WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2021
How about with Romney and Thune?: Mitt Romney is a Republican senator from Utah.
He opposes the Build Back Better bill. Have you ever seen anyone ask him why?
How about Senator Collins (R-Maine) or Senator Murkowski (R-Alaska)? They oppose Build Back Better too. Has anyone asked them why?
How about Senator Thune (R-South Dakota), a "nice guy" Republican, the second highest-ranking member of the GOP Senate leadership.
In this morning's New York Times, a profile of Thune suggests that he may retire next year, at the age of 60, in part because of fatigue with Trump-era politics.
"[Mr. Trump] lashed out at Mr. Thune early this year when the senator rejected his attempts to overturn the election," the Times notes at one point.
In that sense, Senator Thune is a "nice guy" Republican—but he flatly opposes Build Back Better too. Has anyone ever asked Senator Thune why he opposes the bill? Have you ever heard anyone say how angry they are with him?
In fact, over half the United States Senate opposes Build Back Better, at least as the bill currently stands. (Is Senator Sinema now on board? Have you seen any discussion of this point?)
More than half the Senate opposes Build Back Better! But the anger, indeed the fury, is all directed at Manchin. Depending on the way you teach it, this may or may not make sense.
This may or may not make good sense. (As with most things, it probably doesn't.) All in all, we're trying to sketch a basic point—a basic point about anger.
Does it make sense to be angry at Manchin about his current stance? While we're at it—see yesterday's report—does it make sense to be "furious" at the "scum" who still aren't getting vaccinated?
Charles Blow didn't use the term "scum" when he declared that he was now expressly "furious" at all such people. For ourselves, we thought he may have been a bit slippery at one point, or possibly even slick, in identifying who those people are, the people concerning whom he is now proudly "intolerant."
We thought he may have been a bit slick. At any rate, does it make sense to be furious at those people? Does it make sense to be intolerant?
Getting back to Build Back Better, does it make sense to be furious with Manchin? Does it make sense to be furious with him while no one says the first freaking word about the fifty (50) other senators who flatly oppose the bill, with no hope of breakthrough concessions?
Does it make sense to be so angry about Manchin's stance on this bill? For today, we're going to quote at length from Kevin Drum's latest post.
Drum makes a series of points about Build Back Better. We're not sure why he has chosen to speak in the past tense, since the bill may not be dead. At any rate, he starts with the sweep of the bill:
DRUM (12/21/21): I've made this point before, but I want to say it again to bang it into people's heads: BBB was wildly unprecedented. Nothing like it has ever been done in American history.
There were three things that made it so. First, depending on how you count, it created seven or eight big new programs in a single bill. Child care. Pre-K. Climate. Obamacare. Paid leave. Long-term care. Expanded, work-free child tax credit. Hearing and vision in Medicare.
In the past, any one of these would have been a major victory for liberals. The prospect of getting half a dozen of them in one go was breathtaking.
The sweep of the (original) bill was "breathtaking," Drum says. We can't speak to the perfect accuracy of every statement we're going to post, but we're willing to ask you if you actually know that any of Drum's assessments are wrong.
The sweep of the bill was breathtaking, Drum says. As he continues, he speaks to its very large cost:
DRUM (continuing directly): Second, it was expensive. The initial version of the bill probably would have cost more than $500 billion per year, though that number depends a lot on what assumptions you make. Even the cut-down final bill, using realistic assumptions instead of smoke and mirrors, probably would have come to $300 billion or so.
This amounts to 1-2% of GDP compared to less than 1% of GDP annually for FDR's New Deal during its first decade. So the plan was to pass a bill that was astonishing in scope and cost more than the New Deal.
The proposed bill was very expensive, Drum says. We can't speak to the perfect accuracy of those statements, and we can think of at least one quibble. But can you actually say that those statements are factually wrong?
The original bill was breathtaking in its scope. It was also very expensive. Now, Drum suggests that it was always a stretch to think that any such bill could have passed through the Senate. We'll place one of these claims in context:
DRUM (continuing directly): Third, this was to be done in a Senate with precisely 50 Democrats, not FDR's 60 in 1933 (soon to be 70 in 1935).
