Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead at 79

To reiterate:

• And all you have is an argument against, centered around your own personal priorities. To the one, that's well and fine, as that's how you see the world and generally isn't my business. But where we make these sorts of things each other's business, such as this discussion, you're going to need more than that to change my mind.

• What I don't hear is any response to the challenges of history.​

And that's still all you've got.

• • •​

To reiterate:

• What I don't hear is how this is going to work.​

If you wish to keep campaigning around the question, don't let me stop you. But in this case it isn't helping, and, in truth, only increases my worry.

For instance:

Like I said: What I don't hear is how this is going to work.

You're pitching in the style of a Republican operative. Bring the House of Representatives? Yeah, he's just going to energize his base, and it will happen!

Uh-huh.

I believe you.

Just ... poof! ... magic.

What I don't hear is how this is going to work.

 

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I did not say it would "work." In post 50 I showed that the end state does work and is much more desirable than what the US now has.

In post 60 I showed how it could work and said it was improbable that it would. I. e. Sanders must get many of the non-voters (about 25%) to go to polls and vote for him and gain greater support among those who do vote. - That is what he calls his "democratic revolution." If he can do that, transforming Congress to assist is relatively easy, but will not fully happen with his election - future elections will get more of the "obstructionist" (from his POV) replaced.

A low probability shot at getting a government more like those in Scandinavia is better than zero chance. More of the current trends of wealth concentration, etc. will ultimately fail, in violence most likely. We don't want to repeat the French way to end wealth concentration and destroy much of the wealth in the process.

You seem happy with economically unimportat crumbs of liberalism, while the rich grow richer. - Control both the goverment and ever more of the wealth. I'm not. I want significant economic change.

 

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Which is of course the same criticism one could level at Clinton, with the caveat that we have seen in the past (this is called "history") how one would expect "it" to work in any particular matter: advance capitulation (so quick and uneventful as to be indistinguishable from ideological agreement) to the Republican Party's assumed initial negotiating position on the key structural matters, followed by further adjustments in accordance with their actual demands after beginning negotiations, followed by a bruising bout of grandstanding and ultimatum-delivering brinksmanship by the Republican "leadership", followed by partial successful passage of whatever - including all the negotiated concessions from the "left" as represented by Clinton, and the less important features of what remained of the initial pre-compromised Clinton proposal. All of that presented as "pragmatic" and "realistic" by the Democrats involved.

Rinse and repeat, every couple of years rolling back a bit more of the New Deal.

I won't vote for that, until I have to. As long as Sanders is running, I don't have to.

And that, for the third time, is my simple and hardly subtle response to this inveterate bit of troll dust:

You don't get to exclude the relevant history you don't happen to like. My money says Clinton is not going to undergo a radical and unprecedented reformation of her basic ideology and approach to political issues, as President. I regard the prospect of her "holding the line", in other words, or even attempting to, as unlikely in the extreme. Naive.

Whereas the prospect of her getting beat in the general election by any of the three front Rep. nominees is quite likely indeed.

 

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It's nice to know somebody wrote that down. He earned our scorn. He was a traitor to his duty and beloved by the oligarchy. I keep thinking Obama needed to exercise the bully pulpit during the first two years when the Democrats had the majority in both houses. Considering the Republican psychosis it's been hard to watch the electorate vote against their own well being. Now we have a seditionist as majority whip in both houses.

 

And neither do you, but it has never stopped you from doing it.

Ok, you have your opinons and you are entitled to them. But that doesn't make them valid. Even though I have never been a big Clinton fan, the Clintons haven't done that badly. Hillary in particular has been a very competent and accomplished individual. That's some of the history you like to exclude.

Well, here is the thing, Republicans don't share your views in that regard. Republicans have a long history of "talking up" (i.e. glorifying) the Democratic candidate they want to run against in the fall. Obviously, Republicans want to run against the weakest general election candidate. This year they have been and continue to "talk up" and sing the praises of Bernie because they view him as the weakest general election candidate.

