The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Paul Brancato]

I was referring to gun control folks. And I never said both parties were both equally bad. What exactly did Obama accomplish in 2009-2010 when he had control of Congress? Other than the affordable care act? And what’s the point of glorifying past accomplishments? As if I or anyone else here is not aware of them? 
yes we are facing a serious situation, but you’re dreaming if you hold the Democrats blameless. I stand by what I said, and don’t appreciate being labelled falsely. 

[Douglas Caddy]

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cruz-confronted-at-restaurant-over-gun-control-after-uvalde-shooting/ar-AAXPMWO?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=f8e289342e14400198f001f7066bf45d

[Greg Doudna]

7 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

I am with you on lots of things here, Greg, I understand the neo-feudalism well and where capitalism ends up, we're actually at a fourth turning that makes things worse for the ordinary man. Most of all that reducing poverty would improve those peoples health (mental and physical), providing it went hand in hand with education. Have you considered that these people you want to tax don't want working class or under privileged people living a long time? That seems clear to me, there is evidence of eugenics/population control everywhere we look. 

How are we going to address the governmental corruption and these elites that you want to tax being served by the politicians as a class? That needs doing first, you can't have thieves choosing how taxes are spent. 

Chris, what is this "needs doing first" business? Why? Why does all of government have to be reformed first, before there could be an estate tax funding an Inheritance for All trust fund?

Is that a little like saying, I'm for ending neo-feudalism, but only after the Second Coming of Jesus Christ happens first, then we can talk about implementing this structural reform in the tax code that would weaken neo-feudalism (but don't get me wrong, I'm against neo-feudalism)? 

In the Inheritance for All proposal, it is not government, or elites, or thieves, who choose how that money is used. It is the individual recipients of the inheritances who decide that. So that issue is out of the way. 

On what you suggest regarding some at the top end, "owners of the world", maybe not caring about better health for what they might think of as the "useless eaters" of the world . . . well, its up to democratic processes and/or organized participatory action and/or enlightened billionaires to not let the sociopathic ones have the final say on that, isn't it? 

Incidentally, here is how my ideal U.S. President would get elite buy-in cooperation to a Piketty-rate (65%) inheritance tax on the great family fortunes funding pass-through Inheritance for All. This is intended to go to the objection you have mentioned that inheritance taxes have issues with compliance by those affected. Two steps:

• first, write into law closing of loopholes and setting up stiff penalties for noncompliance, and have criminal enforcement. That's one end of it.
• second, ASK the super-wealthy to voluntarily not attempt to game the system (including legally) in this area of their taxes but to cooperate in this system of sharing out some inheritances of their full fortunes to every young person, in addition to a still significant fortune handed on to family members, because it is the right thing to do. Make it a praiseworthy and honorable thing for super-wealthy who do, and get voluntary cooperation going in addition to the enforcement end of it. You know how most people leave tips in restaurants even though there is no law that says anyone must? Same idea. Have it come about that voluntary cooperation is part of noblesse oblige. (But I am not saying not have the estate taxation as law, that funds the Inheritance for All.) The moral or social contract with the super-wealthy here would be that the trust fund goes 100% (minus nominal administrative expenses) pass-through to intended recipients, and does not go to general revenue of the government.

Do you have suggestions on how estate taxation could be made effective? Or is what is going on here (as forgive me, I am beginning to get the impression) actually some sort of ideological objection in principle on your part to taxation of estates as a means of funding Inheritance for All? If so, could you elaborate? If not, could you disabuse me of my possible misconception?

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

I was referring to gun control folks. And I never said both parties were both equally bad. What exactly did Obama accomplish in 2009-2010 when he had control of Congress? Other than the affordable care act? And what’s the point of glorifying past accomplishments? As if I or anyone else here is not aware of them? 
yes we are facing a serious situation, but you’re dreaming if you hold the Democrats blameless. I stand by what I said, and don’t appreciate being labelled falsely. 

Paul,

     Interesting that you mention 2009-10-- the only brief interval of the past quarter century when the Democrats finally had control of the White House and both branches of Congress.  But even that brief interval of constructive Democratic governance was marred by the prolonged delay in the confirmation of Al Franken's Senate seat.

      At the time of Obama's inauguration in January of 2009, the U.S. economy was in a free fall-- with widespread U.S. bank failures, worsening unemployment, and the onset of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression.   We were also deeply in debt from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Bush/Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy (in 2001 and 2003.)   Cheney had insisted to Paul O'Neill that "deficits don't matter."

      So, what did Obama and the Democrats accomplish in the brief period?