This was crazy! What on earth convinced liberals that they could pass something like this? And why did so many of them consider it a vast betrayal as it eventually got cut down to "only" three or four big programs? Even that would have represented the biggest boost to the liberal program in decades. It would have been cause for celebration no matter which programs eventually made the cut.
So why did it go down the way it did? This isn't really about taking sides in the endless and tedious portioning of blame between centrists and lefties. After all, the vast majority of both supported the full bill. In the end, just as political science and common sense suggests, it was brought down by the two or three most conservative Democrats in the Senate.
Under the circumstances, was it "crazy" to think that the original bill could have been passed by the Senate? Given the fact that the Democrats hold a 50-vote pseudo-majority, was it crazy to think that?
We don't know how to answer that question. Within the realm of professional politics, a competent White House would have proceeded based on indications from the more conservative Democratic senators. We don't have the slightest idea what those private communications may have been like at the start of this process, assuming they even existed.
That said, it can certainly seem like the Democratic leadership was taking a bit of flier in thinking it could pass the original bill: And by the way:
When FDR had those 60 senators, that was 60 votes out of a mere 96! Alaska and Hawaii didn't even exist at that time! There were only 48 states—and soon, he had 70 votes!
(On the other hand, the Senate didn't march in partisan lockstep to the same extent at that time.)
Were Democrats whistling past the graveyard when they advanced the original bill? We don't know how to assess that possibility—but we do agree with Drum's final point, if his one speculation makes sense:
DRUM: Long story short, we should all stop feeling like the world has collapsed around us—and drop all the circular firing squad crap while we're at it. Manchin says he's open to further talks in January, and I wouldn't be surprised if they finally produce a compromise of three or four fully funded programs along with enough offsetting tax hikes to make the bill more-or-less revenue neutral.
And if this happens? "Only" three or four programs? Then pop the champagne. No other president in recent memory has done anything like this. And by any reasonable standard, it would make Joe Manchin quite a liberal senator.
Will Manchin ever vote for anything? We have no way of knowing.
But how about Romney, Thune and Murkowski? How about Sasse and Susan Collins?
How about Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the other senator from West Virginia? How about their votes against the bill? Why doesn't anyone ever say a word about them?
At least half the United States Senate is flatly opposed to this bill! That said, our fury is all being aimed at one person—at a person who, unlike The Untouchable 50, "also believes that the rich should pay higher taxes, the government should modestly expand social services, and Medicare should impose price controls on prescription drugs."
No one is asking a single question about the fifty senators who stand in flat opposition. In part, this is because of the mountains of bullshit which get shoveled at us in the liberal world each night by our "cable news" stars.
We live in a world of Storyline, and also of "corporate capture." The children feed us neatly sculpted tales. As with the "scum" when they watch Fox News, we tend to believe every word.
We live in a world of (profit-driven) corporate capture. We also live in a world of anger—a world of anger and fury.
We live in a world of anger and fury, but also of limited judgment. Our favorite stars play us every night. Their thumbs are all over the scales.
We loathe the "scum" who get played on Fox. We're unable to see how this syndrome works with ourselves and our own cable stars.
Tomorrow: That column from 2019
Friday: There but for fortune (two cases)
"Has anyone ever asked Senator Thune why he opposes the bill?"
ReplyDeleteOh dear. There's one perfectly obvious reason to oppose a 2 trillion dollar spending bill, dear Bob. Especially during the time of high inflation. Record-high inflation.
More to the point, why wouldn't you ask any number of dembots (you can start with Kevin, your favorite) why they don't oppose the 2 trillion dollar spending bill during the time of record-high inflation.
Meh, scratch that, dear Bob. We both know: reasoning with dembots ain't possible.
Somerby, with his Catholic upbringing, should understand that forgiveness requires contrition, remorse, restitution. The right has displayed none of these things. Neither has Manchin, who no doubt believes he has done nothing wrong.
