Plato Shrimp » I Like Biden

Jinnistan · 2/14/2024 9:11 pm

So you know, I'm not actively avoiding talking about the embarrassments from both the recent Special Counsel report on Biden's handling of classified documents (which did, in a backhanded way, exonerate him) and Biden's equally embarrassing public reaction to it.

But in terms of having any useful commentary on the issue, I would say that this piece from Just Security, written by ex-Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissman, provides what I think is the best overall assessment of that Special Counsel report, so I'd prefer to let that do the talking:

The Special Counsel Robert Hur report has been grossly mischaracterized by the press. The report finds that the evidence of a knowing, willful violation of the criminal laws is wanting. Indeed, the report, on page 6, notes that there are “innocent explanations” that Hur “cannot refute.” That is but one of myriad examples we outline in great detail below of the report repeatedly finding a lack of proof. And those findings mean, in DOJ-speak, there is simply no case. Unrefuted innocent explanations is the sine qua non of not just a case that does not meet the standard for criminal prosecution – it means innocence. Or as former Attorney General Bill Barr and his former boss would have put it, a total vindication (but here, for real).

But even without the prompting of a misleading “summary” by Barr, the press has gotten the lede wrong. This may be because of a poorly worded (we’re being charitable) thesis sentence on page 1 of Hur’s executive summary. Hur writes at the outset: “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” You have to wait for the later statements that what the report actually says is there is insufficient evidence of criminality, innocent explanations for the conduct, and affirmative evidence that Biden did not willfully withhold classified documents. Put another way, that same sentence about “our investigation uncovered evidence” could equally apply to Mike Pence, who had classified documents at his home, which is similarly some “evidence” of a crime, but also plainly insufficient to remotely establish criminality.

The press incorrectly and repeatedly blast out that the Hur report found Biden willfully retained classified documents, in other words, that Biden committed a felony; with some in the news media further trumpeting that the Special Counsel decided only as a matter of discretion not to recommend charges.

This article is primarily concerned with explaining the evidence, or lack of it, in this case to clarify media misreporting on those facts. The article doesn't venture into questions about the impropriety of a career prosecutor, unqualified to make neurological assessments, speculating on Joe Biden's memory and cognitive abilities (which has been the central criticism to this report), but it does refute the impression given in much of the coverage that the Special Counsel determined that Biden had "willfully retained" classified documents (to which this article shows from the 345-page text of the report that they did not make such a determination) but had only chosen not to prosecute due to determining that Biden's feeble and empathetic demeanor (based on these unprofessional neurological prognoses) would deter a jury's inclination to convinct him.

In other words, an alarming number of media outlets really dropped the ball on accurately depicting the substance of this report, and, willfully or not, were complicit in reinforcing a misleading narrative.

crumbsroom · 2/15/2024 8:41 am

Jinnistan wrote:
willfully or not, were complicit in reinforcing a misleading narrative.

It's this. Not necessarily as a way to stick Biden with the impression that he's old and feeble as a way to undermine his re-election bid (but it might be), but certainly because the media is lazy and they look for ways to continually feed the story that they already have got brewing.

It's a winning recipe. It allows them to continue manufacturing the soap opera that is now our political reality.

The negligence is palpable.

Jinnistan · 2/20/2024 7:28 pm

While everyone has been talking about Biden's age and faculties, the bigger story that the "star witness" at the middle of the Republican effort to impeach Biden and uncover the entire "Biden Crime Family" was arrested by the FBI for, um, making all of that shit up. Should be good news for the Biden team, so naturally it has to take a back seat to Fani Willis' sex and cash in coverage.

And on the issue of Biden's age, I thought this piece from David Corn was a helpful read:

Yes, the old perception angle. Left out of the equation by the NYT is how each man is portrayed. There is a relationship between public attitudes and media coverage. Obviously, some voters possess a degree of concern over Biden’s age, but that concern can certainly be heightened by how news outfits cover the matter. When the New York Times floods the zone with stories about Biden’s age—as it has done the past few days—is it reflecting popular unease or encouraging it? Probably both. During one of its many reports on the Hur report, CNN asked, “Is Biden’s age now a bigger problem than Trump’s indictments?”

Seriously?

Why do Biden’s purported memory lapses receive more ink? Perhaps because it’s easier to spot or understand—and because people have become numb to Trump acting erratically and spouting outlandish stuff, which is basically his brand. The question is how should the media and the politerati process the Biden matter while giving at least equal attention (if not more) to Trump’s own possible cognitive issues and his alleged criminality and dangerous narcissistic authoritarianism? This appears to be a challenge for reporters working within the traditional confines of political reporting.

Jinnistan · 3/08/2024 1:49 am

I only half-watched the State of the Union.

