Sanders: Clinton Will Have To Win Over My Supporters Herself

[Melech 9,900]

20 minutes ago, YourSweet666 said:

 

Ikr? How does he dare to say  it's important to treat Palestinians with dignity and respect. What a cruel man. 

  

He's not even that harsh on Israel, as he could be, but of course any sort of criticism is out of the question.

 

 

He is clueless about foreign relations 

[Melech 9,900]

19 minutes ago, RAMROD said:

Never, bish! Deep down you are a warmonger more than you think you know.  Sanders is the sanest out of the five, like it or not.

 

Yas finally playing Stronghold pays off

[RAMROD 117,132]

1 minute ago, Simon said:

Yas finally playing Stronghold pays off

Don't blame anyone when Hillary being a big bitch to Markela later 

 

[Morphine Prince 109,683]

1 hour ago, Simon said:

Sanders supporters should get off that sinking ship.  I supported sanders at first but his stances on Israel and science issues, two things that are important to me, suck as hell. At this point I'm glad Hillary probably will take the nomination. 

Wow. 

[Whispering 18,865]

4 hours ago, Sycamore said:

How sad for America that between five possible presidents four would start a war and the only one who wouldn't doesn't get enough voters and then gets bashed by GagaDaily members for not telling his supporters to vote for Clinton. 

What a toxic community. Not only for Gaga but also for everybody. 

Even the Republicans have evolved to a foreign policy that is against going into other countries with force on the ground. They are realizing that certain areas of the world are going to be involved in a neverending civil type war. Trump (of all people) just gave a foreign policy speech that basically stated the same general sentiment. 

Out of the remaining five candidates, Bernie might just be the most dangerous, due to his complete lack of knowledge on foreign affairs and policy in general. 

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

Hey again. Hope you're having a good day. This is going to be a lengthy response but I enjoyed thinking about it. Let's get this started  

13 hours ago, Bebe said:

Are a complete misrepresentation of everything I have said. The DNC needs votes, if they win it's because they haven't properly represented their voter base. That's the most obvious thing in the world and it's the same for the Republican Party. I'm actually TALKING about compromise from Hillary and how she should compromise on some issues if she wants the support of Bernie supporters rather than blackmailing them to vote for a candidate that doesn't represent any of the issues they care about.

I've already explained numerous times the issues that Hillary and the DNC establishment are not representing! It should be pretty obvious by now.

You are the one that doesn't want compromise! Your position is "**** the Bernie supporters and whatever they want. They lost now suck it up and vote for this establishment candidate that you so strongly disagree with"!

Also Bernie is far more progressive than Hillary that's for sure, but when 4% of all American's trust Congress and when 75% of Americans believe politicians are corrupt then I don't know if we can really call his ideas extreme? I doubt you would call France extremist when they have free college and proper universal healthcare. You are calling a large proportion of the democratic base EXTREMIST, but it's their support Hillary needs to win over.

The issue I have here is that many people are being inflexible in their expectations for representation.

It is rare to find a candidate that so embodies everything you stand for, while being capable of participating in a cooperative sphere with representatives of other people's needs. 

Hillary already stands for many, if not all, of what Bernie stands for. What makes them different is their approach to solving the problem.

Hillary calls for a more patient and compromising position. It's not just about your needs. It's about everybody's. 

Sanders has a more inflexible approach that makes him appeal to people who want things done quickly. He's only targeting people who feel oppressed by the system, and wants everyone else to get on board. 

Both approaches are valid in their own rights. It boils down to methodology.

Now I know you want to keep making the point of establishment and such. I personally find it quite dismissive and unfair because it ignores the fact that this establishment in particular has been working towards liberal ideologies. I find the term "establishment" to be dismissive of the different structures and roles.

In the case of a political establishment, it is clear that money will always have its place. The money for anything has to come from somewhere. The government and the people cooperate to manage the country. That's how capitalism works. There's always going to be some level of corruption, but any other system has its own fair share of corruption too. It's simply because these institutions are run by fallible people. That's all there is to it.

Regarding your statistics, I find those to be out of context. Regarding your corruption one, any sane individual knows that politicians are corrupt. Even Bernie is. Those who don't work the system do not progress. Bernie has had to compromise his own principles to get where he is. It may be beneficent corruption, but it is still corruption.

It is quite clear that bipartisan politics is taking its toll. The presidency was run by a Democrat and the Senate by a Republican. Any bills Obama drafted were at some, or many points, automatically gerrymandered, protested, or blocked. That's why confidence is low. It's because not much has been done. 

The solution is to work on dismantling this block. How is that accomplished? Historically, Democrats have been more cooperative and considerate when they are the majority, because their liberal efforts were done in the name of all citizens. Meanwhile Republicans only support causes that are essentially limited in scope to their own constituents.

Is it the best solution? Probably not. It would be great to have more parties, but that's not the case now and it won't be the case by the time election season comes. 

A person with liberal ideologies is responsible for ensuring that liberal progression not be undone. While many liberals do not approve of Hillary's approach, it is irrational to be more in favor of anyone else's, because while Trump for example may bring with him anti-establishment politics (which in itself is an oxymoron considering his stances), they are not in the correct direction for anyone who espouses to be a liberal... at any level.

Do not look at other nations for guidance. The USA is a unique entity with its own people and ideologies. France (and other nations with socialist stances) have their own share of problems. In the case of healthcare for example, they are finding it increasingly impossible to accommodate rising medical costs, increasingly unhealthy lifestyle choices, and an aging population. It would be far more wise to take progressive steps to reach these goals without running into the aforementioned problems. It is not that they are extreme. They are admirable goals. What's extreme is the approach, which is what I mentioned earlier.

13 hours ago, Bebe said:

 

How truly ignorant. The idea is to limit corruption? By fixing the corrupt campaign finance system...

