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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I say this because A.) the policy is not designed to address that specific issue so why bring it up, B.) In some cases the policy will still have positive knock on effects that will help elucidate those issues, and C.) Addressing those specific racialgender or other issues will likely require even more radical policy that the critic 9 times out of 10 is not willing to entertain themselves.
I think this is more bad faith, you're making blanket assumptions about what policies critics would support without any actual evidence.
Sanders has a history of tone-deaf actions while focusing on class, why exactly should we automatically assume that he would focus on it over the single issues he obviously prefers?
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangI think it's more the fact that a lot of complaints about it are, "It won't solve racism."
Which is true.
Obama Care, a lot of his policies antecedent, did nothing for it. Racist white people took a black man's gift to them and basically ignored its benefits to them. However, it still did amazing good.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.or something
Maybe this is why people say economic policies won't end racism by themselves, because when people talk about Sander's tone deafness and his questionable concern about issues that aren't class people just say "but economic policies can help!!" as if that answers anything that has been said.
So you know, thanks for showing why people say that economic programs by themselves won't end racism.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:22:45 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang@Charles- Your post gets at something that is a big part of what rubs me the wrong way about Sanders and a lot of his supporters. I can't point to a specific comment, but I feel like there's sort of an official story that Trump supporters, especially the "Obama-Trump" supporters were turned off by Democrats because Democratic programs, like Obamacare and the Stimulus, didn't go far enough and because the Party "left them behind".
Whereas the reality is that opposition to Obamacare was based on allegations that it went too far/ was unconstitutional tyranny/ that Obama would kill your grandparents. Ditto attitudes toward the Stimulus. So when people who previously believed that now say that their objection is based on Democrats leaving them behind, they shouldn't be believed.
I mean it is true that those programs didn't go far enough, but that has a lot to do with the fact that the people who now claim economic anxiety were opposed to them.
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Im talking about a fairly specific criticism that not all of critics of leftist policy have made, though it was a criticism Hillary Clinton herself made during a debate with Bernie when it came to breaking up big banks, and I do genuinely believe it was made in bad faith as both a way to implicitly dismiss the policy proposal and paint it and it’s supporters as being implictly bigoted.
That last part may not have been intentional, but it is the idea that was talen from her statement and has been applied to other leftist ideas like single payer or free college.
Edited by Mio on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:27:50 PM
"Breaking up the banks" is a cute, pithy talking point that stirs up a lot of zealotry, but does it actually accomplish anything useful? How would one go about it? What legal hurdles would need to be overcome? How would you keep consumers from getting the short end of the stick in the incredibly complex technical process of unwinding so many financial structures. Bernie has addressed none of these that I've heard of. Does he have a team of lawyers drafting up sample legislation? Is there a detailed paper on this available somewhere on his website?
I mean, consumer banking hasn't been the fundamental cause of anyone's financial duress for ages. I deposit my paychecks, use my bank card to withdraw cash, write checks (although barely these days), transact online... all of these are things that I could probably get as easily from Mom & Pop's Bank as Wells Fargo, but the size of the institution that I'm doing business with is largely irrelevant. Well, I like being able to find ATMs that don't charge me fees, so there's one benefit.
Anyway, we already have an agency that's supposed to help rein in abusive practices by banks, particularly in terms of how they handle credit: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Heck, we know it was working because one of the very first things on Trump's agenda was to sabotage it.
The problem with our financial system goes way beyond consumer banks and into investment banking and its symbiotic relationship with the stock market. That is the monster in the closet sucking up all our oxygen and eating our food, and dealing with it without catastrophically crashing the economy is going to take a lot more than an old man yelling slogans at an audience.
I could go on, but this is exactly my point. I have never heard Sanders provide any answers to the issues I raise above. I most certainly did hear Clinton provide such answers. I could go on her campaign website and analyze her policy positions down to the most excruciating detail, and those positions matched her public statements. In short, I had confidence that she knew what the fuck she was talking about. Sanders... not so much.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:44:31 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It's very similar to the talking points a lot of social media slacktivists use about entering billionaires' mansions to literally seize the billionaires' wealth and give them out to the poor as if they're liquid assets they're just physically sitting on, when cursory understanding of how the economy works shows that it's not even close to that simple.
