Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
I like how that post endorses theories about the media setting narratives.For everyone that, for some reason, has no idea why Biden is unpalatable:
and you people think he's going to help improve healthcare
2020 US Election (Part One)
- Thread starter Lexicus
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A take on the winner of the American Samoa primary:
What Bloomberg's $500m could have bought instead
The former New York mayor could have paid off student loans for 150,000 people or bought houses for 2,200 homeless people
There wasn’t much good news on Super Tuesday for the more progressive wing of the Democratic party, save for one lesson: money on its own, mercifully, cannot, as of yet, buy an entire election.
That’s the lesson many drew from the failure of billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who had hoped spending a half billion sliver of his massive fortune on an ad buy and staffing a national campaign might make inroads against former vice-president Joe Biden for the battle of the centrists.
But Bloomberg’s announcement today that he will be dropping out means the more than $500m he spent was wasted on nothing. Unless you count his sole win in American Samoa.
Wasted is a relative term of course, because for a man reportedly worth over $60b, $500m to him is practically nothing. For everyone else it’s still, well, $500m, and that has prompted some to wonder what good that kind of money could have done spent elsewhere.
Here are some places he might have better spent the cash dump:
Clearing medical debt
According to RIP Medical Debt, a group who purchases medical debt in bulk, every $100 donated can alleviate $10,000 in oppressive medical bills. 66% of all US bankruptcies are tied to medical debt issues they say. So far they’ve eliminated around $1.3bn in medical debt, but doing some quick math, if Bloomberg had chipped in what he spent on the campaign that might have alleviated … $500bn in debt. Sadly and sickeningly that’s not enough to clear everyone’s tab in America, but it’s pretty close, and good enough to change hundreds of thousands of lives over night. Alas.
Cleaning up Flint
For around 1/10 of what he spent on getting embarrassed in front of the world, Bloomberg also could have replaced all of the old lead pipes in Flint, Michigan, then had hundreds of millions left over to pull every citizen there – or in many other cities – out of poverty. It’s a point that many made when the campaign complained about their headquarters there being lightly vandalized last month.
Pay off student debt
While $500m might be a drop in the bucket of the $1.4tn owed in student loan debt in America, with an average outstanding loan of around $37,000, that’s roughly 150,000 people whose lives the former New York City mayor could have transformed for the better. Think about all the good all those people unshackled at once from their predatory student loans might go on to do.
House the homeless
With a reported 60,000-80,000 people living unhoused in New York City, his hometown, Bloomberg certainly would have had to lay out a bit more than $500m to give them all homes, certainly in one of the most expensive cities in the country, but with an average home price across the US of about $226,000 that’s well over 2,200 people he could have simply purchased a home for. Just like that. Here’s a house. It’s all yours now. He’d barely even notice the money was gone.
Restore voting rights to felons
As an ardent believer in democracy, Bloomberg is no doubt aggrieved by Florida Republicans’ efforts to reverse engineer a poll tax against the will of the voters, making it harder for felons to vote. Bloomberg could make a huge dent in the hundreds of millions outstanding, restoring the right to vote to thousands, or alternatively, he might have funded any number of campaigns against Republicans in the state actively working to disenfranchise its own citizens. His call, really!
The former New York mayor could have paid off student loans for 150,000 people or bought houses for 2,200 homeless people
There wasn’t much good news on Super Tuesday for the more progressive wing of the Democratic party, save for one lesson: money on its own, mercifully, cannot, as of yet, buy an entire election.
That’s the lesson many drew from the failure of billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who had hoped spending a half billion sliver of his massive fortune on an ad buy and staffing a national campaign might make inroads against former vice-president Joe Biden for the battle of the centrists.
But Bloomberg’s announcement today that he will be dropping out means the more than $500m he spent was wasted on nothing. Unless you count his sole win in American Samoa.
Wasted is a relative term of course, because for a man reportedly worth over $60b, $500m to him is practically nothing. For everyone else it’s still, well, $500m, and that has prompted some to wonder what good that kind of money could have done spent elsewhere.