ReplyDeleteTherapists urge victims to forgive their assailants because it is good for the victim, not to benefit the wrongdoer. The act of forgiving enables a victim to stop obsessing over what happened and move on with their lives.
Change comes from anger. That is the purpose of the emotion. If the left lets go of its anger, it may feel more at peace, but it will not benefit our society, which is badly in need of change. That's why Somerby's call for forgiveness is misplaced and even harmful to all who live in our society.
Once again, Somerby keeps claiming to be liberal, but liberals seek change. Somerby, urging forgiveness, wants the liberals to sit down and shut up and leave people alone so that they can keep on doing what they have been doing. That is the essence of conservatism.
There can be no forgiveness as long as the right continues to espouse policies and engage in behaviors that hurt purple. And that IS what they are doing.
For example: it isn't live and let live in the hinterlands.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/20/2070366/-In-rural-precincts-right-wing-extremists-wage-a-campaign-of-intimidation-against-the-mainstream
Well said. Somerby has increasingly gone off the rails. He seems most interested in going after Blacks(Blow) and women(Maddow). Liberals are angry with Manchin because he jerked them around for months. The Republicans have made it clear that none of them were going to break ranks.
Delete"More than half the Senate opposes Build Back Better! But the anger, indeed the fury, is all directed at Manchin. "
ReplyDeleteIf Somerby thinks that we are only angry at Manchin, he is very wrong. The difference between Manchin and the 50 Republicans who obstruct bipartisan efforts in Congress is that no one expects any better of Republicans whereas Manchin claims to be a Democrat (much as Somerby claims to be liberal). Further, Manchin has hinted that if his concerns are addressed he might support the bill -- this statement on Fox News (of all places) repudiates that. There was never any hope of Republicans voting with Democrats on this bill.
We don't need to ask Republicans why they oppose Democratic efforts. It has nothing to do with the specifics of any bill. Republicans have adopted a policy of preventing the Democratic president from achieving anything during his term that can be used to campaign on in 2022 or 2024. That is how Republicans try to win elections these days -- the public and its needs be damned. It is only about political power, not governing, on the right. That's why there is no point in asking them.
There is a saying "Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies." If someone were to ask any Republican why they oppose any Democratic initiative, they will certainly invent reasons. But even if all such reasons were addressed, they still wouldn't change their votes. Just as Manchin will not change his. Why? He hasn't said anything true either. And neither will Somerby. Somerby is not a child. He understands the answers to his own questions. That makes these disingenuous questions deceitful, part of his own propaganda efforts on behalf of the right. And it makes everything he writes here a huge waste of time to read.
Somerby asks: "How about Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the other senator from West Virginia? "
ReplyDeletePlaying us all for fools, Somerby doesn't mention that Capito is a Republican.
It makes more sense to ask why Manchin, supposedly a Democrat, keeps behaving like a Republican, not vice versa. The Republicans are being who they are. They are not turncoats. Manchin is the traitor to his party's ideals. Manchin is the one deceiving his constituents and wasting his party's time. Manchin deserves the anger.
It would be a better use of your time to wonder why Somerby asks such ridiculous questions and why he cannot see the reality of his own political party -- being all liberal and such (as he claims to be).
Continuing his tradition of defending miscreants, Somerby wastes another essay today defending Manchin. His main trick is to pretend that anyone (right or Manchin) has good reasons for opposing this bill, reasons specific to the legislation itself. But if that were true, Republicans would work with Democrats to revise the bill and remove the obstalces, and they have not done that.
ReplyDelete"At least half the United States Senate is flatly opposed to this bill!"
Somerby wants to pretend that there is something inherent to the bill that makes it impossible for half the Senate to vote for it. That might make sense if the half opposing it included some Republicans and some fiscally concerned Democrats. That isn't the case. Those Republicans are opposed as a bloc, not individually, for partisan political reasons, not any reason specific to the content of the bill itself. That makes this a Republican party effort to obstruct whatever Biden might try to do to enact the Democratic agenda, not opposition to a weak or flawed or bad bill. Somerby lies when he pretends that if this bill were better, any Republican would support it.
