I'll take that wager, cause you are dead wrong and your analysis of the situation is flawed imo.Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
Re: Biden thread
I'll take that wager, cause you are dead wrong and your analysis of the situation is flawed imo.
Re: Biden thread
You're on...I'll take that wagerI hope I lose because that would mean the Democrats got off their collective lazy asses, and actually did something for the people who just put them in control of our government.
I certainly could be, but explain it to me anyway.......cause you are dead wrong and your analysis of the situation is flawed imo
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden thread
Do you guys think it'd be more productive if they stopped trying to jam everything into gigantic bills? The COVID relief act is able to be sold on the right wing side as just a cover for 'liberal agenda' items and not really COVID relief which is why the Rs that vote nah won't be hurt much by opposing it.
Minimum wage for example, why not try to change that with a single bill devoted to just the minimum wage? Make senators and representatives vote yes or no on that single item instead of giving them x number of reasons hidden in a gigantic bill to say they are opposed.
The upcoming infrastructure bill would be nice if it just focused on infrastructure but we all know it'll have various amounts of pork and other unrelated items put in it. If it focused on just infrastructure there'd be a higher chance of it passing quickly.
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
-Abraham Lincoln
Four stage strategy from Yes, Minister:
Stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.
Re: Biden thread
Sure, take this statement for example:I certainly could be, but explain it to me anyway....
"I realize this. Correct me if I'm wrong: Bernie puts the $15/hr raise in the bill, and it gets voted down. Now you can point to all who voted against it, including Manchin and Sinema (if she follows suit), and say these Congresspeople don't want to make life better for Americans. Then you go back, remove it from the bill, and hold another vote where the bill likely passes.
Otherwise you give Republicans the ammunition to hammer you about reneging on a campaign promise, and they can even diss Bernie for not even putting it in in the first place. Seems to me to be a lose-lose course to take. Even worse, you open the door to the possibility of the GOP getting their own bill (Josh Hawley's) onto the floor"
Forcing a pointless vote for a bill that won't pass wastes valuable time and only sows division within the party. Why would you be amenable (pretend you are Manchin) to playing the game of give and take if your own party is trying to single you out as the cause for all the world's problems. You think it holds them responsible but no one cares about individual votes. Voters care about what a party delivers, not what they attempt to deliver. And this is where most of your arguments fall apart.
Manchin holds the cards, end of story. This is political power. If he doesn't want $15 min wage in the bill, then trying to override the parliamentarian, making him look like a jackass or the bad guy does nothing but make the party look ungovernable. It makes individual senators feel insecure about the respect they command. These things matter to the human individuals who are ultimately making these choices.
The GOP always says they have a better plan and they never do. Any such plan would come from establishment GOP like Romney and would have zero support from the Trumpists who just want to burn the deep state down. It would have zero support from the Progressives in the Senate and thus never hit the floor and "give the point" to the GOP.
They always say that Democrats failed to govern, it's always a lie. "Biden had the worst first month as president of all time." -Trump at CPAC. Are you that afraid of GOP PR that you would rather waste everyone's fucking time on symbolic bullshit? Just so we can be super duper absolutely, mega, certain that the GOP are lying bastards?
It is what it is, you should be spending your rage on local campaigns/politics rather than getting mad at a big tent party for not magically unifying on all issues to push the ideal agenda in a 50/50 Senate.
Re: Biden thread
As I responded to RS, who has ever been motivated to cast a vote in an election because of a Congressional 'symbolic vote'. Would it be more productive? No, cause dividing everything into many bills means most of those issues simply get dropped.
Thousands of bills are introduced every year into Congress, thousands. These mega bills are good conglomeration of mostly agreed upon policy that can be bundled together for efficiency sake.
What hurts the mega-bills is the fillibuster. It forces everything into the narrow path of 'reconciliation' and the arcane rules of what is acceptable and it allows opposing parties to sit out the game because you can't make long-term reform through reconciliation. Without the filibuster, mega-bills can encompass any and all topics for any duration of time. Which means opposition party has to come to table to influence the bill and moderate it as much as they can.
Re: Biden thread
Forcing a pointless vote for a bill that won't pass wastes valuable time and only sows division within the party.Bull. You force the vote to point out exactly who is responsible for millions of Americans not getting something better than slave wages for their work. As far as division within the Democratic Party, you'll have to do better than hyperbole.....Forcing a pointless vote for a bill that won't pass wastes valuable time and only sows division within the party.
