(Note the nekomimi cat-ear helmet)
Samurai takes an armored cat for a walk by Noguchi Tetsuya pic.twitter.com/k2Lpg48d2m
— Diane Doniol-Valcroze (@ddoniolvalcroze) March 8, 2020
They’re going for the kill. They want Michigan to end it. https://t.co/2fEoxIfqPm
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 10, 2020
There are also primaries today in Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington, but Michigan seems to be attracting the most media attention. Or maybe I’m just prejudiced, since that’s where I spent my first 15 years as a registered voter…
That looks a lot more like a crowd I’m used to seeing at Michigan Dem rallies. https://t.co/OPmcRtN6kY
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 10, 2020
As he’s endorsed by Harris, Booker and Whitmer, Biden pitches himself as a “bridge” between Trump and younger generations of leaders. https://t.co/gCgQAwdaGc
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) March 10, 2020
2020 is about saving the country and returning stability to the world with someone we know and trust, policies we all agree with
Vice President Joe Biden is our safe bridge to the future
I'm taking it#Biden2020
— ?RiotWomenn? (@riotwomennn) March 10, 2020
There are about a dozen disagreements I have with Joe Biden. I’m angry that he even ran, monopolizing the attention that should have gone to younger, more diverse candidates.
But, I believe he’s a good person and cares about me and wants my vote.
I don’t think he sneers at me
— Monjula Ray (@queerBengali) March 9, 2020
Obama saved the economy in 2009, so I assume this means Biden will cure coronavirus and then you'll shit on him for a decade because he didn't implement free college. https://t.co/8cNCDyD7NR
— Malarkey Delenda Est (@agraybee) March 9, 2020
Bitter truth:
Ezra isn’t wrong, but another factor here is that a lot of white voters saw a black man do the job for eight years, convinced themselves he was a literate vegetable capable of little more than reading a teleprompter, and concluded the dumbest white man could do it better https://t.co/jhvwEFLSsQ
— Adam Serwer?? (@AdamSerwer) March 9, 2020
Baud
Monjula speaks for me.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: For me too. Good morning!
Chyron HR
How many decades do you think it will take before bright boys like Ezra start to wonder whose idea it was to create a “reality” show where Trump plays the fictional character of a successful businessman and why they wanted Americans to be fooled into thinking it was real?
Bernie sees hospitals choked with corpses as an OPPORTUNITY! That’s the kind of leadership America needs!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Michigan may do all right this time. Here’s an R mayor of a Detroit suburb in Macomb county.
sanjeevs
I’m surprised there’s been so little discussion of Bernie’s second most important proposal.
He’s planning to take 20% of the shares of all public companies in the US as well as all private companies with revenues over 100m.
Over 10 years the shares will be redistributed to the employees of that company.
So the losers will be anyone who owns shares in a retirement fund, 401k etc, Your shares would lose 20% of their value,
But the bigger problen is the redistribution:
1. If you work for an SME you get nothing
2. If you work for a company with a lot of employees but a low market cap you don’t get much.
3. If you work for a company with a low number of employees but high market cap you do well. A Facebook employee would get 200k or so over 10 years.
I don’t get the logic. Everyone with savings loses regardless of their circumstance, whilst the major beneficiaries will be the already well off.
Baud
Morzer
With any luck, Joe Biden is going to run the table and all that will be left is the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Sandernistas. Also. Biden’s making up a lot of ground in California, so he’s gained a couple of delegates there already.
MJS
@Baud: The answer to Joe’s question is, obviously, “yes” they are with Donald Trump, whether they admit that to themselves or not. Here’s hoping tonight’s results are dispiriting enough to these assholes that they confine their future protests to mean tweets.
Chyron HR
Does Bernie Sanders actually think the people disseminating the senile Biden memes are on his side? Once he lies his way to the convention and shouts until they give him the nomination is he just going to sit back and wait for the IRA’s anti-Trump memes to roll out and win the general election for him?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sanjeevs: Source please?
Baud
@Chyron HR: Yes. He expressly eggs them on.
OzarkHillbilly
Heading to the polls today, voting for Joe. A little further down in that Monjula Ray tweet stream is this perfect encapsulation of why.
“This is what showing up and being an ally looks like.”
sanjeevs
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
https://www.nceo.org/employee-ownership-blog/article/bernie-sanders-announces-sweeping-plan-promote-employee-ownership
Walker
@sanjeevs:
Bernie will do nothing because a president can do no such thing.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Baud
@sanjeevs:
Bernie was never vetted like Dem candidate would have been. That would have changed if he were the nominee.
WereBear
They shouldn’t be holding rallies, however. Lead by example.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
@WereBear: If tonight goes we enough for Joe, the rallies might stop.
Anne Laurie
I think everybody ‘not of the Bernie body’ considers Sanders’ proposals
with the contempt they deserveas so incapable of passing that discussing them is like discussing whether unicorn farts can replace fracking by 2035.No point to dissecting someone’s fantasy life, unless you’re paid to be their therapist.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sanjeevs:
Thanks. And here’s the Sanders position paper.
Jinchi
Not sure they actually needed a bridge to beat Trump, but sure.
Don Beal
May you get your moderate tingle. About as compelling as dirty sox. Elect Joe Biden. Same destination different bus driver. That will drive turn out for sure. Trump is going to eat him alive.