On the left, there has been a tradition of voting one's conscience and the needs of one's constituents, not adhere to party discipline to obstruct and oppose Republican efforts simply because they are Republican. That tradition is what allows Manchin to pretend he has serious concerns about the bill, and not that he has been bought and paid for by lobbyists (along with Sinema). There have always been such members of Congress -- look at the Senators who take care of the interests of big oil, or the tobacco lobby. Even Bernie took money from the NRA (gun lobby) and Obama paid fealty to wall street (receiving more funding from them than Hillary ever did and appointing Larry Summers). But few Democrats have been as brazen as the right when it comes to seeking and sucking up to power, most evident in their fealty to Trump.
Democrats are pressuring Manchin because he is more susceptible to pressure than any Republican. Republicans owe their careers to right-wing power brokers. Democrats, not so much. When a Democrat such as Manchin owes more to lobbyists than to his voters, you get this kind of situation. The only way to reach Manchin is to show him that his career will be over too, if he too obviously sucks up to corporate interests and ignores the people he was elected to serve.
Liz Cheney can oppose her own party when it comes to overthrowing a valid election, mainly because she has the support of her voters. The Republican party cannot threaten her with a primary challenger or by withholding funds. But she wont' vote for Democratic initiatives because she is a Republican and that is what her voters elected her to be. The same is not true of Manchin. He may consider himself immune from his own constituents, but that may not be true if he can be shown to be opposed to helping the people who elected him. And that is what this pressure campaign is about.
It has nothing to do with Democratic vengeance, as Somerby stupidly suggests. But notice how hard Somerby is working to undermine the attempts to pressure Manchin into voting like a Democrat! Somerby is a willing collaborator with the Republicans and their lobbyists. He is the one who should be made to answer questions, not Capito or Thune or Romney.
anon 10.19 states:
Delete" "At least half the United States Senate is flatly opposed to this bill!"
Somerby wants to pretend that there is something inherent to the bill that makes it impossible for half the Senate to vote for it. "
I didn't take somerby to mean that statement as there is something inherently wrong with the bill. my understanding of his post was that if there are 50 senators opposed, why is everyone only focusing on manchin?
And the answer is, of course, party discipline. Who knows what any of those 50 Republicans actually think about the bill -- and no, it isn't because no one has asked them. It is because they aren't allowed to deviate from party line. If they do, their donors will disappear and they will be primaried and their political career will be over. They know that, and that is why they all speak with one voice. Sort of like Communist China, where someone who deviates from party line loses their position within the party. Democrats don't have that same approach to politics. Neither did Republicans until Newt Gingrich. This is how authoritarian regimes work. It should have been unthinkable for the Republicans to behave that way, but somehow it is not. No dissidents allowed on the right.
DeleteThe idea that the bill was too expensive is based on Manchin's insistence that all programs contained in the bill be costed out for 10 years, with that 10 years worth of funding included in the cost of the bill. That is a bit of game-playing.
ReplyDeleteIf this bill were disastrous to the economy because of its cost, why are financial forecasts of GDP gloomy without it? Why did Wall Street show declines? Why isn't the financial community against the bill, instead of strongly for it?
BBB was clearly seen as a stimulus to the economy, not a drag upon it, not a threat to future stability. A stimulus bill pays for itself with the future benefits to the economy. That's how Republicans have sold their extremely costly tax cuts, so they should understand this logic, even Manchin and Somerby.
I don't know what planet Drum is inhabiting lately. His essays don't make much sense. He likes to examine questions from a different perspective, with different assumptions, but he isn't very good at asking why those asumptions weren't used in the first place, why people don't already examine things his way.
