jamie Dimon realizes that this is only going to help Warren, right? https://t.co/cBeUbE8oYI
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 6, 2019
Paul Waldman, in the Washington Post:
… Hedge fund managers warn that if Warren is elected, the stock market will tank. Wall Street Democrat Steven Rattner insists that “a Warren presidency is a terrifying prospect,” lamenting Warren’s targeting of “Many of America’s global champions, like banks and tech giants,” not to mention the effects her policies would have on “Private equity, which plays a useful role in driving business efficiency.” Horrors!
Meanwhile, billionaire investor Leon Cooperman told Politico, “I believe in a progressive income tax and the rich paying more. But this is the f—ing American dream she is sh—ing on.”
As Anand Giridharadas notes, when plutocrats push back on proposals to increase their taxes, they never say what really motivates them, which is simply that they don’t want to pay higher taxes. Instead, the argument is always about how, if we tax them more, then we will only be depriving ourselves of the fruits of their beneficence….
But it’s clear in the venomous reactions Warren produces from the plutocrat class that they want not only to be able to be taxed and regulated as lightly as possible, they want to be told they deserve every bit of wealth and power they have.
Warren does not offer that reassurance; quite the opposite. She says that the system has been shaped by the wealthy to advance their own interests, and if you’re one of them, you have an obligation to contribute more. And she’s happy to mock or insult the billionaire class along the way…
"Much of the Wall Street vitriol now being directed at Warren was previously directed at, of all people, President Barack Obama," writes @PaulKrugman https://t.co/t2ncSUB6xl
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) November 5, 2019
… Objectively, Obama treated Wall Street with kid gloves. In the aftermath of a devastating financial crisis, his administration bailed out collapsing institutions on favorable terms. He and Democrats in Congress did impose some new regulations, but they were very mild compared with the regulations put in place after the banking crisis of the 1930s.
He did, however, refer on a few occasions to “fat cat” bankers and suggested that financial-industry excesses were responsible for the 2008 crisis because, well, they were. And the result, quite early in his administration, was that Wall Street became consumed with “Obama rage,” and the financial industry went all in for Mitt Romney in 2012…
What, after all, does modern finance actually do for the economy? Unlike the robber barons of yore, today’s Wall Street tycoons don’t build anything tangible. They don’t even direct money to the people who actually are building the industries of the future. The vast expansion of credit in America after around 1980 basically involved a surge in consumer debt rather than new money for business investment.
Moreover, there is growing evidence that when the financial sector gets too big it actually acts as a drag on the economy — and America is well past that point.
Now, human nature being what it is, people who secretly wonder whether they really deserve their wealth get especially angry when others express these doubts publicly. So it’s not surprising that people who couldn’t handle Obama’s mild, polite criticism are completely losing it over Warren…
.
Kent
Gotta think there are about 1000x more votes to be had for Warren by criticizing Wall Street and the plutocrats than there were to be had for Clinton by cozying up to to Wall Street and cashing in as she did in 2015 with all the private speaking engagements.
These people are her best advertisement and she knows it. She is playing them like a fiddle.
different-church-lady
I don’t recall the American Dream being defined as “Someone else has all the money.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If the American Dream starts at $50million, aren’t most of us fucked?
Chyron HR
@Kent:
Thanks for sharing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
in other news:
piratedan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: somehow, THAT salient point never quite gets into the polite conversation or the story itself, strange isn’t it?
Mary G
They may be rich, but their will no one think of their feelings?
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
These “successful people” got where they are by screwing other people over, period. They’ve made success a predatory behavior.
BC in Illinois
As Imani Gandy, the Angry Black Lady on Twitter, says :
NotMax
Shorter version:
“How dare anyone question that IGMFU is the sine qua non of Americanism?”
//
Chetan Murthy
@NotMax: “… and IBGYBG the acme of business ethics?”
Baud
I know it’s Krugman and many people here agree with that statement on its merits, but there’s nothing “objective” about it. It’s a legitimate point of view, but it’s not objective.
At least he didn’t say “literally. “
kmeyerthelurker
Oh, so the American Dream is actually having more money than one can possibly spend in one’s lifetime. Seems about right.
kindness
With all due respect fuck you Wall Street.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Krugman has always– at least since January, 2009– had one foot in the camp that believes Obama could, and should, have been a dictator.
debit
Really surprised that Jump, you fuckers! wasn’t a tag on this post.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: With due respect guys, I think you’re forgetting “look forward, not back”. Obama didn’t prosecute hardly anybody for the crimes of the Great Recession. And I say this, as a gynormous fan of the man and his administration.
So yes, “Objectively, Obama treated Wall Street with kid gloves”, just as “objectively, the Earth is round”. I mean, you can believe differently, but it doesn’t change reality.
Mary G
MORE DRAMA IN ALABAMA:
I bet the Twitler grudge beats all other considerations. The only person he seems able to keep quiet about is Putin.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
That’s not objective under any reasonable meaning of that word.
A Wall Street banker would disagree that Obama treated him with kid gloves. Also, not objective.
TomatoQueen
Wall Street? Fuckem.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
Kid-glovesness is not a measurable quantity like roindedness.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud:
Oh, here, let me get Chuckles the Toddler to weigh in and we’ll clear this all up. ROFL. Dude, the idea that Krugman cannot be objective about matters of economics and finance is …. well, it’s pretty rich. There’s a term for your position: it’s called “bothsiderism”. As in: “both sides have good points, and the truth is somewhere in the middle”.
TS (the original)
I heart Paul Krugman. The only NYT columnist worth reading. He well understands economics and politics.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
I didn’t say he can’t be objective. I said his characterization wasn’t objective.
Everything else you said are simply random talking points that don’t fit these facts.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: Your argument can be construed as:
(1) Wall Streeters are liars, sure
BUT (2) so is Krugman.
They’ll both lie if it serves their ends. And while that is eminently clear of basically anybody in finance (it’s about separating widows and orphans from their life’s sustenance, after all), I find no good reason to believe that Krugman is a liar when it suits him.
Do you have such evidence?
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Greenland! Jeez, the shit comes so hard and fast that there are whole categories of scandal and idiocy that disappear down the memory hole. Boy, that was way back in [checks notes] mid-August.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent:
FFS
dm
@Baud: I guess what’s subjective is the meaning of “kid gloves”.
How about this: “Objectively, Obama didn’t jail any bankers for fraudulent practices”, “Objectively, Obama didn’t erect a guillotine on Wall Street nor mount heads on the horns of the Wall Street Bull”? That work for you?
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
The “lie” is presenting a subjective point of view as objective. He could have left out that word and the statement would be fine.
