Do you agree with Bernie Sanders?

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/06/24/3673173/green-partys-jill-stein-thinks-can-speak-truth-power-better-bernie-sanders/

I will vote for him in the primary and for the Democratic candidate in the election.

I’m sorry but the “he can’t win” perspective is the only issue that concerns me regarding EITHER Sanders or Stein. Both have taken the position (correctly) that the milksop Democratic Party is no longer a legitimate home for progressive politics in the country, and nothing would please me more than to see the 2 of them combine. While Stein is correct that Sanders missed the “Black Lives Matter” boat, the sin is trivial in regard to what is at stake. The thing that is important is that Sanders has the momentum, and can most assuredly torpedo Clinton’s shot at the Presidency. If nothing else, he is doing to the Democrats what whack job conservatives have done for conservative politics, dragging the donkey leftwards where it once was and actually belongs. The actual and shameful achievement of lunatic fringe conservatism is that the wing nuts actually moved the middle and everything else to the right. The Democrats, equally co- opted with their conservative brethren barely put up a fight beyond providing little more than lip service to all but the most heinous of propositions from the right. Poor Clinton is in an unenviable position because she can no longer ask of disgruntled progressives “where else can you go?”, and she is in the embarrassing position of having to watch Sanders enumerate the policies and positions which she knows are correct but she herself is unable to endorse.

I don’t know anything about Bernie Sanders. I know more about Colonel Sanders. Are they related?

They are both legendary

I get Bernie Sanders mixed up with Colonel Sanders and Bernie Madoff.

I think Bernie’s candidacy illustrates many of the flaws in our political system. Many voters believe that only Democrats and Republicans are viable candidates, and name recognition trumps records. Many people would rather vote for an incumbent simply because they don’t know the other guy’s name, or are afraid to break the status quo.

I agree with him on most things, and I was one of the people who elected him to Congress back when he ran as a Socialist rather than just Independent.

I plan to vote for him in the primary. If he fails to beat Hilary, I’ll gladly support her, but I do agree with Bernie on more issues.

I’m voting for Bernie in the primary (I was formerly not affiliated with any party [and said I never would be], but I just changed and became a Democrat because Oregon is a closed primary state) and the general election. I do not like Hillary Clinton, and I refuse to vote for people that I morally disagree with. So even if Bernie doesn’t stand an actual chance, I no longer care. I will not support the current system in America any longer. I’m only 30 and I’m completely fed up.

But you have to ask, what possible argument can Hillary mount to counter Sanders’ frank but stark arguments? The only counter I can find is that “he’s unelectable. Remember what Nader did to you?” Well I CERTAINLY remember, and it’s a POWERFUL argument. The trouble with it is that the level of disgust has risen appreciably since 2000 and Sanders’ rising strength dwarfs anything Nader managed at this stage in the process. Hillary has her mainline political hands full.

I found this to be more in depth and helpful than I expected. And apparently I side with Bernie at 92%.

No!

we’ve just been through 8 years of expanding government. It hasn’t worked and never will. Getting something for nothing sounds appealing but if what you get is dirt poor, it loses it’s appeal quickly. Socialism and communism encourage mediocrity and stifle innovation. Not something I want to see happen to us.

^ Skip the buzzwords (especially since they don’t apply to the characters involved). What policies of Sanders are you opposed to – and why?

The @syz quiz gave me a 95% agreement score with Sanders (big shock)

So @Jaxk is the only one here with a single disagreement on Bernie’s stand on ANYTHING? I think his (Bernie’s) previous positions on Israel are flat out wrong!

I never said I agreed with him on everything – from what I’ve read he is not strong at all on gun control/

@stanleybmanly Can you enlighten me on his what his positions were, or provide a link for me so I can read about it?

@stanleybmanly I am not surprised by that, nor am I surprised by @Jaxk‘s delusion that Sanders is a Communist, and that he actually wants bigger government. But that only goes to show that there is a certain percentage of the population who wouldn’t vote anything other than Republican* under ANY circumstances, and who are so vehement about it that they don’t even bother to check the facts.