We need to pass legislation to require wealthy individuals and corporations who make large campaign contributions to disclose where their money is going.  More importantly, we need to move toward the public funding of elections. Real campaign finance reform must happen as soon as possible. That is why we must overturn, through a constitutional amendment, the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision as well as the Buckley v. Valeo decision.

If you cannot see how deeply corrupt the political system is right now then you are beyond reason.... This goes beyond "Oh well humans naturally get corrupt! We can't be perfect". The point is to fix the systemic corruption within the political system.
 

Please note that I don't disagree with the need for financial transparency and fixing the political system. 

Yes..you limit corruption. You can't ever fix it. It's there by nature of being run by humans. More laws do nothing to solve it. Humans are remarkably ingenious people. Furthermore, stricter laws can end up hurting other groups. There's no one-size-fits-all approach that doesn't resort to outright breach of trust in capitalism. 

Everything you mentioned afterwards is what the Democratic party is working towards. This only reinforces my case. The issue is you're oversimplifying the situation.

How do you overturn Citizens United decision? You need a favorable Supreme Court judge bench. How do you do that? By ensuring that a Democrat gets in the White House. Why? It's because that's their goal. Constitutional amendments are notoriously difficult to pass. The most recent amendment was only ratified after 202 years of continuous painstaking effort.. One cannot afford to wait that long for reform, especially when it would only tackle a small piece of the corruption problem.

There is far more to it than Citizens United.  It would remain perfectly legal for special interests to fund the political careers of the politicians who regulate them, send public servants on lavish vacations disguised as fundraising events, and generally do whatever it takes to keep their lobbyists writing laws. Those are what need to be tackled.

How is this all accomplished? It needs cooperation over a significant period of time. It won't happen right away. It will certainly face resistance.

The question is, why now, and why not support the establishment that is working to resolve these issues? Do you distrust them despite their efforts? 

I would too in some light. I just know that now is not the time to throw them away while they're working to help you and society in general.

13 hours ago, Bebe said:

"And yes, I think the best way to get rid of big banks is to work with them, not destroy them. There are millions of jobs at risk here. You can't just wave a magic wand and dismantle it."

 That's not the Sanders plan. How absolutely crazy that you think, tighter regulation and breaking them up = destroying and dismantling the banks. If you think that Charles Koch and the Big banks prefer Hillary because they think she will be tough on them then I mean.....

But that is the Sanders plan, at least it is in the four pages he managed to write up. 

It’s time to break up the largest financial institutions in the country!” Bernie Sander said. “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist!”

I'm going to quote an article because they put it in words far better than I could.

Breaking up the banks is one of those ideas that sound great in theory but less so in reality, a no-brainer until you run it through your brain. It’s not that size doesn’t matter at all, but the debate over size has been absurdly one-sided, ignoring the benefits of bigness, the potential costs of breakups, and what’s already been done to address the too-big-to-fail problem

It’s a radical solution. The United States government does not normally cap the size of private firms, even gigantic firms like Apple or Wal-Mart. Who would invest in a company that’s legally prohibited from growing? It makes sense that Sanders, who is running for president as a critic of capitalism, would support such heavy-handed interference with the market economy. But it’s odd to see less extreme politicians support such extreme measures. They say they’re determined to eradicate too-big-to-fail—as well as “moral hazard,” the temptation for a too-big-to-fail bank to take excessive risks when it can rely on a government bailout if things go wrong. But have they gamed out what that would mean?

The point is that tearing financial giants down to size—to what size, no one seems to know—would be a staggering logistical challenge. The bare-bones Sanders bill, just four pages in all, makes no effort to grapple with that challenge. It simply directs the Treasury Secretary to identify systemically important firms and somehow break them up. It’s a pretty blasé approach to restructuring America’s financial sector, which does, after all, sluice oceans of capital into productive enterprises, while employing 6 million people and accounting for nearly one-tenth of our GDP.

It’s a costly solution. There’s much to dislike about America’s financial sector, but it is America’s financial sector. It’s actually much smaller as a percentage of the economy than its counterparts in Asia and Europe, and it’s much less concentrated at the top . Unilaterally enforcing size limits on domestic banks would put the U.S. at a real competitive disadvantage in financial services.

That may not tug at anyone’s heartstrings, but not all of those 6 million Americans who work for our financial sector are wealthy financiers. They’re also tellers, loan officers, secretaries, security guards, janitors. And even those wealthy financiers pay U.S. taxes that help pay for our roads, our military and our health care. The fact is, If Uncle Sam breaks up JP Morgan Chase—the world’s sixth-largest bank, and the only U.S. bank in the top ten—its largest clients would presumably move their business to huge foreign banks that could still provide one-stop shopping for a variety of global services. Community banks can’t finance global megaprojects and megamergers. JP Morgan enjoys economies of scale just like Amazon and Home Depot do. We should acknowledge that imposing costs on U.S. banks could impose costs on U.S. companies and consumers, making credit less accessible and more expensive while increasing our trade deficit.

Megabanks aren’t necessarily the enemy of stability. At an early May news conference announcing his breakup bill, Sanders cherry-picked a telling statistic: “Today, three of the four largest financial institutions in this country are 80 percent larger than they were in September 2007.” Set aside the obvious counterpoint that the fourth institution, Citigroup, is now significantly smaller than it was in September 2007. What could possibly explain the growth of the other three?

They swallowed smaller too-big-to-fail banks that were failing during the height of the crisis, preventing a financial calamity from becoming a financial apocalypse. Government officials begged them to assume the obligations of their dying competitors to help stabilize the system during a panic, and they agreed, sometimes with government help, sometimes without it. If JP Morgan hadn’t been big and strong enough to absorb the hemorrhaging balance sheets of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, we might well have endured a depression.
 

