2020 US Election (Part One)

[Birdjaguar]

Amazon is red herring because there is always a 1%.

Amazon is only a 1% now. For the first decade or so it was a struggling startup.

 

[Hrothbern]

The base of business is offering attractive products for an attractive price, in an ever changing environment of what suppliers offer, competitors do and customers desire.
The better you are able to manage your internal processes and to see the changing outside world, the higher your increase in labour productivity and capital productivity, the better for your business and the overall economy you are part of.

It is only when a complete secor is stagnating, from maturity or changing customer desires, that you start shifting money from your operations to your owners.
But normally, for micro to medium businesses up to even 250-500 employees, it shows your inability to adapt, to be creative enough, to find adjacent business opportunities.

It is only in corporate that sub-sectors are driven down by cost cuts and investment cuts, before they are heavily restructured or sold (their market more or less) to others, where a reduced future fits better in. And it is only then, before that final phase, that money is extracted as much as possible to the owners and governmental tax matters.
And as side note. It happens also when the "small" business owner is going for his (earlier) retirement, and he is winding down the future investments in equipment and peoples knowledge, increasing his EBITDA, to sell his business as a multiple of that EBITDA.

And back to a government less interested in taxing money on behalve of public activities, and more in tax cuts to let money flow to (stagnating/waning) business owners.
If a corporate business earns more money (profit) than it can invest themselves in healthy growth, for the return on capital that its shareholders expect, it gives the surplus money to the shareholders under the motto: "you will have more return from the dividend invested in other businesses, than I can generate in my investments or acquisitions.
In principle a government doing tax cuts applies that same motto: It says, I have no good use of that money, I see no ways to invest it at the rate of returns you, corporate and the rich, can make.
The perversity of that tax cutting is that the people are the owner of the government and not the businesses. The motto may apply to shareholders, owning a company, getting their dividend money, but not to government tax.

As just stated above... it is only the stagnating/waning business that benefits most of those tax cuts... not so much the growing businesses, not the investing businesses with adapting, improving their products.
Normally a government, at least the specialists, are very well aware of that balance where government investments are judged on their return rates for the economy. Investments in all kinds of traditional infra like general logistics, general education etc, as well as more specific university related R&D, innovation, etc, education programs, industrial and other sector policies. Though in general the government specialists are too university skewed and have too little on the ground qualities.
But if that happens well, it improves all businesses. The growing ones adding labour productivity and national wealth, the switching ones needing bigger leaps to change to transform instead of going down until sold off.

However... if your politics believes in the smallest government possible with no need to support business from understanding how everything ticks, if your politics is lazy... it ends up in trickle down magic.
And trickle down does work to some degree, but the mode, the maturity, the economical complexity the economy is in, determines very much whether that trickled down money finds a way to land in the needed places and advances your economy, your productivity.
The current overall economy is so much more mature than 40 years ago, that the more or less random process in which trickled down money has to find the right spots to advance the economy, has a too low hit rate.
=> trickle down is a waste

 

[Hrothbern]

There is already ample reason to leave. This is garbage corporatist nonsense that says companies will simply decide to leave because of "uncompetitive taxes" or whatever. That is a lie. It isn't true.
Give corporations the ability to reduce their taxes $2 for every $ they pay in salaries and benefits up to a certain amount, they will spend more money paying employees. They won't leave the country because that is cost prohibitive for all but the largest companies, and you won't attract top talent from American universities by living overseas.

On that companies relocating activities to other countries.
When it is not done because of trading necessities (like "dear Japan, you want to sell cars in my country ? ok, but you need to build up manufacruring capacity in my country for xxx jobs")
When it's done to benefit from cheaper labour cost in that other country.
It is important to realise for activities that can be done in less developed countries, that unless you have protective trading barriers...
you either import their cheap labour by importing their people at your lowest wage (pressing your country's wage building down)
or you import their cheap labour as part of the products made in that cheap country (whereby you lose in your country more of the value chain)
The example of the pork in Iowa:
either cheap (opaque illegal) labour in Iowa and have the full value chain of wheat/soy, growing pigs, slaughter and processing in your own country
or as final end result: wheat/soy exported to Mexico where the growing and slaughtering/processing is done and buy the imported pork in your supermarkets.

