US Politics: Sing us a song, you're the Tariff man

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Ormond said:

Completely irrelevant -- but just today for the first time that I remember I had a student paper where "hire" was misspelled as "higher" and here it turns up on this thread. Is there some stupid new spell check error operating?

Ha, that's what I get for posting in tight windows. Typos like that are what got me in college. I'd get a 97% on a paper only to find a boneheaded mistake like that. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Okay, people need to figure out that donations from people WHO WORK IN oil is not the same thing as donations FROM THE COMPANY. If I donate to Clinton it shows up as a donation from Microsoft, but it doesn't mean Microsoft donated him money, nor does it give Microsoft any particular say in his funding.

ActBlue or nearly any other such organization asks for your employer when you donate, I'm not sure but I think its a legal requirement. So yes, Bernie Sanders did receive some small amount from a "big corporation".

$430,000 wont buy you a whole lot of influence with any politician I think, particularly if it is spread over 20-30 individuals. Compared to his 69 million war chest.

[lokisnow]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I don't really think the VP matters all that much. Maybe if you want to secure a very specific state, you go for a VP who does a good job campaigning in that state specifically - but otherwise it's the top of the ticket, and not much else, which matters. 

In a close senate having a “unity” opposite party Vice President means you lose a ton of policy fights to the opposite party.

[DanteGabriel]

7 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

The author of this piece should get a nomination for hackiest hack of 2018.

I wonder what kind of numpty would waste the effort to make such a silly argument...

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Juleanna Glover has worked as an adviser for several Republican politicians, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani and advised the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Jeb Bush. She is on the Biden Institute Policy Advisory Board.

Oh. A Republican hack who's on the board at Biden's vanity center at the University of Delaware.

[Martell Spy]

A ‘loud gong’: National Enquirer’s surprise deal could imperil Trump
The National Enquirer’s parent company has agreed to tell prosecutors everything it knows about Donald Trump — and it might know a lot.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/12/national-enquirers-deal-imperil-trump-1061792

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But it may have been the National Enquirer’s role in helping keep otherwise politically embarrassing headlines about Trump out of the news that ultimately causes the president legal problems.

Former Obama acting solicitor general Neal Katyal described the AMI agreement as “quite important.”

“One by one, the career DOJ prosecutors are removing possible Trump defenses. Now it isn’t just Cohen, but also AMI, saying these hush money payments were made to influence the 2016 Presidential election, and knock out the so-called ‘Edwards defense,’” he wrote on Twitter.

Katyal’s reference is to a legal argument successfully made in 2012 by attorneys for John Edwards, the former Democratic presidential candidate who faced a criminal trial over payments to his mistress funneled through private donors. A jury deadlocked on most of the charges against Edwards, who argued the payments were designed to keep his affair from his wife for personal and reputational reasons — rather than to save his political career. The Justice Department later decided not to retry the case.

That’s in contrast to the payments Cohen and Trump made. According to court documents, the arrangement with the National Enquirer was made specifically to keep his boss’s presidential aspirations afloat.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

Strange. The conservative Supreme Court had claimed that disclosure would be a panacea for all the money they are pouring into the political system with Citizens United and other rulings. Yet Trump and most Republicans in Congress are doing all they can to stop disclosure of political donors. It is a pretty dirty game they are playing. And of course the Koch Brothers opposed this.

The Trump administration's dark money rule makes it easier for foreigners and special interests to corrupt and interfere in our elections," said Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee in a Senate floor speech.

Tester had also been optimistic earlier this week about the resolution’s prospects.

“I think it’s gonna be close but I think we’ve got the votes,” he said Tuesday.

Prior to the vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the resolution was an "attempt by some of our Democratic colleagues to undo a pro-privacy reform. ... In a climate that is increasingly hostile to certain kinds of political expression and open debate, the last thing Washington needs to do is to chill the exercise of free speech and add to the sense of intimidation."

The measure is unlikely to be taken up by the GOP-controlled House, and it was opposed by conservative groups, including the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity.

 

“We are committed to enhancing government transparency, protecting the privacy of American citizens, and the freedom of association enshrined in the Constitution,” Brent Gardner, AFP’s chief government affairs officer said in a statement “S.J. Res. 64 fails on all of these fronts.”

