***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[heelsandeers]

How is this supposed to happen, exactly? Market forces care about and will prioritize short-term profits over everything. And fossil fuels are still the cheapest thing around. There may be some attraction for the private sector to develop clean energy technology and infrastructure, particularly if they're granted (semi-)monopolies over various products and/or regions, but there's no way that can supplant business as usual in any meaningful sense nor with the kind of urgency needed. And why would that be preferable to the state intervening?

utility scale wind and solar are now cheaper on a per-kWh basis than any other electric generation technology and we have found that we can integrate them into the grid at much higher penetrations (maybe up to 70 or 80%) than we ever thought we could

we could replace a lot of fossil fueled grid power with renewables very quickly if we lowered barriers to entry for renewable generators and especially allow the federal government (rather than states) to site multistage transmission lines

just about the only place in the industrialized world that is out of step on this issue is the United States. even European oil companies are getting wise. the auto makers are transitioning to an all EV fleet, one by one. European cities are moving to allow only EV’s

corporate customers are insisting on zero emission or renewable power in increasing numbers. it is cheapest and it is necessary to prevent enormous harm to millions of people. It may not happen according to the Paris accord/green new deal plan but great progress will happen

 

[spiceman80]

broken because he got caught?

 

[Present]

We coulda had high speed rail, clean energy, solar roadways, etc... decades ago but...Reaganomics.

Reaganomics KILLED us as an innovative nation.

So, it turns out that greed isn’t good after all at least not for the vast majority of the American people. But this is a lesson that many U.S. opinion leaders still resist.

For the past three decades since Ronald Reagan’s Republican landslide in 1980 the United States has undertaken arguably the most destructive social experiment in American history, the incentivizing of greed among the rich by halving their top marginal tax rates.


Ronald Reagan
The idea once famously sketched out by right-wing economist Arthur Laffer on a napkin was to slash the tax rates on the rich to spur a “supply side” bonanza of economic growth and higher tax revenues for the government.

Before becoming Reagan’s vice presidential running mate, George H.W. Bush labeled this tax strategy “voodoo economics,” and Reagan’s first budget director David Stockman warned that, without severe spending cuts, it could create a sea of red ink as far as the eye could see.

But the experiment was undertaken anyway, with Reagan persuading a large swath of the American electorate especially alienated white men that tax cuts heavily weighted to the rich were the way to go and that the most important priority was to get rid of federal regulations, or as Reagan phrased it, “government is the problem.”

Reagan’s sharply lower tax rates meant that the rich had a much stronger incentive to pad their salaries and grab whatever they could.

Instead of the richest Americans paying 70 percent or more of the highest tranche of their income to the Treasury as they did in the 1960s and 1970s (it was even higher, 90 percent, under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s), the rich saw Reagan reduce their marginal tax rates to 28 percent by 1988.

The tax bite on some millionaires could be even lower if their earnings were categorized as “capital gains,” which were taxed at 15 percent. Over time, Republicans also eliminated the “estate tax” on large fortunes.

So, rather than discouraging excess wealth as had occurred under presidencies from Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter Reagan essentially encouraged the rich to be greedy. Greed went from being a moral sin to a policy goal.

Gordon Gekko, the fictional corporate raider played by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” summed up Reagan’s new paradigm: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

Reagan's 'Greed Is Good' Folly

Exclusive: For three decades, the United States has undertaken an extraordinary social experiment, incentivizing greed among the richest Americans by cutting their top tax rates in half or more. The results are now in from Ronald Reagan’s bold gamble and Robert Parry says they aren’t good. By

consortiumnews.com

 

[RustyShackleford]

How is this supposed to happen, exactly? Market forces care about and will prioritize short-term profits over everything. And fossil fuels are still the cheapest thing around. There may be some attraction for the private sector to develop clean energy technology and infrastructure, particularly if they're granted (semi-)monopolies over various products and/or regions, but there's no way that can supplant business as usual in any meaningful sense nor with the kind of urgency needed. And why would that be preferable to the state intervening?

I think there is some confusion over my stance, and kinda what market forces are.

