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Election 2020 The 2020 Candidates: Right, Left and Center!

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w01fg4ng said:
The House unanimously voted for the PRIDE Act which removes inadequate wording such as "husband" and "wife" from the tax code.

Warren's plan is simply common sense tax refunding. Republicans probably support this more than democrats, seeing as it's fixing a flawed over-regulation of taxes, no?
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That's right, it's refunding taxes they cheated out of people -- I say cut those folks a cheque . . . now, of course, I have tended to define reparations in the case of the debates going on there (vis-à-vis African American slavery) as back wages for stolen labour plus some interest. That would be a pretty good precedent to set to be sure. The counter argument I have heard is: do you really want the government to be able to dust off their hands and say "Finis . . . there you have it. There's the cheque . . . uh, what? Quitcherbitchin" about the disparities in the status quo.

And my original point -- how long until the not so fabulous sectors of American society have a voice or two yelling "Gimme" not because they really want the dough but to derail Senator Warren's proposal? An accounting professor once pointed out to me that writing policy into tax law is as old as the Republic, and it is the same around the world to various extents, but the income tax is an innovation of the XX. Century, 1913 in the US to be exact, and the complexity of any income tax I can think of is notorious. a lot of details in which the Devil can hide.
 
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cduggles said:
The reparations aren’t about slavery, they’re about the inherited discrimination from slavery.
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I'm aware. I apologize if I worded it poorly (that seems to be my forte at times). It is why I referenced 'the multi-generational effects that slavery and Jim Crow laws had' as the laws and societal norms still put a portion of the population at an unfair disadvantage, to where the generations who followed were starting from a lower point of possibilities than those raised without those disadvantages.

Xorkoth said:
I support this whether or not they should have been bailed out with taxpayer money.
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Another problem I have (seems I have quite a few). I see the ease with which people look to others and say 'they should pay'. Wall street is rich, they can afford to pay, and we have reasons (real or imagined) as to WHY they should pay. Fine, I get that. But for me, everything always starts with the self. What can *I* do about my situation? Can I learn a skill to improve my job? Can I go to school to earn better pay? Can I put more time in and save more in order to afford that desire? For me, it is almost always starting with the self and 'what can I do?' well before it places a burden or expectation on others. Even if something is not my fault, and the other party ('them') is fully responsible to address it, I question myself first. I suppose it comes down to 'let those without sin cast the first stone' or other morals like that, so I check myself first.

Though, if I have done all I can to address my situation, I then look to those around me who would naturally support me - my family, my church, my community. Those that have a vested interest in me, and would most benefit by my success. What can they do to help me and this situation?

Only as a last resort would I look to 'others' such as the gov't or strangers to try and help me. They have the least benefit from my success in a situation.

But ALL of that starts without the basic premise that it is 'their fault' and 'they should pay', in any situation. I suppose that's the major difference here, the gov't WAS part of the problem, in that their laws enforced and supported slavery and bigotry. In that sense, they ARE accountable. And, I can see the relatively easy stretch to view wall street corporations as existing and getting rich off of business that grew and thrived under those laws and social conditions - that they wouldn't have their money and power were it not for the laws and norms of the time. This is still a subject I need some time to chew on in order to shift my view, so I'll stop there with this point.

Assuming I get past that point, there still remains, 'who pays? how much? and how do we best use those funds?' Do all the companies suffer a flat tax, which isn't fair to recent businesses or foreign businesses who had nothing to do with that era of American history? Or do we create criteria by which companies are taxed at different rates based on...something? The promise of how those funds are spent is such a tease - a promise to voters who think that they, personally, will see a check in the mail...HA! I'd prefer a path that pays it for the betterment of all society, honestly. But I have yet to consider how that would be constructed.
 
Nicomorphinist said:
That's right, it's refunding taxes they cheated out of people -- I say cut those folks a cheque . . .
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Cool. Glad we agree.

now, of course, I have tended to define reparations in the case of the debates going on there (vis-à-vis African American slavery) as back wages for stolen labour plus some interest. That would be a pretty good precedent to set to be sure. The counter argument I have heard is: do you really want the government to be able to dust off their hands and say "Finis . . . there you have it. There's the cheque . . . uh, what? Quitcherbitchin" about the disparities in the status quo.
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This was never defined as reparations (as far as I'm aware) by Warren. So yes, as far as tax returns for those lucky enough to have been married in one of the few states prior to the federal turn over, take your check and fuck off! It's pretty simple when you don't try to tackle all of homophobia in one bill. In fact, it's practical not to.
 
Regarding Wall Street... I personally would take some sort of check from them but I'm not really thinking of myself, I don't need it, and I'm not talking about "reparations" anyway. What I'm looking at is the systematic dismantling of standard of living for the majority of people in this country. More and more people are entering the poverty zone, because more and more money is being funneled to the wealthy at the expense of the worker. Wall Street had a big part in the Great Recession because of their predatory practices. Pay raises have not come close to keeping up with inflation. The middle class is getting squeezed out. You can't just say "well, people should look to themselves to increase their standard of living" and expect that to be a solution. I mean, yeah, people should try to figure out how to pick themselves up, but it's not their fault (usually) that they're in a position they need to pick themselves up from, it's the fault of our whole system, of which Wall Street is a big part of the problem. It's not just them though, it's all the super-wealthy and corporations and industries who have been actively working to expand wealth inequality for decades.