It is obvious that in this choice, the business will usually prefer to import cheap labour by cheap workers causing a low wage, causing a lower bottom in your country's wage building.

Here you can kick in as government by having free medical care for all citizens ensuring that a relatively low minimum wage to ensure you keep the total value chain in your country, is still effective in terms of wellfare for the lowest income group, that does not need to pay medical care from that low wage.
The same applies to affordable housing. Enough social housing from goverment money will drive the price down of housing cost of the lowest wage group.

The result: a better defense against destructive competition on your country's economy from low labour or even subsidised agressive export countries.
And less headaches for your lower wage groups.

Wellfare countries are not necessarily uncompetitive.

 

[JollyRoger]

That would be good, too, once the necessary stuff is done.

J

What necessary stuff? That is a step that can be done immediately and voluntarily. Unless, of course, U.S. companies do not want to be competitive with companies in other countries with lower CEO pay.

 

[Birdjaguar]

What necessary stuff?

Grazing, bailing and harvesting. Obviously.

 

[Lexicus]

Yesterday I saw several different "takes" on people who might potentially run in 2020. One was arguing that Elizabeth Warren should be considered a strong contender in spite of the Pocahontas stuff. Then I saw a pair of articles one arguing Bernie shouldn't run, the other arguing it's the duty of all leftists to support Bernie.

 

[metalhead]

Elizabeth Warren twice badly underperformed national Democrats in her Senate campaigns. I don't think she is a good presidential candidate. She did herself no favors with the ridiculous DNA stuff, but that's not the reason she's a weak candidate. She's a weak candidate because she doesn't have broad appeal and isn't a good campaigner. I don't think you're going to beat Trump with a Harvard law professor. And if Trump is going to beat himself, I don't think she is the person you want shepherding the party through elections past 2020 that have the potential to be bad for Democrats.

I don't think Bernie will do well against younger people who he can't position himself to the left of. The thing I can't figure out about him is, he has the ability to go much further out there, start talking up stuff like reparations and a jobs guarantee, really get out on the actual American left and get people fired up. But he hasn't. I'm grateful that he appears to have won the party over on single payer/universal guaranteed coverage, but his post-2016 career has been uninspiring.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Bernie also plays the spoiler pretty well, wether by intention or otherwise. We can't afford a back-biting back-bench this go around.

 

[Gori the Grey]

What I'd like to see is every Democratic candidate say, on the day they announce, that "I'm going to make my bid, but I'm going to energetically and enthusiastically support whoever emerges as our candidate." It's an easy thing to say, in the abstract, right at the outset; it doesn't cost you anything in terms of momentum for your campaign. But if they all emphatically did it, it would frame the entirety of the campaign season. We could have as wide a field as we want, as vigorous a debate about the direction of the party, but then with the resolution that the right-minded are ultimately going to band together to sink Trump. (Because, after all, any one of them is 1000 times better than Trump).

The press could make up for some of the "earned media" they gave Trump in 2016 by asking this question first in their interviews and letting the candidate give a hearty endorsement of party (and nation) before starting to elaborate on what differentiates him or her.

Castro's making a good show of it in his early interviews. He and his twin brother were hilarious on Colbert last night.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I had forgotten about all the free coverage they gave Trump. I'm sure it'll happen again. :-(

 

[Gori the Grey]

His one talent is, as Mark Cuban labels it, generating "headline porn."

And for a long stretch of the 2020 campaign, the total field of Dems will get at best half the news coverage, and Trump alone the other half.

But I actually think this will play very differently in 2020 than it did in 2016. Ordinarily, for the party with the presidential incumbent, there is, after 8 years X-fatigue, ("Obama-fatigue," e.g.). I think Trump will have generated Trump-fatigue in four years. I think America is largely tired of him already. In fact, long tired of him by now.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think Gavin Newsom will be the pick for the top. Kamala Harris will give him a run for his money but I don't think they'll stack the ticket with two Californians.