It's still the case that any number of trivial challenges to Biden's re-election campaign, from the "uncommitted" camp (with about half of Nikki Haley's numbers) to Jason Palmer's winning over the crucial battleground of America Samoa, seem to continue receiving a disproportionate amount of enthusiasm from the corporate media, or how criticisms of "Genocide Joe" seem to be a lot louder than criticisms of those Republicans who are actually cheering for genocide, or how we've had more news coverage recently devoted to Commander the vicious German Shepard hellhound than devoted to how Roger Stone got caught on tape pushing for the kidnapping and murder of Democratic congressmen.

So it's an apt question: What's the deal? What are the reasons why the large corporations behind these media companies and what interests could possibly justify this pessimistic dampening of Biden's prospects? And it's worth running through a few possibilities:

1) Topmost is that Biden has actually been incredibly successful with his Chips Act, Infrastrucutre bill and green energy investments. And now with Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin stepping down, with a Senate majority, Biden will have fewer obstacles to passing tax hikes on billionaires and stock transactions in his second term.

2) Biden's freeze on natural gas exports has been extremely unpopular among businesses. This is despite the fact that the countries we would be exporting this gas to do not want the gas.

3) Biden's rules on capping prescription drug prices have already resulted in multiple lawsuits from these are not going well for them. A second Biden term will assure the implementation of these price controls.

(Take the time to briefly consider the amount of advertising revenue for all cable news channels that comes from energy and pharmaceutical companies.)

4) The FTC under Biden, and his chairwoman Lina Khan, has been particularly muscular in their oversight and enforcement, including corporate mergers, monopolies, and price-gouging. affecting a broad spectrum of the corporate sector.

5) The SEC, under Gary Gensler, has strengthened requirements for corporation emissions disclosures.

6) The CFPB is set to cap credit card "junk fees" after banks set a record in 2022 for charging $130 billion in such fees. The Chamber of Congress has announced a lawsuit, and the American Bankers Association claims the rule will cause "more late payments, higher debt, lower credit scores and reduced credit access", which sounds more like a threat than a concern. This follows multiple other court settlements under Biden's administration which resulted in billions of dollars for banking malfeasance.

7) Biden's Labor Department has also tightened rules of non-compete clauses, independent contractors, and child labor which have all resulted in court fights among large corporations or corporate interest associations.

On the other hand, Trump will not raise your taxes. So who needs democracy?

Jinnistan · 3/08/2024 2:30 pm

In addition to all of the above, in his State of the Union, Biden doubled down on laying out his second-term plans to raise taxes on elite wealth:

In addition to previous calls to raise the corporate income tax rate to 28% from 21% currently, he called for an increase to "at least 21%" for the 15% corporate minimum tax that he won as part of 2022 clean energy legislation. The tax applies to firms reporting over $1 billion in profits.

Biden administration officials also told reporters he wants to quadruple the 1% tax on corporate stock buybacks approved in 2022.

Biden renewed his call for a "billionaire tax" that would impose a 25% minimum tax on income for those Americans with wealth of more than $100 million, saying it would raise $500 billion over 10 years to help fund benefits such as child care and paid family leave.

The average American worker paid about a 25% tax rate in 2022, the OECD reported, opens new tab. Biden said the average tax rate for some 1,000 billionaires was 8.2%, adding: "No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, a nurse."He pledged to extend Trump-era tax cuts for those earning under $400,000 and revive a COVID-era expansion of the Child Tax Credit and increase a tax credit for low-wage workers.

Again, why would the corporate news media be against any of that?

Biden's latest proposals drew a sharp rebuke from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has made preserving the 2017 Republican tax cuts a top priority. Biden's policies "would actually result in lower economic growth, fewer new business starts, less job creation, and fewer choices for American families," said Neil Bradley, the Chamber's chief policy officer.

And, again, that sounds more like a threat than a concern. The WSJ article in the previous post is mostly behind a paywall, but this "top priority" of "preserving the 2017 tax cuts" should be clear. These tax cuts are set to expire in 2025 unless they are extended. Only a Trump victory will preserve these tax cuts for those making above $400,000 a year, or the top 1.8% of the US population. The bottom 98.2% are not a top priority for the Chamber of Commerce, or the bulk of corporate America.

"It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for" the top media corporations - paraphrasing Leslie Moonves

Jinnistan · 4/05/2024 8:15 pm

It is truly remarkable that a media corporation like Apple felt that the threat of Jon Stewart interviewing the FTC head Lina Khan was so significant that they felt it was worth cancelling Stewart's show in order to avoid it. As with Stewart's long-awaited take on A.I. landed this week, so did his long-awaited interview with Khan, which provided the revelation of the bright red line that Apple had drawn at his feet. Apple is certainly not any kind of respected news organization, but it's still chilling that simply interviewing a leading government official would lead to actual cancellation.

