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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#253276: Aug 27th 2018 at 6:02:00 PM

No, NAFTA is not dead. Mexico and the US worked out some bilateral issues, and Trump is outright lying that this amounts to a new deal (that would require Congressional approval, and Congress wants the status quo or a trilateral deal).

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#253277: Aug 27th 2018 at 6:13:23 PM

I find that generally, it's helpful if you just kind of assume that anything that comes out of Trump's mouth is incorrect until you've been given evidence to the contrary.

So, in this case, 'Trump said NAFTA is dead' should be taken as supporting evidence in favour of NAFTA sticking around.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#253278: Aug 27th 2018 at 7:19:26 PM

I decided a long time ago to assume that anything coming out of Trump's mouth is bullshit.

So far, I have not been proven wrong.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Grafite Since: Apr, 2016 Relationship Status: Less than three
#253279: Aug 28th 2018 at 2:30:02 AM

About the gun control issue, am I the only one who sees it motivating more young people to vote and engage in democracy rather than the other way around? One of the main goals of the March for our Lives was to get the students involved registered to vote, overwhelmingly for the democrats because they've been very vocal on it compared to other midterms. That Bill Nelson is a weak campaigner doesn't change anything.

Life is unfair...
Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#253280: Aug 28th 2018 at 3:28:57 AM

[up]It kind of does change things because right now polls show Bill Nelson losing his seat and as someone who lives in Florida and sees how the campaign is going Rick Scott and his allied organizations have been relentless in their attacks aganist Bill Nelson, while Bill Nelson and his allies have been not nearly as vigorous on the attack or defense. If Nelson loses it will be because of poor campaign on his and his organization’s part.

It would not surprise me at all if Florida ends up being the one black mark or outright stymies the blue wave. It’s time as a “purple state” has really made people underestimate how conservative the state really is.

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#253281: Aug 28th 2018 at 3:47:07 AM

It’s not gonna be just Florida, North Dakota is Also looking to likly be a Republican pickup.

In the end fighting a same-constituency Republican in a red state isn’t easy.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#253282: Aug 28th 2018 at 5:17:12 AM

Frankly, the Parkland students and their movement is the one thing which makes me hope that the US can turn the ship around.

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#253283: Aug 28th 2018 at 5:23:27 AM

Bill Nelson has not been particularly noteworthy on basically any level, while Rick Scott has lots of name recognition from being governor for the last two terms. I don't like Rick Scott's policies and I think he's personally loathsome, but he's not actively incompetent and he (rightly or wrongly) gets credit for presiding over the economic recovery post-recession (he first took office in 2011), so he's fairly popular.

Meanwhile, I'm reasonably informed on the subject of politics, and I couldn't really tell you anything about Bill Nelson except "he's one of Florida's senators".

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#253284: Aug 28th 2018 at 6:48:59 AM

GOP senator: Mc Cain is 'partially to blame' for controversy over White House flags

For context, the controversy is the White House for raising then re-lowering the flags for Mc Cain's death.

Republicans and the far right are such vile, contemptible creatures. The far/crazy right is marking McCain's passing by trotting out tons of conspiracy theories about him, everything from he was a North Korean communist agent, he set fire aboard a Naval ship that killed over 100 sailors, he was a pedophile, a member of the Clinton foundation, his cancer was a hoax and he actually killed himself before he could be dragged to Guantanamo Bay, he was a leader of the Deep State, he was part of the Islamic State, etc. Stay classy, you shit smeared maggots.

Link

President Trump displayed his innate grace and decency Saturday by spiking a White House statement honoring the late Sen. John Mc Cain’s life. Monday morning, the flag over the White House was ( until criticism poured in ) back to full staff, six days before protocol says it should have been.

Even for Trump, this seemed churlish. Unless there is another explanation: John Mc Cain is not dead.

When Mc Cain’s family put out the news Friday that he had discontinued treatment for his terminal brain cancer, this was done “to take media attention” from Senate candidate Kelli Ward, and, according to Ward herself, replace it with a “narrative that they hope is negative to me.”