For example, he keeps saying that there is no shortage of truckers and uses employment figures to make his case, but he completely ignores the self-employed truckers who own their own trucks and do not work as employees of trucking firms. This, despite that point being brought up repeatedly in his comments section. He has made similar mistakes using graphs to examine women's participation in the workforce, suggesting that they have not been as impacted as others claim. Yet his graphs gloss over the impact of school reopening on women's work, and use too broad a time scale to show temporary impacts, choosing only to look at figures over a longer time frame. Again, these matters were pointed out in comments, which he ignored.
This bill is expensive if you accept Manchin's demand that all programs be funded for 10 years. But most bills don't do that, and why should this one have to? And why is Drum accepting this demand as reasonable when it is inconsistent with precedent and obviously politically motivated to damn the bill? And if you are going to consider 10 years worth of costs, the same 10 years worth of stimulus and increased revenues need to be considered too. Something Drum ignores.
"President Biden got angry as he talked about the fact that parents can't afford life-saving medication, like insulin for their children." Political Wire
ReplyDeleteWhy shouldn't we all be angry when partisan political maneuvering prevents children from receiving necessary medication (childhood diabetes is life-threatening).
Biden is angry and Democrats are angry because these are things that should make decent people angry. Somerby's suggestion that there is something wrong with justified anger is itself a craven response to intolerable circumstances.
If Republicans don't feel that way, there is something wrong with them, not us.
"Why shouldn't we all be angry when partisan political maneuvering prevents children from receiving necessary medication (childhood diabetes is life-threatening)."
DeleteBecause it isn't "Pro-life", it's "Anti-women".
I find it funny that Somerby's suggestion that the country is all anger and fury these days is met by a ton of anger and fury in the comments LOL. It's not just this blog, it's all social media too. Along with justifications why "my side's" fury and anger is justified and the "other side's" fury and anger is not. I suspect that my post will also be met with, you guessed it, fury and anger. The left doesn't want to hear it but they in ways have become as bad as the right in terms of the anger and self righteousness, and in clowning. Anger and passion have a place for sure, but Bob is right that everyone leads with this all the time on all issues on all sides. Not sure if it's always been this way but i personally don't see how the republic survives with the levels of anger, and fury, and partisanship we are seeing today - we all need to do our part to tone it down a bit.
ReplyDeleteSomerby’s commenters are disagreeing with him, critiquing him. They aren’t full of “anger and fury.”
DeleteIt’s also true that when a Democrat suggests raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for child care or climate change efforts, and are met with comments from GOP members of Congress and talking heads like “the tyrannical Nazi evil Communist demon rats are at it again “, that that is uncivil discourse coming from the GOP and destroys any discourse.
Or when the GOP refuses to consider Obama’s Supreme Court nominee because you shouldn’t do that in an election year, and “we promise we won’t hypocritically consider one when the shoe is on the other foot” and then hypocritically consider one when the shoe was on the other foot, you realize that the GOP is in a war, and not interested in civility.
Then you understand why some on the left get justifiably angry. Anger isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can be a significant motivator of change.
I’m willing to tone it down (I don’t actually tone it up), but it has to be a two way street.
Actually, your cult will be lowering taxes on the wealthy, dear mh. Significantly.
DeleteRaising the SALT cap from $10K to $80K, ~$250 billion over 5 years -- all 100% of it going to the super-rich -- that's part of the liberal bill, dear mh.
Quid pro quo
DeleteThis isn't a both-sides matter. There are unprecedented levels of violence aimed at public servants such as public health officials and vote counters. It is ALL coming from the right-wing, not the left. And there are young Republicans asking "when do we get to use the guns?" at Republican rallies. And Trump authorizing his rally goers to beat up protesters (who are exercising 1st amendment rights in peaceful ways). And there are Proud Boys driving their cars over protesters and teens being gifted with AR-15s so they can shoot protesters while a judge eggs on the defense and rigs a trial to produce a not-guilty verdict. And the right even went so far as to violently attack the Capitol Building, threatening Congress as it tried to peacefully pass the office of the presidency to the president elect. There are no comparable acts of violence aimed at Republicans. So, Somerby's pretense that we have ALL gotten too angry is just an attempt at normalizing and excusing right-wing violence, ahead of an election.
