Comments by "Xyz Same" (@xyzsame4081) on "The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder"
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A main feature (and attraction for very different audiences) of the show is having two hosts from the other side of the political spectrum (they agree on economic populism, which you will not hear about at any other network, that is a big deal). You cannot debunk the nonsense Saagar spouts in the time she has, but she does push back with a fact here and there and has her own segments where she gives HER point of view (and she also pushes - to a degree - back against the guests who are often from right wing / "conservative" think tanks.
Often one would wait for her to say something, or to say more (you will invariably find the arguments in the comment section).
She does not always do it. If they have representatives of neoliberal or conservative think tanks on the show - and that is what The Hill their employer requires - what do you expect ? Of course guests will spout nonsense.
Do you expect the truth, and consisent logic from them or the person that represents the "conservative" side on the show? Of course they will come up with the thought stopping clichés.
She has to discern when to let it pass, and when she drops some lines on them.
The viewers, the poor dears, will have to make up their own mind. And if SHE failed to push back, you can always read the comment section.
A person that watches the show because of Saagar, likely will not notice the contradictions - but at least they are sneakily exposed to one or the other contradicting fact or reasoning, they would never, ever have heard on Corporate media. Not on the liberal networks or Fox.
Krystall when employed by MSNBC was denied to talk about trade deals (TPP) because allegedly the audience was not interested. (after she pleaded with Hillary Clinton to NOT run in 2016, her producers ordered her to submit all her material).
No interest in trade deals. That was a lame self serving excuse. So that the editor did not have to admit that they have orders not to rock the boat. Ross Perot run on that and got 18 - 19 % of the vote as third party candidate. Trump struck a chord when he used the issue in his campaign. Sanders struck a chord. But the "experts" figured the audience would not be interested. Nope - the rich owners did not like that being mentioned, and the suspicions that regular people had being confirmed.
And Saagar might have a point sometimes where he is right and Krystall is not - I cannot remember that ever being the case, but who knows.
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@TheEvolver311 Sanders started with a planned campaign budget of 30 million USD. Ed Schultz got fired for wanting to cover the live announcement at the end of April 2015 (after a heated exchange on the phone with management he had to stand down minutes before the announcement - they had coordinated with the Sanders campaign to cover that and then a prerecorded interview with Sanders
Es was forced bring something else that was not very relevant, and 30 - 40 days later his contract was terminated.
Management was very cozy with the Clinton campaign, likely an observer for the Clinton campaign was in Burlington, saw the crew on site and alarmed the higher charges that Sanders was going to get too much attention.
THEN the DNC only thought Sanders would do well in SOME STATES and could cost CLINTON a few percent ! - that was enough reason for them to act swiftly.
Considering how zealous they were when Sanders was a complete outsider - shall we assume they may have been totally into RIGGING and STEALING the primaries ??
They did not like Sanders to run in THEIR primaries. But he might have run third party and that they would have liked even less.
Clinton had high name recogntion, Sanders was unkown so a NORMAL debate schedule EARLY ON and not only after many complaints and denials of the DNC (nothing to see here) would have benefitted Sanders more (especially since it turned out that people liked the message).
This is not about Sanders btw - the VOTERS were CHEATED out of their chance to learn more early on.
The Ed Schultz coverage (Sanders likely would have gotten an ongoing friendly treatment, which could have balanced out the treatment elsewhere a little bit) AND the debates are major factors to increase name recognition. Name recognition is not enough (it can be negative) but w/o it you can forget it. Free exposure early on is essential to have a chance for a grassroots campaign with a small budget (they did not dare to invest full scale early on into a ground game, only when the campaign picked up and more donations came in) - it is different of course NOW.
Sanders would have had a higher momentum in the first months. - if the tactics were not relevant - why would the DNC and mainstream media bother. It was a death by thousand cuts strategy.
That includes complicated rules in California, cross over ballots, provisional ballots, it took 1 month for the final results in CA to be announced, and I wonder how MANY provisional ballots were thrown out. Of course changing voter registration the same day (party affiliation) could have solved that - in CA I think the parties CAN handle that as they like. Well, it was not supposed to be easy for the enthusiastic Sanders crowd.