Lina Khan has earned the rep as a regulatory rock star for those who have bothered to keep up with her work. Which hasn't always been easy. Apple is not the only media corporation which has shunned her. There's also other reasons why she never appears on any of the news media outlets either. In a way, it's too her credit that she's managed to put the fear-of-god into these corporations and their corporate sponsors. There's a good example of her work recently to explain why. A quick Google search for the FTC report on the inflation of grocery prices ("Feeding Ameica in a Time of Crisis"), shows on the first page there are exaclty two mainstream newspapers, USAToday and NYT, which reported on the report on the day of its release. A third paper, The Hill, finally published an article a week later, on the Friday before the Easter weekend when it was not likely to be noticed. (Interestingly, only the NYT bothered to link the actual FTC report in its article, further obscuring the source.) Coverage of this report, as far as I can tell from Google, has largely been absent from cable and TV news media.

What the report says isn't surprising. It still uses the jargon that we've heard over the past couple of years - "margin expansion", "mark-up growth", phrases which skip words like "profits" and "prices" for their respective context. Also, we hear of the "seller's inflation": "deriving from the ability of firms with a lot of market power in concentrated industries to simply raise their prices". This is significant to distinguish this inflation from the kind of wage-driven inflation from the late 1970s, which remains the model form of inflation and justification for our policies of combating inflation (ie, the "Volcker Shock") leading the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. And even though it's now understood that profits rather than wages are driving this inflation, the Fed is refusing to lower interest rates despite the fact that this inflation doesn't conform to the inflationary model that Volcker was addressing. (The Fed has also admitted that it has no idea why unemployment has remained so low and productivity so high during this inflation, both of which contradict Volcker-era economic presumptions.)

The FTC report is clear on its indictment of "greedflation", that the pandemic-era crunch on supply chains did not cause inflation, nor did the cash infusion from the Covid economic stimulus, but that these corporations, specifically the grocers, used the pandemic as "an opportunity" to raise prices. The kindest excuse given is that these companies feared a eventual economic collapse and were pre-emptively fortifying their portfolios. This excuse has no resonance today, after we've seen two business quarters with all-time record setting corporate profits ("Adjusted profits after taxes hit a record high of $2.8 trillion, beating the record of $2.7 trillion in the third quarter of 2022) within the time frame of this current inflation.

Other stark observations: "The FTC report examining US grocery supply chains finds that dominant firms used this moment to come out ahead at the expense of their competitors and the communities they serve", "Some firms seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further hike prices to increase their profits, and profits remain elevated even as supply chain pressures have eased", "This profit trend casts doubt on assertions that rising prices at the grocery store are simply moving in lockstep with retailers’ own rising costs".

Of course, none of this is controversial in the Business press, but it remains obscured in mainstream coverage, while blaming Biden's "hand-outs" continue to be a common and recurring theme among the punditocrasy.

To be fair, Apple is not likely so concerned with Lina Khan's efforts against inflation, but rather her work against monopolies and anti-trust violations, which has also brought the DoJ into the mix Regardless, they clearly don't want people to hear what she has to say.

Jinnistan · 4/19/2024 2:06 am

I wasn't sure where to put this one. Maybe "Fuck Happened", because that seems more like the catch-all foreign policy thread. But I thought maybe here is better because David Sanger has this habit of suggesting that these "New Cold Wars" (subject of his new book) are simply a matter for Joe Biden to deal with, which has been the typical line not only from Republican hawks but also the more neoliberal side of the Democrat establishment who feel that Biden has failed to be aggressive enough in maintaining American empire, and Sanger here is clearly on the side of the Imperialists.

The straightforward premise is that America has somehow, after the end of the Cold War and the "End of History" in the early '90s when it appeared that liberalism and democracy had triumphed over communism, 30 years later found ourselves in a new paradigm of super-state power struggle. So, gee, how could that have happened? I haven't read Sanger's book yet, and it seems to be a fat one, but going by this interview, I think it's quite telling that Sanger doesn't mention the Iraq invasion a single time. He does give passing mention to our being "preoccupied with our War on Terror". And Jon Stewart is obviously not going to pass up a chance in pointing out this obvious omission (to which Sanger declines to clearly address).

This is significant because, as a member of the Washington Foreign Policy Wonk Establishment, David Sanger was a champion of the neoconservative ideals that fed into our Wars on Terror. Sanger was a cheerleader of the Iraq invasion. So it shouldn't be surprising if he fails to account for the costs of that invasion - in terms of America's international standing, legitimacy, moral authority in addition to the economic costs and the domestic disillusionment that it spurred in the wake of the lies, corruption and torture that it represented - into his larger equation for how America has possibly fallen out of our post-Cold War catbird seat. Oh, right, that thing, that little misadventure which we all knew we'd be paying the price for decades to come. Maybe one of those prices is that those on the losing end of the Cold War - Russia and China - may choose to take advantage of this moral hypocrisy and loss of legitimacy in international propaganda campaigns while also taking advantage of their embrace of capitalism to secure markets in natural resources and rare minerals (or the very things America could have been investing in instead of expensive occupations over two of those last three decades).