Firms care about profits. Firm are not the only actor in the market. Market forces can destroy a firm's private interest just as well as it can destroy what is best for the public good

I didn't say it would be preferable. I am not saying just let the market handle it. I am saying that we need markets to organize in a way that fights these problems. It is not some binary decision that has to be made. We are a mixed economy, we will forever be a mixed economy, and this is a hands on deck issue so we can't ignore such a large part of the economy.

We should not leave it up to private interest, the government needs to intervene in markets to properly organize them to a cause. Governments are actors in the market too.

Of course there needs to be state intervention, large amounts, because this is an urgent problem. However let us consider the situation. Global warming is not something we solve, it is something we manage. Even if we met the deadline climate scientist put forward it is still just to try to mitigate the damage. If we go back to our old habits, then the damage comes anyway, just later. If say power flips in governments and the only thing keep our emissions down is preventative regulations and direct action government agencies, then that can be torn down really quickly, with little pushback.

We need government funded R&D to make technologies that can help in the fight against climate change cheap. Coal was not killed by regulations, it was killed by cheap natural gas. Regulations are not gonna kill natural gas, cheap high quality batteries and renewable energy generation tech will. Car manufacturers will always sell gasoline cars, and people will buy them until it is profitable to move to electric. A carbon tax is not only to raise revenue or properly tax negative extranalities, but to incentivize firm to develop their won cleaner tech and move away from dirtier ones. If we are gonna rework our infrastructure quick enough, then the government will need to hire tons of private contractors to do the work.

Then think about all the other sectors that we need to decarbonize. If we want this to stick, then we need for markets to make clean tech winners over older methods.

Give firms a profit notice, and they will pursue the profit motive. So government needs to make the profit motive align with fighting climate change. They should align markets that bad actors not only face regulatory roadblocks, but get destroyed by other firms that see rolling out clean energy as great for their bottom line.

So from taxes, to R&D, to regulations, to deregulation in some places, to infrastructure projects, to spending bills, governments have vast amounts of power to reshape markets and effect the actions of private firms.

 

[Present]

Missing a Great Opportunity

It is another bitter irony of history that Reagan’s ascension in 1980 coincided with a moment when the United States was on the cusp of what could have been a golden age. Federal investments in transportation, technology and science had brought the country into sight of a new horizon where a broad prosperity was possible for the entire population.

Through the tax structure of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Americans had footed the bill for a wide range of advancements. However, some temporary economic reversals in the 1970s from the Vietnam War’s inflationary hangover to oil shocks in the Middle East created a national malaise that Reagan promised to cure with his cheery personality and tax policies.

So, instead of the country profiting from all those government investments from the highway system under Eisenhower to microprocessors from Kennedy’s space program to the Pentagon’s early development of the Internet the profits went almost entirely to big corporations and the rich who devised ways to take advantage of this taxpayer-financed progress.

Some of the new rich, who piggybacked onto government-funded projects like the Internet, claimed they were the worthy ones who deserved their sudden wealth. Republicans continue to warn that it is wrong to punish society’s “winners,” even though many online moguls might be delivering pizzas today if it weren’t for the taxpayer money used to create the Internet.

Meanwhile, average Americans lost out in two ways: first, the higher productivity from the technological breakthroughs eliminated many middle-class jobs, from factory work to accounting, and second, the adoption of “free trade” policies shipped many jobs overseas to lower-wage countries.

Those two developments alone ensured super-profits to multinational corporations and their wealthy owners. However, instead of a large chunk of that money going to pay back the nation for the crucial investments and for the global security that made the “free trade” possible, the money mostly went to buy expansive mansions and expensive baubles.

If the pre-Reagan higher marginal tax rates had stayed in place, the extra money could have been reinvested in the country’s infrastructure and recycled into additional scientific research, creating millions of new jobs to replace those lost to both technology and globalization.

That lost opportunity represented not only a personal tragedy for the millions of Americans who then frantically sought to maintain their living standards by working more hours and borrowing against their homes, but it marked a historic tragedy for the entire planet because there was a chance for people everywhere to enjoy the fruits of this new technology.

Instead, the ill-timed arrival of Ronald Reagan on the world stage changed that history. But that is not the narrative that most Americans hear. Instead, Ronald Reagan has been transformed into a national icon with recent U.S. polls rating him the greatest president ever.

