EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 3568
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Soularion
Canada2764 Posts
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Wolfstan
Canada605 Posts
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Soularion
Canada2764 Posts
On April 07 2016 18:11 Wolfstan wrote: I never really understood how minds and poll numbers changed so drastically after a debate or an interview. I can now say that after this week I am starting to lean toward Hilary more than Bernie. The last 30 or so pages of debate and that disastrous interview have really made inroads in my opinion. Well argued from the pro Hilary posters in this thread lately. Just to have a debate on the subject 'cause I wasn't really around earlier- what parts of the interview in specific make it 'disastrous' to you? | ||
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kwizach
3658 Posts
On April 07 2016 15:52 Soularion wrote: She's getting flashbacks from her 'free win' in 2008 and is getting desperate, meaning that she's going negative because she thinks that she could just attack Sanders and because he's a weaker candidate he'd fall apart first. Going negative is a bit dumb because - similar to what you said - it'll just make things more extreme. Either it'll work and she'll absolutely clean house on Bernie, or it won't work and Bernie will start to steamroll her going into NY and PA- I doubt it'll remain very close. This is a bizarre take on the race, because not only does Sanders have no chance of "steamrolling" her in NY and PA, but it's actually his campaign which has grown desperate and is ramping up the negativity toward Clinton. They have been attacking her character for some time now, and the criticism Sanders has faced for his interview has led to more ridiculous attacks against Clinton -- for example Jeff Weaver had this ridiculous message for her yesterday: "Don't destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary's ambitions to become president of the United States", which is probably the most ironic statement he could have made. Sanders also said that Hillary should apologize for the dead in Iraq, in response to a query about Sandy Hook that did not even come from her but from relatives of the victims, and his advisers boasted a couple of days ago that they were running focus groups to determine which negative attacks would hurt Clinton the most in NY. More to the point, and I believe this is what oneofthem referred to, Sanders just directly said that Hillary was not qualified to be president, right after falsely claiming that she had called him "quote unquote not qualified". This is false -- she even went out of her way yesterday morning to avoid calling him unqualified in an interview with Joe Scarborough. Also, the reasons Sanders called her unqualified all apply to Obama except the Iraq vote (doubt he'd be saying that against Biden, though), and it's probably one of the most nonsensical attacks he could think of considering she's the most qualified person in the race by far, and one of the most qualified candidates in recent elections (regardless of whether or not you agree with her). There's really no defending the myth that Sanders would not go negative in this campaign anymore. It's too bad, because I feel that if Sanders' advisers had both been more honest with him regarding the math and had not been pushing him to attack Hillary since last year, this could have been a much more positive campaign with two candidates actually reinforcing each other. | ||
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Soularion
Canada2764 Posts
On April 07 2016 19:19 kwizach wrote: This is a bizarre take on the race, because not only does Sanders have no chance of "steamrolling" her in NY and PA, but it's actually his campaign which has grown desperate and is ramping up the negativity toward Clinton. They have been attacking her character for some time now, and the criticism Sanders has faced for his interview has led to more ridiculous attacks against Clinton -- for example Jeff Weaver had this ridiculous message for her yesterday: "Don't destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary's ambitions to become president of the United States", which is probably the most ironic statement he could have made. Sanders also said that Hillary should apologize for the dead in Iraq, in response to a query about Sandy Hook that did not even come from her but from relatives of the victims. More to the point, and I believe this is what oneofthem referred to, Sanders just directly said that Hillary was not qualified to be president, right after falsely claiming that she had called him "quote unquote not qualified". This is false -- she even went out of her way yesterday morning to avoid calling him unqualified in an interview with Joe Scarborough. Also, the reasons Sanders called her unqualified all apply to Obama except the Iraq vote (doubt he'd be saying that against Biden, though), and it's probably one of the most nonsensical attacks he could think of considering she's the most qualified person in the race by far, and one of the most qualified candidates in recent elections (regardless of whether or not you agree with her). There's really no defending the myth that Sanders would not go negative in this campaign anymore. It's too bad, because I feel that if Sanders' advisers had both been more honest with him regarding the math and had not been pushing him to attack Hillary since last year, this could have been a much more positive campaign with two candidates actually reinforcing each other. Just for the ease of viewers, I've spoiler-ed my response as it gets pretty damn lengthy. I don't really want to argue on this because it's something we can agree to disagree on, but you haven't provided any sources and in a couple cases blatantly misinterpret/straight up distort the facts so I've gone through and given the facts as I see them with sources in a way to explain why I think the Clinton campaign has made a misstep and why I don't think the Sanders campaign is imploding - although he's made his fair share of mistakes in these past 48 hours. + Show Spoiler + Well, to begin with, I didn't (at least in that post) mention Sanders going negative or not- I think he has. I think he's realized more and more that the only way to get his name out there and to become a better candidate than Clinton is to attack her, and he's done that. Personally, I don't care much if Sanders runs a negative campaign or a positive campaign or whatever. With that in mind, I'm gonna break down a few points. First off, you can link all of the 'character attacks' Sanders has made BEFORE these past couple weeks (and especially before today) but from what I've seen -- key sentence -- he's ran a largely positive campaign until today. Feel free to prove me wrong, in which case I will concede defeat on this point. - "Don't destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary's ambitions to become president of the United States." this is referring to comments Hillary Clinton made throughout the week such as 'I feel sorry sometimes for the young people who believe this, they don't do their own research.' in response to the comments about Greenpeace which I think are arguable, but this alienates a big branch of the youth vote in the Democratic party and