Sanger's omission of Iraq from this metric of America's lost standing in the world is evident enough without Sanger's later non-response when Stewart brings it up with a "c'mon, man" smirk on his face. But it's also worth pointing out Sanger's lame attempt to draw some kind of line of consequence between the recent hostilities we're seeing from Iran and the 2009 Obama "apology tour", which name is a Fox insult for what was Obama's effort at stablizing the region which we had just broken with the Iraq invasion. Obviously, Sanger sees little to apologize for, and further was heavily crtical of Obama's military retrenchment from the War on Terror in his book at the time, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. Sanger's new book seems to be his gloating that no one took his earlier book seriously enough, but all while still ignoring the principal cause of the crisis. Sanger's description of Biden's responsibilities today are no different. (Sanger would also undermine Obama in other ways during his administration, including another book, Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, a backhanded compliment for Obama's worst war crimes. Contrast that with the fact that Sanger did not write a single book critical of either George W Bush or Donald Trump's foreign policies.)

Again, I haven't read the book. I don't know if Sanger truly reconciles the fact that both Putin and Xi began in earnest their respective pushes into global superpower and international propaganda in the years following the revelations that Iraq invasion intelligence was deliberately falsified, the revelation of our torture program, the financial meltdown which was primarily a Wall Street concoction which cost the entire globe a collective $10 trillion, and the spectacle of people like Sanger, along with the entire American National Security establishment that Sanger represents, very publicly turning their back on Obama for surrendering on NSA survelliance and refusing to escalate in Syria. Sanger can say that Putin and Xi smelled weakness, but whose? Probably not Obama's, but the weakness of the true "deep state", and the true apologists for American exceptionalism, like Sanger himself. Jon Stewart let him off easy.

Jinnistan · 5/12/2024 9:49 pm

You may or may not have noticed that a number of media heads and voices are getting softer on the prospect of Trump winning a second term. A lot of "how bad could it be?" The epitome of this is probably Bill Maher on his latest show, presenting a Trump victory in "not the end of the world" terms. "He didn't exactly start WWIII", Maher actually said, like this standard is a comfort, as opposed to the fact that every US president has managed not to start WWIII. But then again, Bill Maher likes to complain about having to pay his taxes, and millionaires like him are the ones who will see their taxes increase if Biden wins. Maybe that has something to do with it? Disproportionately, the faces and voices in our news media, as well as the editors and producers behind them, fall into the top 2% tax bracket. It's one of the grand lies of right-wing media that these elitists are secretly socialists. Trump might just buy enough time to finish fortifying the bunkers.

Mark Penn is a professional loser. You may remember him for losing Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. He was the pigface prick who had the bright idea of circulating that picture of Obama at his step-brother's Kenyan wedding with the caption "How well do we really know him?" Like other Clinton advisors (Dick Morris), Penn is not motivated by principles. He's a marketing stooge. And there's plenty of evidence that Penn has no qualms about supporting a Trump victory. But the mainstream media loves to parade out these losers to air their "wisdom" on how to win campaigns, and so it's little surprise that the New York Times is pimping Mark Penn's thoughts about how Joe Biden is bound to lose. Penn laments about "massive tax increases" and "extreme climate policies". He claims to represent the swing voters and centrists, but these concerns more closely align to elite wealth and corporate power. He's low-key suggesting that if Biden wants to win, he needs to compromise on tax and energy policy.

Coincidentally, this op-ed ran in the Times a few days after the NYT executive editor, Joe Kahn, publicly announced that the New York Times is not concerned about whether Trump wins this year's election or not. I get it. It's not their job to decide who wins elections (although all papers do endorse candidates). What amuses/amazes me in this particular instance is that the New York Times is 170 years old, and has been around for dozens of presidential elections, and I can't remember a single time in American history where the NYT felt compelled to publicly declare that they are not responsible for who does and does not win an election. So why now, I wonder? Why does this Kahn feel that simply reporting the facts of the candidates isn't sufficient, but he needs to make it clear that they're not interested in who wins the election?

As a brief aside, I'll also point out that there's a bit of insider Beltway gossip surrounding all of this. There's been tension between the NYT and the Biden team, and there's a lot of petty stuff involved: "the newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that Publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright""; "Times reporters were annoyed not to have been invited to Biden’s first public appearance after announcing his candidacy, an informal stop at a Wilmington pizzeria"; "In Sulzberger’s view, according to two people familiar with his private comments on the subject, only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency"; "one Times journalist said. 'It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age'.