Steeplejack
@Chetan Murthy:
“IBGYBG”? Unpack, please.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chetan Murthy:
You know that presidents don’t actually prosecute cases, right, and that “prosecution” and “conviction” aren’t synonyms?
Baud
@dm:
Yep.
japa21
@Chetan Murthy: Since that isn’t his argument at all, one has to wonder what your objective is here.
Chetan Murthy
@dm: Nor did Obama even obey Bagehot’s Rule[1]: “lend freely, at a penalty rate, against good collateral.” Instead, he simply lent freely.
[1] And let’s remember why Bagehot counseled that penalty rate: to punish moral hazard.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: No, his argument is that “treated with kid gloves” is necessarily a judgment call and, therefore, can’t be objectively true or false.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks. That’s clearer than my attempts to explain.
waysel
@Steeplejack: Acronym. IBG YBG. (finance) I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone. (I’ll have gotten my commission; you’ll have sold out to the next guy; neither of us will be held accountable).
IBG YBG – Wiktionary
I had to google it.
dm
@TS (the original): I’d add Michelle Goldberg, Charles Blow, and Kara Swisher to the list of worthwhile op-ed contributors. Mark Bittman, too, when he appears on the opinion page. Maybe David Leonhardt.
Aleta
@Mary G:
“People close to Trump and McConnell have tried to gauge how much POTUS will attack … Trump has told senators/advisers he will move to Alabama to beat Sessions himself. But he’s also kept his powder dry publicly as stories have swirled.”
Sounds like the team of John Miller & Barron is back in town.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Woohoo!
Martin
One could infer that Dimon believes the only successful people are billionaires. I think most of us view ourselves as successful and the fact that we chose to be public service professionals, teachers, nurses, factory workers, whatever even though we knew it would never make us billionaires, is pretty fucking insulting to our career choices and work product.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dm: Jamelle Bouie, often Timothy Egan. Kristoff’s heart is in the right place, bless that heart.
Jay
Talia Lavin, @Chick in Kiev,
Has an excellent article in GQ on how “Eat the Rich” has made a big comeback.
google.ca/amp/s/www.gq.com/story/eat-the-rich-digital-generation/amp
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chetan Murthy:
what are you referring to here?
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: I guess Baud can pretend that whether or not some group of malefactors was treated with “kid gloves” is a matter of opinion. Sure. I guess. I mean, Obama himself is on record has having addressed at least one group of Wall Streeters, noting that he was basically the only thing between them and the howling horde ….. but sure. Whatever.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
I’ll pretend that to my dying day.
germy
That sounds like a threat to me.
Jay Noble
I think Krugman needs to sue Kudlow and Kramer to change their names so I don’t have to spend time sorting them out before I get to the actual meat of an article.
Chetan Murthy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
During the financial crisis, many respectable economists were pointing out that the Fed was lending money at knock-down rates — which it has continued to do. Whereas, Bagehot (famously, editor of The Economist) counseled that the lender of last resort must lend at a penalty rate, in order to ensure that moral hazard was not rewarded. In the instance, economists were recommending that the Fed/Treasury should take equity positions in these insolvent financial institutions, b/c charging high interest rates would have been difficult in such a deflationary environment. Of course, the cries of “SOSHULISM” were deafening, and so that didn’t happen.
That the Treasury made a profit isn’t even an attempt at an answer-back: if the economy doesn’t COLLAPSE, of course the lender of last resort is going to make a profit. What should have happened, was that all the plundered riches got restituted, and that’s part of what happens when grifters and chancers have to give up their shares and winnings.
Ah, well.
Oh, and remember how when it came time for bonuses to be paid, “the sanctity of contracts” was paramount, but when it was about pension funds, or other worker agreements, well, yanno, times they’re tough. Remember how the dickweeds at AIG were screaming that if they didn’t get their bonuses, they’d quit, and that would further wreck the financial system? And they got away with it?
Yeah, no kid gloves there. None at all.
germy
Another endorsement for Warren:
germy
Jay
germy
Juice Box
@Kent: Jonathan Béchamel Hollandaise, is that you? You haven’t been around since you took your post-election victory lap in 2016. How’s the weather in St. Petersburg this fall?
Jay
Jay
Mary G
@germy: Ayanna’s getting a lot of shit from the usual suspects for “disloyalty” to the Squad and all progressives by endorsing EW over Wilmer. I think she was smart, and like her for standing alone.
germy
Barbara
@Juice Box: WTF? Kent is a regular.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: This is a really dumb fight.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Barbara
@germy: He has rotten instincts when it comes to hiring personal legal counsel.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: Trudat.
Baud
@germy:
Quid pro quo expert.
Jay
Tony Jay
+++++++BREXIT ELECTION NEWS+++++++BREXIT ELECTION NEWS+++++++BREXIT ELECTION NEWS+++++++++
“I DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING TO, BUT I WOULDN’T START FROM HERE”
And they’re off!!!
Yes, finally, about bloody time as well. As what will almost certainly be the most important national election in British History since 1979 gets underway the presumed frontrunner, a much-fancied thoroughbred with an awful lot of big money riding on his ample posterior, has already emptied his bowels straight out of the gate, slip-slid on skittering legs straight into the very first fence and now lies, twitching and whinnying, on the much befouled track as multiple sobbing Paramedi(a)cs try desperately to get him back in the race, while from the stands a grim faced Judge begins his descent, mercy-piece cocked and at the ready.
Is that a metaphor or an analogy? Why don’t I understand things? I blame someone.
If you’ve been listening to British Media outlets cover the topic of UK politics at any point over the last millennium (has it only been two years? Really? Is that all?) you’d almost certainly have come away with the distinct impression that this Election was very much a dead rubber. Labour were totes doomed, the Liberal Democrats were on the surge and, though the SNP were due to wipe out all the other parties in Scotland with their message of “Drank mah pish, y’anglash cants”, the only thing standing between the Tory Party of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and an absolute majority in Parliament was the foreign-backed influence project known colloquially as ‘The Brexit Party’ and its intermittently confrontational national Gauleiter, Nigel Farage. This narrative wasn’t just set in stone, it was perma-frozen there by an unchallenged certainty that “Boris”, as his journalistic fans insist on calling him, was simply far too witty and nimble and beloved by the Average Voter for his impression of a jolly decent cove just trying hard to do the absolute best he could on behalf of Queen and Country for anyone on the Opposition benches to lay a glove on him. He’d have this all wrapped up in a matter of days and the only question was how big his win would be.
It would be an understatement of pron-cocktacular proportions to say that this narrative has proven to be, ahem, somewhat flawed.
Where do we even start with the meth-brained way the Tories have gone about the relatively well-defined business of getting themselves elected by actual living voters rather than the access-journalists they used to go to school with?