 

[-Red-]

utility scale wind and solar are now cheaper on a per-kWh basis than any other electric generation technology and we have found that we can integrate them into the grid at much higher penetrations (maybe up to 70 or 80%) than we ever thought we could

we could replace a lot of fossil fueled grid power with renewables very quickly if we lowered barriers to entry for renewable generators and especially allow the federal government (rather than states) to site multistage transmission lines

just about the only place in the industrialized world that is out of step on this issue is the United States. even European oil companies are getting wise. the auto makers are transitioning to an all EV fleet, one by one. European cities are moving to allow only EV’s

corporate customers are insisting on zero emission or renewable power in increasing numbers. it is cheapest and it is necessary to prevent enormous harm to millions of people. It may not happen according to the Paris accord/green new deal plan but great progress will happen

I think there is some confusion over my stance, and kinda what market forces are.

Firms care about profits. Firm are not the only actor in the market. Market forces can destroy a firm's private interest just as well as it can destroy what is best for the public good

I didn't say it would be preferable. I am not saying just let the market handle it. I am saying that we need markets to organize in a way that fights these problems. It is not some binary decision that has to be made. We are a mixed economy, we will forever be a mixed economy, and this is a hands on deck issue so we can't ignore such a large part of the economy.

We should not leave it up to private interest, the government needs to intervene in markets to properly organize them to a cause. Governments are actors in the market too.

Of course there needs to be state intervention, large amounts, because this is an urgent problem. However let us consider the situation. Global warming is not something we solve, it is something we manage. Even if we met the deadline climate scientist put forward it is still just to try to mitigate the damage. If we go back to our old habits, then the damage comes anyway, just later. If say power flips in governments and the only thing keep our emissions down is preventative regulations and direct action government agencies, then that can be torn down really quickly, with little pushback.

We need government funded R&D to make technologies that can help in the fight against climate change cheap. Coal was not killed by regulations, it was killed by cheap natural gas. Regulations are not gonna kill natural gas, cheap high quality batteries and renewable energy generation tech will. Car manufacturers will always sell gasoline cars, and people will buy them until it is profitable to move to electric. A carbon tax is not only to raise revenue or properly tax negative extranalities, but to incentivize firm to develop their won cleaner tech and move away from dirtier ones. If we are gonna rework our infrastructure quick enough, then the government will need to hire tons of private contractors to do the work.

Then think about all the other sectors that we need to decarbonize. If we want this to stick, then we need for markets to make clean tech winners over older methods.

Give firms a profit notice, and they will pursue the profit motive. So government needs to make the profit motive align with fighting climate change. They should align markets that bad actors not only face regulatory roadblocks, but get destroyed by other firms that see rolling out clean energy as great for their bottom line.

Okay, I can agree with most of this.

 

[IATT]

Tweet showing unavailable

Donald Trump 'offered Julian Assange a pardon if he denied Russia link to hack'

Ex-congressman denies being middleman for US president after WikiLeaks published emails damaging to Hillary Clinton in 2016

www.theguardian.com

Trump Offered Assange Pardon if He Covered Up Russian Hack, WikiLeaks Founder’s Lawyer Claims

Lawyers acting for the WikiLeaks founder said Dana Rohrabacher, a former Republican congressman, had brought the message to London from Trump.

www.thedailybeast.com

 

[-Red-]

Missing a Great Opportunity

It is another bitter irony of history that Reagan’s ascension in 1980 coincided with a moment when the United States was on the cusp of what could have been a golden age. Federal investments in transportation, technology and science had brought the country into sight of a new horizon where a broad prosperity was possible for the entire population.

Through the tax structure of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Americans had footed the bill for a wide range of advancements. However, some temporary economic reversals in the 1970s from the Vietnam War’s inflationary hangover to oil shocks in the Middle East created a national malaise that Reagan promised to cure with his cheery personality and tax policies.

So, instead of the country profiting from all those government investments from the highway system under Eisenhower to microprocessors from Kennedy’s space program to the Pentagon’s early development of the Internet the profits went almost entirely to big corporations and the rich who devised ways to take advantage of this taxpayer-financed progress.