Reform is already working. The best way to prevent banks from imploding is to make sure they have enough capital to absorb potential losses. In other words, regulators should rein in leverage, which is basically the opposite of capital. This is vital for all banks, but especially for the biggest, which pose the biggest systemic threat when their bets go bad. They also tend to enjoy lower borrowing rates based on expectations that the government will bail them out of trouble, the so-called too-big-to-fail subsidy.

Guess what? The main thrust of America’s Dodd-Frank financial reforms and the world’s Basel 3 regulations has been to limit leverage and force banks to hold more capital. The capital requirements get progressively tougher as banks get bigger, essentially a tax on bigness. And they’re working.

Americans are often warned that Wall Street controls Washington, but the megabanks took a beating in Dodd-Frank; the community banks, which have a presence in every congressional district, wield more power on the Hill, and fared much better. The best evidence came from a Government Accountability Office analysis of the too-big-to-fail subsidy

This does not necessarily mean the work of reform is done. Maybe the capital rules should be even tougher. Maybe the penalties for bigness should be even steeper. Maybe there should be stricter reforms of executive salaries and bonuses, or more tax hikes for top earners, or some version of the tax on financial transactions that Sanders also supports. But before we impose an arbitrary, say, $250 billion cap on bank assets, we should be sure a world where the U.S. (but no other country) has a slew of banks with $249.9 billion in assets would be a much safer world. And we should have some humility about our ability to extinguish risk from an inherently risky business.

Read more here: Politico Article

In essence, Sanders oversimplifies the situation without a clear goal. Eventually, it's clear that the best way to go through his plans is to use what Hillary is going through now. A pragmatic approach is going to be needed, not an idealistic one.

13 hours ago, Bebe said:

I'm not making any sort of assumption and you are once again misrepresenting what I have written. Do you think that the senate republican majority is not a part of this corrupt establishment politics? Yes... 20 + years without any sort of reform isn't going to make the-paid-for-by-Koch and Wall Street payrolled senate any more likely to fight against the interests of those giving the paychecks. 

Also lets see:
corruption: Hmm no effort from either party to support campaign finance reform, both Obama and Hillary took huge paychecks for supporting the interests of Wall Street... 

 

Well it's clear that Republicans are the major cause of concern. Why are you punishing the Democratic party by lumping them along with the general word "Establishment" with indifference to what makes them different?
Your statement alone dismisses the efforts of the Democratic party.

Civil rights work was not done for paychecks.

Women's right work was not done for paychecks.

LGBT right work was very certainly not done for paychecks.

I'm not going to make a claim that Wall Street is not supporting the Democratic party. However I'd like to know what your criteria for what constitutes "Wall Street" is. 

Is it the employees? All politicians receive donations and help from Wall Street, because those are just people who work there. They have their own views and support whom they want. Even Sanders has received significant donations from Wall Street and corporations. 

Is it the business executives? Perhaps they wish to influence the party. Perhaps Obama figured that he could handle other more pressing matters at the time, such as fixing the mess Bush left, rather than attempt an overhaul of the financial system. 

Are you saying that wealthy citizens should not be able to assist their chosen representative? If they have liberal values, why not endorse the one candidate who is not making them their enemy? Do you want a cap on citizen donations? Wouldn't that essentially force other citizens to have to increase their donations to allow candidates to run thorough campaigns? You oversimplify.

This is my own issue with your posts. You nitpick what people have done, ignoring the context and the situations they were in. You can't do everything at once. You can't just **** everything over and start from scratch.

What do you want from these people? Are you making some implication that they accomplished NOTHING?

No you unfortunately are willfully ignoring the progress that has been made because of one or two criteria that are only one part of the puzzle. 

13 hours ago, Bebe said:

lack of environmental action: Many of Clinton’s largest fundraisers are lobbyists for oil and gas corporations. Some of her largest contribution bundlers are lobbyists representing Chevron, Cheniere Energy, and TransCanada — all companies that use fracking. Clinton's position on fracking has been pretty washy when compared to Bernie's "No, I do not support fracking".
 

One wonders why you are only using one criterion to generalize an entire position.

Yes, Hillary has had a dubious stance on fracking before. Hell she even promoted it to other nations at one point a decade or so ago, but she had her reasons given the information at the time.

What's odd is that you're comparing her previous position to Sander's current one. How is that remotely fair? How do you know what Sanders' stance was before? 

In any case, fracking was not considered inherently bad. Despite its glaring problems, it is the cleanest way to process fossil fuels. Do you expect the entire civilized world to shift to clean energy within a year or something? There has to be a pragmatic approach. 

Hillary had later elaborated that there should be steps taken to limit the dangers they possess. She has, upon learning new information regarding evolving technologies and negative impacts, shifted her stance to a more controlled one.

Now she's in favor of basically eliminating them, by even stricter regulations that will essentially limit them to the point of obsolescence. 

One might think that this is flipflopping, but a lot has happened in 10 years. People were actually in favor of fracking because they thought it would make them compete with Saudi Arabia in fossil fuels. 

She changed her stance as she acquired more information about their dangers. At some point she accepted some level of risk due to the benefits, such as jobs and capitalist competition. Reevaluation changed her mind.

Someone once mentioned that she went to a fundraiser which had fracking investors in it. That is an example of failing to understand how fundraisers work. It wasn't a fundraiser for fracking. It was a fundraiser for all sorts of businesses. They just happened to be there. 

If she has ever received donations from those companies, it was never because she asked for it. Once again you make the false correlation that them giving money is quid pro quo. Considering Sanders has received a sizeable chunk, one fails to see why you're letting him off the leash so easily. Is it the amount? 