1)  The Stimulus Recovery Act which, by scholarly consensus, (e.g., Alan Blinder/Princeton) played a major role in preventing a second Great Depression.

2)  The Dodd/Frank Act-- in response to the Wall Street fraudulence that caused the Great Bush/Cheney Recession of 2008-10.

3)  The Affordable Care Act-- the first U.S. legislation to establish a framework for universal healthcare-- one century after Theodore Roosevelt called for universal health insurance in the U.S..

  Unfortunately, in 2010, the Koch brothers bought control of the U.S. House of Representatives through their astro-turf "Tea Party" movement.  The Tea Party House then obstructed everything Obama tried to do for the next six years-- even turning down his "Mother of all No Brainers" debt-ceiling deal in July of 2011.

  In 2014, the Kochs bought control of the U.S. Senate.

  The Koch/GOP Senate has obstructed any and all progressive legislation for the past eight years (with the help of Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.)

Edited May 28, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Matt Allison]

Paul- opposition to gun reform is entirely on the GOP. The Democrats have had nothing to do with it.

In fact, they would love to pass intelligent gun regulation.

[James DiEugenio]

Since Paul suggested this, I will place this article here.  Its a really good example of honest journalism.  And boy does he give it to that blowhard Rachel Maddow.  What a sellout she turned out to be.  BTW, I never bought into Russia Gate because of Robert Parry.  He was really good on this.  When he passed on, I then started reading Aaron Mate, who was just as good on the issue.  In retrospect, its sort of like Wag the Dog, it shows how to create a war climate on the weakest of grounds and little evidence.  It turned out the FBI lied about Carter Page.  He was a CIA asset.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/shouldnt-hillary-clinton-be-banned?s=r

Edited May 28, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

Thanks Jim. It is very good. It was Ben that first posted it. Why is substack the go to place for good journalists? If there is a deep state, where are they on the marginalization of good independent journalists. And where on so-called RussiaGate? These may seem to be overly simplistic questions. 

[W. Niederhut]

37 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Thanks Jim. It is very good. It was Ben that first posted it. Why is substack the go to place for good journalists? If there is a deep state, where are they on the marginalization of good independent journalists. And where on so-called RussiaGate? These may seem to be overly simplistic questions. 

 

38 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Thanks Jim. It is very good. It was Ben that first posted it. Why is substack the go to place for good journalists? If there is a deep state, where are they on the marginalization of good independent journalists. And where on so-called RussiaGate? These may seem to be overly simplistic questions. 

Paul,

    It's not good.  It's Barr/Durham bunk, amplified by Murdoch's WSJ, and I've already debunked it twice.

    Perhaps the third time will be the charm.  (Red italics mine.)

   

  

Hillary didn’t do it

AuthorKevin DrumPublished onMay 22, 2022 – 8:25 pm44 Commentson Hillary didn’t do it

I'm on vacation cruising down the Seine, so my threshold for commenting on dumb stuff is higher than usual. What's more, the proximate cause of my latest annoyance is the Wall Street Journal editorial page—which is sort of like saying I'm annoyed by cancer. I mean, I am annoyed by having cancer, but I'm annoyed by it every day and it's hardly worth bitching about it every time I get an upset stomach or something.

That said, I'm awake while Marian is still snoozing and I have nothing special to do. So here's the latest from the Journal's distinguished editorial board:

Well, of course Hillary did it. That goes without saying in Journal land. But what was it this time? Did she kill Elon Musk? Steal Joe Biden's stash of Diet Coke? Pull the heist of the century by emptying Fort Knox?

Nah. None of that. Apparently she ran for president a few years ago and her campaign manager, Robby Mook tried to interest the press in some dirt about her opponent:

Prosecutors asked Mr. Mook about his role in funneling the Alfa Bank claims to the press. Mr. Mook admitted the campaign lacked expertise to vet the data, yet the decision was made by Mr. Mook [and some others] to give the Alfa Bank claims to a reporter. Mr. Mook said Mrs. Clinton was asked about the plan and approved it. A story on the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations then appeared in Slate, a left-leaning online publication.

On Oct. 31, 2016, [Jake] Sullivan issued a statement mentioning the Slate story, writing, “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.” Mrs. Clinton tweeted Mr. Sullivan’s statement with the comment: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” “Apparently” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

In short, the Clinton campaign created the Trump-Alfa allegation, fed it to a credulous press that failed to confirm the allegations but ran with them anyway, then promoted the story as if it was legitimate news.

