Is there any sense comparing current data to previous one-termers? Like is there anything nowadays that matches signs that were pointing to Carter and Bush 1 losing? Did Republican fatigue play a factor in 1992 or was Bush always going to be doomed?
US PoliEra |OT12| The Moscow Project
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5k? What? Why risk a PR disaster yet only donate pocket change
I always felt "read my lips, no new taxes" did in Bush Sr. Bush Sr. was seen as a liar and he raised taxes (something Republicans haven't done since if I am correct)
Fatigue might be it. Folks say Perot drew evenly from D's and R's, but the reason a guy like Perot was able to make headway was because the GOP coalition had grown so great as to become unwieldy
It's similar to Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Taft and Roosevelt split the GOP vote, but what opened the door to a schism in the GOP was how dominant the GOP had been (20 years since the last D president in that case).
Edit: Other one-termers earned that status. John Adams went way against the grain of US politics (too authoritarian), Q Adams never got over the corrupt bargain in congress that got him elected, Van Buren was crushed by the Panic of 1837 and a very botched response to it, Cleveland was an iconoclast for economic policy (his brand of anti-corporatism was decades out of date), Benjamin Harrison brought about a ruinous tariff, Hoover had his horrid response to the Depression, and Carter was kneecapped by the Iranian Hostage Crisis and stagflation.
Companies will usually invest irregardless of policies and practices as a measure just in case they need to lobby for something.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...4/mick-mulvaney-cfpb-lobbyist-donations-banks Mick Mulvaney talking openly about it.
https://www.landolakesinc.com/Press/News/PAC-donation-statement-steve-king Land O Lakes saying they donate to both parties in a community they're involved in.
That only makes sense if the candidates aren't open KKK members or pedophiles though.
It came up a few months ago that GoFundMe had accidentally become the nation's second-largest insurer or something ridiculous.
Hey, I know, how about EVERYONE use the site for ALL their bills, and by the time everyone's cash gets spread around it'll be like having single-payer on whatever tax rate!
Bush was doomed by the recession that hit him just as his government was wrapping up. If that had not happen, he would have won reelection.
Fun fact: democrats were so afraid of being crushed by Bush that some of the high profile ones didnt run for presidency, which is what let Bill get the nomination without that much problem.
Companies were donating to Steve King well after it was pretty obvious he was extremely friendly to pro-facist ideas. That's assuming the MLB as an organization is just being ignorant as fuck considering the news right now.
Yeah but that was before they were getting called out about it. People are calling out Cindy Hyde-Smith donors right now... and they decide to donate in the middle of that (the fucking donation was made yesterday!!!). Not smart at all.
Trump has really no idea of what's about to hit him. I think it will dawn on him after he sees Sleepy Ben talking to the ethics committee about spending taxpayer money on nice dinner tables.
I was going to say I wouldn't be content until the entire original cabinet had to resign, but then realized that I'm pretty sure at least half of them belong in jail, too.
Trump's presidency probably has the most in common with Carter and Dubya's second term in terms of sheer incompetence and unpopularity.
The ACA repeal fight in particular has a lot in common with Bush's efforts to privatize Social Security which also went down in flames. The ACA might as well be considered an untouchable third rail like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at this point.
Over the weekend I binged a bit on the Current Affairs Podcast and one of the episodes talked about a sovereign wealth fund
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/current-affairs/e/56024034
Basically, the government buys up stocks of every American company and each American citizen gets one share when they turn 18 that they can't trade away and disappears when they die. Each American citizen will receive a dividend based on how much money is in the sovereign wealth fund.
Essentially, it would turn all Americans into shareholders with voting power. This would all be done on a website where the end goal is to either allow individuals to vote on CEO pay and who is the next CEO, etc., or designate a group who you agree with to vote for you by proxy.
The more that I think about it, the more I prefer it to UBI for several reasons
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/current-affairs/e/56024034
Basically, the government buys up stocks of every American company and each American citizen gets one share when they turn 18 that they can't trade away and disappears when they die. Each American citizen will receive a dividend based on how much money is in the sovereign wealth fund.
Essentially, it would turn all Americans into shareholders with voting power. This would all be done on a website where the end goal is to either allow individuals to vote on CEO pay and who is the next CEO, etc., or designate a group who you agree with to vote for you by proxy.
The more that I think about it, the more I prefer it to UBI for several reasons
- It taxes wealth, not income.
- It doesn't matter if these foreign companies move their corporation to god knows where to avoid paying taxes because shareholders will get their due no matter where the corporation is. That is a big problem that this solves.
- It reduces income inequality, can reign in corporations, and will likely reduce money in politics as well because, again, overtime the individual american will collectively have a huge voice in the oversight of companies, CEO paypackages, and who is the next CEO.
- I think this redistribution scheme will be an easier sell to the American people. There is already one in Alaska and is super popular (though a bit different than this), but more importantly it doesn't 'feel' like a giveaway as it isn't a tax and transfer. You could sell it to the people as recognition of everyone's contribution to American society. It is a deserved payment by the American government to honor that contribution, no matter what work that person does. Framed that way, it'll be essentially impossible for it to ever be eliminated or disappear because you could literally claim that that would be theft.
