Just a hypothetical: Say Bernie becomes president, how much do we really think he could accomplish? I am expecting the Obama years "party of no" Republican Party times ten with a few "moderate" Democrats thrown in.
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Sanders Says He Would Break Up 'Conglomerates' Like Disney/21st Century Fox
- Thread starter Poetic Injustice
- Start date
he would've a real similar first term as Obama. republicans would steamroll the 2022 election after it become obvious that he can't deliver on his dozens of promises
Consuming media via TV/MOVIES/MUSIC is on the lowest peg on the totem pole in regards to the well being of the american people. Worry about the sick/poor/kids looking for an education without signing their life away before you worry about whats on TV
Personally I'd only vote for him if he took a strong stance at breaking up Sony Pictures so that Spider-Man can be liberated and allowed to return home
Yeah, but you'll get the 'party of no' regardless of who the Dem president is. It really has nothing to do with how moderate the Dem president would be.
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People consistently use the word "unrealistic" when discussing a Bernie Sanders proposal. I don't think those of you who engage in this language really understand why he makes them. They allow him to build his platform which I think is fairly obvious, but, more importantly, they set the stage for the public, political, and legislative negotiations that would occur to turn these proposals into law.
His strategy is to start with everything that he wants in the law instead of compromising it before any negotiating has started. Maybe the public will push back on some of what he is proposing, but most think that corporations have too much money and control over our lives. Bernie seems to recognize that government is the only public entity large enough to challenge corporate greed, but I don't think he believes this is a zero sum game.
His strategy is to start with everything that he wants in the law instead of compromising it before any negotiating has started. Maybe the public will push back on some of what he is proposing, but most think that corporations have too much money and control over our lives. Bernie seems to recognize that government is the only public entity large enough to challenge corporate greed, but I don't think he believes this is a zero sum game.
Honestly, compared to what else is out there, no. Disney is a big company but they're dwarfed by a lot of things.
Do it. Bernie iis easily leading the pack in terms of articulating his vision of political change.
interesting to read many comments on here about how unfeasible it is. if everyone thought like you guys we still be in the stone age. Change is often disruptive, and can happen against the odds. narratives about the feasibility of something often affect the feasibility, since they play with people's expectations of what is possible. it is insane how limited the political imagination is at present. i am not sure if it has ever been this bad. many people's expectation are so fundamentally low. the issue with much of the opposition to trump so far, has been that it hasn't been bold enough...whereas one of trump's greatest strengths is how bold he appears to be.
interesting to read many comments on here about how unfeasible it is. if everyone thought like you guys we still be in the stone age. Change is often disruptive, and can happen against the odds. narratives about the feasibility of something often affect the feasibility, since they play with people's expectations of what is possible. it is insane how limited the political imagination is at present. i am not sure if it has ever been this bad. many people's expectation are so fundamentally low. the issue with much of the opposition to trump so far, has been that it hasn't been bold enough...whereas one of trump's greatest strengths is how bold he appears to be.
People are so used to the past 30 years of Democratic obsequiousness (anyone have a better/simpler synonym?) That they think compromising before coming to the bargaining table is good politics.
wheredoyouthinkweare.gif
Well aside from that being a silly take given that media shapes the entire conversation around the "important" issues and can single handedly decide what does or doesn't manifest into policy, this is completely ignoring the idea that for some reason you feel that politicians can only do one thing at a time. The fact that you won't address this at all makes it seem like you are more interested in the wellbeing of Disney?
His entire plan focuses on more than just Disney, and also has an entire section devoted to putting more power in the hands of the workers. The article in the OP is focusing on the Disney part because it's a website about entertainment.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-and-democracy/
Also he is absolutely against companies charging $7k for insulin. Like, you're focusing on one thing when he has multiple positions and this is just outlining his corporate plans. His healthcare platform covers the costs of prescription drugs. https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/
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As someone who has worked the government side of this stuff for over 15 years now, thank you.
Cancel Student Debt—Almost All of It
An obscure, decades-old provision called “compromise and settlement” authority could allow the Department of Education to opt out of collecting trillions in debt.
prospect.org
The need for a Day One agenda is particularly acute as we head into 2020. I keep sensing an undercurrent of despair when talking to liberal partisans about the election, a sigh that beating Trump is not enough but all that can be done. Yes, Democrats are only an even-money shot, at best, to flip the Senate. And yes, even if they succeed, Mitch "Grim Reaper" McConnell can obstruct the majority with the filibuster, and it would not be up to the next president, but the 50th senator ideologically, someone like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, to agree to change the Senate rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for legislation. (There's always budget reconciliation, but that limited path goes through the same conservaDems.)
