crazytown
crazytown's JournalIn the (unlikely) event that Pete Buttigieg wins the nomination
then much like Obama in 2008, he's going to need someone by his side who of good standing, who knows Congress, who can make deals, but who is under no illusion that they are dealing with a nest of vipers. I have no idea who that might be. We can count Joe out this time round, so, any guesses?
NYT: As Warren Gains in Race, Wall Street Sounds the Alarm
As Warren Gains in Race, Wall Street Sounds the AlarmIt’s a role that Ms. Warren unabashedly embraces, as an increasing number of voters, as well as a few veterans of the finance industry, see her as the policymaker who can address the growing wealth gap in the United States and take on the corruption and excess in the business world.
Ms. Warren has made battling corporate greed and corruption a central theme of her fiercely populist campaign, mixing anti-elitist oratory with policy plans calling for sweeping new regulations. On Friday morning she released an ambitious proposal to pay for her “Medicare for all” program, with provisions directly affecting Wall Street: aggressive new taxes on billionaires, an additional tax on financial transactions like stock trades and annual investment gains taxes for the wealthiest households.
Interviews with more than two dozen hedge-fund managers, private-equity and bank officials, analysts and lobbyists made clear that Ms. Warren has stirred more alarm than any other Democratic candidate. (Senator Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a socialist, is also feared, but is considered less likely to capture the nomination.)
Wall Street has long tried to influence American politics and generally donated to both parties, though it traditionally has been more aligned with Republicans. But while there’s no coordinated strategy, the industry is more or less united against Ms. Warren. With just months before the first voting begins, it is unleashing a barrage of public attacks, donating money to her rivals and scrambling to counter her blistering narrative about Wall Street.
“Everyone is nervous,” said Steven Rattner, a prominent Democratic donor who manages the wealth of Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor. “What scares the hell out of me is the way she would fundamentally change our free-enterprise system.”
Wall Street is particularly unhappy with worker representation on corporate boards (the German model), private equity firms having to honor pension fund liabilities, and the restrictions / taxation of lobbying.
The industry was more or less united in their opposition to FDR as well. When you are focussed on quarterly results, the longer term viability of capitalism and democracy is a 3rd order issue.
Note: Ms. Warren rather than Senator Warren.
Apple pledges $2.5 billion to fight California housing crisis
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - Apple Inc on Monday said it would commit $2.5 billion to easing a housing shortage that has driven up prices across California, with most of the money dedicated to funds that will be run either with or by the state government.
One billion dollars will go to a jointly run fund with state officials aimed at jumpstarting delayed or stalled affordable housing projects. Another $1 billion will go to a state-run fund to provide first-time home buyer financial assistance to teachers, nurses and first responders such as police and firefighters, among others.
In an interview with Reuters, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the company felt a “profound responsibility” to improve California’s housing crisis. Apple’s current headquarters - a ring of gleaming metal and glass nicknamed the “spaceship” in Cupertino, California - sits less than five miles from the suburban family home where co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak assembled the first Apple computers in the 1970s.
“We want to make sure that it is a vibrant place where people can live and also raise a family,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told Reuters in an interview. “And there’s no question that today that isn’t possible for many people, that the region suffers from an affordability crisis that is existential.”
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-housing/apple-pledges-2-5-billion-to-fight-california-housing-crisis-idUSKBN1XE12X
Krugman: Did Warren Pass the Medicare Test? I Think So
Did Warren Pass the Medicare Test? I Think SoHer plan is serious, even if it probably won’t happen
Well, the Warren plan is now out. And I’d say that she passed the test. Experts will argue for months whether she’s being too optimistic — whether her cost estimates are too low and her revenue estimates too high, whether we can really do this without middle-class tax hikes. You might say that time will tell, but it probably won’t: Even if Warren becomes president, and Dems take the Senate too, it’s very unlikely that Medicare for all will happen any time soon.
Nonetheless, Warren needed to show that she was working the problem. And she did. She brought in real experts like Donald Berwick, who ran Medicare during the Obama years, and Betsey Stevenson, former chief economist at the Labor Department. And they have produced a serious plan. As I said, experts will argue with the numbers, but this is the real thing — not some left-leaning version of voodoo economics.[
(snip) Am I enthusiastically endorsing this plan? No. I still think that a public-option-type plan, which lets people buy into Medicare, would have a better chance of actually becoming reality — and may well be where a President Warren actually ends up if she gets to the White House. And the plan’s optimism on costs and revenues could be wrong.
But this is a serious plan that reflects hard thinking. In particular, it’s nothing like the snake oil that passes for policy analysis on the right, whether it’s the continual insistence that tax cuts pay for themselves or Paul Ryan budgets that assumed that discretionary spending could be cut to Calvin Coolidge levels.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/opinion/did-warren-pass-the-medicare-test-i-think-so.html
Kate McKinnon: Private health insurance is like an abusive boyfriend.
brilliant
https://twitter.com/nbcsnl/status/1190840165117386752
Warren misquoted: Bloomberg hatchet job.
It's discouraging how DU'ers compete to put the the worst spin on statements by our candidates. I'm sure Biden supporters know how that feels.
Bloomberg libeled Elizabeth Warren in the piece titled "Warren Derides Biden as Running in 'Wrong Presidential Primary".
What Warren actually said was "If anyone wants to defend keeping those high profits for Insurance companies, and those high profits for Drug companies, and not making the top 1% pay a fair share in taxes, and not making corporations pay a fair share in taxes, then I think they are running in the wrong presidential primary".
It's a pretty unremarkable statement - all candidates tax plans will result in higher taxation of corporations and the top 1%, all candidates favor lower drug prices, and all the health plans put forward also introduce further restrictions on Insurance company premiums.
The 'Republican talking points' was a reference to doing nothing at all. "You know, Democrats are not going to win by repeating Republican talking points, and by dusting off the points of view of the giant Insurance companies, and giant Drug companies who don't want to see any change in the law that will bite into their profits."
The reference to Joe Biden, was about disputing her costings:-
“The cost projections that we have on Medicare were authenticated by President Obama’s head of Medicare. Our revenue projections were authenticated by President Obama’s labor economist. And the employer contribution is already part of the Affordable Care Act that President Obama put into the Affordable Care Act. So if Joe Biden doesn’t like that, I’m just not sure where he’s going."
The answer in full is here-
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/468587-warren-fires-back-at-biden-criticism-of-medicare-for-all-plan
Elizabeth Warren: Medicare for All Funding Plan released today
Ending the Stranglehold of Health Care Costs on American Familieshttps://medium.com/teamwarren/ending-the-stranglehold-of-health-care-costs-on-american-families-bf8286b13086
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