So many lies. Heck, he’s even lying in state!

In death, as in life, Mc Cain has a way of bringing out the loons. Undoubtedly the posthumous conspiracy theories would have amused him as much as anybody. He took particular delight in debunking “propaganda and crackpot conspiracy theories,” as he put it to Naval Academy midshipmen 10 months ago.

...

Last Thursday, as the Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer reported, Trump hosted Lionel Lebron, a prominent conspiracy theorist, and posed with him in the Oval Office. Lebron is a 9/11 truther who believes Trump is fighting the deep state and globalist pedophiles and is a leading promoter of the very online network floating the notion Mc Cain is alive or a suicide. Three days after his White House visit, Lebron tweeted an image of Trump crossing a swamp of Democrats, featuring racist images of Barack and Michelle Obama and the words “fire at will.”

With the exception of Hillary Clinton, perhaps nobody stoked the conspiracy crowd’s fevers like Mc Cain. He was “songbird” Mc Cain, a secret agent of the North Vietnamese who threw the 2008 election to Obama, covertly met with the leaders of Islamic State in Syria, secretively started the Robert S. Mueller III “witch hunt” against Trump, and was “in bed with the Clinton Foundation” but turned against Clinton shortly before his death.

A post on Sunday from the leader of a prominent conspiracy forum wrestled with whether Mc Cain killed himself or surrendered: “Suicide weekend? Hands up? . . . We are in control. BIG week ahead.”

And yeah, Trump's so called trade agreement isn't anything of the sort. It's in an extremely tentative and preliminary stage, complete with all sorts of political steps that would have be gone through before any agreement could be signed or NAFTA officially dumped.

Here's a link with some more details, and the audio story on that page includes an interview with an NPR political analyst who goes through some of those details. Long story short, Trump is doing what he always did with his businesses: declaring them huge successes, hyping them to the eyes of the press, and hoping full progress and profits come afterwards due to his brand name and media attention. Hence why about a third of his businesses failed outright and another third ended in bankruptcy.

Other interesting news for the morning:

North Carolina judges find that the state is unfairly gerrymandered (again) in favor of Republicans, may require districts to be redrawn before November elections.

A panel of three federal judges held Monday that North Carolina’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans over Democrats and said it may require new districts before the November elections, possibly affecting control of the House.

The judges acknowledged that primary elections have already produced candidates for the 2018 elections but said they were reluctant to let voting take place in congressional districts that courts twice have found violate constitutional standards.

North Carolina legislators are likely to ask the Supreme Court to step in. The court traditionally does not approve of judicial actions that can affect an election so close to the day voters go to the polls.

But the Supreme Court has just eight members since Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s retirement last month; a tie vote would leave the lower court’s decision in place. Senate hearings on President Trump’s nominee to fill the open seat, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, commence Sept. 4.

The North Carolina case is a long-running saga, with a federal court in 2016 striking down the legislature’s 2011 map as a racial gerrymander. The legislature then passed a plan that left essentially the same districts in place but said lawmakers were motivated by politics, not race.

The Supreme Court told the three-judge panel to take another look at the North Carolina case in light of the high court’s June decision in a Wisconsin partisan gerrymandering case, in which the justices said those who brought that case did not have legal standing.

But Judge James A. Wynn Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, writing Monday for a special three-judge district court panel, said plaintiffs did have standing under the decision in Wisconsin’s Gill v. Whitford, which he said reinforced the judges’ earlier views that the congressional districts were drawn with improper partisan goals.

He said the court was leaning against giving the North Carolina legislature another chance to draw the congressional districts.

“We continue to lament that North Carolina voters now have been deprived of a constitutional congressional districting plan — and, therefore, constitutional representation in Congress — for six years and three election cycles,” Wynn wrote. “To the extent allowing the General Assembly another opportunity to draw a remedial plan would further delay electing representatives under a constitutional districting plan, that delay weighs heavily against giving the General Assembly another such opportunity.”