That's interesting. Why has the NYT spent more time on stories over Biden's age than on stories covering his climate accomplishments or explaining how his economic policies are not responsible for inflation? Now you know.

Let's hear it from Joe Kahn: "there are people out there in the world who may decide, based on their democratic rights, to elect Donald Trump as president. It is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening."

It's the job of the news media to factually explain the consequences of these decisions. For example, if these voters are basing their decisions on factually incorrect information, or disinformation which one candidate more than the other is responsible for disseminating, it's the job of the news media to point out that these decisions are ill-founded. If one candidate is facing nearly a hundred federal felony charges, maybe that's a fact worth promoting, even if this happens to "help" the candidate who is facing zero criminal charges. If one candidate is pledging to immediately undermine the Justice Departmenta and the civil service state to allow for his committing further crimes - while asserting complete immunity - that might be facts worth privileging over the "other side" which is claiming a demonstrably racist conspiracy theory that white people are being replaced by immigrants who will magically be forever obedient to the Democratic party. Joe Kahn is pretending that he doesn't understand context and objectivity. Journalism involves editorial judgment, and sometimes that judgment is to the benefit of some people and detrimental to others.

"It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them?"

One of the essential roles of news editors is to not allow popular opinion dictate the important stories of the day. Whether it's the algorithms or these polls, these news editors have abdicated their editorial judgment to the fickle whims of public fever. Yes, the NYT should, vigorously, report factually on the issues of immigration and inflation. If they did, then there would be no question over whether these issues are favorable to Trump. The only scenario where these issues are favorable to Trump is if the NYT uncritically parrots Trump's talking points on the issue. If the NYT repurted factually on these issues, the American people probably wouldn't be so alarmed about them in the first place. Maybe I could suggest that "polls" are a piss-poor metric for deciding which stories deserve the most coverage? Because "polls" are exactly the tools used by political campaigns to try to manipulate how they are covered.

This kind of coy and phony both-sideism is exactly what some were accusing of Jon Stewart's return to the Daily Show, and although that criticism has abated, it would be interesting to see his take on this. The pendulum swing has become as flat and binary as the zero-sum good/bad either/or template of our partisan discussions. Stewart rightly derided the Washington Post for their "democracy dies in darkness" chivalry, and this "correction" (as Kahn calls it) to that reaction to Trump's "fake news" seems equally glib. Kahn calls out what he thought of the extremity of news media in the summer of 2020, with the convergence of Covid, Trump and George Floyd. The media may have taken on an activist, pedantic response to these issues, but I don't think Kahn's swing to cold indecision is the best solution. Moral ambiguity is not an answer to moral relativism. And there's nothing wrong with the news media being fundamentally moral, because truth itself is a moral principle, and there should be no shame in a news publication supporting a candidate over an overwhelmingly and objectively untruthful candidate. And a poll showing a lot of people believing untruths does not make it acceptable to ignore that fact.

This all brought back to mind one of the most embarrassing moments in the New York Times' history, back in 2012 when the public editor, Arthur Brisbane, asked his readers whether or not journalists should act as "truth vigilantes". In hindisght, it was the canary in the coalmine for our current post-truth times. (I'll also post the follow-up to this, because Brisbane is such a pouty little bitch here.)

Jinnistan · 5/13/2024 7:29 pm

Also per the NYMag Intelligencer, some additional context of the recent Mark Penn op-ed for the NYT:

Penn has always been insistent that the Democrats’ biggest weakness is their desire to tax the rich, and he returns to this claim again in the Times.

“Instead of pivoting to the center when talking to 32 million people tuned in to his State of the Union address,” he writes, “Mr. Biden doubled down on his base strategy with hits like class warfare attacks on the rich and big corporations."

In reality, taxing the rich and corporations is Biden’s most popular issue. One recent poll found that Biden’s plan to raise taxes on people making more than $400,000 a year commands support from 69 percent of registered voters. Nice. Even a majority of Republicans approve of the idea.

If Biden could get the electorate to focus on taxes, he would have a much more favorable environment. That isn’t easy. The campaign media is inherently averse to covering policy.

(Bolded raises a lot of important questions in itself for these totally objective news companies who just want to inform rather than persuade. When you cover elections like personality brands rather than the substantive policies their victories will entail, it kind of is already putting the thumb on the scale in a totally different sense.)

Penn isn’t telling Biden to stop talking about taxing the rich because he wants Biden to win. He’s doing it because he hates taxing the rich and sees an opportunity to use Biden’s travails to advance his agenda.