I don't care about the specifics, we just need to get policy under control so the gap stops widening and starts evening out again. Otherwise we're going to keep falling farther and farther behind in the world, while a select few amass tremendous fortune off the back of a crumbling country. A check to people from Wall Street isn't going to solve the problem, but if we develop sensible policy that's the best for our society as a whole and not some short-sighted grab for more money by those who don't need more money, we might start to solve the problem. It's not about me, I'm doing alright. But a shit ton of people aren't, who are working and doing their part, and that's fucked up, and it doesn't have to be that way. To be honest I don't give a fuck about some rich person's "right" to amass as much of a fortune as they want, when the price of that "right" is the quality of life of average people. We've been conditioned to think that destructive greed is okay, that we're each #1 and fuck everyone else, I just gotta get mine. But that's no way to build a sustainable country and we're seeing the effects of that now. And again, it's not just Wall Street, but I don't think it would be a bad thing at all to reign them in and produce some accountability for their destructive practices. As well as the other forces that are ruining this country. When we were the world leaders of basically everything, it was when the middle class was the strongest, when education was the strongest. Now we're funneling money out of schools to line the pockets of those who would be wealthy for life if they never made another cent. It's madness.
 
Looks like MSNBC did a good job weeding out the Bernie fans from the audience. It was crickets after every response by him...thunderous applause every time Harris spoke. :sick:
 
I thought Harris was charmingly sassy yet reasonable and presidential. I was most impressed by her performance, but I haven't followed her much until now. I still don't put her as my first choice, but she won last night's debate in my eyes.

Close behind her would be Buttigieg, as far as last night's debate went. I like how he challenged Biden without going directly after him like Harris did.

Sanders felt like the same song and dance. Not bad, just more of the same so it's difficult to be impressed by.

Biden could have been much better.

Warren killed the first night.
 
w01fg4ng said:
I thought Harris was charmingly sassy yet reasonable and presidential. I was most impressed by her performance, but I haven't followed her much until now. I still don't put her as my first choice, but she won last night's debate in my eyes.
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NBC is turning Harris into Hillary 3.0 ... pretty clear they packed the auditorium with her supporters, gave her more time than she deserved proportional to her poll numbers going in...nauseatingly overblown reviews of her performance on every broadcast thenceforth...

I mean, I don't really care that she used her racial background to launch a premeditated attack on Biden, I just wish she wouldn't try to have it both ways. She's saying it wasn't an attack she was just ?sharing a personal story? .

Bernie could've brought up the fact that every person on the stage is riding his coattails and they were no where to be found four years ago when they could've helped him achieve the ideas they now support (now that the polls have caught up with the ideas, typical...)

But that's not his style. Just answered his questions. Stayed on message.
 
I am impressed by Harris and would really like to see a Trump-Harris debate, but from apparent audience selection to giving Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard about a second and a half was not even subtle. I know that the NBC organisation is in bed with the Postmodern Techno-Industrial Megastate from their coverage of both Gulf Wars and beating the drums for doing Saudi Arabia's dirty work in Syria and other foreign entanglements, but this was about a subtle as two spoons and a handful of bolts in a blender . . .

Cong Gabbard was angelic and managed to get around their improvised intra-debate press blackout, and of course the beat goes on after the debate . . .
 
mal3volent said:
Bernie could've brought up the fact that every person on the stage is riding his coattails
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I think Bernie and Biden have a similar problem in this regard. Both of them can claim experience as a retort to the other candidates but it doesn't work against themselves, it becomes a catch-22. If Bernie starts spouting off about his experience it speaks well for Biden's experience, indirectly, and vice versa.

I think they both went into it thinking they are the two most likely candidates and the one thing they both have to brag about is experience. They were most likely aware of this going into it as well, which would explain why they didn't lay it on thick in the debate. They walked the line while the other candidates took advantage.
 
I wasn't necessarily meaning "experience" , I just meant, Bernie was fighting for this shit when it was still risky. He saw where the party was going and took it there. Everyone up there talking about income inequality and a living wage and single payer health care as serious issues owes thanks to Bernie. For bringing it into the mainstream.

I want the real deal, the guy whose been fighting for this shit for decades. Who doesn't want to be president for his ego or his place in history, but to make the country better. That is his real motivation. He sees wrongs he wants to right. He could care less about the pageantry and the politics.
 
Sanders really dislikes anything short of critical thinking, he is a true intellectual.

His body language was obvious when the person asking questions demanded a one or two word response from everyone for one of the rounds of questions. Sanders basically shook his head in disbelief while Yang smiled confidently. It was kind of funny.
 
w01fg4ng said:
Sanders really dislikes anything short of critical thinking, he is a true intellectual.