Xentik
@Walker: In theory with the support of congress he could–I don’t believe there’s any constitutional issues preventing it. Of course since he’s making no effort to deal with lobbying or to get rid of the filibuster, he wouldn’t be successful. His plans have always been hollow at their core. He says things that sound good, but they lack the coherent vision and understanding of how things worked that Warren’s plans had.
Baud’s right though. The media went out of its way to not talk about anything Sanders was doing. Look no further than their treatment of him vs Warren in regards to M4A.
Thankfully it’s all pretty much over at this point. I doubt Bernie will have a leg to stand on after today, since he’s been losing ground in both Michigan and Washington since Super Tuesday.*
*-I make no claims that this will cause him to play nice, cooperate, or anything else that might be seen as capitulation to the ‘establishment’ by his worshipers.
Immanentize
@Don Beal: I hope you are not suggesting that Sanders is driving turnout because, you know, zero evidence of that.
Chyron HR
The WaPo has an article this morning about the Onion switching from writing “Diamond Joe” articles to “lol Biden has brain damage” jokes which is funny when you consider that the Bros spent the entire 2016 election screaming that Hillary controls the Onion and uses it as a platform for shitlib propaganda.
Quinerly
Didn’t read all comments yet. Someone may have commented earlier. Bill DeBlassio said on Morning Joe that “Joe Biden has not been vetted.”
Talk amongst yourselves.? I have 4 hrs more od driving to get home. Have a great day.
Immanentize
@Xentik:
Uh, the takings clause prohibits taking 20% of a company’s value without due process and compensation (well any value)
Na.Gon.Ha.Pen
FlipYrWhig
@Don Beal: IMHO thinking a president should be “compelling” is part of the problem.
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: There are other Trump voters who will vote against him. Some voted for him “on spec,” hoping to shake up the political order, and found that Trump’s chaos wasn’t what they had in mind. And there were plenty of Johnson voters who thought Clinton would win and believed they had a free protest vote. Of 10 major party candidates in 5 presidential elections since 2000, Trump had the second lowest popular vote total, barely edging out John McCain’s 2008 performance. I understand the factor of the Electoral College, but I still think the only way Trump can win this election is to steal it.
Chyron HR
@Quinerly:
Everything you can accurately say about Bernie and his staff, they will try to claim about the Biden campaign. “Biden’s supporters are sending us death threats, not the other way around!” “Biden hasn’t been vetted the way Bernie has!” “Biden is hiding his health problems, unlike virile young Bernie!”
Baud
@Baud: we = well
Baud
Not sure if this means anything, but last night, Booker introduced Harris who introduced Joe.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: For those who don’t want to Wade through the class propoganda first, Sanders substantive proposal is:
This is a unicorn fracking fart indeed.
jonas
Not sure I follow. Why would merely redistributing the shares necessarily affect their value?
OzarkHillbilly
@Don Beal: Got it. trump is a superman.
Immanentize
QUINERLY: Well, we know DiBlassio was vetted — and found seriously wanting.
TRAVEL SAFE!
Baud
@jonas:
Depends if these are new shares or a redistribution of existing shares.
It also depends on how you enforce the 20% limit going forward.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize:
OT, but I’m looking at Italy and thinking boy, Imm made a good decision.
sanjeevs
@jonas: Under the proposal they would be issuing new shares for distribution to employees. Since total issued shares will be increasing, the value of the existing shares would be reduced.
Baud
@Immanentize:
I don’t suppose there’s any detail as to how the company must allocate shares among their employees.
Immanentize
@jonas: the proposal is that the companies must issue new, additional shares. Not redistribute. Probably an entirely different stock type from regular shares? It would have to be….
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: ha! I’m still salty about it.
OzarkHillbilly
Headline and sub head at the Guardian. I wonder where they find these people.
Immanentize
@Baud: It goes into an employee run fund overseen by a workforce board of directors…. Meet the new boss….
jonas
@Geminid: This has been my thinking as well. A lot of the public — including most Democrats, it seems — have bought Trump’s own hype that he won by the biggest, most beautiful landslide in American history. He didn’t. A few thousand votes across a couple of key states was all it took.
Now, what Trump has that *is* formidable is a base that won’t budge. If he can just depress turnout among Democrats and count on his base crawling over broken glass to reelect him, he has a way forward. Bloomberg needs to come out charging against Trump’s online campaign and Dem GOTV operations need to GOTV like never before.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s neat seeing the Guardian equate spending money with working harder.
Don Beal
@Immanentize: Check Biden pre South Carolina. No following whatsoever. DNC can coronate its preference but they cannot manufacture voter enthusiasm. Nobody was excited by Joe Biden before South Carolina and it still holds true. Sanders has aways had a very enthusiastic following despite the views expressed here.
PenAndKey
This was my first thought on seeing this “proposal”. There’s not a chance that the current Supreme Court doesn’t render any attempt to seize 20% of company stocks (correction, 16.6% since it’s only requiring the issuance of 20% more stock instead of directly taking it from existing holders) and redistribute it to employees as unconstitutional.
My second thought? The “Sanders is a COMMIE!” ads practically write themselves. Add in his Cuba statements from a short while ago and he’s effectively giving Florida to the GOP if he somehow gets the nomination at this point.
Don Beal
@FlipYrWhig: A candidates message needs to be compelling. Big difference.