People will post their literal beliefs on how the world is the way it is because all the billionaires of the world are sitting on literal inert piles of gold and rubies, or some pop-sci article about how possession of high amounts of wealth is a sign of inherent sociopathy, therefore there's nothing wrong with advocating for their execution (which verges on uncomfortable ableism), and receive thousands of claps on the back for sharing such insightful takes that the proletariat masses are finally becoming woke to.
I would much rather see them offer solutions that take into account what forms their wealth actually takes. But that requires the kind of understanding and dry policy talk that pithy populism can't provide. I'm not opposed because I'm some corporate apologist, in fact quite the opposite, but because these "solutions" are stupid and won't achieve anything but a waste of time and effort.
Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:57:53 PM
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My argument wasn’t really about whether the policy was good or not, and more over Hillary Clinton did not make her arguement based on wonkish details and logistics. She essentially made the arguement that if the policy does not explicitly and directly address certain social issues then the policy is not worth considering and (implicitly) might even be bad for people (implicitly minorities), regardless of what it is actually trying to accomplish and if it actually does improve the condition of minorities even indirectly.
Edited by Mio on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:52:10 PM
As a venezuelan I know very well of that psychopathic revanchism, is vey french in the "take reh rich, then take their things and do something bad", chavez use it in expropiation and taking everything he wanted like the corrupt military he was.
is a issue that some of the left does have a sort of love to violence or a least a romantice version of it.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"I really feel like a "citation needed" is appropriate here.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There's a lot of outright criminal behavior in Wallstreet that basically gets ignored. The story of Enron is billions of dollars stolen and fraudulently moved around but while some paid the price for it, lesser but only in terms of scale activity that ruins countless lives happens all the time.
When I think of regulating Wallstreet, I don't mean a few extra laws here and there, I mean actively arresting people who engage in massive policy fraud and sending them to jail for decades.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 6th 2019 at 10:06:35 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Howard Schultz thinks it’s unfair people have branded him a billionaire
Schultz, who drew the ire of the internet after he announced he was considering running for president as a “centrist independent,” made his distaste of the moniker known during a discussion with CNBC last week. It was the same interview where he was heckled by someone who called him an “egotistical billionaire asshole.”
The former coffee giant was asked if “billionaires have too much power in American public life,” and his response was that he’d prefer to not to call wealthy people “billionaires,” but instead “people of means.”
After a pause, he said:
“The moniker ‘billionaire’ now has become the catchphrase. I would rephrase that and say that ‘people of means’ have been able to leverage their wealth and their interest in ways that are unfair, and I think that speaks to the inequality, but it also directly speaks to the special interests that are paid for by ‘people of wealth’ and corporations who are looking for influence,” he said.
He continued:
“They have such unbelievable influence on the politicians who are steeped in the ideology of both parties … If I should run for president, I am not in bed with any party, I am not in bed with any special interest. All I’m trying to do is one thing: walk in the shoes of the American people.”
The comments from Schultz make some sense—wealthy corporations and individuals do have untoward influence on politicians.
However, his attempt to “rephrase” billionaires was too much for some.
It seems like Schultz has been putting his foot in his mouth constantly since he announced he was considering a third-party presidential bid.
Get ready for more. Schultz said he will take another “three or four months” before officially deciding whether to throw his hat into the ring, according to Politico.
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't calling yourself "people of means" pretty much imply that everybody else doesn't have the means? That's just asking to be taxed more.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 6th 2019 at 7:15:10 PM
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If that’s not the way you interpreted those statements, nor could you see how they could be interpreted that way then we are just going to have to agree to disagree.
Also I made a mistake about where she made that statement. It was at a campaign rally not a debate.
Edited by Mio on Feb 6th 2019 at 1:17:23 PM
@The billionaire thing:
Distinction Without a Difference.
Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.I think a lot of the people who dislike Bernie here don't do it because they're inherently against the man, I think a lot of us (myself, at least) were actually on board with him at one point or another.