You just made my point for me, dude. How about a voter looking at this:Voters care about what a party delivers, not what they attempt to deliver.
https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/sta...757250?lang=en
That was on 9 Feb of this year.The federal minimum wage: 2009: $7.25/hour 2020: $7.25/hour That’s unconscionable. The House voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and it’s time the Senate does the same.
Now you see this:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/harris...s_3710504.html
Would you, as a conscientious black voter in 2024, vote for this woman for president? Doubt it. Just another politician saying one thing and doing another...a clear case of what a politician claims they will deliver and what they actually deliver.Vice President Kamala Harris will not attempt to overrule the Senate parliamentarian if she rules that a federal minimum wage increase cannot be enacted through a process known as budget reconciliation, according to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain.
Sure enough, run up the white flag at the first sign of resistance. Manchin doing what he's doing already shows the Democratic Party is ungovernable. A president that can't get one or two senators in line with PARTY goals. If this behavior is allowed to continue unchallenged, how many more times in the next two years are we going to have this very same discussion about another bill? Manchin isn't god even in his own state:Manchin holds the cards, end of story. This is political power. If he doesn't want $15 min wage in the bill, then trying to override the parliamentarian, making him look like a jackass or the bad guy does nothing but make the party look ungovernable. It makes individual senators feel insecure about the respect they command. These things matter to the human individuals who are ultimately making these choices.
https://newrepublic.com/article/1612...ots-organizing
Manchin's margin of victory was a little over 3% in 2018. He's not unassailable....Getting Manchin to listen, Frankenberry believes, will also involve getting Manchin to understand that supporting the Democratic agenda will allow him to have a potentially historic impact on his state. “I’m reminded about how government has helped West Virginia,” he says. “You had FDR right? You had JFK. Then you had Byrd—everything is named after Robert C. Byrd in West Virginia, because of the amount of infrastructure that he helped bring West Virginia. This is an opportunity, in our view, for Senator Manchin to really make his mark and really help deliver for West Virginia in a way that will give our citizens a future.”
At least one national organization is already ready to pounce and replace him if he doesn’t. On Tuesday, No Excuses PAC, a group founded by former Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez staffers Saikat Chakrabarti, Zack Exley, and Corbin Trent, announced it would be beginning a search for challengers to both Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in 2024—an effort it will be publicizing and supporting through ad campaigns in West Virginia and Arizona. “No Excuses PAC was started a couple of weeks ago, when Senator Joe Manchin announced his objection to sending out checks for Covid relief,” Trent says. “And we decided that was an untenable position—we’d run on it, we’d won on it, and we’d better do it. And we wanted to run some ads and letters letting folks know where he stood there.”
“If Democrats can’t get it right, then they’re going to get replaced,” he continues. “I mean, Joe Manchin went from having pretty solid victories as a senator to barely winning, this last time, in 2018. It was two or three points. What’s happening there—just like where I’m from in Tennessee, just like you saw in Louisiana, just like you saw in Missouri a couple of cycles back with Claire McCaskill—is that the Democratic Party is losing its capacity to relate to people. They’ve got no idea what the hell is going on out here in the real world.” Trent says that No Excuses intends to engage with local organizations already working on the ground in both Arizona and West Virginia and spotlight them on their podcast.
Nope...they don't have much in the way of planning for the future...but...they mostly deliver on their campaign promises. Tax cuts for the rich, conservative judges into federal seats, tougher immigration laws, and maybe they'll get ACA repealed in the near future.The GOP always says they have a better plan and they never do.
And there is ZERO chance to eliminate the filibuster. The sad result of getting your ass handed to you by Republicans this last election.What hurts the mega-bills is the fillibuster.
So keep my effing opinion about national politics to myself, and focus on Michigan? Now you're starting to sound like Gil....It is what it is, you should be spending your rage on local campaigns/politics rather than getting mad at a big tent party for not magically unifying on all issues to push the ideal agenda in a 50/50 Senate.And is the bar set so low at the "big tent party" that we'll accept anything just because this president isn't blowing up Twitter with his BS?
Last edited by ReluctantSamurai; 03-03-2021 at 03:39.
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden thread
Flaws with forcing a vote on minimum wage separately or in combination with other policy:
1. If Manchin and Sinema don't care, they're not going to vote up no matter what.
2. Forcing a vote that fails makes the predominant media narrative "Democrats in Disarray."
3. To the extent any voters are moved by the news, Sinema's and Manchin's electoral prospects would be weakened (and by this I do not mean that they will be successfully primaried by socialists).
4. Sinema and Manchin are thus personally injured and humiliated and are disincentivized from cooperating or compromising on any subsequent major legislation.
All that for a purely performative exercise sounds like a very bad deal. It isn't a way to achieve the goal of passing the minimum wage, and is indeed counterproductive.