Chyron HR
@OzarkHillbilly:
Seems like some 11 million dollar campaign ads targeting black voters might have helped Bernie out the last few weeks. Guess DA STABBISHMENT must have rigged the ad industry against him.
ETA: Can you imagine how loud the Don Beals of the left would squeal if Biden dared to run a general election ad against Trump when BERNIE CAN STILL WIN IT?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Don Beal: I suspect Trump is manufacturing plenty of D enthusiasm. But we’ll see. At this point, I’m going to vote and then think about other things.
Immanentize
Also, Sanders would outlaw stock buy-backs…. There are some times when buy backs are manipulation, which is illegal. But not always. I think this would violate the contract clause. If you can sell stock, one can certainly buy stock. Buy-backs usually are for a premium price, so?
Baud
@Don Beal:
Excitement is measured by votes. This isn’t The Voice where you can vote more than once. People who don’t understand that fail at democracy.
Immanentize
@Don Beal: Sanders has a ceiling. As has been demonstrated over and over in this primary. He has not yet achieved the vote % in any contest that he won in 2016. There are no magical youth voters. Biden just crushed him in VOTES. You know, the things that are the voice of the people. So, Biden has more voters, therefore more enthusiasm than Sanders.
Periodt.
Baud
@Immanentize: Crushed him with far less money and no momentum going into SC.
ETA: Biden probably would have won California if not for early voting.
PenAndKey
Sorry, but Twitter engagement doesn’t equate to enthusiasm. Neither do blog posts or comments, nor ad buys. You know what does? Vote counts. The simple fact of the matter is that Sanders can have a screaming hordes of fans, but unless they’re voting in larger numbers than the rest of the democratic voters it’s irrelevant. Hell, the only reason anyone took Sanders seriously in the first place was that he was capitalizing on a fractured democratic primary with multiple moderate candidates vying for the same voters. Now that he’s down to one actual Democrat as an opponent things are playing out exactly like many of us have been saying it would for months.
Geminid
@Don Beal: After the 2017 and 2019 Democratic wave elections, both Republicans and Democrats agreed that Trump was a potent GOTV force for Democrats, even though he was not on the ballot. Getting Trump out of the White House is a very big issue.
Xentik
@Immanentize: I stand corrected! Hadn’t considered it an eminent domain thing. Arguing that it was “not for public use” would probably only land it in a quagmire of other legal issues.
You know, if Bernie supporters wanted to prove their revolution was really something, they could stand up today and force the senate to pass some meaningful legislation for COVID-19 response. Sick leave paid for by the gov’t, strengthened unemployment, guarantees that the gov’t would pay for all COVID-19 related testing, tweaks/expansion to TANF for the duration of the epidemic, etc. A success at something like that would put some force behind his claims that he could pass legislation were he the nominee. Of course he hasn’t even driven up turnout in the primaries. No way he’s going to get McConnell to flinch.
Uncle Cosmo
@Don Beal: You are cordially invited to go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw. The people of the USA will win this & save liberal democracy while the BS Kiddie Krusade whines about not getting their soshulist unicorn.
Cameron
@Don Beal: Apparently his message is compelling. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/majority-want-biden-to-win-the-democratic-nomination-over-sanders-new-national-poll-shows/ar-BB10XHyY
James E Powell
@OzarkHillbilly:
The writer doesn’t seem to realize that African American voters are Democrats. And spending somebody else’s money on ads is not working hard.
Morzer
@Don Beal: The Jill Stein short bus is waiting for you in the other parking lot.
TS (the original)
@sanjeevs:
New shares are always being created in companies – there is no need to “take” shares from others to redistribute them. All sorts of ways the number of shares in a company change
new issues (for investment funds), executive payment, staff allocations, company buy backs.
I worked for a steel company which made shares available to every employee. They had to be purchased but the cost was well below market value & the company offered a loan to anyone who needed same to buy them. Bernie hasn’t thought through the process, I have no doubt the process would change if it were ever implemented.
Baud
@TS (the original):
That should be macro for easy insertion into a comment.
Don Beal
@Uncle Cosmo: Exactly the level of intellectual maturity I’d expect here.
James E Powell
@Don Beal:
Why do so many people who refer to the DNC seem not to know what the DNC is or does?
Betty Cracker
@Don Beal: I think there’s a lot of voter enthusiasm for the progressive message, but it’s starting to look like Sanders as the messenger is an obstacle rather than a vehicle. I’m disappointed it’s come down to either one of the baggage-laden old farts, tbh, but here we are.
Got a post in the hopper for later about the post-Sanders future of progressive politics (win or lose, we’ll be in that era soon). Stick around and let me know what you think! :)
MJS
@Don Beal: You may want to tell all your friends in Michigan, Missouri, and other states voting today that this is not a dress rehearsal. All those votes that Biden is getting, and Bernie isn’t? They’re real, and they’re what determines whether someone is “electable” or not. So, those millions of invisible Bernie supporters who are just chomping at the bit to face off against Trump and usher in the revolution better show up today, or they will have blown it. Again.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Oh no. I have a ton of work today.
Maybe I can pretend to have the coronavirus.
Immanentize
@James E Powell: I so agree. Under that article’s definition, Steyer worked like 10 times harder than Trump to win over Black voters.