He proposed several unusual ideas: appointing a special master to draw new districts, holding general elections without party primaries or even turning the November elections into a primary and holding the general election sometime before the new Congress convenes in January.

Wynn and his fellow judges called for immediate briefing from the parties about which remedy to pursue.

...

The North Carolina case presented a stark example of partisan intent, with legislators making clear that the map was drawn to help one party over another.

“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats,” said Rep. David Lewis, a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly, addressing fellow legislators when they passed the plan in 2016. “So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.”

He added: “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”

When voters went to the polls that fall, the 10-3 outcome was exactly as Lewis had predicted, even though Republican candidates won just 53 percent of the statewide vote.

the Government's top student loan watchdog who tries to defend students from predatory borrowers quits position at Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, says administration has turned its back on borrowers

Secondary link that contains full letter of resignation

Judge overturns key parts of multiple Trump executive orders that would have made it easier to fire Federal workers and lessen the effectiveness of their union representation

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#253285: Aug 28th 2018 at 7:01:32 AM

Republicans and the far right are such vile, contemptible creatures. The far/crazy right is marking Mc Cain's passing by trotting out tons of conspiracy theories about him, everything from he was a North Korean communist agent, he set fire aboard a Naval ship that killed over 100 sailors, he was a pedophile, a member of the Clinton foundation, his cancer was a hoax and he actually killed himself before he could be dragged to Guantanamo Bay, he was a leader of the Deep State, he was part of the Islamic State, etc. Stay classy, you shit smeared maggots.

Mc Cain's body isn't even cold yet. This makes me feel...well, I think you can all guess.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#253286: Aug 28th 2018 at 7:03:15 AM

I don't like Mc Cain and I dislike the endless apologia and whitewashing of him but that's just sickening, god they really are cockroaches in Human skin aren't they?

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#253287: Aug 28th 2018 at 7:10:35 AM

Cockroach: "Well now, that's just rude."

Edited by M84 on Aug 28th 2018 at 10:10:20 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#253288: Aug 28th 2018 at 7:12:52 AM

I apologize for nothing, cockroaches are vile creatures and thus the few animals comparable to Trumpists tongue

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 28th 2018 at 10:12:29 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#253289: Aug 28th 2018 at 7:31:13 AM

I prefer comparing them to Mosquitos,

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#253290: Aug 28th 2018 at 7:31:36 AM

How can you actually have an ongoing court case when one of the people responsible for the gerrymandered map said, on record, that it was created to result in a partisan outcome?

Also, Trump's parroting that google search results have a deliberate left wing bias.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#253291: Aug 28th 2018 at 7:32:49 AM

[up][up]At least mosquitoes serve a role in the food chain by being a food source for fish.

These assholes? Total wastes of carbon.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#253292: Aug 28th 2018 at 7:34:34 AM

[up][up] Making an electoral map to give your side a partisan advantage is legal in the US.

It’s only if the bias is racial that it’s illegal.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#253293: Aug 28th 2018 at 8:21:10 AM

I can’t believe Rage Googling is a thing now.

President Trump said on Twitter early Tuesday that he had typed his name into Google and was dismayed with what he saw, suggesting that the lack of good news about him at the top of the search engine's results is "rigged" and might be "illegal."

Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of........results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

Another possibility is that Trump just had a historically bad week — several key allies or employees were either convicted of federal crimes or reached plea deals with prosecutors, his former lawyer swore in court that Trump had directed him to commit a federal crime, and intra-party nemesis Sen. John Mc Cain managed, in his death, to provoke Trump into an ill-advised fit of pique followed by a soft capitulation.

[1]

I’m pretty sure this whole thing will be assigned to the time honored bureaucratic process of, being signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

Edited by megaeliz on Aug 28th 2018 at 11:30:17 AM

BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#253294: Aug 28th 2018 at 8:22:45 AM

The Atlantic did an interview with Senator Warren about her recent proposals and what it means for capitalism. tl;dr - she thinks we need to bring back all the economic deregulation that Reagan started, rather than embrace socialism.