Voter roll purges by "mistake" in New York.
Greg Palast sugggests that the tabulation could have been off in other states. There are no exit polls (that is partially true for primaries) and / or they do not publish the raw data.
THAT is also true for the GE, the raw data may need to be adjusted - but if the data is open for the public, statisticians and not only in the U.S. - could scrutinize how the adaptation is made. Is if legitimate, is it plausbile, why and what is adjusted ? Or is it adjusted to bridge the gap beween poll and announced results and to raise no suspicions.
I saw a video of a very experienced statistician, weird things going on (in other primary states) usually as more votes come in, outliers are smoothed out, and the gap between vote count and exit polls gets smaller.
In those tabulations the gaps grew and in a very linear manner. That is statistically impossible he said. (only if for instance one vote is assigned a 0,9 value and the other one a 1,1 value for the count you would see such a pattern. The way the machines are programmed allows that kind of manipulation. (If a number for a vote can only be zero or 1 such manipulation would not be possible, it is about what number type is allowed. When you apply a 0,9/1,1 trick the gap (compared to exit polls) would unexpectedly widen, the more counts come in (1 in 10 votes does not count or are added).
Sanders would have lost the South (early primary states) anyway (not that it matters in the GE how a D candidate does there, Republicans win in the GE) but maybe with LESS margin. Which would have mattered in the total count of how much votes did HRC or Sanders get in total.
He could have come uncomfortably close, or even tied her in spring 2016.
And the establishment was panicking that may happen. Fact is he - not Clinton filled the stadions and had the appeal to groups that normally do not vote. And in the polls he was the safe bet against Trump not Clinton.
Some states Sanders lost narrowly, so the count of WON states would have looked much better when the media talked about his slim "success chances".
Again: why bother to mislead the viewers by adding the Superdelegate count. The narrative being, yes he is a bit of a surprise, but don't bother to engage, Clinton is leading nontheless and by a wide margin. If - IF - the media and the DNC (joined at the hip) did not at least hope it could get them an advantage why did ALL TV networks (maybe not FOX but certainly the "liberal" ones) consistently chose to present the count that way. 0,2 % here, 0,4 % there .... it adds up.
And then there is the "winning underdog appeal"
people like to go with a WINNER and a surprise candidate. And the way to present Sanders to people who were not digging into politics was that he was MORE of an outsider by including Superdelegates than he acutally was. If the primaries are supposed to be a democratic exercise than the Superdelegates would not matter in THAT STAGE. Now they could from time to time have presented BOTH numbers (of course alerting the viewers to the fact that some votes are substanitally more equal than others).
I think after massive and ongong complaints they started to change that practice - but only late into the primaries.
I think in an neutral and fair environment (the DNC made sure media helped them) Sanders could have come much closer or tied her, not sure if he could have won. But that in itself would have been catastrophic for the Clinton campaign. Think what advantages she had.
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Neoliberal (also Democratic) policies paved the way for the global financial crisis Deregualtion was started by Reagan and finished by Clinton. Around 1998 / 1999. Big Finance did a few rehearsals on a major financial crisis in the 1990s. Mexcico right after Nafta, U.S. banks had gone crazy and got financial help.
and that was only the beginning. BUT: the consequences hit the citizens of Asia, Russia, Latin America - so no one in the First World countries grasped the implications or cared.
PBS has a documentary of around 1999 The Crash - looking back - yes they did reherasals and U.S. big finance always had the help of the U.S. government. Diplomatic support and the help of the IMF to secure their wins before spitting out the economy of another underdeveloped country (they do not count and media and academia ignore them).
Large financial institutions all over the world took their cue from the U.S. around 2000. They have subsidies in the U.S., the trend that banks and insurers get larger and more dominant on the "market" and more international has also been started in the U.S. under Reagan.
They saw what money the U.S. banksters could make and demanded from their politicians to give them the same opportunities. If not officially then at least the national regulators were supposed to look to other way (which they did !)
In Europe real estate loans for consumers are much stricter regulated. So buying the bundled shoddy consumer home loans from U.S. banks was the second best option for German and French banks.