Morzer
@MJS: The polling out of Michigan suggests a major ass-kicking for the Bernie Bro faction.
Betty Cracker
@MJS: Tough but fair!
sanjeevs
@TS (the original): issuing new shares is effectively taking from the existing owners. You will own a smaller piece of th pie.
That’s why the existing shareholders always get to vote on issuing new shares whether that’s for Employee Share ownership scheme, takeover, exec comp etc.
Sanders is proposing expropriation.
He is also proposing that employees will benefit in a way that is heavily skewed towards the already better off.
I’m surprised none of his opponents brought it up (that I know of) because it seems like a sure vote loser to me.
TS (the original)
@sanjeevs:
Which is not what your original post said.
new issues may dilute the value of shares but they provide capital for expansion & often within a short period of time the original value of a share pre new issues is reached for all shares including the new issues.
different-church-lady
Seriously, are we not doing FTFY anymore?
Geminid
@Geminid: wave elections in VA, left that out.
Baud
@TS (the original):
New shares distributed to employees provide no new capital for the company.
TS (the original)
@Immanentize:
Probably not. New issue shares sometimes take a year or two to be equal in regard to value/dividends as existing shares. This entirely depends on the rules of the issue. There is no reason why employee shares would have to be different, long term, to any other shares. Executives and senior employees often already get new issue shares as part of their remuneration.
Chyron HR
@Xentik:
If Americans could get the things Bernie is promising without electing Bernie then they wouldn’t need to elect Bernie, you big silly.
sanjeevs
@TS (the original): There’s no new capital for expansion in this case.
The employees get new shares.
The company receives no money in return for the new shares.
The existing shares are diluted and are now worth 20% less than before.
Thats Sanders’ proposal
Morzer
@sanjeevs: What Sanders is proposing is pretty much what Corbyn proposed in Britain. I imagine the Sanders version will be just as unpopular, partly because it’s obviously unworkable, partly because most people don’t believe that the advocate of the policy is capable of delivering it.
different-church-lady
@Don Beal: Scoreboard.
Baud
@sanjeevs:
Plus, the shareholders of any company that grows to $100 million will automatically lose 20% of the value in the company. A hard line like that doesn’t work well.
Morzer
@Chyron HR: That sounds like a win for the broad masses, frankly.
pluky
@sanjeevs: Don’t worry. Doing this would require an Act of Congress. Then one has to get past the inevitable 4th amendment challenges. Not. Going. To. Happen.
TS (the original)
@Immanentize:
Buy backs give shareholders an additional payment over and above dividends. When company taxes are reduced, right wing governments talk about expansion & trickle down & the wonderful things that the company will do to expand the economy – and what do they do – buy back shares with the extra cash – giving a bonus to those shareholders who sell back some or all of their shares. Because there are now a lessor number of shares in the company, the remaining shareholders end up with an increased value of their shares & often increased dividends as the total profit allocated to dividend will not change, but there are fewer shares to receive the dividend funds.
Buy backs take money that would otherwise be spent on investment and give it to shareholders.
gene108
@Xentik:
From Bernie supporters Twitter, McConnell is not the obstacle to progress. The obstacle to progress is the Democratic Party.
Chyron HR
@Morzer:
But not for Bernie’s Revolution LLC, so we’re not going to see them do it.
pluky
@Xentik: Big fat 4th amendment “unlawful search and seizure” argument here.
Morzer
In a surprising development, Putin has decided that maybe he should stay on just a bit longer:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/10/vladimir-putin-amendment-power-russia-2024
Frankensteinbeck
@Don Beal:
Then why not address the many substantive counter arguments you have received? Actual voters, millions of regular human beings who were not taking orders from the Democratic Party’s organizational leadership, voted in a pattern of “Anybody but Sanders.” Sanders did not bring in significant numbers of new voters in this or the previous primary, and performed even worse this second time around. Isn’t this a clear demonstration that no matter how exciting he seems to you, the country at large does not share your feelings? When the actual test of voting came, the theory that Sanders creates enthusiasm has failed. You do have a couple more tries, one today, to prove it, but we have a real, a serious, and a substantive counter to your claim.
rp
Serwer is 100% right. For most Trump voters, the incompetence is the point. That’s white supremacy in a nutshell: The worst white man is better than the best black man.
Morzer
@Chyron HR: Inconceivable!
glory b
@Chyron HR: No, a lot of Americans thought that if the black guy did it and made it look so easy, any white guy could, so why not elect the one that would put people of color back in their place.
The audacity of thinking that we could be equal citizens! Trump will show them!
TS (the original)
@Baud:
Agreed – if there is no charge for those shares. but I could make the same statement as before
I am not a Bernie fan in any way – but I have always liked the concept of employees being part owners of the companies they work for. I like the concept but don’t believe there is any way Bernie could achieve the implementation – Elizabeth Warren, however, would have a workable plan for that.
sanjeevs
@Morzer: Yeah, Sanders version is even worse because it’s 20% , not 10 and I think Corbyn’s version could claim to be redistributive whereas Sanders is taking from peoples retirement but distributing it back in a way that’s skewed very heavily to the well off
Baud
@TS (the original):
Yep. I would trust Warren’s plan way more than anything Bernie puts forward.
