And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020

Started by JBS, June 26, 2019, 05:40:42 PM

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71 dB

Quote from: JBS on September 02, 2019, 05:34:14 PM
I disagree with your underlying premise: that Sanders would fix the system.

If even Bernie Sanders wouldn't fix the system then the US has no hope.
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drogulus

Quote from: 71 dB on September 02, 2019, 06:24:17 PM
If even Bernie Sanders wouldn't fix the system then the US has no hope.

     The set of conditions for system fixes requires a Dem President and Senate. If both are achieved there will be some fixing.

     I recall an Onion headline some years ago that captures my feeling about an "electable" Dem. It was "Bears lead Rex Grossman to Super Bowl". Yes, that's how I see it. Dems can win with a leader, or they can thrust greatness on a mediocrity like the one we are all thinking of right now.
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drogulus


     Dems Fly Over America!
     
     

     
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SimonNZ

Quote from: drogulus on September 02, 2019, 07:05:10 PM
     Dems Fly Over America!
     
     

   

Heh. From that Onion piece:

"Unveiling the new nationwide messaging strategy after six months of planning and research, the Democratic Party launched its "Listen Up, Hayseeds" campaign Monday to win over rural voters. "Hey, you redneck simpletons, put down your whittling sticks, drag yourself away from the Cracker Barrel, and let us tell you how it is," said a team of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on the debut commercial, part of a widespread advertising blitz that will be played at NASCAR races and monster truck rallies across the country. "We know you can barely read, so we'll spell this out for you: The Republican tax plan will only benefit the rich. Don't you dumb hicks get that? Democrats will fight inequality so you and all your inbred cousins don't have to live in a trailer anymore. Get it?" Democratic officials have also announced a new "You Think You Can Do Better Than Us?" campaign aimed at increasing turnout among African American and Hispanic voters."

71 dB

Quote from: drogulus on September 02, 2019, 06:55:55 PM
     The set of conditions for system fixes requires a Dem President and Senate. If both are achieved there will be some fixing.

Obama had supermajority for a while, but not much was fixed. Incrementalism is the best these centrists can do... and that's just not enough. Fundamental radical changes are needed.
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drogulus

Quote from: 71 dB on September 03, 2019, 10:57:10 AM
Obama had supermajority for a while, but not much was fixed. Incrementalism is the best these centrists can do... and that's just not enough. Fundamental radical changes are needed.

     Everything was radical once. Every change is opposed, and some opponents oppose everything.

     Climate change requires large scale investments. That means necessary economic expansion will go through and not around new infrastructure designed to combat and ameliorate climate change effects. The private sector is way ahead of our troglodyte government. What does "radical" mean to an insurance company? What does denialism do for them? Oil companies plan for a global warming future even as they continue to spew talking points against the changes they are planning for.

     The first wavelet of Green New Dealism came a decade ago when it was part of the Bush/Obama recovery plan. The investment was small, the effects were large. It was a textbook case of how large private sector investments are built on a public investment substrate. In just a few years a new energy industry blossomed. The trail blazed by public investment becomes a private sector superhighway.

     There is nothing radical about channeling economic growth through investing in solutions to the biggest problems. That's how one should expect it to work. Look at how the Trumpists efforts to resurrect the industrial past have turned out. We won't build an Again Great America on a declining base. It won't happen. Something else will, not that. I think we should move in the direction open to us, the future we see that is arriving now.
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Karl Henning

Quote from: drogulus on September 04, 2019, 05:43:16 AM
     Everything was radical once. Every change is opposed, and some opponents oppose everything.

Today's Revolutionaries are (or wish to be) tomorrow's Institution.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Florestan

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on September 05, 2019, 09:51:28 AM
Today's Revolutionaries are (or wish to be) tomorrow's Institution.

I am reminded of the (oxymoronically named) Revolutionary Institutional Party of Mexico which governed that country virtually unopposed for about 75 years*.  ;D

* actually, not unlike the Swedish Social-Democratic Party.  ;D

Also, of Emil Cioran's dictum, quoted by memory, that a revolutionist begins by being persecuted, then a street is named after him and eventually his ideas make their way into the statutory laws.  ;D

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

drogulus

Quote from: Florestan on September 05, 2019, 10:48:46 AM


Also, of Emil Cioran's dictum, quoted by memory, that a revolutionist begins by being persecuted, then a street is named after him and eventually his ideas make their way into the statutory laws.  ;D



     I've spent my whole life not quoting Cioran and I'm too old to change now.

     
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Florestan

Quote from: drogulus on September 05, 2019, 11:21:20 AM
     I've spent my whole life not quoting Cioran and I'm too old to change now.

   

Is this an oblique way of averring he's actually right?
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Muzio

New poll from The Economist.  Main story: Lizzie Warren advances, Heels-up Harris nosedives.


drogulus

Quote from: Florestan on September 05, 2019, 11:27:31 AM
Is this an oblique way of averring he's actually right?