Here are some places he might have better spent the cash dump:
Clearing medical debt
According to RIP Medical Debt, a group who purchases medical debt in bulk, every $100 donated can alleviate $10,000 in oppressive medical bills. 66% of all US bankruptcies are tied to medical debt issues they say. So far they’ve eliminated around $1.3bn in medical debt, but doing some quick math, if Bloomberg had chipped in what he spent on the campaign that might have alleviated … $500bn in debt. Sadly and sickeningly that’s not enough to clear everyone’s tab in America, but it’s pretty close, and good enough to change hundreds of thousands of lives over night. Alas.
Cleaning up Flint
For around 1/10 of what he spent on getting embarrassed in front of the world, Bloomberg also could have replaced all of the old lead pipes in Flint, Michigan, then had hundreds of millions left over to pull every citizen there – or in many other cities – out of poverty. It’s a point that many made when the campaign complained about their headquarters there being lightly vandalized last month.
Pay off student debt
While $500m might be a drop in the bucket of the $1.4tn owed in student loan debt in America, with an average outstanding loan of around $37,000, that’s roughly 150,000 people whose lives the former New York City mayor could have transformed for the better. Think about all the good all those people unshackled at once from their predatory student loans might go on to do.
House the homeless
With a reported 60,000-80,000 people living unhoused in New York City, his hometown, Bloomberg certainly would have had to lay out a bit more than $500m to give them all homes, certainly in one of the most expensive cities in the country, but with an average home price across the US of about $226,000 that’s well over 2,200 people he could have simply purchased a home for. Just like that. Here’s a house. It’s all yours now. He’d barely even notice the money was gone.
Restore voting rights to felons
As an ardent believer in democracy, Bloomberg is no doubt aggrieved by Florida Republicans’ efforts to reverse engineer a poll tax against the will of the voters, making it harder for felons to vote. Bloomberg could make a huge dent in the hundreds of millions outstanding, restoring the right to vote to thousands, or alternatively, he might have funded any number of campaigns against Republicans in the state actively working to disenfranchise its own citizens. His call, really!
So, Warren is to drop out.
I am not really of the view she will endorse Bernie. That said, I doubt it matters if she would; she doesn't have many people following her and if she endorses Biden those are not likely to just do the same. Supposedly she was a "progressive", so Biden... would be the same she did in 2016 when she endorsed Hellary.
The positive here is that the next debate will be just Bernie vs Biden. Now it is obvious Biden can't actually win a debate with Bernie, he is barely coherent to win a "debate" against Trump. The real question is if Bernie will put real pressure on someone who afaik is his friend (Biden).
Ultimately, I think that the debate can help Bernie, and it will be interesting to watch.
I am not really of the view she will endorse Bernie. That said, I doubt it matters if she would; she doesn't have many people following her and if she endorses Biden those are not likely to just do the same. Supposedly she was a "progressive", so Biden... would be the same she did in 2016 when she endorsed Hellary.
The positive here is that the next debate will be just Bernie vs Biden. Now it is obvious Biden can't actually win a debate with Bernie, he is barely coherent to win a "debate" against Trump. The real question is if Bernie will put real pressure on someone who afaik is his friend (Biden).
Ultimately, I think that the debate can help Bernie, and it will be interesting to watch.
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Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
The people Bloomberg paid could also spend that money. Have to ask a bunch more people though.
hobbsyoyo
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Couldn't hurt to try?
He wasn't voted in to do it, but it was a priority of a large part of the electorate. He was responsive to that as it was a fairly painless trade to make for the meager agreements he could eek out of Teahadists. Yes, he was responding to racists motivations from racist people, and the policy was not good. But it is unfair to paint it as a direct prelude to the kids in cages of today as if that was the inevitable outcome of Obama's actions. These arguments also absolve Trump of too much responsibility as well.
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You would have to be very naive to think that it doesn't. Most people can acknowledge that Fox News does it.
Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
If it's the comment I'm thinking of then it's a case of Dems repeatedly using the courts to nullify (immigration) legislation (because R) and the SCOTUS majority getting tired of having to repeatedly overturn lower courts acting on increasingly dubious grounds.
The whole "stacking" the court issue presumes a significantly wide gap in what's considered constitutional. Using the courts for backdoor legislating can be a source of that problem, eh?
At worst, Republicans are being accused of lawfare... for a change.