PenAndKey
This is really the root of the proposal, and why it absolutely falls into the quagmire of unconstitutional takings. The percentage doesn’t even matter. What does matter is that these shares wouldn’t be created by the corporation as part of any financial or business strategy, but mandated by federal law. It is, quite literally, taking value from the company and redistributing it to the employees. As much as I might agree with the idea of employees having a say in their companies, this proposal will never achieve that because it’d be dead on arrival.
I have issues with corporations as a general rule, but a federally mandated stock issuance isn’t even in the same ballpark as any of the other reasons for stock splits being discussed here.
Morzer
@sanjeevs: It’s quite an achievement to be even less credible than Corbyn.
gene108
@TS (the original):
You need people with expertise in the legislature to shepherd major legislation through.
I always wonder how the PPACA would’ve turned out, if Ted Kennedy was healthy, and it didn’t have to fall to Max Baucus to fill in.
Eolirin
@TS (the original): Honestly I think getting rid of shareholder value must be protected above everything else and promoting and strengthening unions is sufficient.
Ownership issues and who gets the benefits of growth can be worked out organically if there’s less of a power differential.
Frankensteinbeck
@glory b:
True, but there is an extra layer. To echo @rp:
They didn’t just elect a white man, or even a white supremacist. They nominated a shit-stupid, ranting, mean-spirited, all-around-bigoted, narcissistic, whiny asshole. They nominated themselves to prove that they, personally, are superior to the best black man.
germy
OzarkHillbilly
As a policy goal I like it. The devil is in the details and no matter how it was done it would take time. Like the ACA it would no doubt take more time than any 2 term president would have.
TS (the original)
So the markets are up again today (so far). I cannot remember this type of volatility in the 30-40 years that i have understood the operation of the markets.
Dow is currently 24545 – so trump should be able to tell everyone how great he is when it passes 25000 (for the third time).
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: Excellent points.
sanjeevs
@TS (the original): October 2008 was more volatile from my memory.
So far.
sanjeevs
@Morzer: it’s remarkable how similar Corbyn and Sanders are. Notably in the sort of people they surround themselves with .
SFAW
@Don Beal:
Ah, the 2020 version of “Give me a reason why I should vote for Hillary, but without using the words ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Supreme Court.’ “
SFAW
@TS (the original):
Ken Lay liked that idea, too.
I’m sort-of kidding, because I somewhat agree with you. I was just reminded of all those poor Enron saps who had to — or at least were strongly encouraged to — invest all/most of their retirement plan in Enron stock.
TS (the original)
@sanjeevs:
For a month or two it may have been but did we get so many times a massive fall followed by a massive rise as has happened over the past couple of years. I remember the downward trends but not the equally large upward trends in a short period of time. For the last 7 years of President Obama’s administration I simply remember a slow and steady rise with the occasional fall back.
Perhaps I just didn’t watch as closely, given the then President wasn’t congratulating himself on the markets day in/day out.
rp
I’m sure many others have made this point, but last night I was struck by the fact that Trump perfectly embodies ALL of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. It’s hard to imagine that there’s another person on earth who better represents these traits.
Barbara
@Baud: For me too, except for one thing: The younger generation of leaders was equally stymied by the presence of Sanders, whose name recognition has been bolstered by running for the office for the last four years. They both needed to sit out. I do believe that Sanders’ ploy of splitting the field was much more likely to work if Biden had stayed out. I think that is one reason why Biden jumped in.
I don’t know either of those things for certain, but it was a large field and no one was able to carve out a solid place in the middle. I felt like Warren’s candidacy tanked during the debate where she breezily said that she would abolish private insurance. You could say that it was unfair for people to hold her to account for that but not Sanders, but I believe that’s the wrong way to look at it. The way to understand it is that there were a lot of Democratic voters who were affirmatively looking for the alternative to Sanders, who were actually warming up to Warren. She took herself to the back of the line with those voters by parroting Sanders, and then spent months in a futile quest to prove that she deserved their vote. That’s why Buttigieg and Klobuchar and then Bloomberg all overtook her.
sanjeevs
@TS (the original): Maybe not over that period. We did see extreme day to day volatility around the time of the bailout as every day the odds changed on whether a bill could pass.
Orange Is The New White
@TS (the original): Have you ever worked for such a company? My experiences with them have been shit. You get ownership but no say in how anything is done, and here’s my two real-life experiences:
1st go round with this: the company I worked for pulled a Bain Capital move and moved all the assets out, then sold what was left to the ESOP. The ESOP thought this was a good idea, because they didn’t have any experience to understand what they were being sold.
2nd and current go round with this: The company is being run by a Trump fan who seems to have gotten their management techniques from the Wicked Witch of the West, and the ESOP gets no say in how anything is done.
20% of a privately held company means you own the liabilities, maybe some profit some years, but you get no say in anything.
TS (the original)
@SFAW: Lordy – I had forgotten about Enron – but that was people putting their entire retirement savings into one company – a foolish idea whether you worked for them or not.
SFAW
Serwer:
Well, they were right. If Obama had been competent, Trump would not have been able to destroy (or severely damage) almost every good thing Obama did. Maybe if Obama had issued executive orders with the words “no backsies”? [N.B.: I don’t think that phrase is necessarily the correct one, because I’ve never quite understood the appropriate usage thereof. If someone has a better one, feel free to amend/correct.]
SFAW
@TS (the original):
No argument from me. Unfortunately, not every employee understands things like asset allocation and so forth.