The good thing about Hillary is she has survived decades of Republican assaults on her character and because of that she has been immunized to a large degree from Republican sleaze tactics. Republicans have accused her of everything from malfeasance to murder and it hasn't stuck. If Bernie should become the Democratic nominee, and I doubt he will, he will have to face the same gauntlet of Republican slime and character assassination. Bernie hasn't been immunized. He could well be the next "swift boat" victim if he should become the party nominee. Before you accuse others of naivety, you should take a very long and serious look at yourself.

Bernie's numbers don't add up. Bernie is doing exactly what Republicans have done and continue doing. He's selling things he cannot deliver because his numbers don't add up.

 

Show me why: "Free education paid for by new taxes on automated machine and day trading on Wall Street, no cap on the amount of Social Security tax collected, and higher taxes rates on the top incomes, as US had once when it was growing much better than now. (I. e. Making more money is still an incentive, even if Uncle Sam takes an even bigger bite of it.)" as I said in post 60 will not cover the cost.

Also if we adopted the Scandinavian (and most other advanced nation's) health care system, at least 50% of what US society pays for medical care that delivers at least two years LESS life expectancy, is an enormous sum of money - it would more than fill any gap left over by first paragraph items' increased revenues.

Both free education and universal quality health care are affordable. - All the Scandinavian countries are doing it, and their total incomes are less than the US's. I. e. your claims that free education and quality health care can not be financed are refuted by the fact that many countries are doing just that.

I agree he is selling things he may not be able to deliver, but that is because they can not get thru a congress controlled by the rich and powerful few for their benefit, not because of their cost. More on that in my next post here.

 

Fareed Zakaria summed it up nicely in his article which I reference below.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...bddb40-d684-11e5-b195-2e29a4e13425_story.html

Additionally, you need to be careful when comparing the US to other nations. No other bears the costs of defending the world as does the US. No other country bears the burden and cost of being the world's policeman. The US is committed by treaty to defend a good portion of the world. No other country bears that burden.

 

Bernie lost in Nevada, but he has postive momentum and unlike Clinton, who has negative momentum, he was a total unknown a year ago. She was well known and liked for some decades.

For example less than three weeks before the election the prediction were Clinton, 60% of the vote and Sanders slightly less than 40% - a 20% gap, which Sanders cut in half with his positive momentum. She will probably beat him in most of the supper Tuesday states too, and has locked up most of the supper delegate votes, so I doubt he can become POTUS, but a yogi said, it ain't over til its over. His momentum is growing and Clinton's is falling.

 

Before him, Barack Obama. And Jeb Bush as the strongest, replacing Mitt Romney, who replaced Sara Palin.

The infallible political judgment of Republicans is never to be ignored, true, but one would hardly want to set up one's own political efforts entirely on the basis of Republican propaganda inversion.

And the bad thing is that she has adopted much of the Republican agenda in the course of that survival - not that it was much of a jump from her own basic ideology.

 

Yes I agree that Sander would not be able to pay for it if the straw horse they assumed was his finance plan. Sander is not postulating what they assumed, which was quoting from your link:

"Gerald Friedman, an economist who has tried to make Sanders’s math work. To do so, Friedman assumes that per capita growth would average 4.5 percent (more than double the rate over the past three decades), and that the employment-to-population ratio would suddenly reverse its long decline and reach 65 percent, the highest ever. Even more magically, productivity growth would rise to 3.18 percent. As Kevin Drum has pointed out in Mother Jones, “there has never been a 10-year period since World War II in which productivity grew by 3.18 percent.” ..."

That is they totally ignore Sander's financing plan and attack the "pay by growth" straw horse they invented.
Sanders plan is more like the following:

New taxes on automated machine and day trading on Wall Street, no cap on the amount of Social Security tax collected, and higher taxes rates on the top incomes, as US had once when it was growing much better than now. (I. e. Making more money is still an incentive, even if Uncle Sam takes an even bigger bite of it.)"