DeleteSomerby aids in this effort, like the good little conservative that he is.
Somerby's essay today reminds me of the words of those venerable 60s folk artists, The Fugs:
ReplyDeleteMonday, nothing
Tuesday, nothing
Wednesday and Thursday, nothing
Friday for a change, a little more nothing
Saturday, lots more nothing
repeat in Yiddish and Spanish.
Nihilism was a thing back in the 60s too.
"Ford is a conservative, ..... exemplified by the politics of cooperation, conciliation, compromise, and consensus", but thank God Reagan was there to lead the army of "Republicans who believe that conflict, not compromise, is the essense of politics." Patrick Buchanan, 1976
ReplyDeleteI see Rip Van Somerby might have missed nearly half a century of the evolution of the Republican party.
Will Somerby scold Bernie Sanders? He is angry with Manchin. He is on record as having called Manchin and Sinema arrogant for refusing to support the bill supported by every other Democratic senator.
ReplyDeleteI was shocked and frightened by Drum's description of how enormous a change the BBB was. Apparently the Democrats will support unlimited continuing expansion of government power. I don't think the Democratic legislators are Socialists, but continued expansion of government power will inevitably lead to socialism. Hello United States of Venezuela. :(
ReplyDelete"socialism"
DeleteIsn't that the thing we've use over and over again to bail out the economy after capitalism crashes it?
On the contrary. Take China for example. Their socialist economy was languishing. Then they added back some elements of capitalism. Now they're huge. Cuba was the richest per capita country in Latin America before Castro. Now, they're one of the poorest. When Germany and Korea were cut in two, the capitalist half out-performed the socialist half by enormous margins. Today, Red states like TX are way outperforming Blue states, like CA.
DeleteMy understanding is that China was a communist country, not socialist. Also Cuba had huge income disparity back before Castro. The wealthiest Cubans fled to Miama and that is why they are Republicans. And David, you are forgetting that East Germany was embargoed, much as Iran has been, so it isn't exactly a fair comparison.
DeleteKevin Drum recently made a comparison between TX and CA. His finding was not the same as your claim that TX outperforms CA. But you are also ignoring the ways in which individual people benefit from Democratic Socialist governments in terms of health care, education and social safety net. These are not Communist countries like Cuba or China, but democracies with managed economies instead of unfettered capitalism. If you are going to talk economics, you need to be more careful about your terminology. No one today thinks of carpools and credit unions as socialist or communist, except a few wayward Republicans throwing such words around in propaganda.
@5:01 Communism is a form of socialism
DeleteYes, social welfare programs do a lot of good. but, they have a big cost. It's hard to see the cost. It's measured in the things that did NOT get done, because of the burden of big government.
However, it's more clear when one looks at the results. Most of our major cities have had big government programs for many decades. Have these enormously expensive programs lifted blacks into the middle class? No, the programs failed. Inner cities are, by and large, very poor places to live and to raise a family -- high crime, high unemployment, sub-standard schools, etc. These are the fruits of decades of liberal Democratic governance.
Communism definition: "a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs"
DeleteSocialism definition: "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole"
What is different between the two: (1) Karl Marx goes with communism but not socialism, (2) class war is part of Marxism, not socialism, (3) each person works according to his abilities and is paid according to his needs is part of communism but not socialism, (4) communism is a political theory, not an economic theory whereas socialism is both, (5) means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole in socialism but not communism, which is not necessarily governed by the whole but by a party or committee or authoritarian dictator.
What is the same across the two approaches: ownership on behalf of community, not necessarily common or shared in communism the way it is in socialism. Both are attempts to meet the needs of all people within a society.
As I noted, socialism can be combined with democracy. Communism is not.
You can use Google as well as anyone else here, David. Try doing that instead of assuming that your own mistaken understandings are correct. The current Republican fad of labeling everything Democrats support "socialism" or "communism" interchangeably, is as ignorant as covid-denialism.