13 hours ago, Bebe said:

perpetual war: Hmm Henry Kissinger served as an advisor to Obama... He is also very close to Hillary. I'm not a fan of such a huge conservative and the man who not only served Nixon but met regularly with President George W. Bush and Vice President **** Cheney to offer advice on the Iraq War being an advisor to democratic nominees. Hillary said she has relied on his counsel and called him a friend. Not a great sign for people who want change.

The problem I have with your positions is they completely ignore all the systemic corruption or at the very least completely undermine the influence big money has on the political system. You think Bernie supporters are naive but boy....
 

So she's a friend with someone so you use that to implicate her or something?

How is that remotely fair evidence? Has Obama started new wars? I'm fairly certain he's working to stop them. Why not have the counsel of someone directly involved with them to help them close it?

You're making some implication that people like Kissinger are boogiemen that need to be locked up or something. They have some value. Why not use them to your advantage?

For every negative point you make I can raise a positive one. This is all about subjective bias. You need to stop making conclusions based on incomplete information or individual viewpoints regarding every issue you face. There is more than one side to the coin.

 

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

@Whispering Perhaps I should double major in political science and write my dissertation about Hillary and American politics.  

[Whispering 18,865]

19 minutes ago, LebaneseDude said:

@Whispering Perhaps I should double major in political science and write my dissertation about Hillary and American politics.  

Or you could just write for a blog site, and people will quote you like you are some type of respected expert. Lol 

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

2 minutes ago, Whispering said:

Or you could just write for a blog site, and people will quote you like you are some type of respected expert. Lol 

The shade  

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

Nothing

[PopBitch 1,218]

On 4/26/2016 at 10:32 AM, LebaneseDude said:

It's not about telling his voters what to do. It's to remind them that the Democrats serve their interests the best. He should know given that he's the one that aligned with them.

Of course he doesn't give a **** about the influence he has over his supporters who he has turned off from Hillary, and is only out for Bernie and Bernie alone. He continues to demonstrate that he's not interested in advancing progressives and only is interested in his agenda and his alone. Compromise? LMAO. None of it. No wonder this trash has no friends. 

He has always said he'd support the eventual nominee and then he goes like this. This is the same kind of backtracking bullshit he says about Clinton over and over again.

Using the "establishment" then dumping it when it's no longer in his favor. He just lost any respect I had for him. 

Here's how you ****ing lose with dignity. Watch it. It's the best concession speech I've ever heard and reminds people that it's not about which Democrat gets in the White House, but that a Democrat does, because liberal progressive values are the main focus.

Amen.

[Bebe 17,289]

11 hours ago, LebaneseDude said:

Hey again. Hope you're having a good day. This is going to be a lengthy response but I enjoyed thinking about it. Let's get this started  

The issue I have here is that many people are being inflexible in their expectations for representation.

It is rare to find a candidate that so embodies everything you stand for, while being capable of participating in a cooperative sphere with representatives of other people's needs. 

Hillary already stands for many, if not all, of what Bernie stands for. What makes them different is their approach to solving the problem.

Hillary calls for a more patient and compromising position. It's not just about your needs. It's about everybody's. 

Sanders has a more inflexible approach that makes him appeal to people who want things done quickly. He's only targeting people who feel oppressed by the system, and wants everyone else to get on board. 

Both approaches are valid in their own rights. It boils down to methodology.

Now I know you want to keep making the point of establishment and such. I personally find it quite dismissive and unfair because it ignores the fact that this establishment in particular has been working towards liberal ideologies. I find the term "establishment" to be dismissive of the different structures and roles.

In the case of a political establishment, it is clear that money will always have its place. The money for anything has to come from somewhere. The government and the people cooperate to manage the country. That's how capitalism works. There's always going to be some level of corruption, but any other system has its own fair share of corruption too. It's simply because these institutions are run by fallible people. That's all there is to it.

Regarding your statistics, I find those to be out of context. Regarding your corruption one, any sane individual knows that politicians are corrupt. Even Bernie is. Those who don't work the system do not progress. Bernie has had to compromise his own principles to get where he is. It may be beneficent corruption, but it is still corruption.

It is quite clear that bipartisan politics is taking its toll. The presidency was run by a Democrat and the Senate by a Republican. Any bills Obama drafted were at some, or many points, automatically gerrymandered, protested, or blocked. That's why confidence is low. It's because not much has been done. 

The solution is to work on dismantling this block. How is that accomplished? Historically, Democrats have been more cooperative and considerate when they are the majority, because their liberal efforts were done in the name of all citizens. Meanwhile Republicans only support causes that are essentially limited in scope to their own constituents.

Is it the best solution? Probably not. It would be great to have more parties, but that's not the case now and it won't be the case by the time election season comes. 

A person with liberal ideologies is responsible for ensuring that liberal progression not be undone. While many liberals do not approve of Hillary's approach, it is irrational to be more in favor of anyone else's, because while Trump for example may bring with him anti-establishment politics (which in itself is an oxymoron considering his stances), they are not in the correct direction for anyone who espouses to be a liberal... at any level.

Do not look at other nations for guidance. The USA is a unique entity with its own people and ideologies. France (and other nations with socialist stances) have their own share of problems. In the case of healthcare for example, they are finding it increasingly impossible to accommodate rising medical costs, increasingly unhealthy lifestyle choices, and an aging population. It would be far more wise to take progressive steps to reach these goals without running into the aforementioned problems. It is not that they are extreme. They are admirable goals. What's extreme is the approach, which is what I mentioned earlier.

Please note that I don't disagree with the need for financial transparency and fixing the political system. 

Yes..you limit corruption. You can't ever fix it. It's there by nature of being run by humans. More laws do nothing to solve it. Humans are remarkably ingenious people. Furthermore, stricter laws can end up hurting other groups. There's no one-size-fits-all approach that doesn't resort to outright breach of trust in capitalism. 