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Timsup2nothin
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"What we're watching is more than the center rallying around Joe Biden. And it's a mistake to call this coalition "the establishment" or say that they're corporate shills.
Instead, it's a robust reflection of the backbone of the Democratic Party -- black voters, liberals and moderates and blue-collar workers as well as senior citizens. It's urban, suburban and rural. That is not a collection of elites. It's a reflection of main street America that's more concerned with real solutions to the problems they face than democratic socialist rhetoric about revolution."
Nicely put, I thought.
Instead, it's a robust reflection of the backbone of the Democratic Party -- black voters, liberals and moderates and blue-collar workers as well as senior citizens. It's urban, suburban and rural. That is not a collection of elites. It's a reflection of main street America that's more concerned with real solutions to the problems they face than democratic socialist rhetoric about revolution."
Nicely put, I thought.
Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
They're usually more timid about applying it elsewhere.
Without Bernie or someone like him there isn't much of a perspective to apply it elsewhere on/to. As a white guy, anyway. I'm sure minorities notice(d) the 'cops are heroes and can do no wrong' narrative before we did. because their protests and such are what got it on the news to make people pay attention in the first place.
edit: you can scratch out all of the above, if you like, at replace it with this:
You ever notice how sometimes the news will run an article or story about a topic you're actually an expert in? You definitely notice how much they get wrong. Now think how much stuff they've been wrong about in everything else that you're not an expert in.
It's just that in this context I'm an 'expert' (I'm not) in left politics so I notice the media's quackery behavior toward leftist topics.
edit: you can scratch out all of the above, if you like, at replace it with this:
You ever notice how sometimes the news will run an article or story about a topic you're actually an expert in? You definitely notice how much they get wrong. Now think how much stuff they've been wrong about in everything else that you're not an expert in.
It's just that in this context I'm an 'expert' (I'm not) in left politics so I notice the media's quackery behavior toward leftist topics.
Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
Yes, that's called Gell-mann Amnesia
As for the white centrist thing, fish not noticing water.
As for the white centrist thing, fish not noticing water.
Timsup2nothin
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I'll need a link so I can read about that in a reliable source.
Rashiminos
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Coinage of the term is attributed to Michael Crichton.
Timsup2nothin
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I'm sure he'd have recognized the joke.
@Timsup2nothin “The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect” is the name given by Michael Crichton for a phenomenon that afflicts mass media–its unlimited, unearned credibility. According to Crichton, media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. He called it by this name because he once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. His reasoning was that by using a famous name it would imply greater importance to the effect, than it would otherwise have.
According to Crichton, the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows: “You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
“In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
This then is The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. When it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is worth our time to read the newspaper or listen to a broadcast. Fact is they tell us what they want us to hear which, by the way, is totally independent of the biased reporting problem which is another story altogether. Crichton believes the only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia. One area where I think Crichton got it wrong is that he believes it does not apply to other arenas in life. His point being that in ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. I would tend to disagree with Crichton on this one. I believe that The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is alive and well in everyday life and especially in the workplace.
Murray Gell-Mann was a notable physicist who lived in NM. He named the quark.
According to Crichton, the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows: “You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
“In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
This then is The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. When it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is worth our time to read the newspaper or listen to a broadcast. Fact is they tell us what they want us to hear which, by the way, is totally independent of the biased reporting problem which is another story altogether. Crichton believes the only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia. One area where I think Crichton got it wrong is that he believes it does not apply to other arenas in life. His point being that in ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. I would tend to disagree with Crichton on this one. I believe that The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is alive and well in everyday life and especially in the workplace.
Murray Gell-Mann was a notable physicist who lived in NM. He named the quark.
Timsup2nothin
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@Birdjaguar...that whoosh you heard from above wasn't a passing aircraft. 
I'm guessing from the 'like' that @Rashiminos caught it the second time around, but if a third person doesn't get the joke I'm gonna have to explain it, and no one wants that.
I'm guessing from the 'like' that @Rashiminos caught it the second time around, but if a third person doesn't get the joke I'm gonna have to explain it, and no one wants that.
hobbsyoyo
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I have known one person that was a habitual liar and everyone in our extended friend and working group either turned on him or learned to be ok with the constant lying. My anecdote proves nothing of course
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