 

[Lexicus]

Elizabeth Warren twice badly underperformed national Democrats in her Senate campaigns. I don't think she is a good presidential candidate. She did herself no favors with the ridiculous DNA stuff, but that's not the reason she's a weak candidate. She's a weak candidate because she doesn't have broad appeal and isn't a good campaigner. I don't think you're going to beat Trump with a Harvard law professor. And if Trump is going to beat himself, I don't think she is the person you want shepherding the party through elections past 2020 that have the potential to be bad for Democrats.

I don't think Bernie will do well against younger people who he can't position himself to the left of. The thing I can't figure out about him is, he has the ability to go much further out there, start talking up stuff like reparations and a jobs guarantee, really get out on the actual American left and get people fired up. But he hasn't. I'm grateful that he appears to have won the party over on single payer/universal guaranteed coverage, but his post-2016 career has been uninspiring.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e0f61a8a228b
Fwiw here is an op-ed by an economically illiterate person in the Washington Post heaping scorn on Bernie for suggesting a job guarantee.

Incidentally, because I can't stop myself from pitching the job guarantee, it's hilarious to me that the author of this article actually says that a serious problem with the job guarantee is that it will raise benefits in the private sector labor market:

The reason is Medicare. If it’s provided for those making $15 an hour, there will be pressures to provide it for most workers. Otherwise, uncovered workers might stage a political rebellion or switch from today’s low-paying private-sector jobs to the better-paid public-service jobs, as the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip notes. The same logic applies to child-care subsidies.

If we play our cards right we can get the neoliberal morons to do all the work of selling this policy for us.

I was highly disappointed that Bernie did not heavily pitch employee ownership and workplace democracy in 2016 though so I know where you're coming from here. Bottom line is I think he's old, his thinking ossified, and it's going to take a lot of effort by his handlers to get him to change his tune or thinking significantly.

I'm sure it'll happen again. :-(

It's been happening more-or-less nonstop since 2015.

I think Gavin Newsom will be the pick for the top. Kamala Harris will give him a run for his money but I don't think they'll stack the ticket with two Californians.

I'll end up supporting whomever is the nominee but if it's Kamala Harris I will have a hard time with it.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What's the problem with her?

 

[Lexicus]

What's the problem with her?

Long story short, she's a cop. She did many indefensible things during her time in charge of California's criminal justice system.

Among the most egregious examples:
https://observer.com/2015/03/california-prosecutor-falsifies-transcript-of-confession/

But here’s another doozy: The People (of California) v. Efrain Velasco-Palacios. In this unpublished opinion from the Fifth Appellate District, the California Court of Appeal reveals that state prosecutors and California Attorney General Kamala Harris continue to be part of the problem. Kern County prosecutor Robert Murray committed “outrageous government misconduct.” Ms. Harris and her staff defended the indefensible—California State prosecutor Murray flat out falsified a transcript of a defendant’s confession.

Kern County prosecutor Robert Murray added two lines of transcript to “evidence” that the defendant confessed to an even more egregious offense than that with which he had been charged—the already hideous offense of molesting a child. With the two sentences that state’s attorney Murray perjuriously added, Murray was able to threaten charges that carried a term of life in prison.

Eventually this came to light:

When confronted with the defense’s motion to dismiss the indictment for outrageous prosecutorial misconduct, Mr. Murray claimed his own false alteration of the transcript was “in jest,” a “joke” between two lawyers, and harmless to the defendant. Mr. Murray lobbed in another little bombshell for good measure, swearing that defense counsel had said that the defendant’s defense was “not viable.”

California Judge H.A. Staley got it right. He found that Mr. Murray’s fabrication of “evidence”—falsifying the transcript of a confession during discovery and plea negotiations—was “egregious, outrageous, and . . . shocked the conscience.”

The trial judge saw no laughing matter—and neither should the rest of us. He dismissed the indictment completely, and in a scathing opinion, also quoted by the appellate court, wrote that the prosecutor’s actions “diluted the protections accompanying the right to counsel and ran the risk of fraudulently inducing defendant to enter a plea and forfeit his right to a jury trial.” The court refused to “tolerate such outrageous conduct that results in the depravation of basic fundamental constitutional rights that are designed to provide basic fairness.”