Everything you mentioned afterwards is what the Democratic party is working towards. This only reinforces my case. The issue is you're oversimplifying the situation.

How do you overturn Citizens United decision? You need a favorable Supreme Court judge bench. How do you do that? By ensuring that a Democrat gets in the White House. Why? It's because that's their goal. Constitutional amendments are notoriously difficult to pass. The most recent amendment was only ratified after 202 years of continuous painstaking effort.. One cannot afford to wait that long for reform, especially when it would only tackle a small piece of the corruption problem.

There is far more to it than Citizens United.  It would remain perfectly legal for special interests to fund the political careers of the politicians who regulate them, send public servants on lavish vacations disguised as fundraising events, and generally do whatever it takes to keep their lobbyists writing laws. Those are what need to be tackled.

How is this all accomplished? It needs cooperation over a significant period of time. It won't happen right away. It will certainly face resistance.

The question is, why now, and why not support the establishment that is working to resolve these issues? Do you distrust them despite their efforts? 

I would too in some light. I just know that now is not the time to throw them away while they're working to help you and society in general.

But that is the Sanders plan, at least it is in the four pages he managed to write up. 

It’s time to break up the largest financial institutions in the country!” Bernie Sander said. “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist!”

I'm going to quote an article because they put it in words far better than I could.

Breaking up the banks is one of those ideas that sound great in theory but less so in reality, a no-brainer until you run it through your brain. It’s not that size doesn’t matter at all, but the debate over size has been absurdly one-sided, ignoring the benefits of bigness, the potential costs of breakups, and what’s already been done to address the too-big-to-fail problem

It’s a radical solution. The United States government does not normally cap the size of private firms, even gigantic firms like Apple or Wal-Mart. Who would invest in a company that’s legally prohibited from growing? It makes sense that Sanders, who is running for president as a critic of capitalism, would support such heavy-handed interference with the market economy. But it’s odd to see less extreme politicians support such extreme measures. They say they’re determined to eradicate too-big-to-fail—as well as “moral hazard,” the temptation for a too-big-to-fail bank to take excessive risks when it can rely on a government bailout if things go wrong. But have they gamed out what that would mean?

The point is that tearing financial giants down to size—to what size, no one seems to know—would be a staggering logistical challenge. The bare-bones Sanders bill, just four pages in all, makes no effort to grapple with that challenge. It simply directs the Treasury Secretary to identify systemically important firms and somehow break them up. It’s a pretty blasé approach to restructuring America’s financial sector, which does, after all, sluice oceans of capital into productive enterprises, while employing 6 million people and accounting for nearly one-tenth of our GDP.

It’s a costly solution. There’s much to dislike about America’s financial sector, but it is America’s financial sector. It’s actually much smaller as a percentage of the economy than its counterparts in Asia and Europe, and it’s much less concentrated at the top . Unilaterally enforcing size limits on domestic banks would put the U.S. at a real competitive disadvantage in financial services.

That may not tug at anyone’s heartstrings, but not all of those 6 million Americans who work for our financial sector are wealthy financiers. They’re also tellers, loan officers, secretaries, security guards, janitors. And even those wealthy financiers pay U.S. taxes that help pay for our roads, our military and our health care. The fact is, If Uncle Sam breaks up JP Morgan Chase—the world’s sixth-largest bank, and the only U.S. bank in the top ten—its largest clients would presumably move their business to huge foreign banks that could still provide one-stop shopping for a variety of global services. Community banks can’t finance global megaprojects and megamergers. JP Morgan enjoys economies of scale just like Amazon and Home Depot do. We should acknowledge that imposing costs on U.S. banks could impose costs on U.S. companies and consumers, making credit less accessible and more expensive while increasing our trade deficit.

Megabanks aren’t necessarily the enemy of stability. At an early May news conference announcing his breakup bill, Sanders cherry-picked a telling statistic: “Today, three of the four largest financial institutions in this country are 80 percent larger than they were in September 2007.” Set aside the obvious counterpoint that the fourth institution, Citigroup, is now significantly smaller than it was in September 2007. What could possibly explain the growth of the other three?

They swallowed smaller too-big-to-fail banks that were failing during the height of the crisis, preventing a financial calamity from becoming a financial apocalypse. Government officials begged them to assume the obligations of their dying competitors to help stabilize the system during a panic, and they agreed, sometimes with government help, sometimes without it. If JP Morgan hadn’t been big and strong enough to absorb the hemorrhaging balance sheets of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, we might well have endured a depression.
 

Reform is already working. The best way to prevent banks from imploding is to make sure they have enough capital to absorb potential losses. In other words, regulators should rein in leverage, which is basically the opposite of capital. This is vital for all banks, but especially for the biggest, which pose the biggest systemic threat when their bets go bad. They also tend to enjoy lower borrowing rates based on expectations that the government will bail them out of trouble, the so-called too-big-to-fail subsidy.

Guess what? The main thrust of America’s Dodd-Frank financial reforms and the world’s Basel 3 regulations has been to limit leverage and force banks to hold more capital. The capital requirements get progressively tougher as banks get bigger, essentially a tax on bigness. And they’re working.

Americans are often warned that Wall Street controls Washington, but the megabanks took a beating in Dodd-Frank; the community banks, which have a presence in every congressional district, wield more power on the Hill, and fared much better. The best evidence came from a Government Accountability Office analysis of the too-big-to-fail subsidy

This does not necessarily mean the work of reform is done. Maybe the capital rules should be even tougher. Maybe the penalties for bigness should be even steeper. Maybe there should be stricter reforms of executive salaries and bonuses, or more tax hikes for top earners, or some version of the tax on financial transactions that Sanders also supports. But before we impose an arbitrary, say, $250 billion cap on bank assets, we should be sure a world where the U.S. (but no other country) has a slew of banks with $249.9 billion in assets would be a much safer world. And we should have some humility about our ability to extinguish risk from an inherently risky business.