If we were going to try this gambit on anything, I would recommend it be for exactly the cycle in which the John Lewis voting rights bill comes to the floor. If Manchin and Sinema really refuse to abolish or limit the filibuster for the sake of that existentially-crucial legislation, history may as well cement that they were the hinge on which the party and country fell.
Well, he did just issue one of the most pro-union statements in the history of the presidency, and appears willing to let that be reflected in executive staffing.
I am very confident that Republicans won't campaign on Democrats not raising the minimum wage. More likely they would campaign on saving the country from the Democratic business-killing agenda.Otherwise you give Republicans the ammunition to hammer you about reneging on a campaign promise, and they can even diss Bernie for not even putting it in in the first place. Seems to me to be a lose-lose course to take. Even worse, you open the door to the possibility of the GOP getting their own bill (Josh Hawley's) onto the floor:
The fundamental disagreement here is, whether voters care about this type of gestural politics and buck-passing, and whether it actually moves legislation.Would you, as a conscientious black voter in 2024, vote for this woman for president? Doubt it. Just another politician saying one thing and doing another...a clear case of what a politician claims they will deliver and what they actually deliver.
Remember, the goal here is to - among other things - get minimum wage increases passed. Your proposal might be emotionally satisfying to you, but it wouldn't progress any of your concrete goals.
AFAIK the quality contemporary research on minimum wage effects dispels the century-old conservative dogmas, but I was a little surprised to see so many small business owners supportive of increases in the linked quasi-formal survey. Then again, even most Republicans support increases, so it stands to reason.
I mean, that's a pretty typical story in American politics (and beyond). Not even FDR or LBJ could puppeteer their copartisans, and they had a lot more slack to work with.A president that can't get one or two senators in line with PARTY goals.
Or local voters just disagree with Democratic values and politics.“If Democrats can’t get it right, then they’re going to get replaced,” he continues. “I mean, Joe Manchin went from having pretty solid victories as a senator to barely winning, this last time, in 2018. It was two or three points. What’s happening there—just like where I’m from in Tennessee, just like you saw in Louisiana, just like you saw in Missouri a couple of cycles back with Claire McCaskill—is that the Democratic Party is losing its capacity to relate to people. They’ve got no idea what the hell is going on out here in the real world.” Trent says that No Excuses intends to engage with local organizations already working on the ground in both Arizona and West Virginia and spotlight them on their podcast.
The only prospect is to whittle it down with carveouts for narrow topics (e.g. 50-vote cloture on petitions for accession to the Union), and if the Dangerous Duo have any sense they will talk out of both sides of their mouths on this issue and claim to be upholding the filibuster while admitting no choice but to weaken it in the face of Republican partisanship.And there is ZERO chance to eliminate the filibuster. The sad result of getting your ass handed to you by Republicans this last election.
Our experience of the past decades has made it quite plausible that some credible pork is the only thing that will allow passage of an infrastructure bill.
Vitiate Man.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Re: Biden thread
Emotional satisfaction has nothing to do with it. I am retired so minimum wage has little to no direct impact on me. But I have a lot of friends in the service industry, and a raise to $15/hr does have a major impact on them. If I were a lone voice in the wilderness crying wolf, I'd fold my cards and go home. But I'm not. Any quick perusal of media digital or otherwise shows that.Remember, the goal here is to - among other things - get minimum wage increases passed. Your proposal might be emotionally satisfying to you, but it wouldn't progress any of your concrete goals.
Wow...I'm really impressed...Well, he did just issue one of the most pro-union statements in the history of the presidency, and appears willing to let that be reflected in executive staffing.
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden thread
The emotional satisfaction would be in seeing a show put on which the villains - Manchin et al. - get publicly shamed, but it wouldn't get any money moving to your nonretired friends. Is what I'm saying.
Vitiate Man.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Re: Biden thread
LBJ did a pretty good job of arm-twisting to get his Civil Rights Bill passed, no?I mean, that's a pretty typical story in American politics (and beyond). Not even FDR or LBJ could puppeteer their copartisans, and they had a lot more slack to work with.
FDR was trying to pull off a "Roosevelt Purge", as characterised by media at the time. That's not what's being advocated here...
If money ever moves to my nonretired friends in the form of increased wages, I doubt it will be $15/hr. Of course anything above the current rate is "better", but I don't need to point out to you that in many states, even $15/hr won't be keeping up with the cost of living. Manchin is like the proverbial petulant child...if you keep cow-towing to their belligerent behavior, they keep pushing the limits of what they think they can get away with....Manchin et al. - get publicly shamed, it wouldn't get any money moving to your nonretired friends
Last edited by ReluctantSamurai; 03-03-2021 at 06:19.