Hold the presses! A campaign passed along to the press some potential dirt that they hoped might lead to further digging. It wasn't something they "created," either: it had already been a widespread subject of rumor and investigation on blogs and Twitter for months (I was alive back in 2016 so I know this). Nor did "the press" run with it. A bunch of reporters tried to run down the allegations, but none of them was able to. Finally one person, Frank Foer of Slate, took a flier and decided to publish everything he could dig up. This is a common way of attracting the attention of sources who might be able to add something to a story.

And the Clinton campaign's shameful conspiracy to take advantage of Foer's piece? Two whole tweets!

All things considered, Foer probably made the wrong call. There were lots of questions about the Alfa Bank activity but not enough to justify a fishing piece. But that's it. A close but wrong call.¹

So in the end this was one of the most common and trivial things imaginable: a campaign trying to get the media interested in digging around a possible bit of mud. It's hard to think of anything more commonplace or basically innocuous in the world of presidential campaigns.

ALSO: The Clinton campaign merely passed along some information they hoped was worth checking out. But when it comes to feeding false information to the press and then quoting it back as confirmation when it's published, the all-time king is Dick Cheney during the marketing phase of the Iraq War. Or, more recently, Rudy Giuliani and the Hunter Biden laptop. Oddly, though, I don't remember the fine and honest folks of the Journal editorial page ever getting distressed about either of these things.

AND: As long as I'm at it, the Journal also offhandedly claims that this incident and others started the FBI's long Trump-Russia investigation. This is, unsurprisingly, an outright lie. The timeline of the investigation is very well known and it began not with Hillary Clinton but with a Trump advisor telling an Australian diplomat over drinks about alleged Russian emails that were damaging to Clinton. The Australian government passed this along to the FBI after Wikileaks published hacked DNC emails. This happened in July 2016, months before the Alfa Bank allegations.

¹And to Foer's credit, he promptly published a follow-up piece noting objections and new information about the Alfa Bank story.

[Paul Brancato]

Sorry - this story doesn’t excuse her and her campaign. They are dirty. Maybe not as dirty as Trump, or Bush, or …. but dirty nevertheless. There was no story. As usual the real story was buried beneath the trash. Donald Trump was and is so dirty we didn’t need false stories making him Putin’s puppet, and those stories backfired. Trump is no ones puppet, he’s just a huge schmuck (with a small you know what). It’s so unfortunate to methat the Democrats can throw Al Franken under the bus for nothing, and shoot themselves in the foot in the process. Is it just stupidity? You are aware I hope that the DNC is funding centrist candidates in order to primary progressive, mostly women of color, candidates from the Bernie Sanders wing, (they did this to Stacey Abrams in 2018 even though she is no Socialist btw) you know, Democratic Socialists. Question - are you at heart a socialist? Are you pro labor? Did you enjoy Biden’s administration siding with Amazon on a $10 billion federal contract a month after he gave a pro labor speech specifically mentioning going after Amazon? The Democratic Party, the DNC, has no chance if they continue to throw progressives under the bus and pretend otherwise. Reducing everything to how corrupt the Republicans are - and they are totally corrupt, at least the elected ones - while ignoring huge huge moat in their own eye so to speak, is just unacceptable. And getting rid of Al Franken just makes it worse, inconceivably so, and doesn’t make them the responsible ones in my eyes, it makes them blinded by false morality. Have you ever met any big time Politicians? I have. Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry are two prominent Democrats, and George Schultz, the worst of the three. Yes, Republicans are so much worse. Bush Jr, not Trump, the worst President in my lifetime. But Bill Clinton? Mr. feel good? Pulled the wool over our eyes while he wreaked havoc. 
Anyone But Trump has become an excuse to keep corporate Democrats in power. But it won’t help them against Trump. Prosecuting him might, but Biden’s attorney general and his justice department seem to be very ineffectual. Do you agree? 

are you and others 

[Benjamin Cole]

The Russiagate hoax is doubly ironic, because it harkens back to the old commie-hunt days. 

That is guilt by association, or even 21st century witchcraft (the Alfa bank innocuous automated computer connections) followed by piling on of investigative agencies and allied media. 

The feds investigated Manafort with all the tools of the panopticon state; they can seize bank records, they can seize his smartphone texts and track locations, they can subpoena any and all documents, compel and depose witnesses, and threaten people with long-term incarceration unless they cooperate.  In fact, Manafort was arrested at gunpoint in pre-dawn raid. 

And what was he charged with? Garden-variety grifting, lying on loan docs, not registering as foreign lobbyist, tax evasion etc. 

I am happy to say Manafort is a grifter, and though one might suspect selective prosecution in his case, he was found guilty in a court of law, and that is that. 