    It's not much of an insight. I wouldn't plan on becoming a persecuted revolutionist in order to have a street named after me.
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Florestan

Quote from: drogulus on September 05, 2019, 02:45:28 PM
    It's not much of an insight. I wouldn't plan on becoming a persecuted revolutionist in order to have a street named after me.

You are as cynic as Todd is --- the difference is that you parade as a humanitarian, while he is honest.  :laugh:
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

drogulus

Quote from: Florestan on September 05, 2019, 03:12:56 PM

You are as cynic as Todd is --- the difference is that you parade as a humanitarian, while he is honest.  :laugh:

     I'm neither a cynic nor a humanitarian. I do like parades, though, and carnival rides.
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drogulus


     Warren says her tax plan asks just 'two cents' of the super-rich. But how much of a hit would Gates, Walton and their peers actually take?

     I am unimpressed by the arguments made by libraservatives on the effects of such a tax. Both branches agree that higher taxes on the wealthy are a hit, with the left saying it's not much of one and the right saying it's big.

Her populist pitch is largely centered on her wealth tax proposal, which would impose an annual 2 percent tax on wealth over $50 million and a 3 percent tax on wealth over a billion. The plan would raise about $2.75 trillion over 10 years, the campaign says.

     The effects of tax changes are distributional. By altering the tax balance towards increased economic activity it's unlikely the rich would suffer a hit.

     
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JBS

Quote from: drogulus on September 12, 2019, 07:21:23 AM
     Warren says her tax plan asks just 'two cents' of the super-rich. But how much of a hit would Gates, Walton and their peers actually take?

     I am unimpressed by the arguments made by libraservatives on the effects of such a tax. Both branches agree that higher taxes on the wealthy are a hit, with the left saying it's not much of one and the right saying it's big.

Her populist pitch is largely centered on her wealth tax proposal, which would impose an annual 2 percent tax on wealth over $50 million and a 3 percent tax on wealth over a billion. The plan would raise about $2.75 trillion over 10 years, the campaign says.

     The effects of tax changes are distributional. By altering the tax balance towards increased economic activity it's unlikely the rich would suffer a hit.

   

Warren is a law professor, and so should know that her proposal contradicts a specific provision of the Constitution. (The same provision was the reason it was necessary to pass a constitutional amendment to allow a federal income tax.)  It's possible the courts would uphold the tax, of course, but any wealth tax would be bottled up in court challenges for years, assuming it would even pass Congress.
So is Warren ignorant of the law, or proposing something she knows won't become reality?

[Wealth taxes are a common thing in the US, of course. Anyone who pays property taxes, or intangible taxes, is paying one. But until now they are not levied on total assets, and are levied only at the state and local level.]

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

drogulus

Quote from: JBS on September 12, 2019, 05:11:01 PM
Warren is a law professor, and so should know that her proposal contradicts a specific provision of the Constitution. (The same provision was the reason it was necessary to pass a constitutional amendment to allow a federal income tax.)  It's possible the courts would uphold the tax, of course, but any wealth tax would be bottled up in court challenges for years, assuming it would even pass Congress.
So is Warren ignorant of the law, or proposing something she knows won't become reality?

[Wealth taxes are a common thing in the US, of course. Anyone who pays property taxes, or intangible taxes, is paying one. But until now they are not levied on total assets, and are levied only at the state and local level.]

    My concern is with the effect of changes in the distribution of tax, however it's done, and the consequent improvement in economic growth when the rich get more income from customers with money and less from tax breaks on their passive investment. The efficiency gain on the demand side will work just as well as the supply side doesn't, for exactly the same reason.
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JBS

Quote from: drogulus on September 12, 2019, 05:41:49 PM
    My concern is with the effect of changes in the distribution of tax, however it's done, and the consequent improvement in economic growth when the rich get more income from customers with money and less from tax breaks on their passive investment. The efficiency gain on the demand side will work just as well as the supply side doesn't, for exactly the same reason.

My point is, it won't be done, and Warren ought to know it. Either she is proposing an idea she knows won't happen, or  she's an idiot.

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

drogulus

#498
     
Quote from: JBS on September 12, 2019, 06:07:33 PM
My point is, it won't be done, and Warren ought to know it.

     I don't like it for my own reasons, though I like that it is proposed, for other reasons.
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71 dB

The degree of Elizabeth Warren's "progressiveness" is questionable. Sure, she is more progressive than almost all other Democrat candidates running, but she is not Bernie Sanders, not even close. We can't be sure Warren is for medicare for all if she becomes the president, but we CAN be sure Bernie Sanders will be as the president. Bernie Sanders is just too kind of a person to bring up their differencies as candidates.
Spatial distortion is a serious problem deteriorating headphone listening.
Crossfeeders reduce spatial distortion and make the sound more natural
and less tiresome in headphone listening.

My Sound Cloud page <-- NEW Jan. 2024 "Harpeggiator"