But this reality does not have to inspire progressive anguish. Anyone telling you that a Democratic victory next November would merely signal four years of endless gridlock hasn't thought about the possibilities laid out in this issue. And if you doubt the opportunity for strong executive action, let me direct your attention to Donald Trump.
MAKE NO MISTAKE: Trump is an autocrat, more than willing to break the law to realize his campaign promises. His invocation of inherent, extreme executive power, egged on chiefly by Attorney General William Barr, is in fact dangerous, as former Representative Brad Miller lays out for us later in this issue. Trump has asserted the right to ignore Congress's oversight function, reinterpret laws based on his own preferences, hide information from lawmakers and the public, promise pardons before illegal actions take place, appoint acting heads of federal agencies without advice and consent from the Senate, and raise the specter of emergency to follow through on his campaign promises.
But in a significant number of cases, Trump's pathway has sprung from a simple proposition: When Congress gives the executive branch authority, the president, you know, can actually use it.
Trump's health and human services secretary is employing the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 to test the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada. His education secretary canceled student debt automatically for 25,000 disabled veterans, implementing part of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. His agriculture secretary is resurfacing the work requirements already present in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program statute, to prevent states from waiving them.
We've similarly seen Trump apply Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to impose tariffs on imports he deems present a risk to national security. He also used the Commodity Credit Corporation, established in 1933, to send billions of dollars to farmers, to protect them from the blowback from his own tariffs.
Even his most tyrannical action, transferring billions from the Defense Department to build sections of a wall along the Mexican border, had the backing of a federal law: The National Emergencies Act of 1976 allows limited circumstances for presidents to move around money, despite Congress holding the purse strings. (It was such an emergency that he waited seven months to announce the second batch of funding shifts.)
Few of Trump's ideas have been good policy, from a progressive perspective. Some, like the invocation of emergency powers, are a common tool of despots which never turns out well even when used by small-d democrats, from Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus to Roosevelt's Japanese internment camps.
But Congress has routinely transferred its authority to the executive branch, putting arrow after arrow into a quiver that presidents now have in their arsenal. I despise radical "unitary executive" theories that misread the Constitution to presume an unassailable executive. But the president, by definition, carries out the laws. Trump has been using it for ill. An effective Democratic president could use it for good.
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT is one of the world's largest purchasers of goods and services. This alone gives presidents widespread power to influence the economy by setting benchmarks for federal contractors to deliver high minimum wages, pay equity, safe workplaces, and shared prosperity. The government can even stop doing business with distasteful companies that rely on federal contracts, like the private-prison industry.
The government also manages giant swaths of public land, and can choose to open it up to development and fossil fuel production, or shut that down. And there are all sorts of statutory programs where presidents get to set the rules. When President Kennedy in 1962, after much prodding and delay, fulfilled a campaign promise to prohibit discrimination in federally aided housing, all it took was the proverbial "stroke of a pen."
As Trump has repeatedly shown, in entire issue areas like foreign policy and immigration and global trade, the next president would have expansive authority, all granted by a plain reading of the Constitution, specific congressional statute, or the legislative branch's studied deference. Who the next president chooses for the Federal Reserve Board will define the course of economic policy.
Presidents can make regulatory decisions like who qualifies for overtime pay. They can decide who serves as a worker's employer, a critical determination for collective bargaining. They can choose whether corporations should still enjoy a "safe harbor" to facilitate stock buybacks that enrich investors at the expense of workers. They can't bring forth Medicare for All, but they can use Section 1332 waivers from the Affordable Care Act to enable single-payer programs at the state level, and potentially use nearly $1 billion from the ACA's Prevention and Public Health Fund to defray startup costs.
Once you start thinking about the possibilities, it's hard to stop. Statutory language is sometimes clear and sometimes muddled, but regulatory discretion is almost always broad. What a president chooses to emphasize, and how much the letter of the law can be bent to their preferences, makes a huge difference.
Executive orders are a poor substitute for the authorities already existing in statutory language. It's nice that Democratic primary candidates have been talking about executive orders, such as Kamala Harris's proposed actions to mitigate gun violence, or Beto O'Rourke's ideas on immigration. Some executive orders will make a huge difference in people's lives, like Harris's, Amy Klobuchar's, and Cory Booker's plans for clemency boards and mass commutations for low-level federal drug offenders. (Joe Biden's plan along these lines, predictably, is far narrower.)