Some of the new rich, who piggybacked onto government-funded projects like the Internet, claimed they were the worthy ones who deserved their sudden wealth. Republicans continue to warn that it is wrong to punish society’s “winners,” even though many online moguls might be delivering pizzas today if it weren’t for the taxpayer money used to create the Internet.

Meanwhile, average Americans lost out in two ways: first, the higher productivity from the technological breakthroughs eliminated many middle-class jobs, from factory work to accounting, and second, the adoption of “free trade” policies shipped many jobs overseas to lower-wage countries.

Those two developments alone ensured super-profits to multinational corporations and their wealthy owners. However, instead of a large chunk of that money going to pay back the nation for the crucial investments and for the global security that made the “free trade” possible, the money mostly went to buy expansive mansions and expensive baubles.

If the pre-Reagan higher marginal tax rates had stayed in place, the extra money could have been reinvested in the country’s infrastructure and recycled into additional scientific research, creating millions of new jobs to replace those lost to both technology and globalization.

That lost opportunity represented not only a personal tragedy for the millions of Americans who then frantically sought to maintain their living standards by working more hours and borrowing against their homes, but it marked a historic tragedy for the entire planet because there was a chance for people everywhere to enjoy the fruits of this new technology.

Instead, the ill-timed arrival of Ronald Reagan on the world stage changed that history. But that is not the narrative that most Americans hear. Instead, Ronald Reagan has been transformed into a national icon with recent U.S. polls rating him the greatest president ever.

This is a really great piece from Current Affairs that really destroys the myth that the private sector and these ostensibly great lone visionaries have been responsible for the incredible technological developments we've seen over the last half-century or so.

 

[Mark Antony]

Son came out a muslim

 

[rolaholic]

 

[handullz]

Dooce, come get ya mans, b.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Bruh

Bubba getting love in Da Heights, Ninja must be sick right now.

Bill looks so washed doe. Hillary still probably abusing that man. Bet when she goes to bed early, he grabs da Double Stuff Oreos out the pantry, pours himself a glass of Scotch, opens up an Incognito tab, and has himself a grand ole time. As soon as the light goes out in the bedroom, it is party time...

 

[frshstunna]

Son came out a muslim

This got me dying from yo sounding like a cat that just got out quoting stuff from the prison library and trying to drop "knowledge" to the random "Is Mayweather still undefeated?" part at the end

 

[Mark Antony]

This got me dying from yo sounding like a cat that just got out quoting stuff from the prison library and trying to drop "knowledge" to the random "Is Mayweather still undefeated?" part at the end

Sounded like he had to stop himself from saying "yo this white ***** buggin"

 

[Belgium]

Update: Newspapers now confirming that Julian Assange's lawyers claimed at a pre-trial hearing that he was allegedly offered a pardon to exculpate Russia. I recall something about an Assange pardon in the Mueller report, I'll find it.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...-russia-hack-wikileaks?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Donald Trump 'offered Julian Assange a pardon if he denied Russia link to hack'
Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails, a court in London has been told.

The extraordinary claim was made at Westminster magistrates court before the opening next week of Assange’s legal battle to block attempts to extradite him to the US.

Assange’s barrister, Edward Fitzgerald QC, referred to evidence alleging that the former US Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher had been to see Assange, now 48, while he was still in the Ecuadorian embassy in August 2017.

A statement from Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson shows “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks”, Fitzgerald told Westminster magistrates court.

A series of emails that were highly embarrassing for the Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign were hacked before being published by WikiLeaks in 2016.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is hearing the case at Westminster, said the evidence is admissible.

 

[aepps20]

Tweet showing unavailable

Your posts also show that your moral compass when it comes to Republican Pedos is also unavailable.

 

[Belgium]

Found it. I recalled that Trump was asked a question about pardoning Assange in Mueller's questions for written testimony. Notably, the timeline of Mueller's question is different from the one described in court by Julian Assange's lawyers. It's not clear to me what prompted prosecutors to ask the question in the first place or why they restricted it to a pre-inauguration timeline. That being said, Julian Assange's lawyers' timeline refers to when the offer was allegedly made. Mueller's question is about whether or not Trump had any discussions about such an offer at any point prior to the inauguration. So there's not necessarily a contradiction there.
August 2017 was also around the time Trump's attempt and desire to shut down the Special Counsel investigation was at its height. In July he had twice ordered McGahn to get Mueller removed after Trump learned of the obstruction inquiry. Several days after McGahn refused to carry out the orders, Trump directed Lewandowski to pressure Sessions into restricting the scope of Mueller's investigation so Mueller could no longer investigate Russia's 2016 interference, Trump's conduct or that of any of his associates. In mid-August, Trump followed up on the attempt to have Sessions restrict the scope of the investigation.