@Jaxk ” Getting something for nothing sounds appealing but if what you get is dirt poor, it loses it’s appeal quickly. ”

I agree with you wholeheartedly on that, which is why I disagree with you so strongly on so many other things. What you neglect to mention is that we tried it your way for a few years and wages went down while unemployment went up. On the federal level, we wound up with more government agencies, as well as many existing agencies growing in size to deal with the collateral damage of the policies you support. Furthermore, the states that do what you oppose have economies that rebounded and are growing good and strong while those states that you say do the right thing almost all have worse economies. Everything you fear from Sanders, Democrats, and anyone more liberal than John Boehner is stuff I’ve seen actually happen under Reagan, both Bushes, and in red states.
For much of my time here in Fluther, I still can’t figure out how, for the love of all that is sane and rational in the universe, can you have some of the positions that you have? If you can’t stand something that doesn’t work, that gets you poverty, if you abhor mediocrity and stagnation, then how is it that you go so far to the opposite extreme from me that you can’t even see how far from center you are?

I support Sanders on all the issues, but I am not all that excited about having him as president. He just does not seem presidential. I have a hard time picturing him in the White House He is a great agitator and I am sure he is a fine senator, but his demeanor does not seem suited for the presidency. On the other hand, I don’t trust Clinton but I can picture her as president. I would probably choose Sanders over Clinton but would not be very enthusiastic about the choice. I really wish Elizabeth Warren were running.

@janbb – re: gun control. I was really pleased to see him discuss the issue this way. Culture wars are won by the right, and they know this, resulting in the non-rich in this country voting against their own economic interests.

@jerv – As always, I can never tell what you are talking about. You state things as fact with no back up or reference. If you want to compare ‘Red States’ vs ‘Blue States’ there are ways to do it but it doesn’t result in the points you just make up. For instance. Average Unemployment is 7.6% in states with Republican governors vs 8.8% in states with Democratic governors. Or maybe income growth in blue states is .5% vs red states where it is 1.4%.

Basically, you can’t just make things up and get everyone to believe them. But I’ll give you credit for trying.

@stanleybmanly “So @Jaxk is the only one here with a single disagreement on Bernie’s stand on ANYTHING? I think his (Bernie’s) previous positions on Israel are flat out wrong!”

Israel is one of the issues mentioned in the article I posted. In fact, Sanders is much more of a warhawk than the conventional wisdom about him acknowledges. On all of the issues where Stein and Sanders disagree, I side with Stein.

My top choice is still Elizabeth Warren. Too bad she’s not running.

@JeSuisRickSpringfield to the detriment of all, third party candidates have been all but nullified and excluded from the US political system by the other main two factions to such an extent that even a Jesus/Allah ticket would not win unless they ran as either Democrats or Republicans.

@Jaxk I sometimes wonder if you’re sent here just to draw fire. Isn’t the expansion of government necessary in times of recession to avoid intolerable social disruptions? And when it comes to socialism promoting mediocrity and stifling innovation, I suspect that it is the socialistic aspects of this society ALONE that deter the spectacle of wealthy heads atop pikes in America where the fervor for innovation now centers on slick methods of depriving folks of a decent living.

And of course the growth rates in the red states look better for EXACTLY the same reason they look better in China. They have a lot of catching up to do. The pity is that the “innovative” way to achieve this is to depress the standard of living of the advanced regions of the country to “right to work” levels in Alabama & Mississippi.

@LostInParadise. I agree that frumpy rumpled Bernie is no one’s definition of elegant statesmanship, but things have gotten to the point that were Sanders to transform in front of me to Jaba the Hut I’d still give him money.

@rojo Sure, but the question asks us to ignore that complication and think about the candidates solely in terms of the issues. Besides, the whole “third-party candidates can’t win” mantra is mostly a self-fulfilling prophecy. People don’t vote for third-party candidates because they can’t win, but third-party candidates can’t win because people don’t vote for them.

Warren would have been my top puck, as well. I was really disappointed she didn’t run.

I’m going to have to look into the Sanders/Israel thing, because I don’t know anything about it.