    Full article text 
Bold emphasis mine. Italics used to denote the change of speaker in the original article.
While so much of the action on the American left in recent months has come in the form of revived enthusiasm for socialism, Senator Elizabeth Warren has positioned herself quite differently. During the past two weeks, she has expounded about the prospects for capitalism in a much-covered speech and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Instead of championing the system’s demise, she presents herself as its savior.

Embedded in her musings were two aggressive proposals for overhauling American business. One is the Accountable Capitalism Act, which would require the largest corporations to allow workers to choose 40 percent of their board seats. The proposal is meant to provide an antidote to short-term thinking in the biggest businesses—and to short-circuit the ease with which CE Os make decisions that enrich themselves at the expense of workers and the underlying health of their firm. A similar system exists in Germany, and it goes by the name “codetermination.”

A second set of proposals is what Warren calls the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act. Warren has called for a frontal assault on lobbying, including a lifetime prohibition that would prevent federal officeholders (including the president, members of Congress ,and Cabinet secretaries) from ever becoming paid influence peddlers. Her argument is that lobbying undermines the functioning of markets, by permitting corporations to exert outsize control over the regulatory state and use government to squash competitors.

When I heard Warren speak about the crisis in capitalism, I asked to sit down with her to explore her theory of the case. I interviewed her in her Washington, D.C., office. The transcript of our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.

Franklin Foer: All the investment bankers who have voodoo dolls of you might be a bit surprised that you recently described yourself as “capitalist to the bone.” What did you mean?

Elizabeth Warren: I believe in markets and the benefits they can produce when they work. Markets with rules can produce enormous value. So much of the work I have done—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, my hearing-aid bill—are about making markets work for people, not making markets work for a handful of companies that scrape all the value off to themselves. I believe in competition.

Foer: To what end?

Warren: Markets create wealth. Okay, so I used to teach contract law, and if you really want to go back to first principles: On the first day, I used to take my watch off and I would sell it to someone in class. We'd agree on a price, $20. Then the question I always asked the students was: What did the buyer value the watch at? Much of the class would say $20.

That’s not the right answer. All we know is that the person would rather have the watch than have the $20 bill. What did you know about the value I placed on it? Exactly the inverse. I'd rather have the $20 bill than have the watch. Now, most people think the benefit of markets is: I walked away with a $20 bill, great, which I valued more highly than the watch, and you walked away with the watch that you valued more highly than the $20, but look at all the excess value there.

Maybe you wanted that watch because it completed your fabulous watch collection or you desperately needed a watch or it was so attractive to you that the value you placed on it would be in the hundreds of dollars. You got all that surplus value, and me, I really needed that $20. I had an investment opportunity over here for that $20 that has yielded a manyfold return for me. That’s how markets create additional value.

Foer: But markets right now are doing a good job of producing wealth. Yes?

Warren: Right.

Foer: your description, that's markets working.

Warren: The problem is that when the rules are not enforced, when the markets are not level playing fields, all that wealth is scraped in one direction. For example, leading up to the financial crash, there were a lot of mortgage brokers out there selling mortgages. Wow, did they get rich doing it. Families thought they were buying a product they could afford, whose payments they understood. Many of them lost everything That's a market that clearly was not working. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, after it passed, the first thing we did there at the bureau was to put new rules in place about mortgages. Not so that you could control the mortgage market, but so that the market would work.

I don't know if you've ever looked at the rules, but the rules were basically to say you can compete, but you've got to be real clear about the things you're competing on. Things like: Information has to be put in the same place on each of the forms, so people can lay the forms down next to each other and see what's there and you don't get to put it back on page 32 in fine print.

Foer: Oftentimes, it seems that you’re not really criticizing the behavior of markets—you’re describing outright theft and deception.

Warren: Exactly. Theft is not capitalism. Right?

Foer: Was there a moment when capitalism in America worked?

