I have an acquaintance who is an accountant.
They have a client that is a lobbyist that works alone, by herself, in this state. She got $18,000.00 from the PPP.
My acquaintance also has a client that is a local tortilla maker with actual employees. Their PPP loan got rejected.
This is so fucked. Taxpayers just paid a lobbyist to continue to pay politicians.
And it is 100% legal.
“When you’re a celebrity, they let you do it.”
I’m worried that Biden won’t have the courage to learn from the failures of “neoliberal” economics. Whereas Bernie would have made some changes.
No courage to it, he won’t.
But it doesn’t matter, because the president doesn’t make the law. If we fix Congress, Biden will be a minor concern.
the president can make executive orders that change how certain laws are enforced. Congress has abdicated much of it’s legislative authority to experts, not realizing that these experts are beholden to an executive who cares not for technical and scientific competence.
Oddly they seemed to immediately reclaim it when there was a black president.
Much of a presidents real power is in their vast number of appointments across the government, (normally). I’m also worried about Biden’s ability to learn from anything at this point. Bernie & Warren (I think she is actually better suited in some ways to reform neoliberalism because it seems to me she better grasps it’s machinations), are both still driving the discourse forward. Getting Biden (or any Dem really) elected is mainly just damage control rather than addressing structural failures, but it’s a first step.
That can certainly be a problem (c.f. Timothy Geithner). The biggest problem I see, however, is that I don’t get the sense that Biden understands how severely the working part of the US Federal government has been damaged and demoralized.
But I certainly expect him to at least try to be a good manager and try to put competent people in place. Hopefully we’ll get to see how well he does!
Don’t know if it’s true, but …
The Mariel boat lift was well after the revolution and you would be very hard pressed to find one that is not viceraly opposed to anything even remotely socialist leaning. That said, I think that twiterrati completely missed the author’s valid insigh to score twitter points. (Those exist, right?)
“That kind of question, in the middle of an economic crisis, from a Calgary-based media outlet — really frankly throws me for a loop,” Kenney said to the reporter.
And in the middle of the other economic crisis, where oil currently has a negative value, Kenney is throwing billions at oil companies. SMH.
That scene in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, where the mutants peel their faces off to “reveal their true self to their God”? That’s Kenney with an oil rig.
Wow.
Sunday, April 26, 2020
The Hottest Takes
I saw this at the time but think I failed to recognize just how scorching it was. SUPERNOVA!
Lawrence H. Summers@LHSummers
Forcing the wealthy to spend could boomerang. If the wealth tax had been in place a century ago, we would have had more anti-semitism from Henry Ford and a smaller Ford Foundation today.
Hear that libturds? If you try to take any of our money, we’ll become more anti-Semitic!
Genius like that is surely why I couldn’t even attend Harvard, much less be its president.
And I hope I don’t have to argue about money in the government being better spent than that in ego foundations.
Also ignoring the fact that Ford was taxed at a wildly higher rate that he would have been today.
“If you had taxed 2% of Henry Ford’s wealth, he’d have transformed into Hitler overnight, you hippies!” …is not a good look.
One Rich N.Y. Hospital Got Warren Buffett’s Help. This One Got Duct Tape.
The problem with politicians is most of them aren’t very smart, and when they have their own ideas those ideas are stupid, and when they listen to experts they also think lobbyists are experts and they’re liable to go along with whoever gets them in a room for five minutes
We know Biden won’t be, couldn’t be, anywhere near as bad as Trump
That’s the whole campaign, that’s all he’s promising and it’s all we’ll get