@stanleybmanly – We’ve just been through the most extensive spending spree in history and it hasn’t helped. What we need in a recession is private industry investment, not government investment. We have been losing the good paying jobs to overseas and replacing them with low skill jobs. The socialist model is to make these low skill jobs pay more which only exacerbates our problem. The more you penalize investment and job growth, the less of it you get. There is a couple of $trillion sitting in banks overseas in corporate bank accounts that we won’t allow to be brought back here that could be used for investment and job creation. We won’t allow it because we’re so afraid that someone will make money. Try to imagine a $2 trillion injection of capital into our economy that doesn’t require any government money. That’s more than twice the Obama Stimulus and it’s already there. Dirty Bernie and the rest of the Democratic crowd want to run this through government, the most inefficient mechanism available, even if they could get it.

The European unemployment rate is over 10% and that is the model you all want to emulate. No thanks. I don’t believe the country is ready for a socialist (I know I’m not). So throw stones at me if you wish. If we continue down this road of far left or socialist policies, stones are all we’ll have left.

Let’s address the issue as to how that money came to be sitting offshore as well as why those high paying jobs are PERMITTED and ENCOURAGED to leave here. Actually, since it’s merely the 2 of us going round and round again over the same issue, let’s just save time. The short step to arriving at the answers to it all emerges with the reply to the single question: who is it that benefits from hiding money offshore and exporting high wage jobs to 3rd world countries? Who is it that has arranged it to park profits in the Bahamas in order to shift the tax burden onto the greeter at Walmart?

@Jaxk The truth is that you and I are complaining about the same thing. We both can SEE the results, but we differ on the causes. Your fears about the country becoming socialist are well founded, because we are in very many respects ALREADY a socialist country. BUT the reason for our failings as such are at heart about the fact that while benefits are socialized, the expenses ARE NOT. They are born by taxpayers. Those who have seen to it that they are allowed to carry less than their share of the load are not labeled sociopaths. We refer to them as billionaires. This is EXACTLY what those offshore trillions are about.

First let’s correct a couple of points. The money is not hid overseas. It’s not hidden at all. It’s money from products that were made overseas, sold overseas, taxes were paid overseas, and it was deposited in banks overseas. As for the encouraged to move jobs overseas, it is the liberal policies that do that. You all want to focus on wages but that is not the biggest problem for business. Regulation and a hostile business environment do more to push jobs overseas than wages. There was a study done in California that shows regulation doubles the price of all goods and services. Labor costs don’t have that big an impact.

@Jaxk I’m just looking at how things were under Reagan, both Bushs, Clinton, and Obama, while also looking at each of the individual states instead of aggregate totals (we have a couple statistical outliers that allow your previous sound-bite to be technically true even though they are not generally true). I’m not seeing how your idea would work in the really real world where things don’t behave according to the economic predictions that Conservative think-tanks seem to think that they will.

Having a job that pays 27 cents a week just to keep jobs in America is not a solution, and “Supply side economics” has prevent to cause more problems than it solves…. but you likely see those problems as strengths and think that business can prosper without consumers.

If labor costs don’t have that big an impact though, why are so many Conservatives up in arms about minimum wage? And if you want to talk about hostile business environments, an environment where employers have ALL the power while workers have no rights at all isn’t exactly strife-free.

@Jaxk OK. Let’s say for argument that I accept every word of your explanation, let’s ask once again: who is it that benefits? I would give your argument considerable thought, were it not for the fact that as I ponder, I can’t help but notice that the infrastructure crumbles, wages stagnate and decline, deficits soar ,and THE RICH GET RICHER. Finally, about that spending spree. All that money, WHO WOUND UP WITH IT?

@jerv – Conservatives fight the minimum wage because it cripples small business. The large corporations you all decry as making a fortune don’t hire minimum wage, they need skilled workers. The idea that employers have all the power and workers have none is simply ridiculous. Those kinds of statements don’t move the discussion at all. If I hire someone to mow and trim my yard, it is a mutually beneficial arrangement. If he wants too much, I do it myself or find someone else. That doesn’t make me a bad person nor am I cheating him out of his wages. Same thing when I hire someone at the store, the wage needs to be high enough for him to take the job but reasonable enough for me to make a living. If either party doesn’t benefit, we don’t make the deal. See how simple this is.