And then we just kept... finding out more about him. A gaffe here, a foot-in-mouth there, repeated It's All About Me instances, vague, non-specific policies where he promises the world and glosses over the "how" and we've just gradually soured on him to the point that he's more of a detriment than an asset.
I honestly don't know when this happened for me but it definitely did before the primary.
To be fair, I'm probably one of his harshest critics and I was never for the man. I started out in the Clinton camp and thinking Sanders would be an okay backup if Clinton didn't win the primary, and then my opinion soured to the point that I want him as far away from the Presidency as humanly possible.
If the choice comes down to Sanders vs. Generic Republican, I'd hold my nose and vote for Sanders but only because I don't expect Sanders would pass policies that were deliberately intended to murder poor people and/or minorities. But that's my baseline expectation for the guy: he wouldn't do too much harm.
Which is basically what Republicans said about Trump but whatevs. Hopefully we'll never have to roll those dice.
For me, the "F*ck No" moment was finding out about the nuclear waste dumping in Sierra Blanca, an impoverished Latino community. Especially this quote: when asked by activists if he would at least visit the site in Sierra Blanca and meet the people who would be affected by it, Bernie said, "Absolutely not. I'm gonna be running for re-election in the state of Vermont."
This display of complete and utter apathy towards people who can't or won't vote for him is what shifted Sanders from "acceptable runner-up" to "F*ck this guy" in my eyes.
To me, he's a Leftist Trump. He says and does things because he thinks they make him look good in front of his base. He has no clear plan to actually implement his ideas because they're just Radical Cool Ideas created to sound good to voters. He only cares about making people's lives better if those people are voting for him; he just wants to obtain and stay in power, not to make anybody's lives better. He's never tried to join and participate in the party but instead has tried to take over and usurp the party into the Party of Sanders. And he keeps accidentally letting his Old White Man bigotry slip out in public.
And then I found out that Russia was pushing pro-Sanders propaganda alongside their pro-Trump propaganda and that was pretty much the last straw. I am so ready to be done with Bernie Sanders, and I really hope Vermont votes him out one day.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 6th 2019 at 11:40:47 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Wha- no. You're a billionaire. You have billions of dollars. You're a billionaire. Fuck outta here with this bullshit.
RE: Sanders: The problem with him (and his fan club by extension) is that they're blinded by the white light. They think we all have the exact same problems they do, with none of our own. Not only that, but they reeeeally want you to believe that he cares about minorities more than he actually does, but whenever we tell them free college, free healthcare, and legal weed won't end racism, they cannot be bothered to listen (see above). Or they do, but they tell us "we'll get to your problems later". And when something comes out that displays this, or when people point out his poor track record concerning us, his supporters are either unable to flatout refuse to deal with these arguments.
And I may have said this before, but the fact that someone can laud himself as a "progressive" while repeatedly throwing minority concerns to the wayside and largely get away with it speaks volume about the status of non-white people in America.
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Feb 6th 2019 at 10:52:56 AM
i'm tired, my friendand I really hope Vermont votes him out one day. Considering the 2018 election result, that's not happening anywhere soon. Dying of old age in office is a much more likely end IMO.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanI'd be fine with that too. I just want him out before Democrats roll a natural 1 on politicking and decide, "Hey, maybe we should give our own bigoted short-sighted Russia-backed populist outsider a go!"
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.>walk in the shoes of the american people
oh my god this is such utter bullshit lol
either way I've been done with Schultz. Billionaires thinking they're entitled to the presidency just because they have money is one among many reasons why we have Trump. I cannot possibly fathom having that much wealth and affluence and wanting even more.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Feb 6th 2019 at 2:58:44 PM
I remind you that the Russian propaganda included promoting Black Lives Matter and a bunch of other VERY good things. The thing about it was that they wanted people to become more entrenched in their opinions and divide the United States. It also did ridiculous shit like trolling THE LAST JEDI.
Which was a shit movie.
So, saying they did some Bernie posting doesn't mean anything other than they felt he was a controversial Leftist choice compared to Trump's controversial Right.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

It also doesn’t help that we are probably the most prototypical “Liberal Bourgeoisie State” there is.