In response, Trump testified that he couldn't recall any such discussions.

 

[junglejim]

Your posts also show that your moral compass when it comes to Republican Pedos is also unavailable.

Don’t forget about killing immigrant children because their parents made a choice

 

[IATT]

 

[boris]

Update: Newspapers now confirming that Julian Assange's lawyers claimed at a pre-trial hearing that he was allegedly offered a pardon to exculpate Russia. I recall something about an Assange pardon in the Mueller report, I'll find it.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...-russia-hack-wikileaks?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Donald Trump 'offered Julian Assange a pardon if he denied Russia link to hack'
Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails, a court in London has been told.

The extraordinary claim was made at Westminster magistrates court before the opening next week of Assange’s legal battle to block attempts to extradite him to the US.

Assange’s barrister, Edward Fitzgerald QC, referred to evidence alleging that the former US Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher had been to see Assange, now 48, while he was still in the Ecuadorian embassy in August 2017.

A statement from Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson shows “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks”, Fitzgerald told Westminster magistrates court.

A series of emails that were highly embarrassing for the Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign were hacked before being published by WikiLeaks in 2016.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is hearing the case at Westminster, said the evidence is admissible.

But how does this impact dwalk’s tax breaks?

 

[$tatus $ymbol]

Just read the good news about the poll tax republican scumbags in my state tried to pull

 

[boris]

Joe going at that POS's neck over faking the funk over his disingenuous Obama embracement tour he's conveniently been on all of a sudden

I’m not a fan of Joe as a candidate but it’s been fun watching him go after Mayo Pete and Bloomberg.

 

[rolaholic]

Yea he's been swinging at Goonberg hard in the leadup to the debate later

 

[Belgium]

The WH now claims Trump barely knows former congressman Rohrabacher, also known as Putin's favorite congressman.


I looked into reporting about Rohrabacher around the time Julian Assange's lawyers claim Rohrabacher delivered Trump's alleged pardon offer.

This article is from August 18 2017. It reports on an individual who set up the meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange in 2017 where the pardon offer was allegedly made. He subsequently refused to cooperate with Senate Intel.
https://news.yahoo.com/alt-right-fi...s-cooperate-senate-intel-probe-172020121.html
‘Alt-right’ figure who set up Assange meeting refuses to cooperate with Senate intel probe
A controversial “alt-right” journalist and provocateur who met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London this week says he is refusing to turn over documents and emails requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee about any contacts he has had with Russian agents, telling Yahoo News he has no intention of cooperating with the panel’s investigation.

“I’m absolutely not” going to cooperate with the committee, Charles C. Johnson said in an interview after returning from London, where he had set up a meeting this week between Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

___________________________________



September 1 2017:
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/348773-could-trump-pardon-assange
Talk of Assange pardon worries intelligence community
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who has come under scrutiny for his own ties to Russia, is behind the Assange pardon push.


September 15 2017:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/15/roh...rump-deal-on-absolving-wikileaks-assange.html
A GOP congressman reportedly offered Trump a deal on absolving WikiLeaks’ Assange

September 27 2017:
https://dailycaller.com/2017/09/26/...-stopping-deal-with-assange-congressman-says/
White House Aides Are Stopping Deal With Assange, Congressman Says
President Donald Trump is being blocked from knowing he can pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in exchange for information vindicating Russia of hacking allegations, according to Republican California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.

Trump told reporters Sunday that he has “never heard” of a potential deal with Assange.

“I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I think I might agree with Sewer. My girl fells the same way too. That no matter if you like Biden, that Trump's real victory in this whole impeachment thing is not the sham acquittal, but that he might of succeeded it getting the person polling the best against him out the paint.



And this should be troubling to everyone because it made a narrow path for Bloomberg, and he is probably gonna pull the same finesse on Bernie.