@stanleybmanly – A large part of the stimulus was for infrastructure. Still you complain that it is crumbling. Maybe that’s because the government is the most inefficient way to spend money. As for who wound up with all that money, I don’t know if your talking about ‘Stimulus’ or the ‘Bailouts’. Stimulus went primarily to the states and government wages, while the bailouts were paid back. The bailouts didn’t hurt us at all, in fact we made money on them.

Yes OBAMA’S bailouts helped us avoid economic collapse, but once again and LOUDLY, WHO actually made money and ALWAYS makes money, rain or shine? Stimulus, bailouts, handouts to the state, government wages, it doesn’t matter. WHO is it that winds up with the MONEY? Are those government wages being stashed by their recipients in offshore accounts? WHO is it that increasingly vacuums up an ever larger share of the capital regardless of where it is sprinkled throughout the economy?

Loudly huh? If you are trying to get me to say the people making money are the people making money, well sure, I’ll say that. The problem you seem to have is that it’s not always the same people. If those corporations aren’t doing a good job they go bankrupt. Companies like:
Delphi
Trump Entertainment
Delta Airlines
Indymac Bankcorp
Refco Inc
Enron
Pacific Gas and Electric
WorldCom
General Motors
Lehman Bros.
Have all gone bankrupt. Having money doesn’t assure that you will always have it. If you look at the Forbes list of top money earners, it changes every year. I personally know folks that have gone from nothing to millionaires and back to nothing. There will always be a top 10% because that’s the nature of percentages not because they are always the same people.

Sure the names change, and that’s just a very transparent excuse. You can’t believe that my point is about individual culprits. Of course there are billionaires and beggars. The question is about the proportion of each and more importantly, how many beggars are NECESSARY to create one billionaire. And don’t make the mistake in thinking I fault those billionaires for snatching up all they can nor for engineering the system to enable it. I do fault YOU for pretending that this is not the way things work.

And while you and other small business people might be conservative, don’t delude yourself that those who own this place and its government give a shit about “small business”. You and I are mere dupes (and very handy ones at that) in the struggle for the ever decreasing crumbs. Have you noticed that conservatism is now defined as opposition to ANY measure that interferes with the dictum that THE RICH GET RICHER, no matter what.

Fault me all you like, it’s not the way things work. The really sad part is, my vote counts just as much as yours (which is unfortunately not much). The only organization that actually profits by legally stealing your money is the government.

Yes I have noticed your dictum, unfortunately it is a dictum defined by and promoted by LIBERALS.

So it’s the government that’s raking in all the money? For God’s sake Jaxk , if the rich are getting richer while EVERYONE else falls behind, what other conclusion remains? Of course your vote and mine become increasingly irrelevant, and the solid proof of this is that it no longer matters if a brazen Muslim Communist sits in the oval office. The money ALWAYS flows uphill.

A brazen Muslim Communist who gave away the Arctic to Shell Oil and the rights of workers in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I find it a bit hard to swallow the idea that Obama is an anti-big business socialist these days.

Let’s see, the government will collect $3.2 trillion this year and they produce nothing. That’s just the federal government, another $2 trillion in state and local and again they produce nothing. Seems like quite a racket.

@Jaxk Are you really that naive? No roads, no space exploration, no health research, no veteran’s benefits, no defense, no fire companies, no emergency aid during disasters, no schools….?

No assistance for Walmart employees…..

No subsidies for oil companies. No trans Pacific corporate government. No write offs for lobby pimps.

@Jaxk In theory, yes. In practice, there are other variables. As I recall though, you pay your employees a bit better than the federally mandated minimum anyways in order to make you a viably attractive employer, and much of the regulation (like having a minimum wage in the first place) is due to the actions of those less scrupulous than yourself. You seem to forget that you’re actually nicer than a lot of people!

It’s also worth pointing out that, historically, when if comes time for the feds to take the revenue they collect from the states and disburse it, it seems that in general, the trend is for Red states to take more dollars than they give.

That said, if large multinationals paid in instead of getting subsidized, we’d all see a smaller tax burden. As a small business owner, you’d probably see an even healthier tax cut as a reward for keeping a few people off of food stamps.