So at last we get to Harris' role in this:

Undaunted by the criminal conduct of a state prosecutor, or the district court’s opinion, Ms. Harris appealed the decision dismissing the indictment. According to the California attorney general, only abject physical brutality would warrant a finding of prosecutorial misconduct and the dismissal of an indictment. Fortunately for all of us—and the Constitution—she lost again.

This is Ms. Harris’ third strike in hardly as many months—and those are only the ones that have come to our attention.

There is the outrageous misconduct by the state court agents and investigators in the Sierra Pacific/Moonlight Fire case that caused a state judge to enter a multi-million judgment against Cal Fire. And only a few weeks ago, Ninth Circuit Judges Kozinski, Fletcher and Wardlaw saw misconduct so egregious that Judge Kozinski raised the specter of a perjury prosecution of the prosecutor during the oral argument. Attorney General Harris had to reverse course on that case, but she did so only after the Ninth Circuit judges made clear that she would not like the opinion that would be forthcoming if she did not correct it herself. In that case, Baca, the state court of appeal saw evidence that the prosecutor himself had committed perjury. If Ms. Harris’ office had its way, it all would have been swept under the rug.

As I said, completely indefensible. She'd be better than Trump but that's not exactly a high bar.

 

[Sommerswerd]

But I actually think this will play very differently in 2020 than it did in 2016. Ordinarily, for the party with the presidential incumbent, there is, after 8 years X-fatigue, ("Obama-fatigue," e.g.). I think Trump will have generated Trump-fatigue in four years. I think America is largely tired of him already. In fact, long tired of him by now.

Trump's first 100 days felt like years... It's hard to believe that we've only had him in office for less than 2 years... its been a slog.

I think Gavin Newsom will be the pick for the top. Kamala Harris will give him a run for his money but I don't think they'll stack the ticket with two Californians.

+1 on Gavin Newsome. I've been saying/thinking he was the guy since before the 2016 election. I also like Kamala Harris... @Lexicus -nobody's perfect ... contrast her sins with Hillary's and it'll make you feel better

There's also Tulsi Gabbard but she comes with a different set of issues. Nobody is going to be perfect, sadly.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

@Lexicus

Just like it is totally out of line when people attack a defense attorney for "defending killers and rapists and horrible people" it is out of line to attack prosecutors for prosecuting. Courts work by people doing their jobs. Defense attorneys provide the best defense they can provide. Prosecutors prosecute to the best of their ability. Judges and juries decide the results.

When a prosecutor is accused of misconduct it is the job of every level of the prosecutor's office to make the best case they can that it did not occur, and the judge's job to rule on whether it did. That is exactly what happened in the situation you cited.

 

[Hrothbern]

Will the choice between Democratic candidates and the agenda be influenced as much as this article of Reuters suggests ?

California could have seismic impact on 2020 Democratic presidential race
The nation’s most populous liberal state has moved its presidential nominating contest to early in the 2020 calendar, a shift its leaders hope will give it maximum impact on the selection of a Democratic nominee and push candidates to address progressive issues such as climate change.
The reshuffling means California voters, who can cast ballots weeks before primary election day, will be helping to determine a nominee at the same time as those in traditional early primary states such as New Hampshire.
“It’s a big deal,” said Ben Tulchin, a San Francisco-based consultant who worked as a pollster for Democratic U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. “The traditional schedule had smaller states, more affordable states, retail politics. California is not like that.”
The shift to so-called “Super Tuesday” in March 2020 will change how campaigns structure their efforts and require tough decisions about allocation of resources, Democratic Party sources and strategists say. Competing in California, with its large, expensive media markets, may only be possible for the most deep-pocketed campaigns.
That factor alone might be enough to keep some of the two dozen or so Democrats who are considering entering the race from getting in.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...20-democratic-presidential-race-idUSKBN1OD191

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Will the choice between Democratic candidates and the agenda be influenced as much as this article of Reuters suggests ?

It will very likely quash the "I don't really think I have a chance but let me get in the door in Iowa and see what happens" crowd.

 

[Hrothbern]

It will very likely quash the "I don't really think I have a chance but let me get in the door in Iowa and see what happens" crowd.

And what about the agenda pitched from the start ?
California is more progressive
Will it have influence on the final agenda ? Will it be a more vulnerable road for a progressive agenda, or for winning at all ?