But if a guy is not even charged, let alone convicted of being a spy, or Kremlin agent...but hey, we have the New Donk-Media  Standard: Guilty until proven innocent, if an unidentified source  said you are a Moscow agent.

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

5 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Sorry - this story doesn’t excuse her and her campaign. They are dirty. Maybe not as dirty as Trump, or Bush, or …. but dirty nevertheless. There was no story. As usual the real story was buried beneath the trash. Donald Trump was and is so dirty we didn’t need false stories making him Putin’s puppet, and those stories backfired. Trump is no ones puppet, he’s just a huge schmuck (with a small you know what). It’s so unfortunate to methat the Democrats can throw Al Franken under the bus for nothing, and shoot themselves in the foot in the process. Is it just stupidity? You are aware I hope that the DNC is funding centrist candidates in order to primary progressive, mostly women of color, candidates from the Bernie Sanders wing, (they did this to Stacey Abrams in 2018 even though she is no Socialist btw) you know, Democratic Socialists. Question - are you at heart a socialist? Are you pro labor? Did you enjoy Biden’s administration siding with Amazon on a $10 billion federal contract a month after he gave a pro labor speech specifically mentioning going after Amazon? The Democratic Party, the DNC, has no chance if they continue to throw progressives under the bus and pretend otherwise. Reducing everything to how corrupt the Republicans are - and they are totally corrupt, at least the elected ones - while ignoring huge huge moat in their own eye so to speak, is just unacceptable. And getting rid of Al Franken just makes it worse, inconceivably so, and doesn’t make them the responsible ones in my eyes, it makes them blinded by false morality. Have you ever met any big time Politicians? I have. Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry are two prominent Democrats, and George Schultz, the worst of the three. Yes, Republicans are so much worse. Bush Jr, not Trump, the worst President in my lifetime. But Bill Clinton? Mr. feel good? Pulled the wool over our eyes while he wreaked havoc. 
Anyone But Trump has become an excuse to keep corporate Democrats in power. But it won’t help them against Trump. Prosecuting him might, but Biden’s attorney general and his justice department seem to be very ineffectual. Do you agree? 

are you and others 

 It’s so unfortunate to me that the Democrats can throw Al Franken under the bus for nothing, and shoot themselves in the foot in the process. Is it just stupidity? --PB

I have always wondered about this one. Franken, as a gag and for a photograph, put his hands on the chest of female comedian--who was wearing a heavy-duty flack jacket. The joke: Franken is dumb, you can't feel the boobs through the flack jacket. It's funny. 

And Franken gets the long knife. 

Maybe Franken just quit in the moment. I have wondered if he was perceived as "non-establishment" or not a true New Donk, and thus a threat. So he got the long knife at first chance. 

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Parents of child killed in shooting refused to meet with Texas governor (msn.com)

[Paul Brancato]

32 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

The Russiagate hoax is doubly ironic, because it harkens back to the old commie-hunt days. 

That is guilt by association, or even 21st century witchcraft (the Alfa bank innocuous automated computer connections) followed by piling on of investigative agencies and allied media. 

The feds investigated Manafort with all the tools of the panopticon state; they can seize bank records, they can seize his smartphone texts and track locations, they can subpoena any and all documents, compel and depose witnesses, and threaten people with long-term incarceration unless they cooperate.  In fact, Manafort was arrested at gunpoint in pre-dawn raid. 

And what was he charged with? Garden-variety grifting, lying on loan docs, not registering as foreign lobbyist, tax evasion etc. 

I am happy to say Manafort is a grifter, and though one might suspect selective prosecution in his case, he was found guilty in a court of law, and that is that. 

But if a guy is not even charged, let alone convicted of being a spy, or Kremlin agent...but hey, we have the New Donk-Media  Standard: Guilty until proven innocent, if an unidentified source  said you are a Moscow agent.

 

 

Whatever legal stuff, Manafort and Stone are crooks, unpleasant individuals, guns for hire. 

[Paul Brancato]

For Matt and William - just to be clear, we don’t disagree about what we’d like to see, at least I don’t think so. I just had a wisdom tooth taken out, which I didn’t know I still had, in a bad mood. We disagree about some things perhaps. I’m just super disappointed at the Democrats and always have been. But I’m on that side of things.

[Matt Allison]

Way too much bunk here on page 720 so far lol.

Matt Taibbi is a Hillary hater and is far too cozy with the Russians, having lived there for a time.

And I'm not sure how people seem to be forgetting that Paul Manafort would still be sitting in prison right now, had the crooked and corrupt Donald Trump not pardoned him.

Please read this for a refresher on the ties between Trump and the Kremlin:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/26/secret-alternative-mueller-report-goes-public-00035507