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden thread
I understand your point. That IS one of the countervailing arguments regarding small businesses.
I wonder at the inflationary component of such a wage increase. Businesses, to pay the higher labor costs, must either cut costs elsewhere, raise prices, or reduce profits (or some mix thereof). Is there a viable balance point that does not create an endless loop of rising prices mandating higher living wages etc.? There are mixed views as to such a balance point in the stuff I have read.
"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken
Re: Biden thread
Here's an idea....I wonder at the inflationary component of such a wage increase. Businesses, to pay the higher labor costs, must either cut costs elsewhere, raise prices, or reduce profits (or some mix thereof). Is there a viable balance point that does not create an endless loop of rising prices mandating higher living wages etc.? There are mixed views as to such a balance point in the stuff I have read.How about giving tax breaks, or some other renumeration to small businesses like our government is so gladly willing to do for large corporations? You want to kick-start the economy? Raise the minimum wage for workers, and give financial aid to the small businesses that raise impacts the most.
But of course government still believes in the "Laffer Curve" (appropriately named) kind of economics, and politicians don't receive hefty bribes, err I mean hefty donations from small businesses. The aid included in the last stimulus bill was only a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed. Big Business and the stock market doing well? Great! Small Business struggling with many closing their doors permanently? Meh...where's my latest issue of The Wall Street Journal?
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden thread
LOL, yes! This is how out of touch you are! Because of her, how many black voters are going to get their UI benefits through August and an extra $1,400 in their bank accounts.
Listen, I'm not trying to demean you, I don't know your background but if you are like me, we have to start getting out of the white liberal bubble if we wish to get through Trumpism alive. It is our privilege that gives us the ability to seek the most 'optimal' or 'empathetic' policies, but it is selfish to let the perfect be the enemy of the good because it is not us who will suffer from wasting time on symbolic votes for $15/hr that fail rather than a real change from $7.25 to $11.
I am being absolutely serious here. It is incredibly dangerous to see so many leftist and progressive opinions undermine the Democratic party at this juncture because we only have two years to pass policy, that's it.
Re: Biden thread
Real economists I have been following on twitter (the kind that don't show up on tv and love math) are quick to point out that market prices for goods such as a hamburger are not typically driven by the costs of labor. They are driven by what people are willing to purchase at. There is a big difference there because taking the former idea leads one to believe that a $15 wage will lead to a $22 burger. One look at Denmark and other European countries will quickly disprove that notion.
There is an entire field of optimization that goes into 'supply chain economics' and at the same time, there is a field that basically seeks to find 'market optimal price points' that the public is willing to buy a good for with the highest margin possible for the company.
What this means in reality is that big business like McDonald's can diversify the costs of such a wage by either negotiating the price of its inputs (raw potatoes/meat) further down, removing supply chain inefficiencies, and taking some amount of loss on the profit margin of each product.
But, what you also get from a higher min wage is an increase in demand which either means a higher volume that makes up the difference in the reduced margin or a higher 'optimal market price point' (basically, I have more money, I am willing to spend an extra X cents on a burger).
Again the typical conservative response is "well why stop at $15, why not $20, or $50 minimum wage?!?!" Again, because the economists don't believe that such a wage could be fully absorbed among the various methods described above such that the labor costs do become the driving factor in the overall cost of the product.
Here is the analogy, "I went to the gas station to fill up my car and asked the cashier to charge me for $25 dollars of gas to fill my tank. The cashier asked me if I was going to ask for $25 of gas, why not 50, or a hundred? I ran out of the store crying, understanding just how financially stupid I was."
Re: Biden thread
I live in the predominately black city of Detroit. Most of my neighbors are black, and most of my current friends are black. What I hear from them is that the shine has worn off having a black woman as VP. It's very cool she got there, but now it's time to get real. What are you going to actually do? Well....fewer of them are going to be eligible than was the case under the Trump Administration. Black people here don't just vote for a candidate because they are black. Case in point is the Mayor of Detroit, Mike Duggan, a white man. He won the election back in 2014, and he won convincingly agaist a very popular local black businessman who had previously been a Wayne County Sheriff, and Chief of Police for the City of Detroit. Why? Because he was known as someone who got things done. So yeah....I'm outta touch....LOL, yes! This is how out of touch you are! Because of her, how many black voters are going to get their UI benefits through August and an extra $1,400 in their bank accounts.