They could not hand out the loans like candy (and push for them with sophisticated sales tactics, all while the media praised the rising prices in real estate). As long !! as these schemes function (a few years) they are highly profitable. The banks can sell more loans (that is a profitable income stream) and weak costumers will not negotiate and they pay higher interest rates. so in the short time bank profits and boni for management will soar.
The nationally restricted (European) banks could absorb what the U.S. banks recklessly gave out in loans. The U.S. banks got the bad loans out of their balance sheet and could do a rinse and repeat.
The financial crisis in Ireland, Iceland, Germany / Austria with the Hypo Real Estate Bank scandal, giving recklessly loans to the Greek government, Cyprus, the Spanish real estate and loan bubble - had nothing to do with the U.S. bubble. But once banking in the U.S. got the very much needed closer look, those very unhealthy developments finally were scrutinized. And could not hold up.
In many rich countries the regulators and the politicians failed to reign in the banksters and unhealthy economic developments. (Sweden had a national scandal some years before, so the Swedish banks were still on a short leash and did not join the insanity after 2000. And Canadian banks did no engage as well.)
But in many wealthy nations the large financial institutions joined the insanity.
It is not that such bubbles are new - they popped up as soon as the 18th century - and a few much earlier (the Tulip mania in Netherlands is famous, or "investment" schemes for the American colonies in the French monarchy). Or the speculation on the battle of Waterloo (fortunes were made and lost).
Academia and media also complety failed. It was not rocket science to predict what would come out of it. But it was LUCRATIVE in the short run and Capitalism is built around the principle of the highest profit and that means almost always short term profit ! without consideration of external costs or later damage.
it got insane when all the world and their dog started to place bets on the default risk of U.S. loans. Until then the risks (that the loans would default) had been shifted like a hot potatoe (from U.S. banks to European banks for instance). But within the global financial system the damage because of defaulting U.S. loans remained the same.
That of course had allowed the bubble in the U.S. to grow more than if the loans had stayed within the U.S. financial sphere (and in the balance sheets of U.S. banks) But there was still a tie to the real economy and real values (even if property was overprices).
But with the bets (Credit Default Swaps) the risks MULTIPLIED. Loans for 100 million USD going bad could trigger financial claims of speculators for double, 10 times, 50 times of that amount. It just depended on the volume of bets that were out there (and there was NO regulation on that at all).
The Clinton admin, plus Alan Greenspan and Congress came down like a ton o bricks on the federal agency that only tried to evaluate the risks such unregulated bets could pose to the economy.
The implication of that attempt of the agency was of course that unregulated bets COULD pose a threat to the REAL economy. Brooksley Bourne got crushed. AND bought and paid for Congress did not take any chances: just to make sure that no nosy agency would hinder the money making schemes of their financiers they passed a law that made the large financial institutions excempt from the oversight of any agency when they engaged in speculation with Over The Counter Derivatives. "The big players KNOW what they are doing". Needless to say Alan Greenspan (the Ayn Rand fan) was fully supportive of that.
No they don't know what they are doing. They just run with the crowd as long as the music is playing in the game of musical chairs. And even worse: those who are intellectually honest enough to grasp what is going on - are either cowards - or they exploit the system against the citizens and against the real, productive economy.
Which from their point of view is rational if completely unethical. If they play nice they will be financially safe (and more than that).
And the cynical players who know what they are doing ? They brought the financial system to it's knees, got bailed out, no one was prosectuted and 1 - 2 years later they were back in the game. After the GFC almost all of the finanical gains went to the top - the GFC increased inequality.
Media carefully avoided criticizing the banksters (shifting the narrative to reckless often first time home buyers). -
Thee advantage of owning the political process and the regulators and being at the top of the food chain ? You do not need a sophisticated, WORKING plan. You just need to own politicians and the media. Then you will come out on top of it - even if you screw up royally.
Actors that had not stake in the underlying economic transactions = weak loans * started betting on them. Like they bet on the weather, the price of wheat, oil, interest rates of U.S. bonds, currencies, who becomes the next president of the U.S. ...