- Buying up stocks is a well-known counter-cyclical fiscal tool, which would infuse capital into businesses while also injecting more money into the hands of the people. Depending on how you set up the rules, this could be another very effective automatic stabilizer. UBI doesn't really do that.
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/
Even before I opened that I thought "This must have been Matt Bruenig".
Yeah, this is Bruenig's plan. I think this would be fine. I don't really think of it as distinct from a UBI so much as a variation on a UBI that would be more palatable to Americans.
We should make the Federal Reserve do this just to make Ron Paul's head explode. As a bonus, we'd never have to unwind all the quantitative easing!
No, you'd get stock in the fund, which itself owns a bunch of stock in companies.
Basically it's index fund socialism. Ironically, Matt Levine has also devoted some time to talking about this concept, although Bruenig and Levine are about as opposite ideologically as it is possible for two people to be.
Theres actually an incredibly detailed twitter thread explaining this issue and its a Medicare implementation issue, ill look it up later. Part D apparently has some big issues.
That doesn't surprise me as I definitely see this more palatable to more people than UBI. I mean, capitalists can think of it as every American is investing in our capitalist market economy while socialist can think of it like the people are finally starting to own the means of production!
What I like is that it soles a lot of big problems with our economy in one fell swoop.
I haven't had time to actually review the idea in detail, but a Sovereign Wealth Fund sounds like something that could be implemented at least partially at a state level and bypass issues with the taxbase not being large enough to support UBI through direct taxation?
Even into early 1992 it was generally assumed that Bush would cruise to re-election. Pundits were pretty late to catch onto his vulnerability in part because his approvals had been so high in the immediate wake of the Gulf War (though they had already deteriorated to the point where he was in trouble by the time 1992 rolled around), partly because Republicans had easily won the previous three elections so it was hard to conceive of a Democrat winning (there was much talk of a supposed Republican Electoral College Lock).
On the other hand, at this point in Clinton's presidency pundits considered it a foregone conclusion that he would be a one-term president.
The truth is that it's really hard to tell with two years to go how a president's re-election bid is going to go. Incumbent presidents usually get re-elected (although the extent to which this is the case is typically overstated due to recency bias: the previous three presidents all served two terms). On the other hand, not only is Trump unpopular right now, he's never been popular which is quite unusual for a president.
The issue is that you need to get money into it.
Alaska has a Sovereign Wealth Fund because they stick their oil money into it. North Dakota could create a Sovereign Wealth Fund pretty easily, but other states?
It would be a lot slower and you might need to get creative like legalizing weed and using the proceeds from that to fund your fund. Move away from an incarceration system penal system to one that simply fines (sometimes significantly) for non-violent offenders, and stick the money from that and the money you save into the fund, etc. etc.
The Federal Government just has access to a lot more taxes and ways to get money into the fund.
When we were all freaking out about the courts and someone said "no way Roberts signs off on that"
And you said something along the lines of.. "that seems like a pretty thin reed to grasp on to in order to preserve the fate of the Union and democracy in the west..
... we'll see how it goes"
I'm still laughing at that
Stinkles had a good post the other day where he pointed out that lots of stuff that scans as funny or a joke at first pass these days is really just something that was real and depressing.
I would put pigeon's posts in that category. Too real
Still slowly working my way through Ben Rhodes "The World As It Is". Currently in mid 2011.
Just really emphasises how much the media are to blame for both the public's ignorance, and Trump.
Just really emphasises how much the media are to blame for both the public's ignorance, and Trump.
Thing is, everyone in the NYC tri-state area knows that Trump is a liar and full of shit and have known this for decades. Guess where most of the major news outlets are located? Can you say giant blindspot?
Yeah, and I'd argue this is the "true" liberal elitism - the media's assumption that everyone's as smart as they are and has the same knowledge-base as them, and that everyone can therefore spot the lies, the subtext, the implications of what Trump says.
One fundamental flaw of elections as we know it is they always are a snapshot of how people feel at one specific moment in time, and not necessarily how they feel overall. It's almost impossible for any human to not to have a big bias towards the most recent information.
It's not a new phenomenon, but I think it is a new phenomenon that sentiment a week before election day isn't recent enough to be remembered come time to vote.
Eh. A Democrat governor here in the US Virgin Islands is not a big deal. The alternative was an independent incumbent who raised the minimum wage and gave raises for teachers and police officers. I think the better barometer was getting a full Democrat senate in one district and the fact that a loud, brash incumbent leader was voted out despite good economic indicators. That gives me hope for 2020.
So what happens if congress starts issuing subpoena's and those people refuse to show up/turn over documents? I'm specifically referring to people with presidential protections, lackeys and lower level staff.
Can congress indict people themselves? Does the DOJ decide what to do with them, if so can Whittaker just shield them?
Can congress indict people themselves? Does the DOJ decide what to do with them, if so can Whittaker just shield them?
As a person with hefty student loans this stuff she is doing is criminal. The single company able to do public service forgiveness plans is slow walking everything ,lying to people, and generally just being scummy
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