Let’s begin with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the huffily anachronistic Tory spokesman for the Department of Why Good Blood Will Out, Sirrah!, who took time away from lurking noncorporeally in the blighted ether twixt Dream and Nightmare to go on the radio and pronounce in clipped tones of flat finality that the many of the 72 poor, foreign-born peasants who burnt to death in the Grenfell Fire Tragedy back in 2017 had only themselves to blame for lacking the simple common-sense to ignore the Fire Brigade’s clear instructions to remain in their homes and instead move downstairs, perhaps to the shelter of the family crypt, or possibly the main wine-cellar, where they could have at least enjoyed a nice glass or two of Merlot while awaiting rescue. It didn’t take long for the stench of Rees-Mogg’s comments to breed pushback from the lower classes, and soon he was forced to release a statement in which he clarified that he was, of course, terribly sorry to have been unclear in his original wording and had in fact meant to say entirely the opposite of whatever it was the peons had taken offense to.
Ever the good little Conservative the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg was quick to praise Moggy for the speed of his apology after his ‘gaffe’. I’m sure you meant well, you bargain-basement Halbermann, but I’m afraid you didn’t help. ‘Gaffe’? People asked. What ‘gaffe’? Sneering at dead people for not having the intelligence to ignore mere functionaries isn’t a gaffe, it’s what you do when you’re a Tory scumbag trying to redirect blame away from the private contractor who broke the law to clad the building in cut-price flammable material and the local Tory council who studiously ignored all of the warnings and complaints from the tenants because they didn’t have any financial incentive to give a shit what the serfs were jibber-jabbering about.
Obviously, the next step was to bring in a professional crisis-manager, someone with the nous and the guile to pluck Rees-Mogg from the jaws of peril and fob-off the angry common folk until the Media had got bored and moved on. Obviously, yes, but that bit of common-sense didn’t occur to the mavens down at Conservative Central, because instead they wheeled out oyster-mouthed Brextremist wind-instrument and all-round blistering fuckwit Andrew Bridgen, a sad-trombone sound effect of a man who knows he was lucky to feature in the first series of the inexplicably popular reality-show ‘Britain Does Brexit’ and is so desperate to eke out his 15-minutes of fame that he’ll appear on late-night Japanese TV with a live squid hanging out of his rectum if that’s what it takes to stay ‘relevant’. His argument was that, while Rees-Mogg’s comments were “uncharacteristically clumsy”, his good friend was so “intelligent and compassionate” that what he’d clearly meant to say was that he would simply have given the residents better advice than those know nothing “experts” with their “plans” and “regulations”. Trust a Brextremist to advocate blind obedience to the ill-informed, that’s more or less their native credo. Sorry, Andrew, you’re never going to get that invite to Moggy’s country estate. You’re neither wealthy nor well-born enough, and under that cheap cologne you smell like a prole.
Moving on, there’s the matter of the Intelligence Report on Russian Interference in British Politics, including but not confined to the 2016 Election, which should have been released weeks ago but is now being kept on the down low until after the 2019 Election. Everyone involved in its creation and clearance has affirmed that it’s gone through all of the necessary stages of expert classification and is ready to be released to Parliament and the public in time to be useful, what with a General Election only weeks away. So, what’s the problem? Johnson, of course. He won’t release it. Various BS reasons have been advanced, none of them lasting very long under the intense heat of very mild questioning, and it’s coming down to the simplest of Occam’s Razors: it’s not being released because Johnson and his advisors (mainly long-term Russophile Dominic Cummings) are petrified of what’s in it.
What might that be? Could be anything. Clear evidence of Russian funding for the Leave campaign? Proof of Russian bot-armies helping Leave spread their message? Confirmation of Russian infiltration of the Tory Party? Possibly even actual names named of who the Russians have under their control? Conceivably all of the above with Russo-American in place of just Russian? For all we know the Secret Services could have mapped out the entire influence, manipulation and bribery network that made ALL of 2016’s major failures of democracy happen and handed them to Number 10 wrapped in a big, red bow, but we just don’t know, because Downing Street is deliberately concealing it from us. It’s not hard to see a wide range of reasons Johnson would want to keep the Report bottled up until after the Election, but it is hard to see why an independent Media dedicated to keeping the British Public informed about the major news stories of the day wouldn’t be making a MUCH bigger deal about his deeply-suspicious order to supress it. If only we had one. For example, the BBC didn’t even have the story on their website until very late in the evening after the story broke, and you’d struggle to find it there even now. Needless to say, I can’t imagine that happening if a hypothetical Labour Administration were supressing an Intelligence Report about pressing national security threats. They’d be on it like a drake on a passing lady duck and wouldn’t cover a single other story until it all came out. Still, the topic isn’t going away and every day Johnson sits on it is another day he can get violently buffeted by accusations of complicity with Putin’s aims for the UK. Serves him right.
What’s next? The Advertising Standards Agency has forced the Government to pull its latest tranche of expensive advertisements about the much hated ‘Universal Credit’ system (Welfare or Social Security, I think you guys call it) for being chockablock full of misleading inaccuracies (i.e. blatant lies). That’s a good few hundred thousand pounds of public money spaffed into the void trying to defend yet another Tory project that has as its main purpose inflicting cruelty and misery on millions of defenseless people. Not a good look just weeks before an Election where Labour are making their determination to scrap Universal Credit a centerpiece of their campaign.
It’s been revealed that the figures bandied about by the Government for affordable houses constructed since they won election promising to build 200,000 of them might have been a little bit inflated. Rather than the 200,000 expected, the real figure is a lot more like, uh, just let me check my notes here, ah, more like…. zero. That’s right. Zero. Nada. The big Duck Egg. More millions wasted on incompetence and graft, and what do we the public get out of it? A whole lot of land with absolutely shit-all on it in the midst of a massive affordable housing crisis. Wow, talk about a vote winner, eh guys? They’ll be popping the corks all night at Conservative Central over this one, won’t they? What’s that? Those pops aren’t corks? Then what….? Oh, well, yeah, they obviously knew the price of failure when they took the job on.