Senate votes to overturn Trump donor disclosure rule

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/12/senate-democrats-overturn-trump-donor-disclosure-1057535

[lokisnow]

6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I still don’t get the argument for Beto to be the nominee. Sure he was a great campaigner, but he lost. Cruz is a weak candidate and Beto ran in a wave year, so it’s not surprising that he over performed, and honestly, Democrats should do a lot better in Texas than they have over the last few decades. IMO Beto would better serve the party by becoming a member of leadership at the DNC. I think that’s where you can maximize his value.

But I do agree that it will probably be Harris or Booker in the end. They’ll likely perform the best on T.V.

It took the biggest republican turnout machine in history to beat Beto in Texas, for one If the most prominent stars of the Republican Party, and they only just barely managed it. If republicans had merely maintained their historic midterm performance he’d have beat Cruz by two million votes,  if republicans had matched the previous greatest of all time turnout (of any party) from 2010, Beto would have still won the election by a million votes. Democrats are really not appreciating the cosmic magnitude of what happened in Tx because they’ve only accepted the headline, what republicans accomplished is incredible. Even if he can’t win Tx in a presidential election, the amount of resources they’ll be forced to expend in places like tx, Kentucky, TN, LOuisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas if they have to go against Beto is resources that ahave to be divided in defending the above and the states trump flipped to Wisconsin, penn, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, Iowa.

beto expands the map. Booker, Harris and warren and sanders contract the map.

[Martell Spy]

Well, Pelosi is stepping down...in 2022.

Here’s Why Everyone Is Talking About Nancy Pelosi’s Coat

 

https://www.thecut.com/2018/12/nancy-pelosis-coat-takes-over-the-internet.html?_ga=2.98755614.1445074783.1544662873-773141895.1527809937

 

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Within hours, the coat had not one, but two Twitter accounts dedicated to it’s existence: I Am Nancy Pelosi’s Red Coat and Nancy Pelosi’s Red Coat.

 

[DMC]

16 hours ago, Gorn said:

This study is utterly meaningless, because it oversimplifies things. It lumps Mexican-Americans (which are predominant in California and western states) and Cuban-Americans (which are predominant in Florida) into a single "Latino" category, while ignoring the huge differences in political priorities and voting history of these groups, and then attempts to make an overarching conclusion from it.

I don't know why that makes that link "utterly meaningless."  I wouldn't even really call it a "study," it's just reporting results from counties of interest.  Besides, outside of southern Florida Cuban-Americans are not a large enough population to disaggregate.  Anyway, the link doesn't really show any bad news for Dems in Florida.  All it did was look at Broward and Miami-Dade, and this is hardly bad news:

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The average increase in ballots cast from 2014 to 2018 for the two counties is 45%. In precincts where Latinos make up less than 20% of the registered voter population, ballots cast only increased by 42%, compared to a 53% increase in precincts where Latinos were over 80% of the registered voter population.

Looking at these two Pew studies, it appears Dems are continuing the trend of making inroads in Florida as the older generation of Cuban-Americans dies off.

14 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Yeah, its kind of like a Stag Hunt sort of situation, which if I recall correctly has two Nash equilibrium. One equilibrium is cooperation, while the the other is non cooperation. Which equilibrium obtains depends upon each party having the correct set of beliefs about what the other party will do.

Yeah from what I recall in the stag hunt game the (cooperate, cooperate) NE is Pareto optimal while the (defect, defect) NE is risk dominant.  I think the idea is to show that as uncertainty rises, the risk dominant NE is more likely to prevail, demonstrating credible commitment problems.  Which, yes, I think it's fair to say the GOP has a credible commitment problem when they say they want to work with Dems (and vice-versa for that matter).  Most importantly, thanks a bunch for reminding me of formal theory seminars.  Gah!!

9 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

To get back to this, Warren is a prime example. I honestly think she could have won the primary and the general in 2016, but it’s looking like her moment passed her by. 

I'm not so sure she would have won the general, or even beaten Hillary, but yes that was certainly her optimal time to run.  I also share your suspicion that Biden is angling to be a king (or queen!) maker.

9 hours ago, Maithanet said:

 I don't think the anti-nepotism laws would affect Chief of Staff, since it's not a cabinet level position (could be wrong about that though). 

From what I can tell the anti-nepotism law has nothing to do with cabinet level positions.  Regardless, the Trump administration has already reversed previous DOJ memos to justify Trump appointing Javanka.