So the real divide here is whether one has faith in the system or whether one believes that there are enough people behaving badly for the system to actually cause issues that it would theoretically solve IF people behaved the way some white paper somewhere cites as ideal. Personally, I don’t share your faith in humanity; I believe that there are enough people that have some combination of greed, shortsightedness, or just plain corruption that the world cannot behave in a way that would make supply-side economics work. The best we can hope for is that it yields the same outcome as the most corrupt Communist regime ever recorded in history, only getting there by going right instead of left.

OK, I’ll give you a few services that have some benefit although I don’t consider buying a ticket on a Russian rocket ‘Space Exploration’. BTW, I said that number includes local tax revenue but it does not. Local taxes take in another $800 billion for a total of $6 trillion. That’s quite a bite for the few services provided.

@Jaxk ” That’s quite a bite for the few services provided.”

Some places offer more services though, and that affects things a bit. WA has state programs that NH would never dream of. Neither state has a state income tax, and NH also lacks sales tax compared to the 6.5% for WA state (9.5% in King and Snohomish counties), but that sales tax also allows us to have programs that NH would deem too costly.

@jerv – I think you misunderstand my motives. I don’t pay above the minimum wage because I just a nice guy (I am that) but rather because it helps my business. I pay high enough to retain those that are good workers but not so high that I cripple my business. It’s always a fine line. That’s the way business works. It is self regulating. Introducing artificial minimum wages contributes nothing forces cutbacks in other ways (typically fewer employees). I know you believe that employers will cut their own throat just to screw their employees but that’s not the case. That’s merely the liberal mantra.

@Jaxk I believe that businesses span a spectrum that mirrors the fact that businesses are owned by people and people are diverse. Some are nice, some are corrupt, and most are relatively benign.

However, just because most people are decent, that does not mean that we do not need laws against robbery, rape and murder. The same goes for regulating businesses. That means that small businesses wind up paying for the sins of their larger brethren. Quite literally, actually.

As for minimum wages being artificial, the original intent was to allow any person who worked full-time to be able to afford modest housing and still have enough left over for utilities, food, and transportation without relying on government assistance. How are the rents near you? Can you find a modest dwelling for $50/month? How about $75? Around here it’s closer to $1,100 and it’s not much cheaper in, well, the geographically small area where the majority of the US population lives.

Of course, landlords have their own expenses, and homeowners are well within their rights to charge the market rates for their homes, so it’s not like there is much in the way of price-gouging or anything. The simple truth is that it takes about double the minimum wage to afford a 2-bedroom apartment in many places, and sometimes even that isn’t enough.

Now, if incomes across the board remained flat then I’m sure that we wouldn’t have the unrest that we do. That isn’t the case though; costs go up as most Americans have less buying power than they used to despite the fact that productivity and profits are up.

I agree wholeheartedly that there is a fine line, but we’ve been on the wrong side of that line long enough that the only way to prevent the end-game of neofeudalism is DRASTIC reforms. This isn’t a small problem that cropped up recently, so fixing it will be far from painless. Many claim that changing out current system will remove incentive for investors to invest, but overlooks the fact that for every investor who decided that paying 20% Capital Gains tax is untenable, there are at least dozens, and more likely hundreds of people who have no incentive to even work because the only way to get rich is to be born rich. Upward mobility went the way of the Edsel, and lottery tickets pay out more often than hard work.

Now, which of the following scenarios appeals to you the most;

1) Let employers do what they want without regulation and raise taxes on small businesses and working class people to cover the cost of things like Section 8 housing and SNAP

2) Let employers do what they will while not compensating with government programs, thus putting us in the same boat with India, China, and much of Africa

3) Reform the system to, among other things, close the loopholes that make you and I pay the bills of those who have more zeroes on their net worth in a manner consistent with progressive taxation, and shoot for a system where there is a guaranteed minimum yet enough growth potential to incentivize bettering one’s self to get a more skilled (and higher paying) position.