As I said in post 60, if that above new taxing plan will not cover the cost then we use the saving by lowering of medical care cost by at least 50%. I. e. we adopted the Scandinavian (and most other advanced nation's) health care system, costing at least 50% less per capita than what US society now pays for medical care. That is an enormous sum of money - it would more than fill any gap left over by first paragraph items' increased revenues.

If there is the growth funding the straw horse plan speaks about, all the better, but that invented straw horse plan is not Sander's funding plan.

 

No, that's with his tax increases (e.g. raising marginal tax rates to 85%). No credible economists takes Bernie's numbers seriously per Zakaria's article. His numbers don't add up even with his tax and tariff increases.

 

So you assert. Lets see some annual new revenue numbers. I. e. how much new revenue does removing the cap on Social Security collections produce? How much new revenue does say a 35% tax on day trading and automated machine trading profits yield. How much new revenue does a progressive tax rate increasing up to 85% on the highest incomes raise? What would be the saving achieved with Scandinavian health care system? I. e. what is 50% of the total cost of the US sytem?

And how does that compare to the total college tuitions paid (assuming the current scholarships continue)?

 

If you can disprove Zakaria and the economists he references, do it. But given his credibility and the credibility of his references, you won't be able to.

Bernie's numbers don't add up.

 

Your selection of "credible" economists assumes no cost leverage, on the same basis as they assumed strong cost leverage via the Romneycare free market "exchanges". Their presumptions regarding distribution of income growth are likewise textbook fictions (they assume economic growth distributed throughout the income classes, ignoring the Reaganomic skew). And so forth.

The only thing Sanders has to do to earn a vote is propose something that makes more sense, and adds up better, than his opponents's proposals. That's a bar he jumped a long time ago.

 

Oh, then you should have no difficulty proving it? So let's see it.

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They are both explicit and implicit in almost every one of the "assumptions" and "estimations" of appendices I, II, and III of your link and single point of reference.

Such as this quote, from page 29:
"Once GDP estimates are made, the effect on employment is estimated from the “Okun’s Law” relationship between income and employment. The value used is the average of the annual data for the relationship between growth in the GDP and employment in recovery years from 1959-2014."

That average is based on the effects of GDP growth much differently distributed than we've seen since the crash of '08, or in fact any time after the breakover in 1982.

And so forth.

 

I wouldn't be so concerned about Bernie's numbers at this point in his evolution. I don't think he's running 'to be President' because he's not a 'poser' and most importantly because he wants to put a stop to all the oligarch crap our nation has come to stand for. He's a warrior in my estimation. The Devil is always in the details and I'd be concerned that would seem to make victory technically improbable. But he's a warrior and the Sparks would fly. He might get fed up and 'began a coversation' with the justice department 'defining sedition'.

 

Bernie has many good attributes. I love his passion. But it takes more than passion to become POTUS and to be a good POTUS. I wish Hillary had more of Bernie's passion for electoral reforms. Electoral reform will be tough for any POTUS. Obama wanted electoral reform too. But he didn't get very far and that's very unfortunate. But Obama from day one was faced with massive and extraordinarily critical problems. He had a lot on his plate. Thankfully he had a Democratic congress for the first 2 years of his administration. If a Democrat is elected POTUS, as I think will be the case, he or she, and I think it will be a she, will also need a Democratic congress and a Democratic Supreme Court or at least a non Republican Supreme Court in order to effect any meaningful change.

 

I agreed that their invented straw horse ("pay by growth") funding plan will not provide the funds needed for Bernie's free education plan, BUT that is not his plan for financing his plans.

His plan is for an end to the cap on Social Security collection plus new and higher higher top tax rates in a progressive tax schedule – I. e. pay for tuition free education exactly how it has been done for decades in Scandinavia - So we know it works - can fund free education.

SUMMARY: The economic feasibility has been PROVEN in use for decades! Only economic analysis of a straw horse plan can can show failure.

 

Again Billy T, if you can disprove anything in Zakaria's article, do so.