* having a stake would mean POSSESSING such loans - the bets would simply have offset the losses if the loans would default. That would have been "insurance".
Insurance contracts are highly regulated ! beneficial forms of bets allowed only for people who have a stake in a certain transaction and who have a LEGITIMATE interest in limiting a real economy risk. Insurance is not meant to make you money, it buys ! security.
There would be only relatively few actors WANTING the have the safety of such bets - and on the other side of the transaction there would be only few actors accepting the bet.
As long as the loans are O.K. one sides makes (some) money of winning the bets (loans are doing fine). When the loans default (the more rare event but with a much higher financial loss) the other side would win the bet and that win would offset the financial losses of the failing loans.
(Of course in prudent banking banks are required to diversify and not put all their eggs in one basket. So the question is: if they do a careful analys of the real estate scene - why would they need "insurance" for loans in the first place. They didn't need that in the golden era when the economy vastly expanded and many homes were built.
That the banks were able and allowed to give out so many loans DROVE UP real estate prices. It is not like that much value was created - apart from the the houses that would not have been built w/o the bubble.
Of course aspiring home owners were tempted, they heard it all the time on the media. It was the smart thing to seize the chance the "market" offered.
Of course both parties remained silent, they got (and continue to get) money from the "real estate developers" and the banks.
The Cheney / Bush admin liked it that the bubble supported a good mood in the population and there were jobs in construction. They were busy starting wars and throwing money into the war machine - they had no intention to invest in a jobs / infrastructure program.
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The Democratic establishment WANT to be 80s / 90s style Republicans ! maybe some of the absurde demonization by Repubs has to do with getting rid of the competition that is so SIMILAR to them. Obama pushed for the healthcare plan of a right wing think tank of the 1990s (Heritage foundation, the plan to counteract the Clinton proposal - that was also very friendly towards the industry and the profiteers. Romneycare was based on that Heritage plan). Obama said he did not understand the Republicans, that his policies were like that of a Reagan Republican. He has a point. (so why did he run on Hope and Change ? - because he would not have won if he had been honest).
Corporate Democrats LIKE being financed by the same donors as Republican and courting the affluent suburban swing voter and throwing the working class and low income and regular income people under the bus suits them just fine. They only NEED the VOTE of those people and act very pissed and entitled if they do not get it.
Democrats are inventing reasons why they have to abandon the working class and "must" pivot to the right and cater to the affluent suburbans. Who will in a heartbeat vote for a Republican with better manners and more intelligence next time. So forget about Arizona or Georgia. And Florida.
They ignore all evidence to the contrary, because only that scenario (must pivot to the right or we cannot win) is a good fit with serving the big donors (the interests of the top 20 % income bracket do not collide with the interests of the 0.1 %)
Corporate Dems take for granted that the former constitutents (low income, minorities, working class, or with regular income, females) MUST vote for them anyway. they rely on it that the Republicans will reliably come up with a bad candidate (at the minimum someone like Mitt Romney would be bad for abortion or so the base is told. Apart from that I am not sure he was much worse than Obama).
at least that is what these entitled careerists assume, but that strategy did not work in 2000, 2004, the many midterms, 2016, and 2020 except for the presidential race (and that was too close for comfort). - see Ohio, see Florida, see the Latino vote, Trump improved with every demographic except white males, especially if they did not have a college degree.
They WANT to be the Republicans with better manners that do not openly deny science (they just don't do anything about climate change). They want to be the Republicans that are for reasonable gun regulations and are for safe abortions. There were many Republicans that agreed with that in 1970s and 1980s when they were only pro business, but not that unhinged.
They may not have liked abortion - but they saw the outcomes of back alley abortions. And they did not idolize weapons, nor did their (hunting) base.
The real (unhinged) Repubs have demonized Democrats (no matter how little difference there is except for gay marriage, abortion and gun regulation) - so the Dems are not going to win that stupid game. I think it was Truman that pointed that out. If people have the choice between a real and a fake Republican and they want a Republican - they will always go for the original.