And to get more to the root point of this NYI article, which is that inflation remains Biden's biggest vulnerability, I can only continue to restate what should be obvious for any fact-gathering organization, which is that inflation is not Biden's fault, but has been caused by the very same corporations who may not want Biden to raise their taxes. Why this documented fact is absent from mainstream media sources is a question I'll let NYT's Joe Kahn try to explain, but this documented fact isn't even being disputed in the Business papers that have covered it (some are even appreciative of it) and extensively laid out the documented economic numbers that show the math. As the Fortune headline says, the corporations have been lying to us, and the news media has been complicit in the lie by obscuring the fact of it, while steering more attention towards polls from uninformed voters to justify their preferred (decidedly non-policy) campaign coverage.

crumbsroom · 5/14/2024 7:51 am

It's this kind of cynical, self interested nonsense by Penn which allows people to believe that the democrats are in the pocket of corporations and the wealthy, just like everyone else, which of course they kind of are. But, it would be nice if the average voter could parse which is better when it comes to how much leniency they will give the 1%. And, even if it isn't much....we are talking about fucking Trump here. It would be nice if for once people could not look exclusively at their pocket books. I get it. I struggle financially too. But there are worse things than being broke. Have some fucking speck of some ideals beyond what immediately seems like it might benefit you, people.

Jinnistan · 5/14/2024 5:24 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
It's this kind of cynical, self interested nonsense by Penn which allows people to believe that the democrats are in the pocket of corporations and the wealthy, just like everyone else, which of course they kind of are.

Penn isn't really a Democrat though. A lot of these politico folks don't have any set political principles. They're marketing men. And it's not a coincidence that Penn runs a polling company, because that's what marketing people specialize in, stats and demographics. He's all about massaging the message, to the highest bidder. There's lots of people from both parties who fall into this category, and they overwhelmingly represent the typical pundits you see on cable news. They're just there to game the game. They might as well be on ESPN. This is why it's now taken for granted that "campaign media" doesn't cover policy. Boooring! We want bookies with the numbers! Give me a horse! Let it ride!!! (*skniff*)

Jinnistan · 6/12/2024 4:04 pm

There's an interesting spin - Mobius-esque, if you will - to all of this brutally bad news about Biden's handling of the economy. Dude can't catch a break. These are some actual headlines after the recent "record-breaking accomplishments" in the recent release of employment statistics, known as the "jobs report": "Joe Biden's labor market may be too hot to handle" (Politico); "Strong jobs report presents conundrum for Biden" (theHill); "The strong jobs report is bad news for Biden" (Bloomberg). The question is whether anyone will believe this shit.

But when it comes to inflation, it's always Biden's fault. So obviously the solution for strapped working class families is to vote instead for the Republicans, who, polls show. the American people "trust" more on handling the economy, so that they can immediately fast track an extention of tax cuts for overwhelmingly wealthy families and individuals and cut corporate taxes even further than the current 21%, essentially rewarding them for their price-gouging "seller's market" greedflation, which in turn will require some rather strict cuts on public services that the working class overwhelmingly depend on. This is the perennial Republican con: "Give us what we want, and we'll take care of you". That trickle you feel on your leg isn't rain though. Corporations get paid on both ends. They get the increased profits from their self-inflicted inflation, which is used to damage Biden's reelection, so that they can get tax cuts once the Republicans win. Republicans are the party of 'fiscal responsibility', so obviously their tax cuts will only cost us around $1-5 trillion over the next ten years. "Republicans frequently argued that the law’s tax cuts would pay for themselves, but in the end, only generated enough growth to offset 20 percent of the drop in federal revenue from lower rates, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Economic growth from extending the law, the think tank found in a study published Thursday, would pay for between 1 and 14 percent of the future cost."

“The same corporations that have been price-gouging the American consumer at the grocery store, at the gas pump and everywhere else are now spending their money loading up these Republican political action committees with the plan that the Republicans will deliver even more tax cuts. It’s obscene,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told The Post.

Maybe these corporations will even be nice enough to lower some prices after the election, perhaps as a slightly palliative salve or as "proof" of Biden's failure. But even if they don't, who cares? Election's over and they got their permanent tax cuts embedded. They got bunkers to build.

This week has a macroeconomic study from American University (linking the study directly because very few mainstream news outlets have reported on it) with some intriguing analysis on Biden's proposed capital gains taxes which might be of interest to voters:

Analysis finds increasing taxes on dividends and capital gains raises revenue without impacting economic growth....increasing taxes on dividends and capital gains would raise revenue for government coffers and yield modest increases in GDP and earnings for lower-income households.