9 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Maybe someone will tell Trump that the COS position doesn't have to be filled, and he'll declare he doesn't need one anymore. Then Javanka will essentially do that role between them, but not officially. That'll work out greeeeaaat. 

Jimmy Carter went without a CoS for two and a half years.  Worked out great for him!

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Okay, people need to figure out that donations from people WHO WORK IN oil is not the same thing as donations FROM THE COMPANY. If I donate to Clinton it shows up as a donation from Microsoft, but it doesn't mean Microsoft donated him money, nor does it give Microsoft any particular say in his funding.

I personally could give two shits about oil executives donating an infinitesimal percentage of Beto's overall haul, but the link mormont provided does clearly suggest he violated a campaign pledge:

Quote

There has been some confusion about who in the oil industry donated to O’Rourke. Sludge found that there were 24 oil executives who made donations to O’Rourke’s campaign, totaling $35,125. According to this data, Beto broke his pledge at least 25 times.  

“We only just found out about the information based off of your email and retracing that thread,” David Turnbull, of Oil Change USA, one of the organizations that supported the pledge, told Sludge. “We’re going to be reaching out to Beto’s campaign to get a better understanding of what the situation is, and if his contributions are indeed counter to the spirit of the pledge, we’ll take him off the website and certainly encourage him to come back into compliance with the pledge.”

53 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

It took the biggest republican turnout machine in history to beat Beto in Texas, for one If the most prominent stars of the Republican Party, and they only just barely managed it. If republicans had merely maintained their historic midterm performance he’d have beat Cruz by two million votes,  if republicans had matched the previous greatest of all time turnout (of any party) from 2010, Beto would have still won the election by a million votes. Democrats are really not appreciating the cosmic magnitude of what happened in Tx because they’ve only accepted the headline, what republicans accomplished is incredible. Even if he can’t win Tx in a presidential election, the amount of resources they’ll be forced to expend in places like tx, Kentucky, TN, LOuisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas if they have to go against Beto is resources that ahave to be divided in defending the above and the states trump flipped to Wisconsin, penn, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, Iowa.

beto expands the map. Booker, Harris and warren and sanders contract the map.

While Beto's performance was impressive (particularly his fundraising prowess), you continue to overstate and ignore context.  Turnout was up 12% nationwide; it was the highest midterm turnout since 1914.  In fact, comparatively:

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States where turnout was up by more than 15 percent over 2014 included Missouri (19.6 percent), Nevada (17.9), Virginia (17.8), Texas (17.5), Indiana (17.4), California (17.1) Georgia (16.4) and Vermont (15.5) — a good mix of blue and red states.

Jacky Rosen got more votes than Heller did when he won in 2012 - a presidential cycle (whereas Beto did not get as many votes as Cruz did in 2012).  Perhaps she should be the nominee.  You also continue to ignore the fact Cruz was underwater in approval for most of the previous two years - a clear danger zone for an incumbent.  And I don't know why you're using 2010 as a comparison - there was no Texas senate seat up that cycle and the gubernatorial race wasn't really competitive.  Finally, we have these entirely dubious assumptions that Beto can expand the map in other southern states - states that otherwise are clearly getting more and more red - which is based on nothing (plus the assumption Harris or Booker contract the map is equally dubious).

24 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Well, Pelosi is stepping down...in 2022.

Kinda surprised she was willing to do that given her detractors lost basically any leverage over the past few weeks.  

[Guy Kilmore]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Kinda surprised she was willing to do that given her detractors lost basically any leverage over the past few weeks.  

I wonder if she wants to be proactive in shaping the next leader of the House.

[mormont]

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Okay, people need to figure out that donations from people WHO WORK IN oil is not the same thing as donations FROM THE COMPANY. If I donate to Clinton it shows up as a donation from Microsoft, but it doesn't mean Microsoft donated him money, nor does it give Microsoft any particular say in his funding.

Sure. But as noted, this is not regular people who happen to work in oil donating $10 each. This is executives of oil companies making very large personal donations, and O'Rourke accepting them in apparent violation of a pledge he signed up to. If Mexal is criticising Booker and praising O'Rourke for their supposedly contrasting fundraising approaches, it's absolutely relevant to note this. 