Truman was excpected to lose. But his R opponent confidently campaigned against the New Deal. On election night it looked like a narrow win for the Republican, but then the results from the Midwest trickled in, and they helped Truman to get a solid win. Eisenhower paid attention, he told his own party it was unpatriotic to be against SS. Likely he was the only Republican president ever that was not opposed to it since it was implemented in the 1930s.
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No shame in being a middle manager - or someone working at the gas station, as cook or teacher. Or cleaning lady. - that's the point: these people deserve to have a decent life, a living wage and affordable healthcare (with full coverage). Even teachers are not doing too well - and they are required to have an academic training (which costs money).
only the lottery of birth prevents Meghan McCain from being someone like that. - A Bill Gates, or a Whoppi Goldberg or a Kamala Harris have what it takes to work their way up*. - Well, goldilocks hasn't what it takes.
So with some insight, wisdom and humility she would praise her good luck and not throw a tantrum when politicians want to give a few crumbs to those that are not so lucky as her. (she did not this time, but Medicare for All triggered one - it was epic).
Not that I think "mediocre" does not deserve the good life.
The gift of intelligence and health is not earned either.
Most of us hover around "average" - at least when it comes to the traits that are truly valued in our society and that have to do with getting a high income and / or celebrity.
Being kind, baking wonderful cakes at home does not count, being funny - but w/o making it as entertainer does not count.
Never mind the lip service that is occasionally paid.
.... we would got nuts if we had only alphas, and exceptionally brilliant people, ambitious, driven people around us.
And they need someone whose workforce they can leverage to make their brilliant ideas happen. Plus usually the consumers to buy or the audience to watch/listen to the results.
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Healthcare is complex, individual, costly even if run cost-efficiently. It is impossible to regulate it IF the motive to maximize the profits on the back of the weakest participants in the system = the patients - plays a role. Big companies in healthcare have no counterparts and will always be ahead 3 steps of patients and even well meaning regulators, law makers.
And they will set up a huge adminstrative operation to screw the patients, so they have plausible deniability that uphold the law and are not greedy leeches - which they are of course.
The red tape for the bureaucraZy for them is cost of business - they shift it over to citizens and of course fleece the government budgets (with very willing political help of the lawmakers they bribe).
You can imagine that not much love was lost between Germany or France, U.K., Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden ... directly after WW2 and in the late 1940s.
But while cleaning up the rubble from war all nations decided they wanted to implement or expand universal healthcare. All but Switzerland decided that they could not leave the "insurance" to for-profit players. and most saw to it that at least a good numbers of hospitals in the country (if not most) were public non-profits. (Switzerland pays the price for that historic error today).
In other words: they realized that healthcare is a terrible fit for the "free market", that the profit motive creates toxic incentives for THAT service - and that it would be impossible to regulate the profit motive here. But it could be eliminated especially in the most complex decision process (when doctors consider what tests to use for diagnosis or what treatment to use)
So if they have for profit players - they are small and regulated. Doctor practices and pharmacies are like small companies with a contract with the public agency. The revenue covers the costs of the operation and the profit is the "wage" resp. income of the doctor or owner of the pharmacy. Which should be a good income, but no one rakes in the millions.
They are not allowed to organize / incorporate in chains (and there are no hospital chains like in the U.S. either). So they have their non-profit professional organisations that represent their interests at the negotiation table. But no for-profit corporation with undue influence and huge resources (money, staff, lobbying, lawyers) can leverage the profit motive against the public agency and the patients.
The only big for-profit player are large pharma corporations. They have very standardized, internationally comparable products. (Meaning even if the brand name in France and Sweden is different, or they come in other package sizes and number of pills per package, the substance name behind the product name has been tested in scientific studies, and the dosage of the effective substance must be precise and consistent).
With that comes (official or inofficial) price transparency about what discounts are given on list prices. So if Denmark with 3 million people or Iceland with 300,000 people want to know what Germany, France, U.K. Italy, .... are paying (nations with 85 / plus 60 million poeple) they can find out.
No need to start a GoFundMe for Big Pharma, they still do fine, but it gives the public agencies the very much needed edge to restrain those powerful players in negotiations.
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