Biden’s proposal seeks to increase the tax rate on dividends and capital gains for households earning over $1 million to 39.6 percent, up from 20 percent. This would result in mild expansionary effects of increasing GDP, capital stock, employment and wages in the long term. These tax increases would raise government revenue by approximately 5 percent while fostering growth of about 1 percent.

IMPA’s review finds that tax hikes on dividends and capital gains would lead to positive benefits in helping to close the wealth inequality gap: a reduction of income and wealth among top earners and gain in significant revenues, while modestly increasing income for lower-income households.

Taxes on capital gains and dividends are levied on corporate distributions and, hence, they tax profits after investments have been made. As a result, these taxes primarily influence stock market valuations, impacting the wealth holdings of the wealthiest individuals.

The taxes represent a highly efficient means of generating revenue: They mitigate inequality without impeding economic growth.

So the Republican tax cuts will add up to $1-5 trillion to the national debt, while only generating enough growth to pay 1-14% of that cost, while Biden's plan to raise capital gains taxes will add nothing to the debt while raising wage-income and GDP.

An interesting footnote: "The economic model used by the American University study accounts for the increased private sector market power — the ability of firms to raise prices above costs — resulting from this higher degree of concentration." This concentration is driven by the stock market and shareholders. "The top 1 percent of the U.S. wealth distribution owns about half of the stock market, while the bottom half of households own just 1 percent of stocks", which is precisely why we have an unprecedentedly high stock market (The Dow over 40,000) but the vast majority of the country isn't feeling the benefit. Capital Gains taxes directly, and only, target "corporate distributions" which incentivizes price-gouging.

The dividend and capital gains rate proposals “primarily alter the valuation of stock market wealth, leaving the economy’s long-run productive capacity unaffected,” the authors of the study argue.

But rather than bother to explain any of this in lucid detail, why don't we just show you the latest polls about how people feel and their perceptions of how market economics work. After all, the only functional business media is exclusively geared towards the exact types of brokers and shareholders who have been gaming this system all along. Why piss on the party when we can just trickle on the poors?

crumbsroom · 6/12/2024 5:05 pm

Why do democrats so consistently not take charge of the conversation about who actually might sorta care about the working class?

How does the right suck up so much of the credit for economies that benefit everyone, and not just the rich?

It shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't be fucking hard. Unless there are benefits in the messengers never giving the left a lick of credit.

But of course not, because all these multi billion dollar news corporations are clearly a lock on promoting liberal cocksucker values and socialism. That good old left wing bias that is turning everyone of us into pinko turnips.

Jinnistan · 6/12/2024 8:10 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
Why do democrats so consistently not take charge of the conversation about who actually might sorta care about the working class?

I think many Dems still have their heads in the sand about how little the mainstream media is actually willing to help them. They think they're all buddy-buddy with MSNBC....until MSNBC spends an entire weekend before the election prognosticating on how damaging the Weiner laptop will be. (*spoiler* it wasn't)

As for these newer leftist podcasts, they have a more stubborn apathy towards anything that might show Dems in a positive light, and seem to take a lot of glee in undermining many of them, to show off how pure their leftism is, I guess. For example, I caught the tail-end of Young Turks, where the host was whining about Biden's problem with inflation, providing none of the numbers and analysis I point out above, none of the comparisons with Republican policies, only that "people are hurting", and then ending with the kiss-off, "Maybe we could make a better case for Biden, if only he wasn't preoccuppied trying to aid a foregin nation in slaughtering thousands of people, so...."

Just think. When Trump strolls back into office, their opportunities for performative outrage will be a veritable land of milk and honey. But I can't complain. They've never pretended to be real journalists anyway, just professional bitches. And when these bitches cost Biden the election, I won't be able to begin to count the flames on my face....

Jinnistan · 6/27/2024 10:04 pm

I'm now convinced of a couple of things at this point.

I didn't think Biden was that bad at the debate, in that he looks like the same Biden we've been seeing for months. In other words, he looked really really old, and people are saying he has a cold giving his voice a whispery rasp like death trying to escape.

It's clear to me now why they chose to hold the debate so historically early this year. Normal debates take place in September and October. The advantage of holding a debate before the Democratic Convention, where they officially chose their candidate, is that they can use the poor press from this debate to push Biden to step aside before the Convention. (By "they", I of course mean "the establishment".)

I'm also convinced that this decision must have happened prior to this particular performance, already being described as "weak" and "feeble", although it will be this performance used as an excuse for it. Watching even the Dem-friendly pundits calling the debate an outright disaster is pretty telling, even though none of these criticisms are based on substance rather than Biden's appearance and performance. In fact, somewhat amusngly, on the substance of what Biden said, these same pundits are calling him "overprepared" because he offered too much actual policy information - exactly the kind of substance that news pundits assume puts the average American dumbfuck to sleep. Trump was more rousing, even though he was substantially full of shit.