generally was met with a lot of harsh reception from Bernie fans. These types of statements divide the party, and ultimately were capitalized by the aggressive move that the Clinton campaign made in that fateful sentence-- "Disqualify Bernie Sanders, then defeat him, then unify the party afterwards". Do you believe that's a positive campaign strategy? Do you think that's a campaign strategy that oozes confidence and security in the status quo? To me, that signifies mounting tensions and pressure to *end it already*. - "Sanders also said that Hillary should apologize for the dead in Iraq, in response to a query about Sandy Hook that did not even come from her but from relatives of the victims." Simply responding with the facts. - this is Hillary Clinton joining in on the NYDN's cover to pressure Sanders for putting gun manufacturers over the children in Sandy Hook. - this is the actual -source- for his comments. Note that this is a 'Congressional Correspondant' for CBC, not a goddamn relative of the Sandy Hook victims. Lastly, do note that the Iraq War is a thing that Hillary Clinton actively supported and voted for, while Sanders in no way supported the Sandy Hook massacre and in fact is in favor of taking steps to stop it. How is this a negative attack from Sanders? He's questioning Hillary for something /she supported/ in response to Hillary and others questioning him for something he doesn't even support. - More to the point, and I believe this is what oneofthem referred to, Sanders just directly said that Hillary was not qualified to be president, right after falsely claiming that she had called him "quote unquote not qualified". This is false -- she even went out of her way yesterday morning to avoid calling him unqualified in an interview with Joe Scarborough. Oh, this is your big point, isn't it? Well, okay. First off let's get to the facts- in response to questions about whether or not Bernie Sanders is qualified to be president, Hillary first hit him on the interview and then proceeded to say "it raises questions for voters to ask themselves", "I am by far the better candidate" and some other really long-winded ways of dancing around the question without actually saying no but heavily, heavily implying no. Sanders misspoke here. He said 'quote unquote' in relation to Hillary Clinton, which isn't entirely true. It would be correct if he said that the Campaign was implying that he was disqualified to be president- that was mentioned directly in the statement I mentioned above, and it was also heavily implied in the interview which you can see here : In short- Sanders is replying to a general tone and a heavy implication so his comments don't lack in reasoning, but did make a clear mistake in quoting her. Secondly, and more importantly, Sanders is hitting Clinton on reasons why she is not -ready- to be president- her judgement. He pointed out numerous (and fair) times where Clinton was on the wrong side of an issue and used that to raise a point that, if she's been wrong so many times before, it's unwise to trust her to not be wrong again. Is it a negative attack? Sure. Have the Clintons ran an entirely positive campaign? Nope. Is it factually incorrect? Nope. Is it morally incorrect? Up to the voters to decide. In terms of chances of steamrolling, well, we'll wait and see. That's definitely his 'win condition', but I have no clue how likely it is or how possible it is. Again I'd say around ~5% chance of a victory in NY/PA, which is fair according to any actual source that isn't just 'gut feeling'. I'd go back on my wording regarding 'desperate' - something like 'antsy' or 'impatient' would be a lot more fitting - but the general air in the Clinton campaign is one of 'okay lets just go more aggressive and hope it works', which will inherently divide people and leads to much clearer feelings and much less uncertainty. Therefor, it's hit or miss, and that uncertainty makes it a bad campaign move in my eyes. I didn't even mention Sanders' campaign or his desperation or any of that, which you could easily make a case for. So- regarding my actual post and the point made of Clinton's aggression being a sub-par move, do you disagree on that point, or are you merely arguing for no reason? | ||
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Wolfstan
Canada605 Posts
On April 07 2016 18:49 Soularion wrote: Just to have a debate on the subject 'cause I wasn't really around earlier- what parts of the interview in specific make it 'disastrous' to you? The fiscal/corporate part of the interview mostly. Foreign and social policy has never really been a voting issue for me. + Show Spoiler + Daily News: Okay. Well, would you name, say, three American corporate giants that are destroying the national fabric? Sanders: JPMorgan Chase, and virtually every other major bank in this country. Let me be very clear, all right? I believe that we can and should move to what Pope Francis calls a moral economy. Right now, there are still millions of people in this country who are suffering the results of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And when you have companies like Goldman Sachs and many other major banks reaching settlements with the United States government, as you're aware, for many billions of dollars, this is an implicit admission that they have engaged in illegal activity. Using the words Pope and morality make me roll my eyes at the weakness of the argument, in the eyes I compare it to Republican draconian social policy and dismiss it much the same way. A settlement is not an admission of guilt to me, especially if a candidate is proposing incarceration for executives based upon that. He seems unable to articulate and assuage the fears that he may be trampling rights to put into action his rhetoric. He doesn't specify if he will act on his proposals based on legislation already passed or need new legislation to act in his first year of his administration. + Show Spoiler + Daily News: And then, you further said that you expect to break them up within the first year of your administration. What authority do you have to do that? And how would that work? How would you break up JPMorgan Chase? Sanders: Well, by the way, the idea of breaking up these banks is not an original idea. It's an idea that some conservatives have also agreed to. You've got head of, I think it's, the Kansas City Fed, some pretty conservative guys, who understands. Let's talk about the merit of the issue, and then talk about how we get there. Right now, what you have are two factors. We bailed out Wall Street because the banks are too big to fail, correct? It turns out, that three out of the four largest banks are bigger today than they were when we bailed them out, when they were too-big-to-fail. That's number one. Number two, if you look at the six largest financial institutions of this country, their assets somewhere around $10 trillion. That is equivalent to 58% of the GDP of America. They issue two-thirds of the credit cards in this country, and about one-third of the mortgages. That is a lot of power. And I think that if somebody, like if Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he would look at that. Forgetting even the risk element, the bailout element, and just look at the kind of financial power that these guys have, would say that is too much power. After condemning Trump and his lack of specifics, he proceeds to namedrop(poorly) a conservative group, meme, ,meme, namedrop Teddy. Yes, he checks the boxes for talking points but he was asked for specifics. + Show Spoiler + Daily News: Okay. Well, let's assume that you're correct on that point. How do you go about doing it? Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail. Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority? Sanders: Well, I don't know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it. Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, "Now you must do X, Y and Z?" Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination. Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do? Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do. Daily News: So if you look forward, a year, maybe two years, right now you have...JPMorgan has 241,000 employees. About 20,000 of them in New York. $192 billion in net assets. What happens? What do you foresee? What is JPMorgan in year two of... Sanders: What I foresee is a stronger national economy. And, in fact, a stronger economy in New York State, as well. What I foresee is a financial system which actually makes affordable loans to small and medium-size businesses. Does not live as an island onto themselves concerned about their own profits. And, in fact, creating incredibly complicated financial tools, which have led us into the worst economic recession in the modern history of the United States. Daily News: I get that point. I'm just looking at the method because, actions have reactions, right? There are pluses and minuses. So, if you push here, you may get an unintended consequence that you don't understand. So, what I'm asking is, how can we understand? If you look at JPMorgan just as an example, or you can do Citibank, or Bank of America. What would it be? What would that institution be? Would there be a consumer bank? Where would the investing go? Sanders: I'm not running JPMorgan Chase or Citibank. Daily News: No. But you'd be breaking it up. Sanders: That's right. And that is their decision as to what they want to do and how they want to reconfigure themselves. That's not my decision. All I am saying is that I do not want to see this country be in a position where it was in 2008, where we have to bail them out. And, in addition, I oppose that kind of concentration of ownership entirely. You're asking a question, which is a fair question. But let me just take your question and take it to another issue. Alright? It would be fair for you to say, "Well, Bernie, you got on there that you are strongly concerned about climate change and that we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel. What happens to the people in the fossil fuel industry?" That's a fair question. But the other part of that is if we do not address that issue the planet we’re gonna leave your kids and your grandchildren may not be a particularly healthy or habitable one. So I can't say, if you're saying that we’re going to break up the banks, will it have a negative consequence on some people? I suspect that it will. Will it have a positive impact on the economy in general? Yes, I think it will. Daily News: Well, it does depend on how you do it, I believe. And, I'm a little bit confused because just a few minutes ago you said the U.S. President would have authority to order... Sanders: No, I did not say we would order. I did not say that we would order. The President is not a dictator. Daily News: Okay. You would then leave it to JPMorgan Chase or the others to figure out how to break it, themselves up. I'm not quite... Sanders: You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up. Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program? Sanders: It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that. These follow up questions show excellent reporting. He goes from maybe needing more legislation passed to the legislation is currently good enough to maybe some agencies but not others to yes we can and it will be great to the banks have a better way to accomplish my goals to I want to change the subject to be about climate change to I'm not a dictator but I can appoint some great, great, smart people,(Trump voice in my head) When Bernie was my preferred candidate the answer I wanted to hear was, "Too big to fail is not an asset or employee size, having the trillionth dollar on the books or hiring the hundred thousandth employee is not the problem. Mixing asset and liability types and complexities are where I believe we need stronger regulation. Should one of these entities require a bailout the equity should be destroyed and the liabilities renegotiated." + Show Spoiler + Daily News: Okay. Staying with Wall Street, you've pointed out, that "not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy." Why was that? Why did that happen? Why was there no prosecution? Sanders: I would suspect that the answer that some would give you is that while what they did was horrific, and greedy and had a huge impact on our economy, that some suggest that...that those activities were not illegal. I disagree. And I think an aggressive attorney general would have found illegal activity. Daily News: So do you think that President Obama's Justice Department essentially was either in the tank or not as... Sanders: No, I wouldn’t say they were in the tank. I'm saying, a Sanders administration would have a much more aggressive attorney general looking at all of the legal implications. All I can tell you is that if you have Goldman Sachs paying a settlement fee of $5 billion, other banks paying a larger fee, I think most Americans think, "Well, why do they pay $5 billion?" Not because they're heck of a nice guys who want to pay $5 billion. Something was wrong there. And if something was wrong, I think they were illegal activities. Daily News: Okay. But do you have a sense that there is a particular statute or statutes that a prosecutor could have or should have invoked to bring indictments? Sanders: I suspect that there are. Yes. Daily News: You believe that? But do you know? Sanders: I believe that that is the case. Do I have them in front of me, now, legal statutes? No, I don't. But if I would...yeah, that's what I believe, yes. When a company pays a $5 billion fine for doing something that's illegal, yeah, I think we can bring charges against the executives. Daily News: I'm only pressing because you've made it such a central part of your campaign. And I wanted to know what the mechanism would be to accomplish it. Sanders: Let me be very clear about this. Alright? Let me repeat what I have said. Maybe you've got a quote there. I do believe that, to a significant degree, the business model of Wall Street is fraud. And you asked me, you started this discussion off appropriately enough about when I talk about morality. When I talk about it, that's what I think. I think when you have the most powerful financial institutions in this country, whose assets are equivalent to 58% of the GDP of this country, who day after day engage in fraudulent activity, that sets a tone. That sets a tone for some 10-year-old kid in this country who says, "Look, these people are getting away from it. They're lying. They're cheating. Why can't I do that?" Daily News: What kind of fraudulent activity are you referring to when you say that? Sanders: What kind of fraudulent