Immanentize
@TS (the original): I understand what they do and how they operate, and I agree they do not always or often help workers or investment, but that doesn’t mean you can just make them illegal, does it?
Or is that the no rule of law world you want to live in
ETA The evil is not the buy backs, it is the massive counter productive tax breaks that allow for such profit taking buy-backs. Talk about attacking a symptom rather than curing the ill.
Uncle Cosmo
@Don Beal: Arseholes like you, led by a shoutyfingerwagging old fuck with delusions of adequacy & funded by laundered Mafiya rubles, are doing their best to sabotage my liberal democracy. Telling you to GFY is the gentlest appropriate rebuke.
Now crawl back under your rock.
TS (the original)
@Orange Is The New White:
As I said somewhere above – I worked for a company that allocated a small number of shares for every employee – we had to pay for them – but much under market value. Probably 90% took them up. It was in Australia so perhaps a small company by US standards but one of our largest. Worked well for us at the time. The total shares owned by the employees under this scheme would have been 5% at most – I kept them for years – paid dividends, increased the capital value.
I’ve only been involved once with a vulture capitalist company – fortunately I left before they cashed out & left behind a company shell.
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW: Lot of people at MCI were in the same position (I know several.)
We didn’t have a RIP thread for Bernie Ebbers, though.
Dorothy A. Winsor
As I understand it, some European countries require that a percentage of board seats be filled by union representation. I think was part of the problem in opening an auto plant in SC? If you want to at least gesture toward protecting workers, board reps might be better than stock held in a separate fund. If the company fails financially, the worker isn’t screwed from two directions.
glory b
@James E Powell: I’ve mentioned this any number of times on this top 10,000 blog! It is a puzzlement!
Immanentize
@SFAW: Not only that, but the Enron employees were not allowed, by the terms of the employee stock purchase plan, to sell their shares for some ridiculous number of years.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
Bullshit. Now, had you added a few “please”s and “kindly”s, I would have agreed.
MisterForkbeard
@Don Beal: I think this is broadly incorrect, and it’s kind of weird to insist that the guy who has a really committed base but can’t grow it is the one that will definitely win the election in the general.
Immanentize
@glory b: It almost makes one think people don’t want to know what the DNC does or what (NOT-)super powers they (don’t) have.
TS (the original)
@Immanentize:
I wasn’t attacking a symptom as such – simply stating the obvious – tax cuts allow for buy backs. I agree entirely that we’ll never get back to an equitable society while governments keep reducing taxes so it becomes impossible for them to do any governing.
I’m a Keynesian economist & given the growth of the past 8 -10 years, all western economies should have massive surpluses that could have been used in the current situation to provide both the health care required to combat the virus & an economic stimulus – but that surplus was given out in tax cuts & we are left with massive deficits heading into a recession.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
WalpoleCedar Junction? Shirley? Framingham?Yeah, I know that’s not what you meant. I didn’t remember (if I ever knew) about that happening at MCI, thanks (sort of) for the reminder.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MisterForkbeard:
I agree with you, but as a Warren fan, I figure the poster is probably in one of the stages of grief right now.
Kathleen
@Baud: I think it’s significant that Harris was in the front line during the march across the bridge in Selma. And belated Good Morning to you and other Juice People. Plus I’m sure thread is probably dead.
Barbara
@Morzer:
Just looked at the “live” results on the Washington Post website and you aren’t kidding. Current delegate count is 185 Sanders, 143 Biden, 5 to Warren — 333 out of 415 to be awarded. People were speculating a week ago that Sanders might get virtually all the delegates in California.
Immanentize
@TS (the original): Oh, I agree with you — I am just upset at Sanders’ fact free prescriptions.
Look at Thompson/Reuters where once my wife worked. They had a stock buy back, not for profit-taking so much as because their business (especially the print side) is contracting quickly. They need to shrink the outstanding investments to meet their new size and potential revenues. So buy-backs are not Inherently bad and may sometimes be necessary to keep people in their jobs. But what is bad is obscene amounts of tax revenue being shifted from government to corporations weakening our country’s ability to respond to any threat that cannot be faced with a bazooka or drone.
Immanentize
@SFAW: Massachusetts joke.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: But wasn’t he just the same way when Sanders was riding high? It’s hard to know what is grief and what is fundamental personality. You are a very kind person.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I always wonder what people like this would say in a IRL conversation if they said things like this and I said, “Who is Blanche Lincoln and why is she relevant here?”
See also, Tim Johnson, Kent Conrad, Mark Pryor….
Felanius Kootea
@Morzer: I hope the Coronavirus gets him. Would be perfect after he’s laid out all his schemes for eternal Russian domination to be taken out by something he couldn’t plan around or bargain with.
Felanius Kootea
@TS (the original): Elizabeth Warren did have a plan for employees having a percentage of the seats on the Board of a major company (apparently the way it’s done in some European countries?).
Eolirin
@Felanius Kootea: I worry that a post Putin Russia is actually worse. Though they’d be less effectively able to run psyops on other countries, so that’d be something.
Loose nukes in a power struggle between factions of an organized crime syndicate sounds bad to me though.
Calouste
@sanjeevs: A Facebook employee already gets 200k in stocks over 10 years, if not more.