That $1400 was supposed to be $2000, and the UI benefits were originally written through September, so both got walked back. Add to that the number of people going to be eligible for the $1400 will be less than the folks who were eligible when Trump was in office. Not a good look for Democrats.
Please stop with the minimum wage thing...
Biden and Manchin should just go out behind the White House and whip them out to see whose is bigger....God I effing hate politics.....
Last edited by ReluctantSamurai; 03-05-2021 at 23:40.
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden thread
Dangerous and unproductive mindset in more than the mildest form, as it promises to squander the 2-year window we have in exchange for reducing the probability of securing further such windows.
And why is it, by the way, that no one tells centrists about not letting perfect be the enemy of good? It sure seems like their vision of perfect tends to get priority...
What do you make of Duggan rejecting supplies of the J&J one-shot vaccine on the basis that it's not good enough for urban (here he himself emphasized urban qua distribution capacity) populations?I live in the predominately black city of Detroit. Most of my neighbors are black, and most of my current friends are black. What I hear from them is that the shine has worn off having a black woman as VP. It's very cool she got there, but now it's time to get real. What are you going to actually do? Well....fewer of them are going to be eligible than was the case under the Trump Administration. Black people here don't just vote for a candidate because they are black. Case in point is the Mayor of Detroit, Mike Duggan, a white man. He won the election back in 2014, and he won convincingly agaist a very popular local black businessman who had previously been a Wayne County Sheriff, and Chief of Police for the City of Detroit. Why? Because he was known as someone who got things done. So yeah....I'm outta touch....
Vitiate Man.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Re: Biden thread
YOu yourself said it is a waste to be doing performative votes that accomplish nothing. So what is it Monty, pass Manchin approved bills or nothing? You can't act as if the ability to make $15/hr happen is actually there.
Centrists get priority cause the system is built to give them and conservative voices an oversized voice in the system. it is what it is for the moment, we can both acknowledge it is wrong and work with it for the time being until we get a 63+ Dem Senate.
Last edited by a completely inoffensive name; 03-06-2021 at 00:32.
Re: Biden thread
On voting rights today:
2030 GOP: When the social inferiors refuse to make themselves available for slave labor it inflicts economic and moral damages to the virtuous classes. All laws thus unresponsive to our natural, God-given rights are therefore inapplicable.At issue in the Supreme Court today was whether restrictive voting laws in Arizona violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And a Republican Party lawyer defending the restrictions couldn’t have made his intentions clearer.
Tuesday’s oral arguments in two cases—Brnovich v. DNC and Arizona Republican Party v. DNC—concerned the legality of “ballot harvesting,” a practice in which community activists collect ballots to boost voter turnout. The arguments also discussed an Arizona law that disqualified ballots cast in the wrong precinct. There’s no evidence of the voting fraud that these laws purport to limit, and voting rights activists say that the laws disproportionately limit Black, Latino, and Native American voters’ access to the polls.
So Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a simple question for the lawyer defending the GOP-backed laws: “What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC here in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?”
“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” the lawyer, Michael Carvin, responded. “Politics is a zero-sum game.”
An oldie on the reactionary Evangelical/neo-Calvinist mindset that came to dominate the Republican Party:
Maeve Reston reminds me of a conversation from 1993, reconstructed and reimagined from my memory, after an OEOB Ira Magaziner health care reform meeting:
Another Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary: "You've lived in California; Washington, DC; and Massachusetts. You don't really understand the rest of the country--you don't understand the South; you don't understand Texas."
Me: Half my extended family lives in Florida...
ATDAS: "That's not the South..."
Me: Three of my four grandparents come from Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri...
ATDAS: "The Midwest is not the South, or Texas..."
Me: One of my great-great-great grandfathers is buried in Wichita...
ATDAS: "And Wichita is not Texas.
Me: True...
ATDAS: "You don't understand the Republicans we have in the South, and in Texas. You know of Northeastern and Left Coast Republicans. Even Midwestern Republicans--especially Bob Dole--actually think that sick and disabled people, even if they are poor, should be able to get the health care that is good for them, without having to beg. That's not the case with Republicans down in Texas. Republicans in Texas think that if you can't pay the doctor out of what is in your pocket and from the insurance policy you bought, then you need to go beg at your church. And only after you have begged at your church, and begged sincerely and abjectly enough, might your church find itself paying for you out of Christian charity--the benefit of which is to save their souls, not your body!"
Me: But...
ATDAS: "They don't like Medicaid. They don't like Medicaid because it short-circuits this process. You get treated but you don't have to beg for it. The only reason they vote for Medicaid--and Texas only votes for grinchy Medicaid--is that the rich doctors of Dallas and Houston who contribute so much to the Republican Party think that Medicaid means that they don't have to dig into the pockets of their practices to support charity care."