Let’s see. In the debate over Johnson’s Withdrawal Bill his Government made a clear promise to MPs of all parties that of course Parliament would have a vote on extending the transition period between agreeing to leave the EU and actually leaving past the December 2020 cut-off should any hypothetical Johnson Government fail to agree a Free Trade Agreement with the EU in that time. This was the infamous No Deal time-bomb identified as the real reason the Brextremists who’d scuppered May’s Withdrawal Bill three times voted for Johnson’s very similar one. If they just held their nose and waited a year, they could force a No Deal Brexit by voting against signing off on whatever rushed and unbalanced FTA the UK and EU managed to cobble together in such a short period of time. The promise to MPs that they could prevent a No Deal by voting to extend the transition period to cover however long it took to get an FTA agreed and signed won a lot of votes over to Johnson’s Withdrawal Bill, but now they’ve bluntly announced that MPs won’t get any such thing, making it crystal clear that Flobalob wants the threat of No Deal back on the table to wave at the next Parliament’s MPs should they reject the terms of any FTA he negotiates. This has not gone down well at all, and leaves Johnson wide open to accusations that he’s just a lying sack of shit who will say whatever he has to in order to get the person he’s talking to to drop their knickers, which has the added benefit of being oh so true.
Next, the Secretary of State for Wales, one Alun Cairns, has been forced to resign from his post after an e-mail emerged proving that he’d been (prepare to be shocked) lying his stumpy little arse off when he denied knowing anything about a former aide (who he had later backed to become a member of the Welsh Assembly) deliberately sabotaging a rape trial in order to get a friend of his off. The thing is, Johnson didn’t sack him, and he’s not stopping him standing as a candidate in the election. On the contrary, he thanked him for his service and is apparently looking forward to welcoming him back when he’s spent enough time in ‘exile’. It’s a really, really bad look and gets worse when (as has been pointed out by Labour) neither Cairns nor his boss seem to have given a moment’s thought for the actual real-life victim in all this at any point during the proceedings. Coming very soon after another Tory candidate in South Wales was outed for having used social media to tell everyone the people featured on Godawful poverty-pron reality TV show ‘Benefits Street’ should be “put down”, this isn’t doing anything good for the Tory campaign to pinch lots of Leave voting seats across South and Central Wales.
And then there’s Flobalob himself, who just can’t seem to get through a single sentence without segueing off into a fat old lie or three. That’s been the key to his success for all these years, but things are a tiny bit different when electoral ‘purdah’ rules are in effect, because the national media have to at least – look – like they’re being unbiased now that everyone is starting to tune in. In other words, there’s immediate fact-checking going on and (important) the fact-checking is being reported on in real time.
So when he claims that Parliament blocked his Withdrawal Deal from passing, it’s immediately pointed out that, no, Parliament started passing his Withdrawal Deal but rejected his attempt to restrict the whole process of passage to three days, at which point he pulled the Deal and demanded an Election, you fucking liar.
When he claims that electing Labour would mean two Referendums next year and no Brexit, its immediately pointed out that Labour promise one Referendum (on Brexit) and have actually ruled out giving the SNP another Independence Referendum early in their first term, you fucking liar.
When he claims that the Tories are building 40 brand new hospitals, it’s immediately pointed out that the Government has announced six hospital upgrades, with dozens of others being promised some funds to plan these upgrades themselves, you fucking liar.
I could go on, because this shit incenses me and there’s just so much of it happening in such a short period of time, but you get the point. This is supposed to be an Election Johnson and his cronies have wanted and planned for, yeah? So why is this bed piled so high with shit you could throw a sheet over it and provide low-cost skiing opportunities for daredevil midgets? Why can’t the Tories stop stepping on each other’s dicks like they’re trying to skip across Todger River? Could it possibly be that, despite the hype, they’re actually not that good at this unless they get to define the terms and cheat the system in every situation? This is supposed to be Day One of the Greatest Arsekicking Ever Delivered To The British Left and, I’m sorry, but I’m really decidedly unimpressed by the quality of the beating I’m receiving. If I was paying for this, I’d want my money back. Hell, Johnson and Co are paying for this, but they’re using public money to do it, so I feel doubly aggrieved.
Maybe we are going to come out of this with a Government that isn’t actively trying to run some sort of enormous con to immiserate the country in order to enrich their business sponsors. That would be just great, thanks. So if the Tories want to continue being garbage at the job they’ve given themselves, that would be great too, because it looks like Labour are really up for this and chewing up that poll disadvantage even faster than they did in 2017.
Fingers crossed. What’s happening over there? I hear you had some elections that went well?
Jay
Jeffro
@dm: Those folks are all good/great reads. Leonhardt, Blow, and Goldberg are usually right on point.
germy
Conservatives are complaining that Obama forced CIA officials to attend “PC” meetings to learn to be more politically correct:
Silverman must be chuckling over this.
jk
h/t huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-k-street-epiphany_n_5dc332d9e4b00551388225e7
Is it time to finally acknowledge that Joe Biden has lost his goddamn motherfucking mind? The stakes in 2020 are simply too high to nominate this fool which is why we need to go all in for Elizabeth Warren.
germy
@Tony Jay:
Jeffro
@Martin:
The main thing I took away from his comments was that, once someone gets to a say Dimon-like level of success, the criticism ought to be so tepid as to not actually qualify as ‘criticism’. Maybe more like ‘gentle suggestions’. You know, if the billionaires are getting away with murder and contributing relatively next to nothing in the way of taxes, we lessers ought to ‘gently suggest’ that they could throw us a few more crumbs. Something like that.
Where is my bat?
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bouie’s Twitter game is pretty good, too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chetan Murthy: so we’ve gone from legal prosecutions to something that happened when Bush was president to the Fed should’ve raised interest rates to….?
IANAL, so I don’t know if there were in fact things Obama could have done and didn’t. You haven’t made that case, and frankly this all sounds like a lot of “There oughta (have been) a law! and it’s Obama’s fault there wasn’t!”
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
inorite?
germy
@jk:
It's actually happening already. Look at all his Republican colleagues who jumped to his defense over this Hunter Biden business.FelonyGovt
They’re trying to steal the Kentucky Governorship.
Baud
@germy:
DONALD TRUMP IS STILL IN THE WAY!
Kent
@Omnes Omnibus: $120 million from Wall Street for mostly private speaking engagements for both Bill and Hillary since 2000.
But I guess this was some sort of financial S&M scheme and they were really paying to get spanked in private?
I voted for Hillary and was a big supporter in 2016 over Sanders and the the rest. And I thought she got robbed. But spending the time between her Secretary of State resignation and her entry into the 2016 race doing Wall Street speaking engagements was pretty tone-deaf.
Steeplejack
@waysel:
Thanks.
Baud
@Kent:
Do you have a source for your dollar figure?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: If those were the only speaking gigs she had, I might agree with you. They were not. We’ve covered this here a thousand and eight times, so I won’t bother with the links again.
japa21
@jk: Even if the first half of your statement were true, which is manifestly debatable, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we need to go all in for Warren. There is no correlation between the two. As a matter of fact, I could repeat comments by Warren and with as much justification state that is why we need to go all in for Biden.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh please, let’s go for a thousand and nine. It might be the one time something actually gets through to some people. But probably not.
laura
Confiscatory tax rates to wring the idle capital out of the soft hand of the obscenely wealthy after leaving a goodly amount of wealth; as was not begrudged in our best years of shared prosperity; to soft palm. Put the rest to good social use.