Read more here: Politico Article

In essence, Sanders oversimplifies the situation without a clear goal. Eventually, it's clear that the best way to go through his plans is to use what Hillary is going through now. A pragmatic approach is going to be needed, not an idealistic one.

Well it's clear that Republicans are the major cause of concern. Why are you punishing the Democratic party by lumping them along with the general word "Establishment" with indifference to what makes them different?
Your statement alone dismisses the efforts of the Democratic party.

Civil rights work was not done for paychecks.

Women's right work was not done for paychecks.

LGBT right work was very certainly not done for paychecks.

I'm not going to make a claim that Wall Street is not supporting the Democratic party. However I'd like to know what your criteria for what constitutes "Wall Street" is. 

Is it the employees? All politicians receive donations and help from Wall Street, because those are just people who work there. They have their own views and support whom they want. Even Sanders has received significant donations from Wall Street and corporations. 

Is it the business executives? Perhaps they wish to influence the party. Perhaps Obama figured that he could handle other more pressing matters at the time, such as fixing the mess Bush left, rather than attempt an overhaul of the financial system. 

Are you saying that wealthy citizens should not be able to assist their chosen representative? If they have liberal values, why not endorse the one candidate who is not making them their enemy? Do you want a cap on citizen donations? Wouldn't that essentially force other citizens to have to increase their donations to allow candidates to run thorough campaigns? You oversimplify.

This is my own issue with your posts. You nitpick what people have done, ignoring the context and the situations they were in. You can't do everything at once. You can't just **** everything over and start from scratch.

What do you want from these people? Are you making some implication that they accomplished NOTHING?

No you unfortunately are willfully ignoring the progress that has been made because of one or two criteria that are only one part of the puzzle. 

One wonders why you are only using one criterion to generalize an entire position.

Yes, Hillary has had a dubious stance on fracking before. Hell she even promoted it to other nations at one point a decade or so ago, but she had her reasons given the information at the time.

What's odd is that you're comparing her previous position to Sander's current one. How is that remotely fair? How do you know what Sanders' stance was before? 

In any case, fracking was not considered inherently bad. Despite its glaring problems, it is the cleanest way to process fossil fuels. Do you expect the entire civilized world to shift to clean energy within a year or something? There has to be a pragmatic approach. 

Hillary had later elaborated that there should be steps taken to limit the dangers they possess. She has, upon learning new information regarding evolving technologies and negative impacts, shifted her stance to a more controlled one.

Now she's in favor of basically eliminating them, by even stricter regulations that will essentially limit them to the point of obsolescence. 

One might think that this is flipflopping, but a lot has happened in 10 years. People were actually in favor of fracking because they thought it would make them compete with Saudi Arabia in fossil fuels. 

She changed her stance as she acquired more information about their dangers. At some point she accepted some level of risk due to the benefits, such as jobs and capitalist competition. Reevaluation changed her mind.

Someone once mentioned that she went to a fundraiser which had fracking investors in it. That is an example of failing to understand how fundraisers work. It wasn't a fundraiser for fracking. It was a fundraiser for all sorts of businesses. They just happened to be there. 

If she has ever received donations from those companies, it was never because she asked for it. Once again you make the false correlation that them giving money is quid pro quo. Considering Sanders has received a sizeable chunk, one fails to see why you're letting him off the leash so easily. Is it the amount? 

So she's a friend with someone so you use that to implicate her or something?

How is that remotely fair evidence? Has Obama started new wars? I'm fairly certain he's working to stop them. Why not have the counsel of someone directly involved with them to help them close it?

You're making some implication that people like Kissinger are boogiemen that need to be locked up or something. They have some value. Why not use them to your advantage?

For every negative point you make I can raise a positive one. This is all about subjective bias. You need to stop making conclusions based on incomplete information or individual viewpoints regarding every issue you face. There is more than one side to the coin.

 

"The issue I have here is that many people are being inflexible in their expectations for representation.

It is rare to find a candidate that so embodies everything you stand for, while being capable of participating in a cooperative sphere with representatives of other people's needs."

That's simply not true. I'm not being inflexible and neither is Bernie btw, Hillary doesn't represent a large chunk of what I want a candidate to represent me. Hillary and Bernie are very, very different. As someone who you agreed with said - in most other countries people like Bernie and Hillary would be in different parties and Trump/Cruz would be in a different party to Kasich.

With two wildly different candidates, what I would like to see (as well as MILLIONS of other Americans) is a candidate that is fighting against corruption, who is against private prisons, who isn't taking legalized bribery from Wall Street (by who I mean big banks spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars if it was not so obvious), who is not supportive of the "aggressive" foreign policy of Hillary, who is going to actually fight for  a single-payer healthcare system, who cares and wants to fight for the college students buried in debt and wants to move towards the more progressive countries like France where it's free. I want a candidate (skilled in negotiation and compromise as the Amendment King - praised by both Democratic and Republicans) who is willing to fight for progressive ideals rather than starting negotiations favouring the other side. That sort of negotiation didn't work for progressives during Obama and won't with Hillary. The point you raise later perfectly demonstrates this - the conservatives are more aggressive in getting what they want and they win. The democrats come to the bargaining table with 1/2 of what they want hoping to get more and walk away with 1/4 of what they wanted to begin with and call it a win. I want a candidate that is not only experienced with negotiations with republicans but whose record is stellar in terms of being able to pass progressive legislation (or the most legislation in the house of representatives full stop) with the support of Republicans who wanted to shrink government or hold it accountable and progressives who wanted to use it to empower Americans. 

"Hillary calls for a more patient and compromising position. It's not just about your needs. It's about everybody's. 