Another interesting aspect of the CNN coverage is that they had their top fact-checker do live responses, but they chose to limit this feed to Twitter/X rather than post them live to the bottom of the TV screen. Since this feed clearly showed Trump's credibility liabilities, it may have helped some of these presumably dumbfuck Americans understand how full of shit he is. Again, this factor of the debate has been curiously absent from the pundits' analysis.

We'll see, but I'm betting we're going to see a pretty aggressive "mainstream" push from the news media for Biden to step aside in the coming week or two.

Jinnistan · 6/27/2024 10:16 pm

All I'm saying....Gavin Newsome sure looks excited right now.

Jinnistan · 6/27/2024 10:54 pm

Talk of an "open convention" is already raging. The last open convention was 1968, and that went fine, right?

I'm worried that the chaos caused by this last-minute switcharoo will prove to be counterproductive. I suppose Pubs can try to say, "Look at this mess and dysfunction", trying to deflect from their own chaotic shitshows from Trump to MTG and the Freedom Caucus running all of their Speakers out of town.

There is a small part of me, as well, that feels slight relief at the prospect of a Biden replacement, or a hopeful sense that it may put some of this baggage to rest. All of that is based on the contingencies though. A worse candidate, for example, and I do fear that the replacement will be picked from a more centrist, moderate position. Essentially this will do nothing to quell the problems with the "uncommitted" youth vote, the black vote or union support, and it may involve a complete surrender on things such as the Trump tax cuts, the green energy push, Lina Khan's FTC, Gary Gensler's SEC, the CFPB, Net Neutrality and a whole host of other things that no one gives Biden credit for that have never really gotten support from these centrist pro-business Democrats. Gee, maybe we should ask Joe Manchin if he wants the job?

Rampop II · 6/27/2024 11:38 pm

That debate was excruciating. Like you said, there were no surprises in terms of form. Most notable to me were all the things left unsaid. Politicians dodging questions is nothing new. Biden spent too much time on the defensive, playing Whack–a–Mole with Trump's scattershot barrages of bullshit. He was strongest when he wasn't playing that game. Neither made a clear case. Too much time was wasted trading low–brow barbs about who's the bigger criminal, whose golf game is better and whom "The Blacks" love more. I didn't see enough pushback on the condescending rhetoric about "The Blacks," and the rampant demonizing of immigrants. Joe trailed off twice, once almost going Mitch McConnell, and those moments seemed like bumps of coke for Trump. Not that it's of much substance. That's the problem.
I only watched out of a sense of civic duty. I don't think I need to see any more. My mind is made up and I doubt tonight changed anyone else's. The Democrats need to work on their messaging. They've got the rhetorical ammo, they just seem incompetent at deploying it.
Anyone on the fence at this point might want to just skip over to scrutinizing exactly whom these two surround themselves with. I doubt the sky will fall if Kamala Harris had to finish out Joe's term. Who's Donald's running mate? Who will fill his cabinet, this time?
Ugh. I might actually drink tonight. That sounds nice.

See what you make me do, America!

Rampop II · 6/28/2024 12:18 am

Ahhh. Beer. Now I remember my patriotism.

Funny, a neighbor was just saying the same thing about expecting the Dems try to move Joe aside. I think it would be political suicide. Damn, and they're good at that.

Jinnistan · 6/28/2024 12:19 am

Rampop II wrote:
Too much time was wasted trading low–brow barbs about who's the bigger criminal

There was that one funny part, where Biden lists off Trump's civil cases, and Trump responds "I didn't have sex with a porn star". But raping a woman in public, sure, what are you going do?

Rampop II wrote:
whose golf game is better and whom "The Blacks" love more

That was all Trump.

Rampop II wrote:
Joe trailed off twice, once almost going Mitch McConnell

Yeah, the "We beat Medicare" is likely to be the big meme of the night.

Rampop II wrote:
They've got the rhetorical ammo, they just seem incompetent at deploying it.

It was brought to my attention that Biden didn't mention the Inflation Reduction Act a single time. Part of the problem is that stuff like this is unfortunately conventional wisdom among the "wizards" of campaign politics, the notion that actually talking policy is boring and should be avoided at all cost.

Rampop II wrote:
I doubt the sky will fall if Kamala Harris had to finish out Joe's term.

I am kinda hoping a DUI will allow Biden to pick someone else at this point. And just for irony, I hope its weed.

Rampop II wrote:
Who's Donald's running mate? Who will fill his cabinet, this time?

I posted about the Project 2025 a while back. Lots of the same stooges with boring names like Stephen Miller, Jeffery Clark, Russ Vought and a whole horde of Christian Nationalists.

Rampop II wrote:
Ugh. I might actually drink tonight. That sounds nice.

See what you make me do, America!