Me: But what if you don't have a church!
ATDAS: "Then you should go join one, shouldn't you? That's a benefit..."
The idea being to try to get as much out of him as possible, not allow him to unilaterally set the agenda as he pleases. To use your discussion of inflation as an analogy, we're trying to find an optimal price point for the buyer (Manchin et al.), not just selling 25c patties because that's what Manchin would like to see.
What there is an ability to make happen is something that the leadership can discover, it's not something to be presumed in either direction. If, within limits of methods, Manchin will never ever budge on $15 minimum wage (and I'm not even sure that is the case), then we've found it out through the process.
Vitiate Man.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Re: Biden thread
So it sounds like they are being very pragmatic in their political choices and not at all idealistic or ideological. How about that.....Why? Because he was known as someone who got things done. So yeah....I'm outta touch....
Re: Biden thread
Political power doesn't work like that Monty. 'Getting as much out' of someone involves applying available leverage to a situation as part of bargaining. What leverage does the party have over a Blue Dog Dem who happens to be Dem #50 in a 50/50 Senate and has a very tenuous position in a ruby red state?
Have you read the bio's on the guy? He has a staffer text him the national debt every morning when he goes to work. What's there to do other than ask him what number he feels comfortable voting for?
Re: Biden thread
Which was precisely my point in making the statement you mocked. I don't know how black voters in other areas of the country feel, but after the corruption and scandal during the terms of several of the past mayors who were black, African-American residents of Detroit have become very pragmatic. Trust me, when 10,000 Detroit families (and I'm just picking a random # here) receive less than, or no Covid relief checks, and have their UI reduced, than what they got under the Trump Administration, they are going to be asking themselves what the hell they voted for last November...So it sounds like they are being very pragmatic in their political choices and not at all idealistic or ideological.
So what!?! You get the man into a meeting and discuss how to get him on board with the Democratic agenda. You don't just run up the white flag every time he objects to something. If Biden is such a good negotiator as he claims, find some common ground where Manchin gives whats good for the administration, and can get what's good for him. Otherwise, Manchin will almost single-handedly be responsible for the GOP reclaiming both Houses of the Senate in 2022, and the presidency in 2024.Have you read the bio's on the guy? He has a staffer text him the national debt every morning when he goes to work. What's there to do other than ask him what number he feels comfortable voting for?
Last edited by ReluctantSamurai; 03-06-2021 at 01:30.
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden Thread
LBJ and FDR weren't as successful in pursuing their priorities as you think, which was why a lot of legislation either had to be watered down and passed on a bipartisan basis (Southern Yellow Dog Democrats really sucked! even though they gave Democrats supermajorities). Which is not to say that the acronymic leadership was below replacement level compared to what we might have got instead. Black people only even got a proper minimum wage in 1967 (1966 Fair Labor Standards Act amendment), practically speaking, and that contained many limitations that we recognize today such as the separate tipped minimum or even deprecated provisions (?**) such as the student subminimum. (There's an interesting narrative to be derived here about how leftist-favored "universal" programs rarely actually start universal but have to be built up...) But it's important to note that to the extent individual legislators could be cajoled or threatened back in the day*, it is because loyalties, priorities, and commitments were more fluid within and between factions and parties. Nowadays it's possible to more or less pin down every legislator (or at least Senator) 'where they are', which wasn't the case until the past decade. It's hard to understate how much of a change to the process it is for votes to almost be a mathematical function rather than a very personal and impressionistic area of judgement. The "uncommitted" member is a critically endangered species.
*A lot of the action involved simply bypassing roadblocks created by ranking Southern committee members using procedural methods, rather than convincing them of anything. The hurdle today is less with procedure than with the aggregate vote
**One apparent remnant of the 1966 amendment is "a minimum of not less than $4.25 per hour for employees under 20 years of age during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer."
Well, we don't know anything, that I am aware of, about the private process. That is, I could understand faulting Biden with giving up too easily if this is how his interactions with Manchin unfolded:If money ever moves to my nonretired friends in the form of increased wages, I doubt it will be $15/hr. Of course anything above the current rate is "better", but I don't need to point out to you that in many states, even $15/hr won't be keeping up with the cost of living. Manchin is like the proverbial petulant child...if you keep cow-towing to their belligerent behavior, they keep pushing the limits of what they think they can get away with.
Biden: So, minimum wage in the package
Manchin: Nah
Biden: I've done all I can
But I don't see why we should assume such a low level of commitment on Biden's part (though this is bad, albeit itself offset by 100% COBRA subsidy).