Sanders has a more inflexible approach that makes him appeal to people who want things done quickly. He's only targeting people who feel oppressed by the system, and wants everyone else to get on board."

This is just not true... That's really just not true, what Bernie represents is not a quick fix. It's a battle. To characterise Hillary as more compromising is false and to imagine she cares about everybody's needs while being so blase on issues like fixing our democracy, stopping private prisons, regulating Wall Street, helping students in debt, fixing our environmental issues is hugely simplifying everything.

"Now I know you want to keep making the point of establishment and such. I personally find it quite dismissive and unfair because it ignores the fact that this establishment in particular has been working towards liberal ideologies. I find the term "establishment" to be dismissive of the different structures and roles.

In the case of a political establishment, it is clear that money will always have its place. The money for anything has to come from somewhere. The government and the people cooperate to manage the country. That's how capitalism works. There's always going to be some level of corruption, but any other system has its own fair share of corruption too. It's simply because these institutions are run by fallible people. That's all there is to it."

"How do you overturn Citizens United decision? You need a favorable Supreme Court judge bench. How do you do that? By ensuring that a Democrat gets in the White House. Why? It's because that's their goal. Constitutional amendments are notoriously difficult to pass. The most recent amendment was only ratified after 202 years of continuous painstaking effort.. One cannot afford to wait that long for reform, especially when it would only tackle a small piece of the corruption problem."

This is so frustrating, because you don't seem to understand at all how corruption has infiltrated our government, the huge impact it is having and how Bernie plans to solve this issue. To simplify this as "here's always going to be some level of corruption, but any other system has its own fair share of corruption too. It's simply because these institutions are run by fallible people. That's all there is to it" is just hugely ignorant.

We live in a society now where PUBLIC OPINION HAS NEAR 0% IMPACT ON U.S LAW That's ****ing crazy. That's not a democracy, it's a hugely corrupt system. It's is systematically corrupt. The corruption runs so deep.

I recommend watching this quick video on this

 

If 0% of the people support a public policy it has 30% chance of being passed. If 100% of the people support a public policy it has... 30% chance of being passed. Fortunately this only applies to the bottom 90% of earners.

The elite 10% who can afford lobbyists get what they want. 
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

I'm sure you are in that 10%?? Surely you are supporting the candidate that represents you? 

The reality of this situation is that action on climate change is being dictated by Oil and Gas companies, action on regulation is being dictated by Wall Street, action on crime and justice is being dictated by Private Prisons, action on gun control is being dictated by the NRA, action on Health Care and drug costs are being dictated by Insurance and Pharmaceutical companies, 
 

You keep talking about how the Democratic Party is super progressive and fighting for us, but we have empirical data to show us that our opinion DOESN'T IMPACT congress at all. That's the problem with establishment politics. Pointing out that Democrats are less corrupt does nothing to help the problem.

Like former President Jimmy Carter recently said, unlimited money in politics, “violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now, it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. Senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”

 You can twist this all you want into: 

"Perhaps they wish to influence the party. Perhaps Obama figured that he could handle other more pressing matters at the time, such as fixing the mess Bush left, rather than attempt an overhaul of the financial system. 

Are you saying that wealthy citizens should not be able to assist their chosen representative? If they have liberal values, why not endorse the one candidate who is not making them their enemy? Do you want a cap on citizen donations? Wouldn't that essentially force other citizens to have to increase their donations to allow candidates to run thorough campaigns?" 

All you want and say that I'm 'over simplifying the issue" but frankly, it's you and your naivety on the issue that is oversimplifying it. 

Now onto the solution:
we must overturn, through a constitutional amendment, the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision as well as the Buckley v. Valeo decision. We need to pass legislation to require wealthy individuals and corporations who make large campaign contributions to disclose where their money is going.  More importantly, it is why we need to move toward the public funding of elections.

Note that despite your clever twisting of information there, the last constitutional amendment really took from 1982-1992.  It was overlooked for centuries and didn't have the endorsement of a U.S president. There already is a call for an Article V convention concerning campaign finance reform that so far has gathered 4 states in 5 years. It's a tough battle but won't take long before the floodgates open.

Sanders, in his words, wants to:
"Only appoint Supreme Court justices who will make it a priority to overturn Citizens United and who understand that corruption in politics means more than just quid pro quo." (Side note: despite you thinking Democrats are working towards this, Obama only appointed or tried to appoint those AGAINST overturning Citizens United).

"Fight to pass a constitutional amendment making it clear that Congress and the states have the power to regulate money in elections. I have been a proud sponsor and leading champion of such an amendment in the Senate."

"Fight for a publicly financed, transparent system of campaign financing that amplifies small donations, along the lines of the Fair Elections Now Act that I have been pleased to co-sponsor, and an effective public financing system for president."

"Insist on complete transparency regarding the funding of campaigns, including through disclosure of contributions to outside spending groups, via legislation, action by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Election Commission, and Federal Communication Commission, and an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their political spending."

"Fight to eliminate super PACs and other outside spending abuses."

"Work to aggressively enforce campaign finance rules."


Now...

"Yes, Hillary has had a dubious stance on fracking before. Hell she even promoted it to other nations at one point a decade or so ago, but she had her reasons given the information at the time.

What's odd is that you're comparing her previous position to Sander's current one. How is that remotely fair? How do you know what Sanders' stance was before? 