Option #1 just leads to higher taxation, doubly so on those like you and I as we can’t move our money to the Cayman Islands and have other taxpayers give us even more money for doing so. I sincerely doubt you want that and mention it merely for completeness. And it would appear that choice #3 is Liberal propaganda and thus something you would NEVER consider or else we wouldn’t perpetually squabble, so by process of elimination I am going to assume that you want option #2… unless there is more common ground between us than you are willing to concede.

False choices. Your attitude is what brought us Obamacare and the only people benefitting from that are the insurance companies. OK fine, I don’t like it but I can live with it. The same for Dodd-Frank that is killing the community banks in the country. OK fine, poorly written and more detrimental than good but I can live with it. You’ve defined rich as $200K and raised taxes. There is no way 200K is rich but OK fine, you want it you got it. You wanted a flood of cheap unskilled labor, so Obama has mandated that illegal immigrants can stay. How about 11 million unskilled laborers, is that enough for you?

I don’t want all the regulation repealed. Hell I don’t even ask to have the taxes reduced. What I want is a chance to catch my breath. Stop trying to fix things and let us recover. In other words, STOP trying to help me. Let the dust settle before making anymore comprehensive changes. Give me a rest from the regulatory upgrades. I have owned my store for 8 years now and have been forced to make major upgrades every year since I owned it. This year I will be forced to change out the systems I had to change back in 2011.

Changes are disruptive and major changes can bring things to a stand still. That doesn’t mean we can’t change things but you can’t change everything continuously. Trump has a point when he says the people in Washington are idiots. They are and they don’t have to deal with the stupid regulations they write. Hell, they don’t even read the stupid regulations they write.

I feel like a guy getting whipped with a cat-o-nine tails. I’m not asking anyone to bandage my wounds, just stop whipping me.

@Jaxk I’m going to take a while to recover from that overdose of cognitive dissonance of that first paragraph. Half of it makes less sense than the song This is Ponderous by 2nu.

I will say that the Obamacare thing seemed like a great idea to Republicans when the heritage Foundation penned it, and when Romney implemented it, so I cannot help but see a large degree of contrariness. It almost seems like Conservatives care more for spiting their political opponents than about national security, the economy, humanity, or anything else. And I’ve never had issues finding community banks doing well in places like VT and WA, so I’m going to assume that you’re projecting a little there based on the woes of your own state.

As for having 11 million unskilled workers, I don’t know if you have seen the condition of our infrastructure since the JFK administration, but I personally wouldn’t mind if we spent a little federal money fixing some of these interstates, even if that means a little extra government. Hell, we can compensate for that by sacking the TSA, a totally useless waste of revenue that causes more danger than it prevents. And if we got Qualcomm and Time Warner to pay taxes, we could probably still kick in a tax cut for small businesses and the working class.

Personally, I’m not a fan of change for the sake of change either, but when you have a raging inferno and the hose in your hand is spraying gasoline, it takes a special type of xenophobia to insist on staying the course. In fact, a truly hidebound person may decide to look at the past when we used water instead of flammable petrochemicals to fight fires and try a a proven solution. As I recall, we had a pretty strong economy fifty years ago. It really didn’t start to turn South until we decided to gut the social safety net, stop rewarding hard work reliably, and cling to an economic theory that was soundly denounced over a century ago for reasons you and I have been seeing in the papers for decades.

Of course, the problem here is more akin to two people in a car wrestling with the steering wheel; the only way to prevent a lot of (often dangerous) changes in a short time is to let one or the other have complete control, but when given the choice between slamming into a rock wall or plowing through the guardrail and falling hundreds of feet, I’d rather keep swerving than let the wheel get jerked too far the other way like it would be if either let go.

We’ll stop whipping you when you stop pointing a loaded gun at our heads. You feel your livelihood threatened by the Liberal Agenda, but a lot of us feel even more threatened by Conservatives. Sure, you worked hard to get where you are, but you also lucked out by actually being modestly successful and not winding up with enough medical bills that you can’t even afford to file bankruptcy. Take a moment and realize how privileged you are to even earn enough by yourself to pay rent on a single income. Look at the world around you as it really is, as tens of millions see it every day. Then ask yourself if you would give up all that you have accomplished so that your neighbor can afford to add the optional Chrome package to their Hummer, and if the answer is no, then why would you expect others to do the same for you?