Under the plan passed by the House, individuals earning up to $75,000 per year and couples making up to $150,000 per year would qualify for the full $1,400 stimulus payment. The size of the payments then begins to scale down before zeroing out for individuals making $100,000 per year and couples making $200,000.
Under the changes agreed to by Biden and Senate Democratic leadership, individuals earning $75,000 per year and couples earning $150,000 would still receive the full $1,400-per-person benefit. However, the benefit would disappear for individuals earning more than $80,000 annually and couples earning more than $160,000.
That means singles making between $80,000 and $100,000 and couples earning between $160,000 and $200,000 would be newly excluded from a partial benefit under the revised structure Biden agreed to.
Theoretically there are some genuine hardball measures that might be used to drive Manchin to cooperation, such as threatening federal defunding of West Virginia in the form of highways or military bases. Going really below the belt, the President could threaten to have Manchin's family investigated for dirty dealings. I do doubt Biden would ever go so far as to consider either of these tactics. I wouldn't advocate for them either, except in service of meta-political legislation such as voting rights, new states, or even judicial reform, because this isn't the sort of winch one can apply continually before the rope breaks; Manchin would soon get angry enough to call the bluff.
Other than the hardball tactics I mentioned above, the basis of negotiation in the barest sense would be to ask Manchin what he's comfortable with and try to work him up as much as you can with persuasion (arguing the case) and blandishment (constituent, personal, political, or partisan benefit distinct from the policy under negotiation). We literally discussed avoiding pre-compromise like 3 years ago.
I doubt such inflationary pressures obtain in practice. If you mean the perpetual inflationary growth of the entire economy/currency, AFAIK it has to do with the comprehensive monetary policy in the developed world since WW2 - prior to which used to be both inflationary and deflationary cycles - not regulations such as minimum wage.
Wage push pressures of the sort the Fed tried to crush in the 70s and 80s may have some influence over inflation, but the concept of the wage push is that workers broadly speaking have enough power to bargain from management higher wages and benefits, a situation that doesn't exist but should. We evidently have better mechanisms for controlling inflation (what the targets ought to be is a whole other question) than suppressing labor. Anyway, a low government-set minimum wage doesn't do that much to increase worker bargaining power on its own because it only establishes a level playing field (in theory; removing the carveouts for agriculture and tipped occupations would make it more so). We can settle the issue by indexing the minimum wage to inflation, which creates predictability and stability in all normal circumstances.
Indeed, I'm surprised the UK members haven't mentioned their minimum wage (though it may have undesirable features, such as the age tiering, and I'm not convinced about linking to median wages). Another point of comparison may be to UK state pensions and their triple lock, which generously raise the state pension by the highest of three measures: annual growth in average earnings, CPI inflation, or 2.5%. Triple-locking the minimum wage, and perhaps a whole spread of financial entitlements (e.g. SNAP, Section 8, Social Security), could be conclusive for a generation, opening more space for other political goals.
Also, important question about the US economy: What is the distribution of low-wage (<$15/hr) workers among firms by size?
Finally, another one of those telling historical graphs:
Vitiate Man.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Re: Biden Thread
Recent updates:
The deliberations:NEW: Dems have reached an agreement, per an aide. They will now offer an amendment to extend the enhanced UI benefits through September 6 at $300/week — a month less than Carper amendment.
The agreement will still make the first $10,200 of UI benefits non-taxable but ONLY to households with incomes under $150k.
Manchin is on board with this one, for the record:
“The President has made it clear we will have enough vaccines for every American by the end of May and I am confident the economic recovery will follow. We have reached a compromise that enables the economy to rebound quickly”
This deal took about 9 hours to put together. The Senate is still only on the first vote of vote-a-drama. Long night ahead.
The two parties spent Friday afternoon battling for Manchin's support on changes to federal unemployment benefits, showcasing how a 50-50 Senate can instantly swing power to one holdout. Senate Democrats struck a deal on Friday over the boosted unemployment benefits in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, shortly before debate on the bill reached its peak. But Manchin (D-W.Va.) hasn't agreed to go along.
An amendment readied by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) would change the bill’s boosted weekly federal unemployment payments from $400, as approved by the House, to $300. That benefit would be extended through September instead of August, and the first $10,200 of unemployment insurance would be non-taxable income to help laid off workers avoid surprise tax bills.
But Manchin is also intrigued by a proposal from Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), which would extend the $300 unemployment benefits until July 18 — and amounts to a cut from both the Carper proposal and the House bill. Manchin spoke by telephone with Portman on Friday afternoon as the intrigue grew and the Senate stalled.
