Thursday, February 21, 2019
Please Don't Run Joe
I don't really have a particular favorite among the declared Democratic candidates for president, but I really do not want Biden. I'm not as sure as everyone else seems to be that he'd win the nomination if he ran, but I really do not want him, and I really hope he doesn't run. He's basically all the bad aspects of Clinton and Obama without either of their upside (oversimplified: he's a pro business Dem who is also a white dude).
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Shorter Klobuchar...
Vote for me because...¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know very little about Amy Klobuchar, but what I have read/heard in the past was that she was a very competent legislator and that people in MN like her. (For this I'll ignore the possible mistreatment of staff issue...I suspect it's true, but not sure it's actually any worse than how many people--men--in power mistreat their staffs).
If you want to run for president you should probably, you know, stand for something...have some vision of what America could do or be. She just seems to want to knock down others' visions, and that's ok if you've got your own but she just doesn't. This is actually a gripe of mine from Obama in some ways (he was really good at laying out better-nature-of-ourselves type aspirational cases, but when it came to policy aspirations he was not so aspirational at all). Also pretty sure I complained about this with Clinton last election.
Yea, maybe a single payer health care plan for the US (e.g.) isn't going to happen in the next 4-10 years, but that isn't a good reason to say it shouldn't. Also, we're the biggest, wealthiest country on the planet...to the extent that something like that "isn't possible" it's because politicians won't fucking try, not that it isn't actually, you know, impossible.
I know very little about Amy Klobuchar, but what I have read/heard in the past was that she was a very competent legislator and that people in MN like her. (For this I'll ignore the possible mistreatment of staff issue...I suspect it's true, but not sure it's actually any worse than how many people--men--in power mistreat their staffs).
If you want to run for president you should probably, you know, stand for something...have some vision of what America could do or be. She just seems to want to knock down others' visions, and that's ok if you've got your own but she just doesn't. This is actually a gripe of mine from Obama in some ways (he was really good at laying out better-nature-of-ourselves type aspirational cases, but when it came to policy aspirations he was not so aspirational at all). Also pretty sure I complained about this with Clinton last election.
Yea, maybe a single payer health care plan for the US (e.g.) isn't going to happen in the next 4-10 years, but that isn't a good reason to say it shouldn't. Also, we're the biggest, wealthiest country on the planet...to the extent that something like that "isn't possible" it's because politicians won't fucking try, not that it isn't actually, you know, impossible.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Pretty Much Proves Progressives Right
I suppose it's unsurprising that Wall Street would prefer Trump to Warren, but it's hard to read this article about it without coming to a couple pretty simple conclusions:
1. The people who are "Wall Street" are stupid and greedy.
2. We really need someone like Elizabeth Warren to crack down on them.
There's really a lot to unpack in the first one, but an oversimplification is that a stable economy that helps everyone, even one with higher taxes on rich people is better than an unstable economy that primarily benefits rich people and this is true EVEN FOR RICH PEOPLE. Yes, rich people may not make quite as much in said stable economy but on the other hand, they don't need to worry about torches and pitchforks, which is where we're headed.
There were lots of stupid things there too: Warren is not a socialist and is actually more of a capitalist than many of the other Democratic contenders. Pro-Wall Street isn't actually capitalist. The economy we have with Wall Street as some form of center is pretty severely distorted from capitalism. If it were actually capitalist there probably wouldn't be a single surviving [major] Wall Street institution following the financial crisis. Gains going private and losses being eaten by the public is not capitalism.
The fact that those people belive the crap they're spewing and the fact that they would prefer Trump speaks pretty strongly for how corrupt and vile they are. They need far more regulation than they have been subject to.
1. The people who are "Wall Street" are stupid and greedy.
2. We really need someone like Elizabeth Warren to crack down on them.
There's really a lot to unpack in the first one, but an oversimplification is that a stable economy that helps everyone, even one with higher taxes on rich people is better than an unstable economy that primarily benefits rich people and this is true EVEN FOR RICH PEOPLE. Yes, rich people may not make quite as much in said stable economy but on the other hand, they don't need to worry about torches and pitchforks, which is where we're headed.
There were lots of stupid things there too: Warren is not a socialist and is actually more of a capitalist than many of the other Democratic contenders. Pro-Wall Street isn't actually capitalist. The economy we have with Wall Street as some form of center is pretty severely distorted from capitalism. If it were actually capitalist there probably wouldn't be a single surviving [major] Wall Street institution following the financial crisis. Gains going private and losses being eaten by the public is not capitalism.
The fact that those people belive the crap they're spewing and the fact that they would prefer Trump speaks pretty strongly for how corrupt and vile they are. They need far more regulation than they have been subject to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)