Jamie Dimon should be ignored and opposed.
Tony Jay
@germy:
Shocking what real, actual journalism (rather than slimy agenda peddling) can do, isn’t it?
the Conster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Shitting on Obama is where we are now in order to go all in for Liz, who was a Republican all through the Reagan years? Is that right? What am I missing?
@Kent: These are right wing talking points. Her speeches to *Wall Street* were about empowering women. The only reason you know about them is because she listed ALL OF THEM on a schedule to her tax returns, which were a tiny minority of the speeches she gave to international trade organizations from her experience as the last Secretary of State who promoted democracy in the world.
Doug R
@Kent:
God forbid a woman make any money doing anything, that’s just for men, right?
TS (the original)
@dm: I don’t follow them, so don’t know – I cancelled my subscription sometime in 2016 when butter emails kept appearing. I save my limited reads to see what Krugman is saying – and for those times when I accidentally hit a link without checking if it is nyt.
jk
@japa21:
I’ll take Warren’s Senate record over Biden’s Senate record in a heartbeat. Have you seen Biden recently? It’s a daily struggle for him to keep his foot out of his mouth. He’s too damn old and he’s too out of touch to be the nominee. If you want to guarantee Trump’s re-election, just go ahead and nominate this imbecilic Biden and watch him get his ass kicked on Election Day.
the Conster
@japa21:
THANK YOU. I vowed not to vote for another old white dude, but I care about restoring relationships with our allies, FIRST. On day one. I assume Obama would be on the other line when Joe calls our allies on the first day, assuring them that the US isn’t a Russian satellite state.
Jay
Kent
@Juice Box:
Geez….so what’s your point?
1. That Hillary didn’t cash in on a speaking tour of Wall Street between the time she stepped down from the Secretary of State job and the time she announced her 2016 campaign?
2. That Warren isn’t taking a different tack with her 2020 campaign?
3. That ordinary voters don’t notice the difference?
Yes Hillary was perhaps the most progressive presidential candidate we had in decades on a whole bunch of social issues. No doubt about that. I voted for her in both the primary and the general. But she was pretty milquetoast and centrist when it came to her approach to Wall Street regulation and financial regulation in general. Both as a Senator and as a candidate.
Of course this is all performance art. None of Warren’s major tax proposals or M4A are going to make it through a Congress in which best case scenario Doug Jones or Joe Manchin are the deciding votes. But voters do notice. All I’m saying is that I think Warren knows what she is doing by going on the attack against Wall Street and I expect it will be a more rewarding strategy than the more centrist approach taken by Clinton and now being advocated by Biden.
HalfAssedHomesteader
Is anyone enjoying the implication that the only successful people are billionaires as much as I am?
Chetan Murthy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @the Conster: “Accurately recognizing what Obama was and was not able to do” != “Shitting on Obama”. He’s still my President, but it doesn’t mean I can’t understand his weaknesses. Amongst other things, it helps for understanding what needs to come next. And for instance, it’s why I like Warren and her plans: b/c we really do need to take these malefactors of great wealth down a few thousand notches.
Obama is still the greatest President I’ll ever experience — of that I’m sure. But it doesn’t mean he was perfect.
TS (the original)
@germy:
The lady who has advisers and makes plans, or the guy who tweets his hate while on the toilet or eating burgers. Hard decision.
FelonyGovt
@Tony Jay: This is all fascinating. Over here we are all too familiar with a “leader” who does nothing but lie all the time. It’s very disorienting.
Kent
@Doug R:
She can make as much money as she wants. I couldn’t care less. All I’m saying is that I think Warren has the better electoral strategy. Especially against Trump. If we’ve learned anything at all in the past 4 years it’s that our oligarch class care mainly about taxes and conservative [pro business/anti regulatory] judges and not much else. And they are always going to hold their nose and support the GOP as a result.
Chris T.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What, didn’t you know that if your net worth is under $50 million, you can’t be a Real American? Real Americans are those who live in the middle of the country and are worth over that. In other words, the Kochs.
the Conster
@Chetan Murthy:
Yet, not acknowledging the racist crazy tea party vitriol he was up against in a country that has violently enforced white supremacy since the Founding, and him not being your Negro is what this sounds like. He had no support from the white majority and blaming him for not fixing what you wanted him to fix in the short time he had, without a majority in Congress, is not where I am.
Jay
Tony Jay
@FelonyGovt:
Apparently they all went to the same Self-Empowerment lecture in 2011 where the speaker mixed a certain strain of blue-pill with a common over the counter laxative and minds were blown. This is the result.
Drugs make fascists, okay kids? Now fix this century, please, some of us want to live in it.
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
More often used for Climate Change as an existential problem, this refers to “I’ll be Gone; You’ll be Gone!” While true, seems pretty grim way to look at the world. My descendants won’t be gone, hopefully neither will yours.
I have no direct descendants, as we have no children so far as I know. I do have nephews and nieces, and cousins galore. Some of whom I adore, others of which, meh…
Mary G
@Jay: I didn’t know what EOD meant, turns out it’s bad when they are too tired.
ETA: Sweeping an entire golf course for bombs is a big job.
jk
h/t mediaite.com/election-2020/elizabeth-warren-offers-to-meet-with-bill-gates-and-talk-wealth-tax-after…
Mart
@Tony Jay:
We say little people now.
Thanks for your continuing insights on your countries own Russian inspired mess. If Putin does not knock the USA off the stage of credible world actors, implode the United Kingdom, and tear apart the European Union; at least he can take solace in knowing he drove the citizens of these nations out of their fucking minds.
Cacti
@jk:
Because the safe bet is on the candidate who has made a 52 trillion dollar healthcare plan the centerpiece of her campaign.
Smh.
Jay
Mary G
Sweet Jeebus, no:
The DNC needs to give her the wrong time and place.
Chetan Murthy
@the Conster:
Actually it’s the opposite. I wrote this just now at LG&M: disq.us/p/25eha1s
Look: I know — I KNOW — that Obama is better than we deserved. It doesn’t mean he was perfect, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect that our tribunes do better in the future in some of the areas where he fell short.
Tony Jay
@Mart:
I sacrificed the little people for verbal flow.
I felt bad then, I feel bad now, but at least I don’t have to look anyone in the eye and explain myself. /s
Chetan Murthy
@J R in WV:
Uh, it might be used for Climate Change these days, but in the runup to the Great Recession, it was bandied about specifically in the subcultures of Wall Street where mortgage-backed securities were traded, pretty much as @waysel explained.