In any case, fracking was not considered inherently bad. Despite its glaring problems, it is the cleanest way to process fossil fuels. Do you expect the entire civilized world to shift to clean energy within a year or something? There has to be a pragmatic approach. "

I know it's soooo unfair to talk about Hillary's PAST POSITIONS. What we are supposed to do is talk about all that experience she has. Wonderful, wonderful experience. What is her record on certain issues though? Oh well don't talk about how she voted for Iraq (and bizarrely called it a "good business opportunity"), don't talk about fracking, don't talk about her endorsement of DOMA/DADT, don't talk about her bailouts of the big banks and her cozy support from them. Don't talk about what happened with Libya and her failure to address the leadership vacuum left behind, don't talk about the arms trades to Saudi Arabia which is being used on people of Yemen so on so forth. These don't reflect her center-right character whatsoever.

Regardless, fracking is not the cleanest way to process fossil fuels. That's some Right-Wing Koch-Sponsored propaganda right there.

""It is not really that complicated: you can be in favour of fracking for shale gas, or you can be in favour of fixing the climate.” John Ashton said at a London panel discussion in June. 

He was Special Representative for Climate Change at the UK Foreign Office, 2006-12. The International Panel on Climate Change substantiate this claim, asserting a great deal of conventional fossil fuels needs to be left in the ground to tackle climate change, and no unconventionals (including shale gas) should be extracted. The UN Environmental Programme alerts: “This unconventional gas extraction technique presents environmental risks, despite economic or energy security benefits, including: air, soil, and water contamination; water usage competition; ecosystem damage; habitat and biodiversity impacts; and fugitive gas emissions.”

Scientists point to both the energy intensity of the fracking process and that it unleashes methane, seeping out through the same pathways as toxins. It means locals can set fire to their drinking taps. Not only explosive, methane gas is far more potent than CO2 as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. Consequently, the levels of methane leaking have led independent scientists to calculate that fracking is worse for the environment than coal, substantiating earlier findings.

Fracking has also been linked to massive rises in ozone pollution in both rural Texas and Wyoming. The latter was known for its crisp mountain air, but has recently recorded smog levels you would expect in large cities. A study in Colorado shows how it increases a further range of dangerous gases that cause acute health problems."

http://www.contributoria.com/issue/2014-08/5392eccaf461286f4f00012b/

"If she has ever received donations from those companies, it was never because she asked for it. Once again you make the false correlation that them giving money is quid pro quo. Considering Sanders has received a sizeable chunk, one fails to see why you're letting him off the leash so easily. Is it the amount? "

That's a lie? Hillary Clinton is getting DIRECTLY supported by lobbyists representing Wall Street and other big money interests. Bernie Sanders is not. You know the difference, don't feign ignorance.

"So she's a friend with someone so you use that to implicate her or something?

How is that remotely fair evidence? Has Obama started new wars? I'm fairly certain he's working to stop them. Why not have the counsel of someone directly involved with them to help them close it?

You're making some implication that people like Kissinger are boogiemen that need to be locked up or something. They have some value. Why not use them to your advantage?"

He is an advisor to Obama and a consultant to Hillary? She praised him and said she appreciated his help? That implicates her? Obama's foreign policy is terrible from a humanist perspective, so is Hillary's. Probably because their advisor Kissinger is one of the most disastrous and frankly evil heads of states in recent history. Assuming that you think Bush's foreign policy or Nixon's foreign policy was disastrous (being liberal and progressive and all), surely you must admit the faults of the Obama administration and Hillary's role in that - they were advised by the very same man.

"For every negative point you make I can raise a positive one. This is all about subjective bias. You need to stop making conclusions based on incomplete information or individual viewpoints regarding every issue you face. There is more than one side to the coin."

You can't though, every point you made exposes a superficial understanding of corruption in politics or environmental issues... You are clearly the one with incomplete information if you think that Fracking is the more environmentally positive way or that Corruption can be boiled down to "The government is run by fallible people".

[Luc 4,776]

12 hours ago, Whispering said:

Even the Republicans have evolved to a foreign policy that is against going into other countries with force on the ground. They are realizing that certain areas of the world are going to be involved in a neverending civil type war. Trump (of all people) just gave a foreign policy speech that basically stated the same general sentiment. 

Out of the remaining five candidates, Bernie might just be the most dangerous, due to his complete lack of knowledge on foreign affairs and policy in general. 

Sanders is one of the most experienced. Sorry but Hillary is the definition of a technocrat (though I actually support technocrats usually). Sanders is an idealist. That means that Hillary is more pragmatic (what is the best policy I can do without losing support) while Sanders would probably look at the ideals he can make true. 

It's done now, though. Rooting for Hillary. And to be honest Hillary is also a very good candidate. The EU needs TTIP and NATO and America's current military policy needs to continue for their power to remain dominant. It is just fun to think that the EU could become the biggest global power if Trump wins, the UK stays in the EU, the 2% goal is reached by all countries, TTIP signed, EU more integrated and the flow of refugees is kept away from the EU.

[wahkeenasitka 1,995]

i don't have any loyalty to her at all, and would not vote for her just because she's a democrat. f*ck hillary. 

[Whispering 18,865]

47 minutes ago, Luc said:

Sanders is one of the most experienced. Sorry but Hillary is the definition of a technocrat (though I actually support technocrats usually). Sanders is an idealist. That means that Hillary is more pragmatic (what is the best policy I can do without losing support) while Sanders would probably look at the ideals he can make true. 

It's done now, though. Rooting for Hillary. And to be honest Hillary is also a very good candidate. The EU needs TTIP and NATO and America's current military policy needs to continue for their power to remain dominant. It is just fun to think that the EU could become the biggest global power if Trump wins, the UK stays in the EU, the 2% goal is reached by all countries, TTIP signed, EU more integrated and the flow of refugees is kept away from the EU.

 Bernie has had the same talking points for decades and he has little to no idea how to achieve those main points of emphasis. They were  unrealistic and completely unachievable. Bernie would have been a dead on arrival President, and one that lacked foreign policy knowledge. I still would have marched down to my local polling station and cast a vote for Bernie, if he had been the nominee this November.