The minimum wage debate is largely about simply keeping up with the times. If you can find a way to dramatically lower housing costs, you may well be able to pay 1970s wages without lowering the standard of living for most people. But since you can’t really do that without shafting those who rely on rental income for their own livelihood, that sort of cost control isn’t feasible. (Almost every landlord I’ve had wasn’t much better off than I am due to the combination of mortgage payments and property tax.) Government subsidies are a necessary evil as there will always be a portion of the population that cannot make rent through no fault of their own, but I don’t want to see those programs be something that the majority of the population relies on either, for a variety of reasons. So since we can’t cut costs or subsidize, the only option remaining is adjusting wages. And since productivity per worker has risen, then even if you disregard cost-of-living raises and go solely by productivity, minimum wage should’ve gone up anyways. You have said a few times that CEOs are worth what they are paid, but are you saying that they are the ONLY ones who deserve fair compensation for their labor?

Of course, it’s also possible that our economic crisis is simply because certain things don’t scale. Direct democracy works fine when you have less than about 20 people but runs into problems when you have 20,000 or 20,000,000 if you catch my drift. In that vein, our top tax bracket starts well under $1m yet there are some people that earn well over ten times the cutoff for the highest tax bracket; reality has exceeded what we had rules for. And when it’s cheaper to multiply one person’s salary 300% than it is to give each worker 3%, maybe we need a new paradigm to cover that sort of thing that was inconceivable a couple centuries ago; something Capitalist enough to reward the deserving while Socialist enough to reward the deserving.

But a lot of the changes that are being called for by those you consider Liberals (which seems to be everybody to the left of Ted Cruz as near as I can tell… unless you’re just living up to the persona of your avatar) is simply to get back to when we were doing well. Low unemployment, a bit less pork in the federal budget, companies spending more on R&D and/or growth than on marketing/settlements/fines, payscales that let all workers enjoy the benefits of a prosperous company while still having enough inequality to justify working harder and/or smarter so that ambition and talent were rewarded…. basically the total opposite of the bubble-bursting supply-side oligarchy that we have now.

We got Dodd-Frank, such as it was, because the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act eviscerated the Glass-Steagall act that had held financial institutions in check for the prior sixty plus years. It is a poor substitute, written mainly by the banking industry itself and slowly disassembled by them since its inception. How did they do this? By putting more money into the pockets of those who should be our representatives and buying what they wanted much like the insurance companies and the ACA

@Jaxk I do agree with you that the insurance companies are the ones who benefitted from the ACA. That was the plan all along.

The insurance companies put a lot of money into political pockets to ensure that they were the middleman for the system and thus the beneficiaries. Obama and the Democratic wing were recipients of this largess as much as the Republicans. This is not a Dem vs Rep or Lib vs Cons. issue. It is simply a matter of who has the cash to buy the system they want.

Although public sentiment favored a more socialized single-payer system where the people used their power as a single massive bloc to gain concessions from the medical community in setting fees for various medical procedures and services, there was no way that the Dems were going to get a single-payer system put in place that eliminated the insurance company involvement with the Rep resistance and honestly I don’t think they ever wanted to do more than give it lip service. Again, where is their campaign funding coming from.

@rojo – I agree with you about Glass-Steagal. Al wee needed to do was to put it back, after all we already knew it worked. Instead we created Dodd-Frank which was an enormous complicated expensive piece of crap that isn’t likely to solve any problems but will most assuredly create some. Dodd-Frank is a microcosm for what I was trying to explain to @jerv . The intent was to address the ‘Too Big to Fail’ banks but is killing the smaller banks. 2300 pages and 400 regulations so far with no end in sight. Instead of fixing the ‘Too Big to Fail’ problem we’ve made it worse. God save me from people with good intentions.

No argument there. Glass-Steagal wasn’t written by bankers, bankers lawyers and their political lapdogs for bankers as were the other two.

@jaxk – re: Glass Steagall and Dodd-Frank – It sounds like you agree with Bernie Sanders on some things after all.

Can’t speak for @Jaxk but my impression is that he is not against all regulation only un-necessary regulation. ‘Course we can disagree on what is necessary and what is not. That’s what makes it fun.