Jay
@Cacti:
As Dump 45 and the ReThugs have shown, deficits don’t matter.
google.ca/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/11/01/elizabeth-warren-releases-plan-to-pay-for-medicare-for-a…
You are going to pay that money anyway, wouldn’t you rather get healthcare for that money as opposed to Insurance CEO’s getting richer and richer while you die slowly of a treatable cancer while fighting bankruptcy?
Of course not. You are American. Dying without heathcare is your birthright.
Mary G
WaPo has a breaking news alert that Twitler wanted Barr to throw a press conference and state that the call to th Ukrainian president was perfectly legal.
joel hanes
@germy:
BillGates, the great philanthropist of our age, is so attached to his own wealth that
… he never gave a penny, not one thin dime, to any charity whatsoever, until he married Melinda and she told him that sociopathy was not a good look and karma would eventually get its turn at bat.
Melinda Gates is the philanthropist. Bill Gates was/is the original self-absorbed techbro. Brilliant business strategist. Have always hated the man, especially for never correcting people who give him credit for software chops he never had. He, himself, wrote one of the early x86 BASIC interpreters. Microsoft purchased DOS from its author.
joel hanes
@Omnes Omnibus:
Jackals apparently gotta jackal.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chetan Murthy: I really don’t want to do this again, but…. from my perspective, you did not “accurately” discuss what Obama could and couldn’t do, you talked about what Obama should have done, more accurately, what Obama should have been able to do. Let’s start with your original complaint, the favored trope of Matt Stoller and other emo-progs: Obama didn’t put any banksters in jail. Again, IANAL, but I believe that process would’ve started with the now-fabled office of the US Atty for the Southern District of New York. Obama appointed the almost now-legendary Preet Bharara to head that office:
so, there’s Obama “kid gloves”: a “crusader prosecutor“. Unless you have some evidence that Bharara wanted to prosecute more cases, and Obama stopped him, please stop with that worn-out old emo-trope.
Why do I care? Cause underneath this zombie-emoplaint about Obama is the cult of the presidency. We don’t need to win down-ticket races, we can ignore the Senate. we just need to swing for the fences! excite the base! Bernie will rule by executive order! I mean, Warren is gonna institute a wealth tax! No, she’s not (though this is, I think an example of good, excite-the-base politics). Liz is gonna pass single payer! No, she’s not, cause even if she wins by (in spite of) promising to eliminate private insurance, Martha McSally and Susan Collins and (god help us) Jeff Sessions are gonna use that rhetoric to save the Senate for for Mitch McConnell.
I could go on, but I still have a few things to do before I even start dinner.
encephalopath
“Private equity, which plays a useful role in driving business efficiency.”
In the same way that wolves play a useful role in driving “efficiency” in the elk herd.
Jay
the Conster
@Chetan Murthy:
Where did he *fall short* giving what we know about this country and how he had to negotiate the mine field put in his path by the emoprog white left and the revanchist white right who were determined to blame him for operating under the systemic racism this country was founded on? Do you remember the “I blame Obama” memes? The fact that he was trying to be the president of the entire country? I do. It’s seared into my memory. I will not participate in any “let’s blame Obama for him not being perfect” in order to feel better about what happened, and why.
Chetan Murthy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Surely you’re joking? Or you’ve forgotten? Each of the three incidents I mentioned (Gates, Trayvon, crossing the street) were anodyne things Obama SAID, and got attacked viciously for having said.
different-church-lady
@jk:
Well, she just lost the true left.
JanieM
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not jumping into this argument in a general way, but we Mainers will have failed mightily if Susan Collins is still in the Senate in January of 2021.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JanieM: I have faith in you, but she doesn’t seem near scared enough yet. I saw Bill Cohen on MSNBC today, doing his “I am not a Donald Trump Republican” thing. Andrea Mitchell did not get my “Ask him if he’s a Susan Collins Republican!” brain message.
@Chetan Murthy:
Objectively, the earth is round and Preet Bharara is a Wall St lackey. You can believe differently, but it doesn’t change reality. Or something.
J R in WV
@joel hanes:
I was always pretty sure he got CP/M ( an early 16-bit operating system ) out of a dumpster behind the office building where the company publishing CP/M operated, late at night. But I could be oh so wrong…
I will confess, I could probably not have written an x86 BASIC interpreter without a lot of help even back then.
the Conster
@JanieM:
I’m in Mass., and I’ve adopted this Senate race. I’m going to take one of my weeks of vacation (and donate) next year to work for Sara Gideon.
the Conster
@Doug R:
Paris Hilton makes a million dollars per speech at parties. {shrug emoji}
Jay
Mart
@Tony Jay:
Did they taste good?
the Conster
@the Conster:
Shout out to Liz, btw, for understanding that flipping the Senate is important to implement her plans. Unlike Sanders. She’s earmarked some of her millions to fund the Gideon campaign, while Sanders continues to be an 80 year old cardiac patient grifting ratfucker.
Jay
JanieM
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I agree, and I don’t know why. I’ve heard rumors that she won’t run, in the end, if her internal polling suggests she won’t win, which suggests that since she hasn’t pulled out of the race, she must have some polling numbers that are giving her confidence. Which is hugely depressing! On the other hand, maybe she’s just too deep in her bubble to read the tea leaves accurately. I think she has changed for the worse over the years, psychologically. Not that she was ever the moderate or maverick she got all kinds of press for being, but that there was a time when she wasn’t a ball of whiny resentment because she actually had opponents and — heaven forbid! — voters who detested her. Then again, in the early days she was winning by crazy percentages, so maybe it has just never occurred to her that that won’t keep going forever. Bleh.
A recent PPH article on the subject, including the fact that she hasn’t officially declared yet.
@the Conster: Sounds great!! We need all the help we can get! And since Maine is Vacationland, by definition you can still have some fun on the side! ;-)
Jay
Gwangung
@joel hanes: As analyst of philanthropic behavior as my day job, I must say….
You are not incorrect.
joel hanes
@J R in WV:
DOS was not based on CP/M code (although the original author of DOS was certainly familiar with CP/M). Gates purchased from the original author an independently-written microcomputer monitor program (not an actual operating system) called QDOS, for “quick and dirty OS”, without telling that author that the fledgling Microsoft would be using it as the basis for a contract with IBM.
Jay
the Conster
@JanieM:
my oldest best friend in the world is in Kittery and I can stay with her to do what needs to be done. Southern Maine is where most of the population is. We’re going to do this.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: I think you’re overstating the case you’re trying to make.