But there's no substitute for authority from Congress. And in a surprising number of cases, presidents already have it. They don't have to rummage for a few votes for financial reform; the architecture of existing law allows them to reform already. They don't have to muster courage from swing-seat representatives to fight big corporations and tax the rich; the Federal Trade Commission and the IRS can get us there.
Public momentum can keep these rules in place, as advances for the American people tend to stick around. For instance, when you cancel publicly held student debt, as the education secretary has the authority to do under the "compromise and settlement" provision of the Higher Education Act, it's difficult to un-cancel it. When you license out excessively priced prescription drugs to generic competitors, as the government can do under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 or Section 1498 of the federal code, it'll be difficult to un-license it, and shoot drug prices back up again.
And aggressive executive action can spur legislative action. Congress doesn't particularly like governing, but they hate being circumvented. Presidents making known their intentions to use existing statutes to solve problems can lead to lawmakers finally getting around to it themselves.
Cancel Student Debt—Almost All of It
An obscure, decades-old provision called “compromise and settlement” authority could allow the Department of Education to opt out of collecting trillions in debt.
prospect.org
How the fuck did "conglomerates like Disney" become "only Disney"
The sole focus isn't on Disney. He's just using them as an example of a conglomerate.
The sole focus isn't on Disney. He's just using them as an example of a conglomerate.
"it's not technically a monopoly" is one of the most dishonest arguments posters here put forward
Week has only begun but it's like we have plenty of shit on MCU threads lol.
If he can do it then try I guess. All I know is that Fox was selling and 2 offered to buy it. It's whatever I guess, if he can figure it out to make it not happen then cool for him and the others.
If he can do it then try I guess. All I know is that Fox was selling and 2 offered to buy it. It's whatever I guess, if he can figure it out to make it not happen then cool for him and the others.
bernie sanders has a way of making people act really obtuse and weird. I think it's mostly because people are capitalists to the bone, and when methods to achieve the social justice they say they want comes into conflict with that, well...
Disney made 12 billion dollars last year. Apple made 50 billion. Why isn't anyone calling for the breakup of Apple? (and before you say someone is, why have we had a dozen threads with people wringing their hands about Fox merging with Disney, and zero threads about breaking up Apple.)
So, what don't you like about Disney? Why do they deserved to be broken up, but not Apple?
Why is Apple owning 73% of the smartphone market's profits better than Disney owning 40% of the movie industry profits. Again, Disney made 12 billion, Apple made 50 billion. Why are we focused on breaking up Disney, and not Apple?
Well, yeah, Alphabet should. Strange. I must've missed the break up apple and break up alphabet threads tho. Only disney seems to get those. Huh.
probably because disney recently acquired fox and thus makes it a good, specific example of a merger of two massive corporations that most people can say "oh yeah, i understand what you're talking about!"
Please list economic initiatives proposed by Warren that she has flip-flopped on.
I must have missed where Trump was successful in stopping the AT&T merger? Sanders can have DOJ bring about an anti-trust suit but that will be an uphill battle.
Because liberals only care about the status quo.
And especially on this forum, people will stan for corps who make that fav media.
Apple is an issue that can be solved with the fixing of corporate tax. They haven't expanded by buying their competition or buying companies in different markets like disney
You are bizarrely defensive about Disney.
Maybe re-read the title of this thread. Then read it again, and again until you understand that it's not specifically about Disney, but that perhaps Disney is being used as an example because of the high profile Fox merger that happened a 5 months ago that should never have been allowed.
Take your time. I'm sure you'll get there.
Very true. The daily abuses of power by companies such as Alphabet, Apple and Facebook just blend together.
Oh. Am I not allowed to talk about the contents of the thread? Merely the title of the thread? I'm sorry.
Oh wait, looking at the title, I see Disney is in fact mentioned, and I'm allowed to talk about it. Huzzah!
A monopoly on profits is not monopoly on a market, first of all. Secondly, it's an example of a merger of giants. What giants got together to make the iPhone.
The only reason this thread has devolved into this wankfest is because of people like you getting overly defensive at Disney being used as an example of a company that should be broken up. The title of the thread and the OP is not specifically about disney. So don't get indignant about a lack of threads about Alphabet or Apple being broken up.
But that's what people are arguing about Disney. They claim they own 40% of the movie industry profit, so I just point out that Apple owns 75% of the smartphone industry profits. It's....well, apples to apples.
Apple didn't buy their competitors to get there, so it's not apples to apples.