@DoNotKnow – Not enough to notice. While Bernie seems to want Glass-Steagal restored I can’t figure out how he intends to do it. Nor does it sound like he would repeal Dodd-Frank. His big thrust is in breaking up the big banks. Not something I would generally endorse. Breaking up any big business seems to be part of liberal ideology and Bernie at his core is an ideologue.

@rojo – Absolutely right. I will always fight against overly lntrusive and poorly written regulation or legislation. Keep it simple and targeted. And for God’s sake do your homework and do it once.

@jaxk – As a suggestion, it might help to save the labels (liberal, ideologue, socialism, communism, etc). They don’t help the conversation in any way. Note: I believe you probably agree with this in other contexts (re: PC conversation-stoppers, such as “sexist” or “racist”). Just try sticking to the issues.

@DoNotKnow – Normally I would agree with you but in this particular case I believe the Ideologue is the issue, at least for me. You’ve got Bernie and Elizabeth trying to pull the democratic party left as far as possible and Hilary simply leaning which ever way the wind blows. For instance Bernie wants to break up the big banks. That doesn’t solve any problem. it arguably may make the problem less severe but doesn’t solve it. What it does is give him a good far left populous stand. Ideologue, I know no other way to state it.

Not arguing with the above (for once) but curious as to what you think Trump is? I sure as hell don’t know.

Good question. Every time I hear him speak he sounds like someone I would meet in a bar discussing politics. He’s entertaining and I believe refreshing but I certainly wouldn’t call him an Ideologue.

He’d need to have some real ideas to be an ideologue. Just sayin’.

I still haven’t dismissed the thought that Trump is deliberately sabotaging the GOP. What happens if he’s shut out by the party & takes his supporters with him as an independent? By the way, Sanders is threatening to also run as an independent.

@Jaxk Sanders wants to break up the big banks to eliminate “too big to fail”. It ain’t gonna happen. Just like the restoration of Glass-Steagal is going nowhere. In fact the elimination of Glass-Steagel should be regarded as the corporate graduation from the school of lessons learned from the breakup of AT&T. The major goal of totally co-opting (owning) the government has been achieved, and any blind man can see it.

@stanleybmanly – Actually the success of Trump shows that there is some resistance to the corporate politicians we’ve had for some time now. Trump is a horrible politician with little in the way of plans for the country. He is however his own man with little concern for what others think. That is the key to his success. Ben Carson is second in line on the Republican side and he also is no politician. People (at least Conservatives) are sick of the career politicians and beginning to revolt. I view that as a good thing even if the person benefitting from this wave is less than a desirable candidate.

Everyone is sick of career politicians. It’s Trump’s money alone that allows him the threat of monkey wrenching party regimen, while Sanders is snowballing his momentum toward disrupting democratic machinery. The relevance of both parties becomes increasingly less important as things further polarize. But I feel it is essential to recognize that NEITHER party is going to turn the country around the way things are now wired. It DOES matter who occupies the White House. You and I have opposing views on the role of government, but the reason I keep droning on incessantly about the economics we confront is that unless BOTH liberals and conservatives come to understand WHO it is the government serves, there is little hope for restoring the country.

“I will always fight against overly lntrusive and poorly written regulation or legislation. Keep it simple and targeted.”

I agree, which is why I could NEVER vote for many of the people you support; they seem to like intruding quite a bit and putting out poorly-written legislation that often gets struck down by higher courts as unconstitutional or otherwise harmful to society. And I find it ironic that they consider those Conservatives who uphold the traditional core values of the party are labelled RINO or even Liberal simply because they are they are more like Coolidge or Eisenhower than like Cruz or Palin.

“I still haven’t dismissed the thought that Trump is deliberately sabotaging the GOP. ”

I think that Trump’s GOP bid is a sterling example of Hanlon’s Razor in action. I mean, it would take an intellect that made Lex Luthor look like an imbecile by comparison for the Trump campaign to be planned like this, and I just don’t think he has that sort of brainpower.

There is indeed some merit in the fact that it’s difficult to cast Trump as a tool of “special interests”.