No time for extensive links, but my recollection is that several of the giant banks (GS, in particular) didn’t want to get involved in any government rescue program (they were able to take the money and run before the crash) but were forced to do so because the Treasury didn’t want people making (even more of) a run on the weaker players. “See, everything’s fine. We’re supporting the US banking system. Your money is safe no matter where it is.” Preventing a run on the banking system is a good thing, but Geithner and the rest probably didn’t do as much as they could have to reduce the moral hazard.
And the US government did make money (by some measures) with things like TARP. And the US government did take stock as collateral :
The guy running the mortgage/foreclosure modification system that Obama set up – Edward DeMarco – probably did more damage than Geithner when it comes to
affectseffects on average homeowner’s pocketbooks and delaying the recovery.Oh, and the Financial Fraud Task Force did prosecute a lot of banksters (but not the giant ones, for various reasons).
That’s my recollection, anyway.
tl;dr – The Banksters had good enough lawyers to know where the line was and not cross it too often.
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@Tony Jay: Is it wrong that I prefer to refer to two of your more illustreless political fuckups as Niggling Falange and Jackoff Grees-Smogg?
Steeplejack
@Mary G:
Interesting that Trump remains fixated on the “perfect” phone call, while the rest of the world has moved on to the multiple first-hand witnesses corroborating the whistleblower’s claims and the un-perfectness of the call. At this point the call is almost a footnote.
Mandalay
@debbie:
The truth frequently gets swiftly removed from the Wiki entries of influential people so I’m surprised that this nugget is still there:
It’s true (see the video starting at 0:58, just after he says there shouldn’t be hearings for Trump’s impeachment) , but I’m sure his minders will get it wiped soon.
Also in the vile fucker’s wiki entry:
– In November 2011, Cooperman gained attention for an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama in which among other things charged the president with engaging in class warfare.
– On September 21, 2016, Cooperman was charged with insider trading by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission….In May 2017 Cooperman’s firm agreed to a $4.9 million settlement with the SEC.
And this: Cooperman said he chose to give his money away rather than letting the government take it in taxes.
Jay
Another name, another pin, need more yarn,
Jay
Kent
@Baud:
NYT: OK, yes, they were concern trolling. But they usually don’t get the dollar amounts wrong: nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/hillary-clinton-speeches-wikileaks.html
Jay
Baud
@Kent:
Thanks for linking. The $120 million seems to be from all speeches by Bill and Hillary since 2001, not just Wall Street speeches.
Amir Khalid
@TS (the original):
Ahem! Gail Collins. Is Charles Blow still columnicating there? If he is, I’d count him too.
TS (the original)
@Mandalay:
How dare the government make decisions on spending money in the US. I flush it down the toilet rather than pay taxes.
Great community guy.
Aleta
Toward the end of this essay by Gary Wills I found I was inadvertently thinking of Warren, and about ways that she and other female candidates have been interpreted. And about things proved in their pasts that I’m usually not thinking about when I think of them. Their strength and intelligence and routes are so anomalous.
Jay
the Conster
@Another Scott:
IT WAS A CRISIS OF BUSH’S MAKING, WHICH WAS DUMPED INTO OBAMA’S LAP ON DAY ONE. He had to rely on the advice of the people who fucked it all up, how to unfuck it before the entire global economy crashed. Still, he got the $800 billion American Recovery and ReInvestment Act passed (scandal free and effective, thanks to Joe Biden) and the ACA passed against all odds. Remember, he had a slim supermajority for about 9 months.
Aleta
@Amir Khalid: Oh he’s there and he’s often on fire. I find his twitter very good too.
Jay
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amir Khalid: @Aleta: I always thought Blow served up some pretty weak tea, but the trump era seems to have put him on a next level. I could be wrong about his previous stuff.
And there’s the affirmative-action hires, Douthat and Stephens. Frank “meh” Bruni. And Brooks, Friedman and Dowd, like the paint cans and old couch the sellers left in the basement and it would cost more to get rid of them then to just not look at them
chris
Rachel just said that the shitgibbon asked Barr to give a press conference and say that the call was perfect and the preznit did nothing wrong. Barr said no. Meanwhile on Fox, of course:
Kent
@the Conster:
Personally I have very little criticism of Obama from his first year in office. They moved mountains to repair the horrors left by Bush.
Where I tend to get critical is that it took him far too long to get to the “no fucks left to give” Obama that finally emerged in his 2nd term. And a whole lot of their regulatory changes and such were still working their way through the system at glacial speed when Trump took over. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – JRR Tolkien.
Aleta
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “the trump era seems to have put him on a next level” That’s my impression too. And police abuse.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
makes me wonder how somebody like Barr leaks, to whom, through whom….
Bobby Thomson
@the Conster:
Which is why after her last election she didn’t horde her war chest and instead donated it all to down ticket races. Oh, wait. That was Harris.
Warren kept millions.
piratedan
@chris: i am fast coming to the position that I wish that the network news folks simply ignore Lindsey Graham completely, I mean really, what does he bring to the conversation than someone who conversationally carries the WH water with nary a nod to his former “principled” self. You know what he’s going to say, why fucking bother. He doesn’t give a shit that he’s completely hypocritical, he’s speaking to an audience of one, just let him call DJT himself and spare making us the middlemen…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@joel hanes: Bill Gates “transformation” probably had more to do with his mom dying, about the same time as his marriage. Death has a way of focusing priorities.
Amir Khalid
@the Conster:
And she makes that money off people who have a need to show that they can afford to blow a million bucks on nothing.
Jay
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Interesting phrasing in that Times article: “The Clintons have made more than $120 million in speeches to Wall Street and special interests since Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001.”
Isn’t any organization willing and able to cough up big bucks for an A-list speaker at a convention or some such almost by definition a “special interest”? I mean, the Boy Scouts of America are a “special interest.” Although I doubt they’ve got the money to pay for Hillary Clinton—or, say, Donald Trump, for that matter.
From 2014:
Meanwhile, according to that article, Bill and Hillary were typically charging $200,000 a speech and, I guess, running up their total in volume.
One of the authors of that Times article is Amy Chozick, longtime Hillary gadfly and pet peeve of valued commenter Kay.
Dan B
@Tony Jay: I must congratulate you on making it impossible for me to read a short section of your post to my partner. Somewhere arround “sad trombone” and rectal squid I couldn’t stop beginning to convulse with laughter. Now he is hiding somewhere safe dialing the local home for the suddenly insane. (Not really)
He did remark on your fine ability to render an unforgettable put down. And I remarked that it all comes together in a coherent narrative for the current state of British politics.
Bravo!
chris
@piratedan: I agree, but I found the seekrit demoncrat allegation amusing. Desperate too and I love seeing that.
the Conster
@Amir Khalid:
Yup. But let’s impugn the motive of the most accomplished woman in the world for being paid to share her vast knowledge of the world she kept together for 4 years, which she should have given away for free because…. reasons.
