US Politics April 2019 Thread: 'I find that pretty hard to believe'

Interestingly, in interviews w voters here, the issue they have been citing first as a “too far” lefty pipe dream is free college. Have heard from people who love Warren but part with her on that.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) April 29, 2019

They don’t say Medicare for All goes too far, they don’t say the Green New Deal does. They say free college does.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) April 29, 2019

#JoeBiden Surging Among Democrats in Presidential Race, Poll Finds; U.S. Voters Support Wealth Tax, Oppose Free College https://t.co/08l04x5yyR #2020Election

— Quinnipiac University Poll (@QuinnipiacPoll) April 30, 2019

this just shows the power of "better things aren't possible" and self-loathing "the things we want are fundamentally unpopular with real americans". it's not just melt centrist politicians spouting it. it infects voters too. so in a way the melt centrist politicians are right!

a wealth tax (which to be clear i support) is way, way more radical than free college. it's a fundamentally new and very lucrative form of taxation what will change the the economy works. and medicare for all is (by normal standards of budgeting) more expensive than free college. but free college is where even people who like warren draw the line.

Couldn't it also be that they see health care as a human right that all Americans should have, while college seems something that mostly the middle class will get to do anyway?

it's not either/or but it is in their mind because they've (we've!) trained themselves to think so.

there are a lot of factors that make it difficult for children of the poor or the working class to succeed through academics, compared to children of the middle class. it isn't just social stigma or self-hypnosis.

getting a "why do I need to pay a school tax? I don't have any kids" vibe from this

Anti-intellectualism has deep roots in the USA. Richard Hofstadter wrote an excellent book on the subject. Republicans have enthusiastically tapped into that lately, while Democrats have tended to reject it. It's yet another way in which the two major parties have divvied up the nation into exclusive spheres of influence.

Also, the Dems have become the party of college-educated voters -- a remarkable shift from even the 1970s and 1980s.

feel like "free college" is still new enough to the conversation that sustained messaging and how-it's-framed could change those numbers a lot. comparison to m4a should actually highlight that, imo, since that's a classic "popularity has soared since it's been steadily in the conversation" case.

i wonder who (besides student loan companies) would be against the idea of using student loan "profits" to subsidize college tuition? why not shift management of student loans to the public sector, where theoretically there's not a profit motive? why is the status quo to allow third party lenders to make billions of dollars off of everyone else's misfortune?

oh wait, because a whiff of socialism will destroy our wonderful society

as far as the 'private sector is much better at managing things than the government, which is the problem!" theory goes, i just received an INCREDIBLY confusing letter from myfedloan.org today which somehow presented 4+ pages of detailed information on my 8 student loans and all of the various payments and when they're due, and i STILL had no idea when the next payment is or how much it would be.

shit, the government is pretty bad at managing a lot of things, but they can fail at least as well as myfedloan.org or any other number of lenders or middlemen

The most brillant move of the conservative right was to convince the american people that Keynesianism was socialism. I really think it won them 30 years and counting.

why is the status quo to allow third party lenders to make billions of dollars off of everyone else's misfortune?

For the same reason that post offices are legally barred from providing banking services and North Dakota is the only state that has created a state-run bank. Control of credit gives banks incredible power and gives bankers incredible wealth. They make full use of that wealth and power to retain control of credit.

The 'free market' theory is that in return for this wealth and power bankers perform a valuable economic service, by applying their professional expertise to vetting loans and allocating capital only to those who are good risks and will create social value out of that capital; bankers who fail to do so are punished by the withdrawal of capital from their control, so that the bank falters and dies. This theory is officially hilarious, in light of the role banks played in the financial crisis of 2008.

No reason to get excited about the URL but worth noting that Trump isn't even George W. Bush.

Apparently all the Democrats have to do is give that 55 percent no reason to change their minds. For what it’s worth, a similar poll in mid-2016 found that 48 percent of Americans “definitely” wouldn’t vote for Trump. And that turned out to be true. In the end, an additional 4 percent joined the crowd and 52 percent of the electorate didn’t vote for him. If the same dynamic holds next year, Trump will receive about 41 percent of the two-party vote and be turned out of office in one of the biggest landslides ever. Wouldn’t that be great?

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/chart-of-the-day-donald-trump-has-already-lost-the-2020-election/

For the same reason that post offices are legally barred from providing banking services and North Dakota is the only state that has created a state-run bank. Control of credit gives banks incredible power and gives bankers incredible wealth. They make full use of that wealth and power to retain control of credit.

The 'free market' theory is that in return for this wealth and power bankers perform a valuable economic service, by applying their professional expertise to vetting loans and allocating capital only to those who are good risks and will create social value out of that capital; bankers who fail to do so are punished by the withdrawal of capital from their control, so that the bank falters and dies. This theory is officially hilarious, in light of the role banks played in the financial crisis of 2008.

― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, April 30, 2019 3:07 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Plenty of countries have banks operating in free market settings and have regulated interest rates for students loans + affordable tuition and/or straight free tuition. One of these countries happens to be just north of the border.

The reason why the US does not have affordable tuition is because Americans voted for policy makers that don't give a shit about affordable tuition.

You gotta hand it to the GOP’s commitment to the bit in light of a mountain of data proving them wrong

For the same reason that post offices are legally barred from providing banking services and North Dakota is the only state that has created a state-run bank. Control of credit gives banks incredible power and gives bankers incredible wealth. They make full use of that wealth and power to retain control of credit.

fwiw we had a ballot measure in LA on this in 2018 and i don't think there's much evidence that it lost because of the banks.

WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, wrote a letter in late March to Attorney General William P. Barr objecting to his early description of the Russia investigation’s conclusions that appeared to clear President Trump on possible obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department.

wouldn't it have been cool if mueller, instead of handing over his report to a lying piece of shit who mischaracterized the report and then saying absolutely nothing for a month, had instead held a goddamn 30-minute press conference and walked everyone through the report he just spent 2 years working on?

didn't only like 19 people bother to vote, bcz America?

xp

maybe mueller fell for the good ol' "republicans can't be THAT evil" trick and assumed that barr wouldn't completely fuck him over

All the assholes that used his so-called silence as proof that it was a nothingburger can fuck off now

I’m quoting something mordy said a few weeks ago—but why is mueller such a coward?

If he felt the report indicated serious wrongdoing—actionable wrongdoing—he could have made that a lot clearer.

I guess he just likes being a sphinx?

Let's not rush to judgment until we see Bill Barr's summary of Mueller's angry letter to him. https://t.co/ZWcQ25BAFq

— Josh Gohlke (@JoshGohlke) April 30, 2019

Yeah but as karl malone said

Mr. Barr, who was scheduled to testify on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation, has said publicly that he disagrees with some of the legal reasoning in the Mueller report. Senior Democratic lawmakers have invited Mr. Mueller to testify in the coming weeks but have been unable to secure a date for his testimony.

hey mueller, maybe find a fucking open date on your calendar?????

Mueller had a clear shot. But he decided to back off. He must not really think what trump did matters.

3% right, 97% wrong

On the last-gasp conspiracy theory of the collusion dead-enders to keep the flock hooked: that William Barr is materially misrepresenting the Mueller report & Mueller and his entire team are just remaining quiet & not objecting about this wholesale distortion of their work: pic.twitter.com/ESq8Dw4nr1

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 27, 2019

didn't only like 19 people bother to vote, bcz America?

xp

― blokes you can't rust (sic), Tuesday, April 30, 2019 7:30 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no. turnout was enormous for a midterm year and not terrible in an absolute sense (50-60%) depending on whether you mean CA, LA county or the city. participation in a technical ballot measure like that was lower than the turnout, but it was still 30%ish iirc.

Wow. Mueller wrote a letter to William Barr complaining that his summary of the report confused the public, potentially undermining public confidence in the investigation, WaPo reports.

Of course, it did exactly that. Key quote from Mueller's letter:https://t.co/30maBGNBfT pic.twitter.com/oOGlTs4F2V

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 30, 2019

so...why didn't mueller turn down the opportunity to review barr's 4 page cover-up misleading summary letter?

and after it came out and was intentionally misleading, why did he say nothing for a month+? why can't he find a fucking day on his calendar to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee?

People not understanding Mueller’s adherence to his clearly restricted remit and his obeisance to hierarchy: he’s a Marine, sorry

caek: the latter is probably what I'm thinking of, I was tinkerbelling the measure during that week and remember the vote being extra disappointing

Mueller is a Republican, let's remember, and, also, he believes indicting a president would upset our constitutional norms as much as letting Donald J. Trump occupy the Oval Office for 18 more months or another six years.

In other words, a classic Beltway stooge.

xp it wasn't a close ballot (60/40) but if the last time you checked on turnout was the day after the election, remember that 50% (and climbing) of CA voters who do vote do so by post and don't show up in the "turnout was terrible" takes everyone insists on writing the morning after.

p.s. impeach barr. he deserves it.

word ^

meanwhile at home

The 2019 election will boast the highest enrolment rate in Australian history (96.8%) and a record enrolment rate for young Australians (88.8%), in figures released on Tuesday.

9.7% of enrolled voters are now between 18 and 24. fuck 'em up, millennials

Mueller is a Republican, let's remember, and, also, he believes indicting a president would upset our constitutional norms as much as letting Donald J. Trump occupy the Oval Office for 18 more months or another six years.

on the latter part, he was following justice department guidelines, as ill-suited for our current times as they may be. on the former, he's a republican who oversaw a damning document (and with excellent prose, as you noted!) of a sitting republican president. once you've been the lead author of a 450 page report that features hundreds of instances of the president being a crook, it would seem that opening your mouth to let someone know that the attorney general is mischaracterizing your report isn't such a big step

Pretty clear that the "irritation" of Barr and his aides is that Mueller had presented them with a report designed for public consumption and clearly aimed at Congress. In other words, he seriously complicated the cover up plan.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 1, 2019

whoops, meant to include this as well

the true nature of the irritation becomes clear down in the Times story pic.twitter.com/0IoiG5r5VJ

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 1, 2019

he's a republican who oversaw a damning document (and with excellent prose, as you noted!) of a sitting republican president. once you've been the lead author of a 450 page report that features hundreds of instances of the president being a crook, it would seem that opening your mouth to let someone know that the attorney general is mischaracterizing your report isn't such a big step

Yes, and that's partly why he made the prose so transparent. He's also a wuss.

Not really surprising like it isn't the first time Barr helped bury bad news. Jeeze you even had Ollie's name come up this weekend too...

How did Mueller not understand that the first thing people heard about the report would have a bigger impact than totality of the 450 pages, as absorbed by a sensitive and objective reader? In Trump’s America?

He seems like naive and kind of dumb or else complicit in—if not the cover up—positioning this so it fizzled out. Between this and rosenstein praising trump’s warmth and humor i just

Treeship

lol

Treeship again otm

You guys can think trump is warm and humorous if you want

Xps