And in Sanders’ glorious socialist workers’ paradise, do the stocks of people who leave the company still count as glorious socialist workers’ stocks, or do they become dirty capitalist stock instead? Most likely, he hasn’t thought anything through and still thinks people work at the same steel mill for forty years.
glory b
@Don Beal: And yet, here you are.
What part of the jackal thing didn’t you understand?
Hildebrand
Just got back from voting (Michigan). My precinct usually has a pretty strong early morning rush – the poll-workers said it has been slow today. You have to declare a party in the primary, so it will be interesting to see if that squelches the party-crossing shenanigans in any measurable way (not sure if any of the MAGA types could stomach making the check next to the Democratic Party – even for this).
The only other question on our ballot is whether or not we will extend a millage for the Detroit Institute of Arts. My guess is that the DIA question and the primary will turn out a pretty solid Democratic electorate – and of those voters, at least in Wayne County (Detroit), it will be a very Biden heavy group.
Anecdotally – I haven’t heard anyone in my 100% African American congregation on the East Side of Detroit even hint about voting for Bernie (even if some of the younger folks were talking about it earlier this year, they changed course after South Carolina). As one member told me, ‘I just want the crazy to stop.’
Felanius Kootea
@Eolirin: It’s going to happen anyway because people like Putin never groom a successor to hold things together when they leave (by dying, severe ill health, etc.). The question is do you want Russia to implode now or a decade from now?
sanjeevs
@Calouste: Yeah 50 years ago the value of a company had some sort of relationship to the number of employees.
Not now. Instagram had 6 employees when it was sold for 1 billion.
glory b
@Quinerly: I saw him too. I think he was indicating we should get ready for Bernie to stay in the race like he did in 2016.
First, he said we need to take the time to vet Biden (Joe S pointed out that Biden had been in politics for decades), then said there is no need to rush this, he’s sure that the upcoming debate will be enlightening.
He said we need a careful, detailed review of all of each candidates’ proposals. I got the impression that Bernie’s people are setting up for dragging this out.
tam1MI
@Betty Cracker: People who read Rick Perlstein will get this analogy… Bernie is the left’s Goldwater. They now need to find their Reagan.
schrodingers_cat
BS has been in the Congress longer than I have been in this country yet according to “revolutionary” logic I am supposedly a member of the establishment while he is an outsider.
I hope Joe gets an unsurmountable delegate lead and sends Putin’s pawn #2 packing.
Uncle Cosmo
For most of the 1980s I worked for Westinghouse. In late October 1987 I was in Pittsburgh for the company’s Statistics Symposium. I have a very clear memory of riding the hotel elevator up to the top-floor ballroom for the banquet and keynote speech with a bunch of fellow employees, in the early evening of Monday the 22nd.
That was when I first heard it had been “Black Monday,” the date of the DJIA’s greatest one-day percentage drop before or since**.
The atmosphere in the lift was as funereal as you might imagine. Most of my fellow passengers had much if not most of their life savings invested in “circle-W-bar” shares, which IIRC lost 1/4 of their value that day.
Up in the ballroom, doors were open to the balconies, with a hotel porter at each. I remarked that we’d probably be issued numbers with dessert and the porters were there to check that no one jumped out of sequence***. To no one’s surprise, my quip kind of (how shall I put it) fell flat.
** 22.6%, equivalent to ~6,600 points from the 2020 high
*** At the time I did not own a single share of Westinghouse stock.
Kathleen
@Barbara: I think Biden would not have run if Sanders had not run.
Uncle Cosmo
@SFAW: He was “cordially invited to” etc. IMO that was extremely, if not excessively, diplomatic on my part. (If you define diplomacy as the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a fashion that s/he looks forward to the journey…;^D)
Brachiator
NPR had this little tidbit about the Washington Primary
catclub
Saudi Arabia?
MCA1
@Don Beal: Biden’s “message” is quite compelling. It amounts to “Bernie Sanders would lose by 150 Electoral Votes, and this country will be destroyed by 4 more years of Trump in charge, so vote for me.” The beautiful thing is, once Wilmer’s out he can just take out the first clause and the core of it still works in the general.
Looking forward to your thoughtful contributions to the board after the Bern path to the nomination is so narrow it’s not navigable, either tomorrow or after Florida.
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yep. This is why I’m not laying into him. Same with most of my Bernie-fan friends on facebook.
I do push back pretty hard on any “Dementia” bullshit, but this commenter seems to have mostly stayed away from it. Good for him.
MisterForkbeard
@Brachiator: ….I was going to ask if people actually do this, and then realized I licked my mail-in ballot’s envelope to seal it when I did my CA ballot.
NPR needed to phrase this better. :/
noname
@Morzer: I see what you did there (I think?)
J R in WV
@sanjeevs:
The way that works in Europe is that company boards of directors are composed of reps from management and reps from the union representing the workers. I’m not sure about stock distribution over there, but stock holders don’t actually manage a company, they just help elect board members proposed by management, in this country.
So Bernie’s proposal won’t help change corporate management at all, even if he got it implemented it would fail at changing management climate instantly and forever. Putting union reps on boards of directors would change things instantly and forever, assuming unions were legal again.
Bernie just isn’t very smart if this is an example of his “revolution” ~!!~ So dumb!!!
J R in WV
@Don Beal:
Bernie Bro Beal, providing maturity to Balloon Juice for – um, about 4 hours, now! Please go away on your own, my pie list is getting too long!