Jay
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
Even if he was expecting the Republican party to refuse to deal with him sincerely for the nation’s sake, and I doubt he was ever naive about that, I reckon he felt obliged to allow them aa chane to do so. That is, in order to get to NFLTG, Obama had to spend his first term giving away all his fucks.*
*Yes, I know: phrasing.
Aleta
(brief video of protest line)
gwangung
Yeah, pretty much.
Actually, that’s wrong. Big national organizations with national conventions will budget for A-list speakers. And there aren’t that many that are larger than the BOy Scouts.
catclub
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I would sure like to see him quote Warren here. I have serious doubts.
Jay
Jay
Steeplejack
@gwangung:
Perhaps instead of “got the money” I should have said “would spend the money.” I couldn’t find any examples of the Boy Scouts paying someone six or seven figures for a speech. Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy, spoke to them in 2012, and his fee apparently ranges from “$75,000 and up.”
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack:
He’s convinced himself that he gave this one perfect performance — and yet he gets no credit from us ingrates!
Another Trumpian throwback to the TV sitcom version of the 1950s, where the bumbling husband Saves the Day on a Very Special sweeps Episode. And for the next several seasons, whenever he gloriously FUBARs something, he whines, But what about that time I Saved the Day?!?…
Percysowner
@Cacti:
O, FFS. She DIDN’T make it the CENTERPIECE of her campaign. Her centerpieces are taxing the wealthy, which she always talked about going to education, child care and other social programs and ending the influence of money in elections in order to stem the corruption in government and large companies. She didn’t come out of the gate with a plan for M4A. She looked at the alternatives, recognized that health care is one are where people can’t make decisions that work under a capitalist structure and agreed that Health care needs to be a government run program, or at least run by non-profits. She might well have been happy to not talk about it at all, except 1) Bernie made it the centerpiece of HIS platform and won’t shut up about it 2) The media jumped on board demanding all the candidates take a stand and then defend how they will pay for M4A while not say BOO about who will miss out on coverage under other plans and 3) Buttigieg and others demanded that she come up with a foolproof, detailed plan, because Warren is gaining in the polls. She was in between a rock and a hard place. If she didn’t come up with a plan, the media and her opponents would hammer her for selling a pipe dream. Whatever plan she came up with would be hammered as being “wrong”, “poorly thought out”, and unrealistic.
I don’t know that she had a good choice here and it may have been a misstep. I can, however, believe that even if she loses the nomination, that one day a decade or so from now, a lot of her ideas will be part of how Health care will change in America.
the Conster
@Percysowner:
Please read this thread by Congressman John Dingell. The winning message is expanding on what we have.
Who Knew Healthcare Could Be So Complicated?”
twitter.com/JohnDingell/status/844325501086961664
Kay
I think Trump’s changing his rally speech. It sounds like they trying to make him sound “Presidential”. Trying and failing, sure, but it sounds coached. I detect an effort. Hah!
Dan B
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I know people who are close to Bill Gates – worked in executive positions. They say he listened to good people and modified his views. Melinda may very well be a key influence. The other is his father Bill Senior who fought for years to retain the estate tax because he felt it was one way to prevent the US from becoming a society with inept rich kids who were Aristocracy 2.0, corrupt and contemptuous. His other positions were mostly left of center. Bill’s mother Mary was a very successful woman who was often the only woman on boards and in meetings. The loss of his mother would have been rough. And Microsoft’s first or second hire was openly gay. He was the president of the Lakeside Computer club where Bill and Paul Allen got their start. Ric, the gay geek, was harrassed at Microsoft and that opened Bill and Paul’s eyes.
Dan B
@Dan B: Just to be clear I know bits and pieces about Gates’ family and employees. I’m no scholar on his political journey but it’s interesting that a number of people in his sphere may have influenced him.
I hope he (and Melinda) meet with Warren. He’s thoughtful but has some ideological blind spots.
I was on a first name basis with Ric the gay geek, and bodybuilder – not your sterotypical brainiac geek.
Aleta
E.J. Dionne Jr. in the Post
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Trump wouldn’t be paid by the Boy Scouts, he appeared as their ex-officio President.
@Dan B: Mary Gates was also on the UW Board of Regents.
Cacti
@Percysowner:
Berniecare is the hill she’s chosen to die on.
And die we will, if she’s the nominee.
Fair Economist
Midterm elections are referendums on the incumbent. Voters don’t care much about policy provisions, even ones that would produce tremendous benefits like Warren’s M4A plan. It does matter in the primary, and Democrats have strong majority support for a single payer plan.
Steeplejack
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Thank you for sawing the sawdust into tinier bits of sawdust.
Aleta
eddie blake
@the Conster:
THREE months.
between the seating of franken and the death of kennedy.
AxelFoley
@Chetan Murthy:
All due respect indeed, but as President Obama said, they got the ones who they were able to prosecute. The ones who didn’t break any laws, they couldn’t prosecute, even if, like Jim said, folks like Krugman wanted Obama to be a benevolent dictator and lock up everyone on Wall Street.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: You’re most welcome.
Chris Johnson
@Cacti: You keep saying those words, and to counter them I say: if we choose Biden, literally nobody is going to vote for him, because he’ll be a mess and the Republicans will turn him into an Ed Muskie-like wreck within two weeks. He’ll fall apart, and then he’ll literally fall over and Russian people will mount a concerted effort to appoint Bernie Sanders as the only acceptable also-too-old white man for the Democratic nominee, at which point they’ll reveal just how much they’ve been doing to ‘help’ him plus they will enlist both Wall Street and the insurance companies to openly side with Russia against the Democrats, and we’ll have four more years with the corpse of Trump, who is actually an animatronic replica. And though this is admittedly a big improvement over actual Trump, we’ll still be fucked.
But Biden will say he can work with him if only he reaches across the aisle, since he won’t get out of the way.
And that’s all about as plausible as what you’re claiming.
Uncle Cosmo
@Percysowner:
Probably her best choice – our best choice – was to be supportive of improvements but vague on details. There’s no reason to do otherwise, other than to try & outbid BS for his supporters – which IMO is a fool’s errand; if they don’t come around after he flames out in the primaries, they were never coming around in the first place.
I certainly hope that her ideas will be a substantial part of the discussion in a few years’ time. But right now Jobs 1 through N are to pry as many of the fucking fascists as possible away from the levers of Federal power. IMO promoting M4A in the current climate makes the lift heavier than it needs to be, and in that context is (again IMO) a
betrayaldisservice to the preservation of the Republic & the restoration of American democracy.