If the black middle class didn't come from big city programs, where do you think it did come from? Among those big city programs are access to higher education, access to small business loans, better health care, and other kinds of programs that prevent people from being overwhelmed by the problems that accompany poverty. No one expects 100% success from any program, but where exactly do you think the black middle class came from?
@11:28, yes, there is a black middle class, but the black underclass is huge. I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about poor education, high crime and other social maladies. I don't accept the excuse that no one expects perfection. This country has spent literally trillions of dollars to improve the conditions of the black underclass. Given all that effort, we mostly failed.
DeleteIMO we failed because we spent the money on the wrong programs. Democrats focused on giving things to blacks. That's a good way to buy votes, but it encourages dependence, rather than independence.
My father was a poor immigrant. Fortunately nobody gave him anything. I say "fortunately", because, immigrant Jews learned to move upward by mutual support, ambition, and hard work. Asian immigrants did the same. Blacks were making good progress when they were in charge of their own advancement. Once the politicians took charge, advancement slowed.
Everything was going along hunky-dory until the stupid politicians passed Civil Rights legislation in the 60s.
DeleteWe've had this conversation about the differences between immigrants and former slaves before and you never seem to listen. Why bother writing it again? You cannot pull yourself up by bootstraps when you have no boots.
DeleteWhen have blacks been "in charge of their own advancement"? We went from slavery to Jim Crow to those government programs you revile (but which provably resulted in a major increase in the size of the black middle class until today it is: "27.3% of black households earned an income between $25,000 and $50,000, 15.2% earned between $50,000 and $75,000, 7.6% earned between $75,000 and $100,000, and 9.4% earned more than $100,000...Black Americans make up 12 percent of the middle class and 13 percent of the population." White people are 51% middle class and 40% working class.
However, being in the middle class doesn't tell the whole story of unequal wealth distribution in our country:
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/ccf4dbe2-810a-44f8-b3e7-14f7e5143ba6/economic-state-of-black-america-2020.pdf
Okay let's talk Republicans. Republican politicians wouldn't be there without the culture war. They can't talk class issues because that's the whole point, argue about evolution not pay raises. Jesus loves you.
ReplyDeleteHow prepared are Democrats to talk class issues? Let's not forget that the student debt holders were all smug fratboys who don't deserve money. A total lie but it was a lie that pretended to be about class, while defending the interests of the powerful.
Or how about how neither party has ran on campaign finance reform, despite this attacking corruption and putting regular people into power. A generation ago the ACLU purged its hard left members during McCarthyism and now we just have gentrified communism, middlebrow thinkpieces in the papers about how a sad, navel gazing bowtie feels conflicted about life under the capitalists and reactionaries but can't bring himself to use "their" word.
Here is what Hillary had in her campaign statement in 2016:
Deletehttps://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/campaign-finance-reform/
"Americans are understandably cynical about a political system that has been hijacked by billionaires and special interests. That’s why Hillary Clinton is putting forward a plan for aggressive campaign finance reform. She’ll work to curb the outsized influence of big money in American politics, shine a light on secret spending, and fight to make our democracy work for everyone—not just the wealthy and well-connected."
This general paragraph was followed by a series of specific proposals. Because she was the Democratic nominee in 2016, you cannot really say that neither party has run on campaign finance reform.
Just for the record, McCarthyism was 70 years ago, not a generation. A generation is 20-30 years.
Today Biden extended the moratorium on student loan debt repayment. By the way, he is a Democrat.
Biden's bills on social spending are tiny correctives of all that's been stolen since 1981: the wealthy own everything and pay no taxes, the Pentagon is a piggy bank of endless blank checks, and the Supreme Court is
Deleteis the RNC.
What Drum doesn’t assess is the critical point, is the big price tag on the bill offset by taxing the rich and super rich? It was once said regularly that our problems couldn’t be solved by soaking the rich. One doesn’t hear that much anymore. I’m afraid our media considers such questions getting down “in the weeds.”
ReplyDeleteBut then Manafort gave polling data to the Kremlin and the rest is history as we say they say.
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