Warren: There are times that parts of the markets worked better. Look at it this way: 1935 to 1980, a time when there's much more of emphasis on worker power. Union membership is going up. There's more aggressive regulation of markets, more enforcement of antitrust laws. The Securities and Exchange Commission had just been created and was a strong cop on the beat. Glass-Steagall was strictly enforced, FDIC insurance had gone into place. And you watch: GDP goes up 1935 to 1980 and the 90 percent of America—everybody outside the top 10 percent—gets 70 percent of all new income growth.

Foer: Policing, rules—these are really core concepts for you.

Warren: Yes.

Foer: What does it say about human nature? We have this almost innate inclination to trade with one another. And yet, the market also brings out an innate human tendency toward avarice and greed.

Warren: I would describe it differently. There's always somebody who will see if they can run the light. The question is whether we maintain good rules and an effective cop to enforce those rules. This is where the wheels came off starting in the ’80s.

This is a political issue. It's not a markets issue. There were years of not perfect but fairly well-enforced rules that were pretty firmly hit and held. Then you hit the ’80s and the lobbying by the wealthy and the well-connected steps up and the rules start shifting. The rules tilt just a little more toward the rich and the powerful. Just a little more, just a little more. Enforcement gets weaker and weaker. Remember the whole description that started in the ’80s about deregulation and the beauties that deregulation would bring America? I understand no one wants to have to abide by dumb regulations. I get that, but deregulation became a code word for “fire the cops.” Not the cops on Main Street, the cops on Wall Street.

Foer: The 1980s seem to be the moment of your own personal political transformation. Right? [Warren says that around that time she went from identifying as a Republican to becoming a consumer activist.]

Warren: Yes.

Foer: That's when you—

Warren: —I never want to overstate this, because the truth is I was never very politically active. I was active in economic ideas and what was happening to working families. That's been the animating feature for me since the first time I got to do research.

Foer: But it changed your analysis of capitalism?

Warren: Absolutely.

Foer: On this question of regulation and capture, you have your own wariness.

Warren: I do.

Foer: When you think about erecting new structures, like in your Accountable Capitalism Act, creating a new federal structure for the licensing of corporations—why isn’t a structure like that ripe for capture?

Warren: This is about taking the current structure and making it work better. Every corporation in America is chartered somewhere. The big banks in the country are already federally chartered. Chartering is just where the rules reside. For decades there have been restrictions in the charters on what it is the corporations can do and instructions on what they must do. Quarterly shareholder, annual shareholder meetings ... What I propose is to amend those rules for billion-dollar-plus corporations. The reason is because the rules are not working now. We were talking about how when GDP goes up, productivity goes up and workers' wages go up. In the ’80s, that just flattens out. GDP continues to go up, productivity continues to go up, but workers fall behind and the gap has now become enormous. Eighty-four percent of the wealth in the stock market goes to 10 percent of the population.

Half of all America owns not one share of stock. Not one. Not even in a 401(k) or an employer retirement plan, and yet a huge portion of the worth of the corporation is being directly diverted to the shareholders. That was not always true. There was a time in America when that wealth was shared among those who helped produce it. The workers and the investors. That's just not true today.

Foer: There are all these hints of Louis Brandeis in what you do. Brandeis had a vision of how the economy could be structured differently when the rules that he wanted were applied. He favored the small shopkeeper. In your vision, who gets favored? Are there forces in the market that you feel like are being unfairly shackled that you want to see unleashed?

Warren: Yes. Perfect. Competition. I love competition. I want to see every start-up business, everybody who's got a good idea, have a chance to get in the market and try. This is what's so interesting to me. There are so many people right now who argue against these reforms and other reforms, who claim they are pro-business. They're not. They're pro-monopoly. They're pro–concentration of power, which crushes competition.

This is where the political and the economic interact. Once a corporation climbs up the ladder so that it's got hundreds of millions—no, so that it's got billions of dollars in resources—today too many of them turn around and use those resources to influence government to cut off that ladder, so nobody else climbs it. To cut off that ladder so that the big guys don't have to compete with the little guys anymore.

I was just going to say, you were asking me, what excites me about markets? I was telling you that gains-from-trade argument, but really what excites me about markets is competition. I want to make sure we've got a set of rules that lets everybody who's got a good, competitive idea get in the game.