"There's bipartisan support for what Rob's trying to do. And Manchin's getting beat up by his side. They're trying to get him in line, so to speak. And he's trying to do the right thing," said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). "He knows that the Portman amendment saves a lot of money and is better policy. But Democrats in his caucus obviously don’t want to give Republicans a bipartisan win on this."
Thune said he believed the Portman proposal could pass despite skepticism among some conservatives about any additional federal unemployment payments. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he didn’t know where Manchin’s vote was. He said Democrats “don’t want” Portman’s amendment: “We want to get this wrapped up.”
The Carper proposal, hatched by both moderate and progressive Democrats, also links up the expiration of unemployment benefits with the current lapse of government funding at the end of September. But a vote on the measure was delayed as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) held an animated discussion with Manchin on the Senate floor.
Sinema indicated to Manchin that he could theoretically vote for both Carper's Democratic amendment and Portman's GOP amendment in an attempt to end the stalemate. The two parties are fighting over which order to hold the amendment votes in.
Yeah, tbh he's more disappointing than I factored in. He's being outright arbitrary, you can't even glean the principle (it's not to save money, since the total package size isn't really affected).
Vitiate Man.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Re: Biden Thread
Can you imagine watching this crap on tv---provided you don't live in Texas where you still haven't had electricity restored, or had it shut off 'cuz you can't pay the outrageous new bill---sipping on bottled water (which the local food donation center was gracious enough to give you)---because if you live in Cleveland or maybe Baltimore you're water's been shut off 'cuz you can't pay the last several inflated bills---and eating beans out of a can (which you also got from the food donation center) and wondering what world these people live in??Yeah, tbh he's more disappointing than I factored in. He's being outright arbitrary, you can't even glean the principle (it's not to save money, since the total package size isn't really affected).
I guarrantee if this was about a bailout for Boeing Aircraft, or Chase Manhattan, the deal would've been done and signed into law weeks ago.....
God I effing hate politics......
Last edited by ReluctantSamurai; 03-06-2021 at 05:51.
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden Thread
One has to wonder how a lawmaker could conceive of this when arguing against a bill so desperately needed by millions of Americans:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-j...b6829715055f8e
The suddenly fiscally responsible Senator Johnson had no trouble voting for $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy back in 2017. Perhaps voters impacted by all of his delays should buy him a ticket aboard the Space X SN10 and send him halfway to the moon....Sen. Ron Johnson: "That is what we are debating, spending a stack of dollar bills that extends more than halfway the distance to the moon. And this is at a point in time when we're about $28 trillion in debt."
Sen. Johnson, an ex-polyester and plastics exec, has a current net worth of nearly $40 million:
https://www.salon.com/2021/03/05/sen...-covid-relief/
Last edited by ReluctantSamurai; 03-06-2021 at 14:17.
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden Thread
Very happy the bill passed the Senate today. There is a lot of good stuff that the suburbs will appreciate and I think it will only hurt the GOP to be the party that unanimously voted against it.
"92% non-COVID related" bullshit will fall apart when the family of four gets their 12k.
Re: Biden Thread
Plus the whole "voted against Covid relief" likely won't play very well for 2022...
On the Path to the Streets of Gold: a Suebi AAR
Visited:
Hvil i fred HoreToreA man who casts no shadow has no soul.
Re: Biden Thread
First, It's about time...
Second, I hope Joe Biden got the message loud and clear that all that campaign rhetoric about bi-partisanship, was a pipe dream. The final Senate vote, 50-49, clearly sent that message. The GOP, still firmly in the grasp of Donald J Trump, is going to do what they've always done during this last decade---block everything the Democrats try to accomplish, and bide their time until they reclaim Washington.
The "Own the Libs" theme is going to continue unless the filibuster is abolished, and the Democrats are just not united enough to get that done. With the 50 Republican Senators (and likely several conservative Democrats) voting against such a move, abolishing the filibuster is a dead issue. So on to the next circus act....
High Plains Drifter
Re: Biden Thread
Manchin is hinting that he is open to reforming the Filibuster. The ideas getting floated to him right now are:
1. Reduce cloture from 60 to 55.
2. Require senator to hold the floor to filibuster, not just invoke it.
3. Remove cloture entirely and require a 40 Senator affirmative vote to continue debate.
1 doesn't really do much for Dems, but 2 and 3 set a hard time limit for the minority to delay which means the Senate becomes in practice more majoritarian.
Re: Biden Thread
Again, I think it betrays your ignorance of politics to think this when Biden gave the go ahead to move forward with reconciliation on day 1.
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