Uncle Cosmo, that’s quite a good election slogan you have there! Keep up the good Balloon Juice work!!!
MCA1
@Kathleen: Agreed, and heartily endorse Barbara’s take on the overarching shape of this Democratic primary.
Sanders shouldn’t have run because of age and health, because of his unvetted background that would be supremely exploitable by the GOP if he were to find himself in a general election, and because of his disposition and lifelong role as an oppositional figure, in a time where a united front against the very real dangers of Trumpism are the primary concern.
If he hadn’t run, there was no real need for Biden to run, because none of the other candidates would have been so divisive within the party and easily painted as an extremist/communist sympathizer/wackaloon by Trump. Even Warren, despite more liberal views and policy positions, could probably have gotten the more moderate base of the party behind her and would be more capable of winning over independents in the general. But with so many vying for the non-Bernie lane, and none of them with national recognition, the arc of the primary was easy to predict. I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, to hear that Joe had to be convinced to run, given his age, his past experiences with Presidential campaigns, etc.
And if those underlying fundamentals hadn’t been there to get Biden to run, Bloomberg wouldn’t have gotten in the race, either. I think he saw himself (perhaps in a more cynically opportunistic way, perhaps not) as the insurance policy to the insurance policy, after Biden faltered early on.
In other words, the great irony of Dems 2020 is that while they were very excited about the depth of the talent pool a year or two ago, and their terrific, diverse crop of candidates as this primary began, that depth (along with an outsiderish agitator) looks like it’s going to end up leading to an uninspiring result for all but the 5% of the party that was enthusiastic about Biden all along.
L85NJGT
The fantasy is you’ll end up being some startups first dozen employees and make billions. The reality is investing that heavily in a single security is an insanely high level of risk. Anybody that invests like that will get screwed hard. Full stop.
ESOP is so 1974 failing smokestack concern dumping an illiquid spreadsheet on a naive employees.
Don Beal
@Betty Cracker: I look forward to it Betty. We don’t agree much of the time but you are a fun read and without the malevolence of some of the other anti Sanders folks.
SFAW
@Immanentize:
C’est vrai. Je suis un Masshole, n’est-ce pas?
But I think G&T, being a Vo Dislunder (since RI is just a breakaway province of MA, formerly ruled by Cian Ci Shek), picked up on it.
And, in case you’re wondering: no, I don’t speak French, so my grammar may be upgefickt.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
Yes, I saw the “cordially” part. I’m saying it wasn’t enough.
Uncle Cosmo
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Try reading it in an Irish brogue (brilliantly à propos this week).
Actually I may have bent over too far backward. Most Bernie Bros wouldn’t recognize common courtesy if it crept up behind them & bit them in the left(wing)nut.
(When I was 20 I was hanging with the Trotskyites. Five years & three elections later I knew better. Folks under 20 get a pass from me [along with an admonition that it’s time to grow up]. Between 20 and 25, gray area [same admonition, more urgently]. 25 and over, no excuses. Not sure what age this yob is, but sounds to me like he’s old enough to know better.)
mrmoshpotato
Amen Mr. Serwer. Spot on.
Uncle Cosmo
@MCA1: Respectfully disagree. IMO there was ample reason for Joe to run. Someone of national stature had to stand up for the achievements of the Obama administration & against Dolt45 dismantling them from the gitgo. Someone of national stature had to offer an alternative to the increasing number** of 2016 Trump voters experiencing buyer’s remorse if we were going to save democracy.
And there really wasn’t anyone but Biden who fit the bill. The continuing presence of BS (and the clear disaster of a Sanders Administration looming) certainly provided an added push, but IMO it was Uncle Joe, faute de mieux, from the start.
—–
** I’d estimate 15-20% of his 2016 total voted for him for reasons that (in their view) were not primarily or obviously bigoted, & for the most part they didn’t get what they thought they’d voted for. YMMV
MCA1
@Uncle Cosmo: Fair enough view. I guess I had no doubt that a nominee Klobuchar or Harris or Booker or Buttigieg would have done a good enough job speaking up for the Obama legacy that Trump’s been shredding. Or in presenting themselves in a manner that allowed the 15% of the populace that’s struggling to find a way to atone for getting fleeced by whatever appeal they foolishly saw in Needy Amin, without having to go so far as to vote for Democratic Socialism, which they think means the coming of centrally-planned economies and 80% marginal tax rates or something. Certainly Biden’s a more ready-made vessel for those impulses, though. I doubt any of the younger vanguard would have wrapped up the endorsement of a Republican mayor in Michigan already, for instance.
LongHairedWeirdo
Herm. This is one of those funny things that annoys me.
It’s true, a lot of white voters have become convinced that if Obama could do it, so could Trump. However, saying they “convinced themselves” is to disregard the constant propaganda leveled against him.
The GOP, and its news affiliate, told a huge pack of lies about Obama; they then told an even bigger pack of lies about Trump (i.e., they didn’t mention he was a dishonest, unprepared, incompetent, bigoted, bungler). Don’t blame ordinary people for believing the Very Serious People who spent eight years slandering Obama.
(Note that “slander” does not require it to be *actionable* – telling negative lies about a person is slander, even if the perps can wrap themselves in the first amendment and claim “absence of malice, and a public figure, so you can’t sue!”)