US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3573

On April 08 2016 10:52 Slaughter wrote:
http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/04/07/cnn-gets-confronted-live-on-air-over-faked-bernie-sanders-interview-and-it-doesnt-end-well/

Kind of interesting. This is the type of thing that a lot of invested sanders supporters would read and believe.

On April 08 2016 09:45 TheFish7 wrote:
BREAKING NEWS: Hillary doesn't know how to swipe a metrocard! Not a true new yorker!! Well, to be fair, those things can be finicky sometimes.

http://nypost.com/2016/04/07/hillary-has-to-take-five-swipes-with-metrocard-to-ride-subway/

Two scientists have highlighted dangerous water contamination from a fracking operation in Wyoming, three years after the US Environmental Protection Agency decided to abandon its investigation into the matter.

The report found there were dangerous levels of chemicals in the underground water supply used by the 230 residents of Pavillion, a small town in central Wyoming. Levels of benzine, a flammable liquid used in fuel, were 50 times above the allowable limit, while chemicals were dumped in unlined pits and cement barriers to protect groundwater were inadequate, the research found.

Dominic DiGiulio worked with Stanford academic Robert Jackson on the research after the EPA decided to ditch its own study into the situation at Pavillion, which came to light after residents complained about the smell and taste of their water. DiGiulio’s work for the EPA was abruptly halted and handed over to state authorities in Wyoming, which have said there are no firm plans to take action over the issue.

Using publicly available information and freedom of information requests, DiGiulio and Jackson have published a report in Environmental Science & Technology that examines what went wrong at Pavillion. The research finds that workers were drilling at very shallow depths, as little as 700ft underground, placing the fracking operation uncomfortably close to the drinking water aquifer that supplies the wells used by Pavillion residents.

The water contamination caused by the fracking was compounded by questionable practices going back to the 1960s, before fracking took place, such as the dumping of chemicals into unlined pits. The legacy of this pollution was evident several years after fracking finished in 2007, with the EPA starting its investigation in 2010 before turning it over to Wyoming.

On April 08 2016 11:08 Plansix wrote:
News media was a mistake, burn it all down.

Bill Clinton Spars With Protesters in Philly Over 1994 Crime Bill

...

Then came Mines’ shout, after Clinton said Hillary was “the first person that really talked about” how some people were in prison for too long for non-violent offenses. Mines shouted something at Clinton about the 1994 crime bill and its “three strikes” provisions. “I heard it,” Clinton replied. “Can I answer?” Mines shouted something back.

“We didn’t start out yelling or screaming at anybody,” Mines told Philadelphia magazine after the rally. “But as you can see, when you go against the popular thing at the time, we get labeled as thugs. We expressed ourself as the first amendment allows us to … but when somebody’s coming up to you, literally trying to take something out of your hands, literally putting their hands on you, and I’m now defending myself, when all I did was hold up a sign like everyone else. They asked me to put down my sign because they didn’t like that it didn’t say, ‘Hillary is God.’”

Sanders, an independent, edges Clinton nationally thanks to solid support from several groups. He leads 76-23 percent among those 29 and younger; 63-31 percent among Latinos; 62-32 among independents; 58-38 among the unmarried; and 56-42 among liberals.

Clinton leads 65-29 percent among those 60 and older; 61-35 among African-Americans; 57-39 among the married; and 53-43 among Democrats.

“Age seems to be the most significant factor,” Miringoff said.

On April 08 2016 12:09 GreenHorizons wrote:


Indeed, Bern it all down

Also this.



Source

and this...



It's going to be a looong time between Wyoming and NY...

On April 08 2016 12:24 Acrofales wrote:


Welcome back.

On April 08 2016 11:05 Lord Tolkien wrote:

Well, in the same vein, Sanders doesn't know that they discontinued tokens for the metro yet.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/bernie-sanders-not-savvy-subway-rider-article-1.2585761

But either way, this is mostly just silly.


The question is can Bernie win a 10+% margin in NY with two weeks left in a closed primary state. Gut says no, and I find that

Regarding the Daily News interview, you could honestly just listen to the interview yourself and form your own opinions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAKWgjBfmH8

From the beginning, many and probably most liberal policy wonks were skeptical about Bernie Sanders. On many major issues — including the signature issues of his campaign, especially financial reform — he seemed to go for easy slogans over hard thinking. And his political theory of change, his waving away of limits, seemed utterly unrealistic.