activity? Fraudulent activity that brought this country into the worst economic decline in its history by selling packages of fraudulent, fraudulent, worthless subprime mortgages. How's that for a start? Selling products to people who you knew could not repay them. Lying to people without allowing them to know that in a year, their interest rates would be off the charts. They would not repay that. Bundling these things. Putting them into packages with good mortgages. That's fraudulent activity. Daily News: All right. You say also that the big financial institutions and the wealthy have rigged the game against regular Americans. And you've also criticized Hillary Clinton for saying, "We just need to impose a few more fees and regulations on the finance industry." Sanders: Yep. He starts off by saying that a more aggressive attorney general should have had more luck in finding illegal activity. I see this as supporting a witch hunt. My opinion is that the burden of proof should be less to administer a regulatory fine than to recommend incarceration. He could neither communicate specific laws that were broken nor specific individuals that broke them. This brings a fear to me and my regard for constitutional rights. These kinds of exchanges keep me vigilant about people either disappearing into the night or being bought before a kangaroo court. I really wanted Sanders to have better answers to a central part of his platform. | ||
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Deleted User 137586
7859 Posts
While the focus of the Republican presidential campaign shifts eastward to the New York primary, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is pivoting west, where he is quietly trying to chip away at Donald Trump’s lead in the race for convention delegates. Cruz won six pledged delegates during a pair of obscure, congressional-level Colorado GOP assemblies on Saturday. He is also poised to make gains in several other western Republican contests, including a possible sweep of Colorado’s remaining assemblies, due to conclude Saturday. Cruz’s success in the complex delegate game is helping him counter Trump’s headline-grabbing wins in big states and would give the Texas senator a tactical advantage should the party’s presidential nomination come down to a rare contested convention. “Cruz is ahead of everyone on this,” Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg said, describing Cruz’s aggressive but quiet delegate strategy as “equally important” to the actual votes. Source | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On April 07 2016 09:58 cLutZ wrote: At the end of Colonization countries like Rhodesia had transnational railways that rivaled those of Europe. Near the end of British control Argentina had a median GDP per capita nearly on par with the United States, prior to Castro the same was true of Cuba. Whitehat is legitimately crazy. Colonialism did a great deal of bad things to undeveloped countries. Failure of infrastructure is not one of those things. The infrastructures were state of the art...to facilitate the more exploitative things. We might not understand each others if you think the only infrastructure needed to permit an economy to function is the train. To trade, you need a state, a set of regulations, something that plays the role of an army and a police force, some stability, etc. : basically an institutional frame. In Africa (and not necessarily elsewhere for various reasons), all the structure of powers that gave stability to those areas were destroyed by the colonization, their agriculture was completly replaced by the european agriculture, completly useless for the african environment. There are tons of book on the subject, and tons of articles, really from my point of view you're the "ignorant crazy" guy who actually believe road and rails are actually relevant for an economy that has no government, no common language, no system for fiscal redistribution, etc. Those roads were destined to disappear, due to the incapacity of the local governments to actually take care of them. Some article on the subject. Was colonization costly for France? Did French taxpayers contribute to colonies’ development? This article reveals that French West Africa’s colonization took only 0.29 percent of French annual expenditures, including 0.24 percent for military and central administration and 0.05 percent for French West Africa’s development. For West Africans, the contribution from French taxpayers was almost negligible: mainland France provided about 2 percent of French West Africa’s revenue. In fact, colonization was a considerable burden for African taxpayers since French civil servants’ salaries absorbed a disproportionate share of local expenditures. http://econ.sciences-po.fr/sites/default/files/file/elise/S0022050714000011a.pdf The Balance of the Evidence So far we have argued that though colonialism had uniform effects, one can make clear distinctions between three types of African colonies. Those which coincided, usually coincidentally, with pre-colonial African polities, the colonies of white settlement and nally those which either had no centralized states or were a heterogeneous mixture (like Nigeria) and or lacked white colonization. Putting the evidence and arguments about counter-factuals and mechanisms together we argue that in first and second sorts of colonies there is a clear case to be made for colonialism retarding development. Making this case entails counter-factuals for both the colonial and post-colonial period. In the introduction we proposed some simple ones, based really on continuity with the pre-colonial experience. In colonies which coincided with relatively centralized polities there was the essentials of order and public goods provision which could have been the basis for development (Warner, 1999). Botswana is a perfect case. Though Botswana has been an African success since independence it is likely that absent British colonialism Botswana would be a great deal more developed today. Prior to the colonial period Tswana elites were already reforming institutions and showing an extraordinary ability to negotiate with external forces, traits which reproduced themselves after independence. Yet during the colonial period institutional reform was held in check in Botswana and instead chiefs and elites had to ght a rearguard action to stop such forces as indirect rule and mining from destroying their polities and the fruits of their previous institutional innovations. At the same time the British provided more or less nothing in terms of education, health, infrastructure or other types of public goods. After independence Botswana was able to benefit from its coherence as a polity and because the pre-colonial institutions which persisted were ones that promoted accountability. Generally, there is a negative correlation in Africa between pre-colonial political centralization and the extent of such accountability institutions (for example using the data in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, see Osafo-Kwaako and Robinson, 2012) and the state in Rwanda, for example, backed the type of accountability mechanisms the Tswana had. Nevertheless, it is overwhelmingly plausible that Botswana would be much more developed today had it not been colonized. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18566.pdf We exploit differences in European mortality rates to estimate the effect of institutions on economic performance. Europeans adopted very different colonization policies in different colonies, with different associated institutions. In places where Europeans faced high mortality rates, they could not settle and were more likely to set up extractive institutions. These institutions persisted to the present. Exploiting differences in European mortality rates as an instrument for current institutions, we estimate large effects of institutions on income per capita. Once the effect of institutions is controlled for, countries in Africa or those closer to the equator do not have lower incomes. Many economists and social scientists believe that differences in institutions and state policies are at the root of large differences in income per capita across countries. There is little agreement, however, about what determines institutions and government attitudes towards economic progress, making it difficult to isolate exogenous sources of variation in institutions to estimate their effect on performance. In this paper we argued that differences in colonial experience could be a source of exogenous differences in institutions. Our argument rests on the following premises: (1) Europeans adopted very different colonization strategies, with different associated institutions. In one extreme, as in the case of the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, they went and settled in the colonies and set up institutions the colonies and set up institutions that enforced the rule of law and encouraged investment. In the other extreme, as in the Congo or the Gold Coast, they set up extractive states with the intention of transferring resources rapidly to the metropole. These institutions were detrimental to investment and economic progress. (2) The colonization straegy was in part determined by the feasibility of European settlement. In places where Europeans faced very high mortality rates, they could not go and settle, and they were more likely to set up extractive states. (3) Finally, we argue that these early institutions persisted to the present. Determinants of whether Europeans could go and settle in the colonies, therefore, have an important effect on institutions today. We exploit these differences as a source of exogenous variation to estimate the impact of institutions on economic performance. There is a high correlation between mortality rates faced by soldiers, bishops, and sailors in the colonies and European settlements; between European settlements and early measures of institutions; and between early institutions and institutions today. We estimate large effects of institutions on income per capita using this source of variation. We also document that this relationship is not driven by outliers, and is robust to controlling for latitude, climate, current disease environment, religion, natural resources, soil quality, ethnolinguistic fragmentation, and current racial composition. And the last sentence of the article : Africa is poor today because it has experienced a long vicious circle of the development of political and economic institutions http://economics.mit.edu/files/7641 Took time finding back those things and putting the english transcript damn. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15690 Posts
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
I guess he didn't want it to be about emails, just speeches she gave. | ||
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Kipsate
Netherlands45349 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21694 Posts
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Mohdoo
United States15690 Posts
On April 07 2016 22:45 Gorsameth wrote: I dont think the race changed Bernie. I think its more that he thought his message alone would be enough to carry the day but it turned out not to be the case. And I just sit here, grinning, realizing that all these idealists are having their dreams shattered. I love knowing that people had this unreasonably romantic idea of Sanders being some sort of political Jesus on his way to the presidency. Nope, resorting to lies, distortion and just general idiocy. And he'll still lose. | ||
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kwizach
3658 Posts
On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: Just for the ease of viewers, I've spoiler-ed my response as it gets pretty damn lengthy. I don't really want to argue on this because it's something we can agree to disagree on, but you haven't provided any sources and in a couple cases blatantly misinterpret/straight up distort the facts so I've gone through and given the facts as I see them with sources in a way to explain why I think the Clinton campaign has made a misstep and why I don't think the Sanders campaign is imploding - although he's made his fair share of mistakes in these past 48 hours. Declaring I misinterpreted/straight up distorted the facts does not make it true. Nowhere in my post did I misrepresent the facts. I also did not argue that his campaign was imploding. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: Well, to begin with, I didn't (at least in that post) mention Sanders going negative or not- I think he has. I think he's realized more and more that the only way to get his name out there and to become a better candidate than Clinton is to attack her, and he's done that. Personally, I don't care much if Sanders runs a negative campaign or a positive campaign or whatever. With that in mind, I'm gonna break down a few points. Well, given that you wrote an entire post explaining that it was "a bit dumb" for Clinton to go negative and that it could hugely backfire, I provided some context to point out that Sanders had been going negative, and had in fact been attacking Clinton's character, for quite some time. I didn't say you were denying that Sanders had gone negative. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: First off, you can link all of the 'character attacks' Sanders has made BEFORE these past couple weeks (and especially before today) but from what I've seen -- key sentence -- he's ran a largely positive campaign until today. Feel free to prove me wrong, in which case I will concede defeat on this point. "Largely positive" is very vague, and I'm certainly not saying that he's been as vicious as plenty of political campaigns in the past. Yet there is no denying that he has been going negative for some time now, with the first cracks in his stance appearing at the end of January/beginning of February. In what had been until then a campaign focused almost essentially on the issues, he started including jabs at Clinton not for her positions on various topics but through innuendos that she was doing Wall Street's bidding and that she was in the pocket of special interests because of her campaign contributions. You don't need to be outright saying "she is corrupt" to be clearly sending a negative message about someone to the voters. This was still very tame, though, but it continued until March saw his campaign and Sanders himself substantially double down on these attacks on her character and integrity. It's too bad, because he initially rejected attacking her like that, and it was his view that even her paid speeches were not something he should criticize her for, saying she had the right to make money. And now, as we saw this week, his rhetoric has gone even beyond that, arguing that she is "unqualified" to be president. I don't think either Hillary or Obama ever said that about each other in 2008. Again, I'm certainly not saying Sanders' campaign is outrageously more negative than many other campaigns (the 2008 Democratic primary took many nasty turns), but he said his campaign would remain entirely positive and that has simply not been the case for more than one month. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: - "Don't destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary's ambitions to become president of the United States." this is referring to comments Hillary Clinton made throughout the week such as 'I feel sorry sometimes for the young people who believe this, they don't do their own research.' in response to the comments about Greenpeace which I think are arguable, but this alienates a big branch of the youth vote in the Democratic party and generally was met with a lot of harsh reception from Bernie fans. These types of statements divide the party, and ultimately were capitalized by the aggressive move that the Clinton campaign made in that fateful sentence-- "Disqualify Bernie Sanders, then defeat him, then unify the party afterwards". Do you believe that's a positive campaign strategy? Do you think that's a campaign strategy that oozes confidence and security in the status quo? To me, that signifies mounting tensions and pressure to *end it already*. The idea that Hillary Clinton is anywhere close to destroying the Democratic Party is ludicrous. She has been a Democrat for decades, has worked relentlessly for years to raise money for the Democratic party and for Democrats running for office at various levels, is still doing that, and she's repeatedly tried to focus on opposing Trump and the GOP rather than on defeating Sanders in this race. Meanwhile, around the turn of the 1990s, Sanders called the Democratic party and the GOP "tweedle-dee" and "tweedle-dum", and argued that the Democratic party was "ideologically bankrupt". Did he work with the Democrats? Sure, since he's obviously much closer to them than to the GOP (and that's also the only way he was going to get committee assignments). Yet even now, on his facebook page, he presents himself as an Independent and not a Democrat. With regards to actually damaging the party, he recently said in a TYT interview that to a large extent the Democratic party was the "party of the upper middle class and the cocktail crowd and the heavy campaign contributors", and that if he didn't win the nomination, he'd ask "what is the Democratic establishment gonna do for us?", essentially saying they were going to need to work for his endorsement or else. He's the one who has used demonizing rhetoric to present Hillary and the Democratic party as out-of-touch with ordinary citizens, as if he had a monopoly on talking to, and working for, the people. Clinton saying that the young people who fell for specific distortions weren't doing their own research doesn't even come close, since all she was saying is that looking into the matter should lead anyone to conclude she's not in the pocket of the oil & gas industry. Sanders, meanwhile, has essentially been portraying the major figures siding with Hillary as "the establishment" and disconnected from the reality of ordinary citizens, wielding a brand of populism which can be particularly divisive and which has been divisive in other countries. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: - "Sanders also said that Hillary should apologize for the dead in Iraq, in response to a query about Sandy Hook that did not even come from her but from relatives of the victims." Simply responding with the facts. + Show Spoiler [twitter] + https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/717797172154998784 + Show Spoiler [twitter] + https://twitter.com/nancycordes/status/717824134655377408 - this is the actual -source- for his comments. Note that this is a 'Congressional Correspondant' for CBC, not a goddamn relative of the Sandy Hook victims. Perhaps you should have paid a closer look to the tweet from Nancy Cordes that you just cited, since in her first sentence she mentions "calls for him to apologize to Sandy Hook victims". Who did those calls come from? Like I said, families of the Sandy Hook victims (first five seconds of the video): Did Hillary join in on the criticism? Sure, but the fact remains, as I wrote, that he was asked about a query for him to apologize coming from relatives of the Sandy Hook victims, and he ended up saying that Hillary should apologize for the dead in Iraq. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: Lastly, do note that the Iraq War is a thing that Hillary Clinton actively supported and voted for, while Sanders in no way supported the Sandy Hook massacre and in fact is in favor of taking steps to stop it. How is this a negative attack from Sanders? He's questioning Hillary for something /she supported/ in response to Hillary and others questioning him for something he doesn't even support. Nobody is arguing that Sanders supported the Sandy Hook massacre, obviously. This is about his comments about the suit that some families of the victims are trying to bring against gun manufacturers. Again, he's saying Hillary should apologize for the dead in Iraq in his response to relatives of Sandy Hook families asking him to apologize for his comments on their desire to sue gun manufacturers. I'm not sure in which universe that is not a negative response, but in any case 1. Hillary did already apologize for her vote and 2. to place the responsibility on Clinton for the all of the American deaths which resulted from the Iraq war solely for her vote (which she explained at length at the time (before casting it) was first and foremost a means to force Saddam Hussein to the negotiating table through the threat of intervention) is hardly fair. Was her vote a terrible mistake, for which she should strongly be criticized? Absolutely. But his statement goes beyond that and is, as I pointed out, another example of him and his campaign lashing out against Clinton much more negatively than what was previously the case. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: - More to the point, and I believe this is what oneofthem referred to, Sanders just directly said that Hillary was not qualified to be president, right after falsely claiming that she had called him "quote unquote not qualified". This is false -- she even went out of her way yesterday morning to avoid calling him unqualified in an interview with Joe Scarborough. Oh, this is your big point, isn't it? Well, okay. First off let's get to the facts- in response to questions about whether or not Bernie Sanders is qualified to be president, Hillary first hit him on the interview and then proceeded to say "it raises questions for voters to ask themselves", "I am by far the better candidate" and some other really long-winded ways of dancing around the question without actually saying no but heavily, heavily implying no. Sanders misspoke here. He said 'quote unquote' in relation to Hillary Clinton, which isn't entirely true. It would be correct if he said that the Campaign was implying that he was disqualified to be president- that was mentioned directly in the statement I mentioned above, and it was also heavily implied in the interview which you can see here : + Show Spoiler [video] + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfQr5RmSUAE In short- Sanders is replying to a general tone and a heavy implication so his comments don't lack in reasoning, but did make a clear mistake in quoting her. Erm, "not entirely true"? No, see, when you use "quote unquote", it means you're quoting someone verbatim. It wasn't true at all that Clinton called him unqualified. It's a false statement, and it's a false statement which he used to justify calling her unqualified. With regards to the interview, the facts are again how I described them: Clinton went out of her way to not say that he was unqualified. She was certainly making the argument that he was unprepared with regards to one of his core issues and to implementing his agenda, but being unprepared is very different from being unqualified. She was as civil as can be in her criticism of Sanders for his answers in that interview. The facts are, therefore: 1. Clinton voiced criticism of Sanders for his lack of preparedness with regards to the implementation of his own platform 2. Clinton refused to call Sanders "unqualified" although the host baited such an answer three times 3. Sanders made the false assertion that Clinton had called him "unqualified" 4. Sanders declared that it was Clinton who was unqualified to be president. As I mentioned previously, I don't think the Obama vs Clinton primary ever went as far as one of the two declaring the other was "unqualified" for the presidency. There was Clinton's "telephone call at 3 AM" ad whose purpose was to argue to make the case that she was the one who was ready to take a call like that, but it's obviously not on the same level as outright saying your opponent is unqualified. That is an outrageous statement to make when your opponent is as qualified as Hillary is. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: Secondly, and more importantly, Sanders is hitting Clinton on reasons why she is not -ready- to be president- her judgement. He pointed out numerous (and fair) times where Clinton was on the wrong side of an issue and used that to raise a point that, if she's been wrong so many times before, it's unwise to trust her to not be wrong again. Is it a negative attack? Sure. Have the Clintons ran an entirely positive campaign? Nope. Is it factually incorrect? Nope. Is it morally incorrect? Up to the voters to decide. No need to change the word he used -- he didn't say she was not ready, he said she was "unqualified". Merriam-Webster defines qualified as "having the necessary skill, experience, or knowledge to do a particular job or activity : having the qualifications to do something". Hillary Clinton is not unqualified to be president, and she's in fact one of the best qualified presidential candidates in recent elections for that job. Disagreeing with Clinton on the issues is perfectly fine, as is criticizing her judgment on decisions she's made. Yet saying she's unqualified is on another level (and yet again attacking her integrity with no substance to back it up is also pathetic), and it's simply false. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: In terms of chances of steamrolling, well, we'll wait and see. That's definitely his 'win condition', but I have no clue how likely it is or how possible it is. Again I'd say around ~5% chance of a victory in NY/PA, which is fair according to any actual source that isn't just 'gut feeling'. I agree with that assessment. I was objecting to your use of the term "steamroll", however, which is not the same as simply winning. I don't see Sanders as having any chance of greatly overwhelming Clinton by sizable margins in NY and PA, in the very unlikely event that he does win those states. On April 07 2016 19:54 Soularion wrote: I'd go back on my wording regarding 'desperate' - something like 'antsy' or 'impatient' would be a lot more fitting - but the general air in the Clinton campaign is one of 'okay lets just go more aggressive and hope it works', which will inherently divide people and leads to much clearer feelings and much less uncertainty. Therefor, it's hit or miss, and that uncertainty makes it a bad campaign move in my eyes. I didn't even mention Sanders' campaign or his desperation or any of that, which you could easily make a case for. So- regarding my actual post and the point made of Clinton's aggression being a sub-par move, do you disagree on that point, or are you merely arguing for no reason? I agree with the term impatient, and "frustrated" would be accurate as well. She's impatient/frustrated on two levels: she was hoping to no longer have to expend funds in pursuit of the Democratic nomination at this point, hoping to be able to focus on the general election and use them in battleground states instead. She is also frustrated at the dishonest character attacks targeting her -- she's been facing smears like that from the Republicans for 25 years, but it's very disappointing to see progressives go that route. And it's especially disappointing considering the need to achieve as large a Democratic victory as possible in November, so it's an obstacle to achieving unity. It's perfectly justified for her to be impatient and frustrated in this respect. I'm not comfortable making a blanket statement about what "Clinton's aggression" is going to result in, since we don't know what her campaign is actually going to do. It'll depend. And I'm not questioning why you're posting, so I see no reason for you to question my motives. | ||
KwarK
United States42734 Posts
On April 07 2016 21:37 WhiteDog wrote: We might not understand each others if you think the only infrastructure needed to permit an economy to function is the train. To trade, you need a state, a set of regulations, something that plays the role of an army and a police force, some stability, etc. : basically an institutional frame. In Africa (and not necessarily elsewhere for various reasons), all the structure of powers that gave stability to those areas were destroyed by the colonization, their agriculture was completly replaced by the european agriculture, completly useless for the african environment. There are tons of book on the subject, and tons of articles, really from my point of view you're the "ignorant crazy" guy who actually believe road and rails are actually relevant for an economy that has no government, no common language, no system for fiscal redistribution, etc. Those roads were destined to disappear, due to the incapacity of the local governments to actually take care of them. Some article on the subject. http://econ.sciences-po.fr/sites/default/files/file/elise/S0022050714000011a.