[A True Kaniggit]

13 minutes ago, mormont said:

Sure. But as noted, this is not regular people who happen to work in oil donating $10 each. This is executives of oil companies making very large personal donations, and O'Rourke accepting them in apparent violation of a pledge he signed up to. If Mexal is criticising Booker and praising O'Rourke for their supposedly contrasting fundraising approaches, it's absolutely relevant to note this. 

What exactly was the pledge? To not accept donations from oil oil executives, or not allow such donations form oil executives to influence his decisions? Because really, if your opponents want to give you free supplies for nothing in return, why not take them? If said executives get pissed about their donations being wasted, well sucks for them.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

4 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I wonder if she wants to be proactive in shaping the next leader of the House.

This is my bet. I'm not sure if there is a clear leader for House Democrats after Pelosi, especially if there is a growing divide between Old Blood and New Blood Democrats.

[mormont]

37 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

What exactly was the pledge? To not accept donations from oil oil executives, or not allow such donations form oil executives to influence his decisions? Because really, if your opponents want to give you free supplies for nothing in return, why not take them? If said executives get pissed about their donations being wasted, well sucks for them.

To not knowingly accept donations over $200 from oil executives (or companies or PACs or fronts linked to those companies, but it's the executives bit that O'Rourke has broken, apparently in a couple of dozen cases). 

And I'm sorry, but even if the argument were that he hadn't technically broken the letter of the pledge because he took the money but wasn't going to allow it to influence his decisions? That's nonsense. First of all, the point of the pledge is that if politicians accept money from oil execs, voters can never be sure that it hasn't affected their decisions. That's not how human beings work. Secondly, arguing technicalities is not a good look if you're criticising other candidates for dubious funding. 

The amounts are not huge. But the principle is relevant to the point Mexal was making, I think. 

[OldGimletEye]

Just remember certain sorts of people claim they voted for bidnessman Trump because allegedly the country should be run like a business.
And then Trump gets elected and shows he has no fuckin' idea of what he is doing.

https://www.vox.com/2018/12/12/18136647/mark-calabria-fhfa-trump-interest-rates

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President Trump keeps saying he wants the Federal Reserve to ease up on interest rate increases, but he keeps using his actual powers of office to install people who don’t agree with his dovish views on monetary policy.

 

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The most recent culprit is Mark Calabria, formerly the head of financial regulation at the Cato Institute. Calabria currently serves as Vice President Mike Pence’s top economist but is widely said to be in line for a job running the Federal Housing Finance Agency

 

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Mark Calabria, for example, was calling for tighter money way back in December 2010, when the unemployment rate was sky-high and the Fed was rolling out its second round of quantitative easing.

“The primary problem facing our economy is not a lack of demand,” he wrote at a time when the primary problem facing the economy was clearly a lack of demand, before warning that “a large surge of inflation is likely to occur quite suddenly, without giving the Fed months or years of warning.”

It’s eight years later and the surge in inflation is still nowhere near materializing.

...........................................................................................................

More on the Calabrias of the world being massively wrong.

https://voxeu.org/article/europes-fiscal-policy-doom-loop

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The damage done by procyclical fiscal policy in the euro area between 2010 and 2014 is likely to be even larger than previous studies have suggested. The column argues that fiscal policymakers at the time created a 'doom loop', with unfounded pessimism feeding into policy, and the consequences of those policies increasing pessimism. This has created hysteresis, permanently reducing GDP. 

From Chapter 16, of the GT.

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AN act of individual saving means — so to speak — a decision not to have dinner to-day. But it does not necessitate a decision to have dinner or to buy a pair of boots a week hence or a year hence or to consume any specified thing at any specified date. Thus it depresses the business of preparing to-day’s dinner without stimulating the business of making ready for some future act of consumption. It is not a substitution of future consumption-demand for present consumption-demand, — it is a net diminution of such demand. Moreover, the expectation of future consumption is so largely based on current experience of present consumption that a reduction in the latter is likely to depress the former, with the result that the act of saving will not merely depress the price of consumption-goods and leave the marginal efficiency of existing capital unaffected, but may actually tend to depress the latter also. In this event it may reduce present investment-demand as well as present consumption-demand.

 

Quote

If saving consisted not merely in abstaining from present consumption but in placing simultaneously a specific order for future consumption, the effect might indeed be different.