Foer: I've heard your latest proposals described as an attempt to save capitalism, which implies that it's in pretty dire straits. How dire do you think the state of American capitalism is?

Warren: I worry both for capitalism and for democracy. People across this country once believed that folks who work hard and play by the rules have a chance to be able to build real security and that their kids will do better than they did. Today, that dream runs into a very hard reality that this is now a world that works better and better for a smaller and smaller number of people. That's a problem for capitalism and for democracy at the same time.

Foer: There’s so much talk right now on the left about socialism, which seems somewhat misguided given everything you say capitalism has to recommend itself.

Warren: I love the competition that comes with a market that has decent rules. I love the structure that encourages anyone with a good idea to try their hand in business.

Foer: When Franklin Roosevelt talked about the crisis in capitalism, he looked and he saw the left and alternatives to capitalism emerging, and that was one of the things that he was able to argue to the country—to say, "Look, we need these reforms in order to save this system, in order to prevent something dangerous from happening in another direction."

Warren: Okay. You're taking it to a hundred thousand feet, which is great, but my argument is far more personal. We need to make capitalism work for your family and we need to make democracy work for your family ... It's not that you're wrong, I'm just saying this is where I land it, right with how families experience this economy. A rising stock market is not helpful to the half of all America who own not one single share of stock. Rising productivity that doesn't translate into rising wages for the people who actually do the work is not building a better future for them. Costs that are skyrocketing for education and health care and housing put a squeeze on families that are struggling with flat wages, so every one of those is about the lived experience, and that's what colors our view of both capitalism and democracy in 2018.

Foer: I find it interesting that you have frequently used the word liberty in connection with all of this.

Warren: That's what it's really about. You've got an idea and you want to get into the market, or you're an employee and you want to be able to negotiate, you want to have some bargaining power in getting a share of the value that you produce. That's participation, but it's participation in democracy as well.

When Big Pharma rolls into Washington and gets a law passed that says that the federal government cannot negotiate down the prices of drugs, then democracy is not working for families. When the big [coal] companies can get a new rule out of the EPA that will increase particulates in the air and trigger over 100,000 premature deaths, then democracy is not working for the American people. So you are exactly right. Everything I'm working on is about giving individuals the opportunity, the liberty to participate in this economy and in the governance of this country. I love this stuff. Isn't this stuff fun?

I know that Warren likes being in the Senate, but part of me really, really wishes she'd run in 2016 to make Bernie sit down and shut up.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#253295: Aug 28th 2018 at 8:30:11 AM

Excuse me? What part of that includes her supporting deregulation? Because she literally says the opposite, that rules to restrain capitalism are good and that the Consumer Protection Bureau is something she's proud of.

But yes I would vastly prefer her as a symbol of the populist left instead of Sanders.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 28th 2018 at 11:30:14 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#253296: Aug 28th 2018 at 8:31:23 AM

Elizabeth, we can do both.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#253297: Aug 28th 2018 at 8:35:06 AM

[up][up][up] Warren is saying bring back all the regulation that Reagan ENDED. You can’t “bring back” economic deregulation when it’s been the status quo for the last thirty plus years.

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#253298: Aug 28th 2018 at 8:36:14 AM

I think Blue meant bring back the regulations removed as part of Regan's deregulation.

So regulated Capitalism as opposed to Socialism.

Personally I'm not sure you'll find a ton of difference, Capitalism evolves into Socialism as one adds regulations that grants the people greater control and influence over Capitalist systems.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#253299: Aug 28th 2018 at 8:36:29 AM

[up]There is no difference, the people calling for Socialism just want regulated Capitalism.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 28th 2018 at 11:36:46 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#253300: Aug 28th 2018 at 8:45:14 AM

I don't see how they're remotely the same.

1. Regulated Capitalism: You can't charge 200 dollars for a pill that someone needs to survive.

2. Socialism: You get free pills.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 28th 2018 at 8:44:51 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

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