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w18566.pdf And the last sentence of the article : http://economics.mit.edu/files/7641 Took time finding back those things and putting the english transcript damn. You open by explaining that the infrastructure you were referring to is not anything that a native English speaker would describe using the word infrastructure (which is fine, probably just a mistranslation, but that's why we were picturing trains) but rather the fabric of society and the nation state. Which is all well and good but neither of those things existed in a modern recognizable incarnation in pre-colonial Africa (excluding the Mediterranean coast which culturally has always been more European than African). Europeans brought the nation state to Africa. You then go on to prove that there was no real French investment in Africa by using government figures. Now I'm not sure if you did this to deliberately mislead or just through ignorance but the majority of investment in the colonies was private. That's how it worked. Colonialism was an exercise in private economic exploitation backed by a government which was pushed into protecting and securing the investments of the rich against local government figures and native uprisings. You can't simply say "the French government didn't invest in the colony and therefore the colony received no investments from France" when the French government had no economic role in the colony beyond providing a secure framework for private economic exploitation. It was private individuals who were creating the plantations, building up the ports in order to export the yields of those plantations, funding the railways, funding the mines and so forth. Hell, according to your numbers the great triumph of French colonialism, the Suez Canal Company, simply didn't exist. After all, it wasn't funded by the government. The only government involvement was to secure the canal to protect French investment from local political threats. Honestly I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how colonialism actually worked, and how it still works to this day. 1) Rich white guy comes up with good idea about how to make money from natives/their natural resources. 2) Rich white guy strikes a deal with local despot, buys slaves/creates plantation/opens diamond mines. 3a) Rich white guy starts exporting all his sweet slaves/rubber/diamonds and everyone back home is super happy about it. 3b) Local despot gets European guns and political support in exchange for being a smiling black face appearing in shareholder reports with a big thumbs up going "there is nothing at all immoral about this". 4a) Local despot shoots a bunch of black guys quietly. 4b) Local despot sends his son to Oxford to be educated, to rub shoulders with the colonial elite and to make the connections that will secure the mutually beneficial arrangement for years to come. 5) Either the local despot gets too uppity, a rival despot rises up or there is a popular revolt. Suddenly the investment is threatened. The rich white guy walks up to his friend, the government minister, who he went to school with and who happens to be a significant shareholder in his company, and explains how important it is to national security that the arrangement not be threatened. 6a) The year is 1900. The government sends in troops to put down the locals and to either restore the despot or, if the despot cannot be restored, take over direct control. See the history of Egypt and most recently the Suez Crisis. 6b) The year is 2000. The government makes an assessment of how bad this could look. If the despot, who they gave guns to, massacres a bunch of civilians it'll look pretty bad. On the other hand if they do nothing then they could lose the arrangement. They can't take over direct control because that looks super bad. If the old despot can be quietly retained, great. If not you need a new despot who hasn't massacred any civilians on CNN yet to take over. Failing that an extremely corrupt democracy imposed from outside could still work. See Libya, in which the UK government gave Qaddafi guns in exchange for him granting oil concessions to BP. While Qaddafi kept shit quietly together BP got to rape Libya's oil fields while Qaddafi got to be dictator with political support from Tony Blair. When the Arab Spring happens and Qaddafi wants to shoot a bunch of guys on CNN with British made weapons suddenly BP's investment is threatened, even if Qaddafi wins people are going to start asking questions. BP goes to the government and suddenly Libya is Britain's problem and there is an intervention to replace the local despot with a new, friendlier face. This is how the system works. It's how it's always worked and it's how it still works to this day. Government spending and control is immaterial to colonial investment and only shows up in the late stages of colonialism when bankers attempt to privatize the profits and nationalize the losses. Colonialism was, is and always will be a fundamentally economic affair conducted mostly by bankers seeking poorly protected resources which would naturally belong to the people of a nation but can be stolen from those people due to an immature state in which the people cannot assert their rights against a despotic leader. Incidentally it's why the United States cocked up South America so badly after taking over the empire from the European powers. They never fully understood that South America was still a part of the empire after gaining independence from Spain and instead tried to support the governments of the proto-nations in an ideological struggle. The Marxist revolutionaries weren't appearing because they were siding with the USSR in a geopolitical struggle, they were appearing because foreign powers were raping all their national resources with the bribed consent of their leaders. You simply assess which side is likely to win, most likely the revolutionaries, and then you offer them the guns they need to win in exchange for a friendly trade agreement when they do. They can have a turn on top as long as the American companies keep getting their mining concessions. The European empires were far, far bigger than they appear when shaded in on the maps. You don't actually need to shade a place in on the map until the breakdown of economic imperialism occurs. As long as the arrangement with the local elites is secure and the shareholders are happy there is absolutely no advantages to imposing direct control, only disadvantages. Direct government control is a symptom of late stage imperialism, not a marker that denotes the beginning. It is effectively irrelevant. Egypt is a good example of this, economically Egypt was a part of the French empire, not the British, but it was shaded in pink on the map. Yet that made it no less French and did nothing to deter the French from getting involved in the 1956 Suez Crisis when their economic interests were threatened by an uppity local despot. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15690 Posts
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On_Slaught
United States12190 Posts
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Mohdoo
United States15690 Posts
On April 08 2016 00:19 On_Slaught wrote: "Ladies and gentlemen, your 45th president of the United States, Donald J Trump!" If Bernie runs 3rd party, the GOP can choke hold the convention. They can declare Kasich the winner, drop the mic, have voter turn out in the low 30s and still win. In a way, Bernie being anywhere near the general election flatly removes Trump from the election. But maybe Trump would run...4th party? what a time to be alive. These thoughts aren't crazy. They're strange, but they are not complete madness. They should be. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
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Sent.
Poland9198 Posts
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