In short if I paid the Natural Light Brewing company a certain sum of money to deliver me several cases of beer tomorrow (plus interest for my act of abstaining for a period of time), then aggregate demand problems might never arise. But since I don't typically buy cases of beer on a forward contract, the Natural Light Brewing company has no idea what my intentions are when I save.

.............................................................................................

I don't believe in "bi-partisanship" for the sake of doing bi-partisanship. But this is bi-bipartisanship I can get behind.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/12/18136826/senate-yemen-war-resolution-saudi-arabia-khashoggi

 

Quote

The Senate is moving toward passing a resolution this week to end US involvement in the war in Yemen — in what could be a stunning show of bipartisan pushback against the Trump administration and its support for Saudi Arabia.

The joint resolution, which was introduced by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Chris Murphy (D-CT), calls for President Donald Trump to stop US armed forces from supporting Saudi Arabia in its war against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“The Saudi intervention in Yemen has created the worst humanitarian disaster in the world, with millions of people facing imminent starvation,” Sanders said in a statement on Tuesday. “The time is long overdue for the United States to stop following the lead of Saudi Arabia, a brutal regime that recently murdered a dissident journalist and has no respect for human rights.”

 

[A True Kaniggit]

From mormonts link.

-- "The Pledge:

I pledge to not take contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industry and instead prioritize the health of our families, climate, and democracy over fossil fuel industry profits."

Taking the pledge means that you and your campaign will adopt a policy to not knowingly accept any contributions over $200 from the PACs or executives of fossil fuel companies — companies whose primary business is the extraction, processing, distribution, or sale of oil, gas, or coal.--

Yep, that's pretty specific.

 

[OldGimletEye]

37 minutes ago, mormont said:

To not knowingly accept donations over $200 from oil executives (or companies or PACs or fronts linked to those companies, but it's the executives bit that O'Rourke has broken, apparently in a couple of dozen cases). 

And I'm sorry, but even if the argument were that he hadn't technically broken the letter of the pledge because he took the money but wasn't going to allow it to influence his decisions? That's nonsense. First of all, the point of the pledge is that if politicians accept money from oil execs, voters can never be sure that it hasn't affected their decisions. That's not how human beings work. Secondly, arguing technicalities is not a good look if you're criticising other candidates for dubious funding. 

The amounts are not huge. But the principle is relevant to the point Mexal was making, I think. 

A lot of this situation is accomplished as follows.

Step 1.

Destroy labor unions.

Step 2.

Have the US Supreme Court declare that the act of giving money in all cases is tantamount to free speech.

Which of course leaves progressive politicians, with little choice but turn to Daddy Warbucks for funds. And Daddy Warbucks usually doesn't give money from the goodness of his little old heart.

[A True Kaniggit]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

And I'm sorry, but even if the argument were that he hadn't technically broken the letter of the pledge because he took the money but wasn't going to allow it to influence his decisions? That's nonsense. First of all, the point of the pledge is that if politicians accept money from oil execs, voters can never be sure that it hasn't affected their decisions. 

Doesn't work in this situation obviously, because it's too late. But I have a feeling there was a missed opportunity here.

As in an image of the guy holding a check from an oil company/exec for "x" amount of money, right next to a picture of him donating same exact amount of money to some green energy initiative. Doesn't let moron donor get their money back, while making it clear said candidate has no intention of supporting the donor.

[Mexal]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

To not knowingly accept donations over $200 from oil executives (or companies or PACs or fronts linked to those companies, but it's the executives bit that O'Rourke has broken, apparently in a couple of dozen cases). 

And I'm sorry, but even if the argument were that he hadn't technically broken the letter of the pledge because he took the money but wasn't going to allow it to influence his decisions? That's nonsense. First of all, the point of the pledge is that if politicians accept money from oil execs, voters can never be sure that it hasn't affected their decisions. That's not how human beings work. Secondly, arguing technicalities is not a good look if you're criticising other candidates for dubious funding. 

The amounts are not huge. But the principle is relevant to the point Mexal was making, I think. 

Fair point. I just looked up Booker and he has stopped taking donations from Big Pharma as of last year due to public criticism which is the right move as he prepares for a Presidential run. We will see if Booker is capable of inspiring donations like Beto was. I doubt it. Even though Beto took 429k from oil and gas (whether executives or not), that was only .5% of the $79M he raised. 

[mormont]

Trump's giving another legal lecture on Twitter, btw.