His body language was obvious when the person asking questions demanded a one or two word response from everyone for one of the rounds of questions. Sanders basically shook his head in disbelief while Yang smiled confidently. It was kind of funny.
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That has been my analysis since back when Senator Sanders was Mayor of Burlington, and I wondered quite a bit how the debate would go when I heard what the format was, with 30 second answers and so forth. I wouldn't call de Blasio a sound-bite oriented politician either and I think he did what he may have needed in making an impression but he seemed distracted to me for some reason.

It seems to me that doing two debates because of the size of the crowd on the stage was not really all that helpful. Why the media pushes the narrative that Senator Warren is some kind of clone of Sanders is beyond me -- to both of their credits they reach quite a few similar conclusions via different paths. Were they on the stage simultaneously, they would have had the chance to allow those watching the debate to compare all this in real time.
 
w01fg4ng said:
I think Bernie and Biden have a similar problem in this regard. Both of them can claim experience as a retort to the other candidates but it doesn't work against themselves, it becomes a catch-22. If Bernie starts spouting off about his experience it speaks well for Biden's experience, indirectly, and vice versa.
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This is true, but there's another angle to the 'experience' entry on the resume. "What have you done with all that time in gov't?" Is there anything significant Biden accomplished as VP or leading up to that position? Even if there is, does the public know this or assume everything was done by Obama? Is it a plus to have years in gov't that has historically struggled to move forward - ie, you know how to navigate the political waters and make deals to get what you want? Or is it better to come in with less experience, and more wide open optimism to make things change? The latter worked for Trump pretty well, not that any Dem wants to emulate Trump, but I believe a big reason he was elected was that he wasn't ingrained in the political machine. If you look at the older Dems, do they represent a return a better time or an aging relic? If you look at the younger ones, do you see a break towards something new, or someone too naive to get anything done?
 
TheLoveBandit said:
This is true, but there's another angle to the 'experience' entry on the resume. "What have you done with all that time in gov't?" Is there anything significant Biden accomplished as VP or leading up to that position? Even if there is, does the public know this or assume everything was done by Obama? Is it a plus to have years in gov't that has historically struggled to move forward - ie, you know how to navigate the political waters and make deals to get what you want? Or is it better to come in with less experience, and more wide open optimism to make things change? The latter worked for Trump pretty well, not that any Dem wants to emulate Trump, but I believe a big reason he was elected was that he wasn't ingrained in the political machine. If you look at the older Dems, do they represent a return a better time or an aging relic? If you look at the younger ones, do you see a break towards something new, or someone too naive to get anything done?
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Experience is important. I love how Pelosi challenges and moves others using her expertise and know-how in a productive and intelligent manner. She gains my trust by owning her position and clearly describing her concerns. Obviously she isn't running, however she is an example of the type of person who SHOULD be in the "political machine."

I don't think any of the older democratic candidates represent a "return to a better time" or an "aging relic." I do think Biden is be the most moderate and represents the least amount of change, however he still represents a small step forward. There's really only one candidate that I'm following who I would consider young, Buttigieg. His ideas are less progressive and "new" than many of the other candidates but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have proper work experience.

Pete's experience with the war in Afghanistan, for example, is more than our draft dodging president can say.
 
While I totally agree with the idea of decriminalizing sex work for many reasons, I'm not sure this is going to be good for his chances to get elected. I think a lot of people will probably be turned off by the idea because of the puritanical origins of our society that still affects us singificantly.
 
the christian right seem to have no issue with a president who's been divorced twice, had affairs with porn stars and paid money to keep it quiet, bragged about grabbing women by the pussy and lies every other sentence. why would they have a problem with this?

:) :(

alasdair
 
Dems fighting Dems, AOC plays the race card and fails

Racial Issues Rise to Surface in Dispute Between Pelosi, House Freshmen
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the speaker of singling out women of color in remarks that drew rebukes from some fellow Democrats

Race has become a flashpoint in the growing dispute between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a quartet of liberal freshmen lawmakers, again pitting Democratic members against each other in starkly personal terms.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) told the Washington Post that she felt Mrs. Pelosi was persistently singling out “newly elected women of color” and the speaker’s comments were disrespectful. The remarks drew fire on Thursday from fellow members of color in the caucus.
“What a weak argument,” Rep. William Lacy Clay (D., Mo.), who is African-American, said of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez invoking race. “Because you can’t get your way, and because you are getting pushback, you resort to using the race card. Unbelievable.”
Rep. Val Demings (D., Fla.), who is also African-American, dismissed the idea that Mrs. Pelosi’s actions were driven by race. “There are a lot of things you can say about her. I have never, in all of my interactions with her, ever thought that anything she has said or done was racially motivated, other than to look out for people of color,” she said.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, said she empathized with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and hoped to meet with Mrs. Pelosi to smooth things over and address concerns from the caucus’s left flank.
“It’s just a constant thing we deal with as women of color. It’s just harder when it’s coming from your own side, whether that’s how it was intended or not. It’s always much harder,” she said.
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