Some Sanders supporters responded angrily when these concerns were raised, immediately accusing anyone expressing doubts about their hero of being corrupt if not actually criminal. But intolerance and cultishness from some of a candidate’s supporters are one thing; what about the candidate himself?

Unfortunately, in the past few days the answer has become all too clear: Mr. Sanders is starting to sound like his worst followers. Bernie is becoming a Bernie Bro.

Let me illustrate the point about issues by talking about bank reform.

The easy slogan here is “Break up the big banks.” It’s obvious why this slogan is appealing from a political point of view: Wall Street supplies an excellent cast of villains. But were big banks really at the heart of the financial crisis, and would breaking them up protect us from future crises?

Many analysts concluded years ago that the answers to both questions were no. Predatory lending was largely carried out by smaller, non-Wall Street institutions like Countrywide Financial; the crisis itself was centered not on big banks but on “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers that weren’t necessarily that big. And the financial reform that President Obama signed in 2010 made a real effort to address these problems. It could and should be made stronger, but pounding the table about big banks misses the point.

Yet going on about big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders has done. On the rare occasions on which he was asked for more detail, he didn’t seem to have anything more to offer. And this absence of substance beyond the slogans seems to be true of his positions across the board.

You could argue that policy details are unimportant as long as a politician has the right values and character. As it happens, I don’t agree. For one thing, a politician’s policy specifics are often a very important clue to his or her true character — I warned about George W. Bush’s mendacity back when most journalists were still portraying him as a bluff, honest fellow, because I actually looked at his tax proposals. For another, I consider a commitment to facing hard choices as opposed to taking the easy way out an important value in itself.

But in any case, the way Mr. Sanders is now campaigning raises serious character and values issues.

It’s one thing for the Sanders campaign to point to Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street connections, which are real, although the question should be whether they have distorted her positions, a case the campaign has never even tried to make. But recent attacks on Mrs. Clinton as a tool of the fossil fuel industry are just plain dishonest, and speak of a campaign that has lost its ethical moorings.

And then there was Wednesday’s rant about how Mrs. Clinton is not “qualified” to be president.

What probably set that off was a recent interview of Mr. Sanders by The Daily News, in which he repeatedly seemed unable to respond when pressed to go beyond his usual slogans. Mrs. Clinton, asked about that interview, was careful in her choice of words, suggesting that “he hadn’t done his homework.”

But Mr. Sanders wasn’t careful at all, declaring that what he considers Mrs. Clinton’s past sins, including her support for trade agreements and her vote to authorize the Iraq war — for which she has apologized — make her totally unfit for office.

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This is really bad, on two levels. Holding people accountable for their past is O.K., but imposing a standard of purity, in which any compromise or misstep makes you the moral equivalent of the bad guys, isn’t. Abraham Lincoln didn’t meet that standard; neither did F.D.R. Nor, for that matter, has Bernie Sanders (think guns).

And the timing of the Sanders rant was truly astonishing. Given her large lead in delegates — based largely on the support of African-American voters, who respond to her pragmatism because history tells them to distrust extravagant promises — Mrs. Clinton is the strong favorite for the Democratic nomination.

Is Mr. Sanders positioning himself to join the “Bernie or bust” crowd, walking away if he can’t pull off an extraordinary upset, and possibly helping put Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the White House? If not, what does he think he’s doing?

The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and energy that the progressive movement needs. It has also, however, brought out a streak of petulant self-righteousness among some supporters. Has it brought out that streak in the candidate, too?

Source

On April 08 2016 19:57 Ghanburighan wrote:
4% + 2 delegates worth from WI, whatever that might mean in %.

Someone recently said that Krugman and Stiglitz support Sanders, but Krugman just posted this:

On April 08 2016 20:08 GreenHorizons wrote:



It was after "Bernie is becoming a Bernie Bro." I stopped taking it seriously.

This whole fixation on "unqualified" is kind of a joke when the other side has a guy who regularly refers to his opponent as "Lyin' Ted".

I'm looking forward to getting back to the issues though. This debate should be the best one yet.

On April 08 2016 20:17 Acrofales wrote:

So the Republican primary is an even bigger shit show. That doesn't mean that Sanders wasn't being dishonest, or that the Democratic primary hasn't taken a turn for the worse.

Also, thus isn't some random columnist, but one of the
US' top political economists. You may not like what he has to say, but you'd do well to at least listen.