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Tom Perez B/K/M? This poll is closed. |
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77 | 25.50% |
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160 | 52.98% |
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65 | 21.52% |
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MooselanderII posted:JC you'll go only as far as to admit that the optics are bad, but you'll go no further in either actually explaining why they are bad or even suggesting that maybe Obama could have done something to obviate them. Explaining why the optics are bad would require admitting that the system is bad rather than merely saying platitudes implying the system might be bad because it will get rubes onboard to support the continuation of the system. It's a bit how you can pretend NAFTA was a left-wing ideal by using the right words and implying that not depressing Mexican wages, not nuking Mexican agriculture with cheap exports, not tanking Mexican living standards to below where they were in the 60s and not loving up Mexican unions would be racist. And no, JC, Wall Street is not a nefarious octopus, it's a class of humans. The capitalist class (or a portion thereof). Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 21:01
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JeffersonClay posted:The optics are bad because people are dumb and think Wall Street is some giant nefarious octopus instead of a bunch of corporations in competition with one another with varying sizes and degrees of nefariousness and culpability for the financial crisis. You are the densest motherfucker alive.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:05
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"These lords are all competing for the king's favor, how can feudalism be real"
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Apr 28, 2017 21:05
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JeffersonClay posted:It's speculative that he won't give the money to charity or use it to fund political advocacy--he hasn't actually been paid yet. I'm willing to give obama the benefit of the doubt on his stated intention to fight voter suppression because I have no reason to doubt him. Why is there any absurdity in self-funding an anti-gerrymandering campaign? JeffersonClay posted:It's speculative that he won't give the money to charity or use it to fund political advocacy--he hasn't actually been paid yet. JeffersonClay posted:It's speculative that he won't give the money to charity JeffersonClay posted:It's speculative that he won't  Every time I think you've hit rock bottom when it comes to intellectual honesty you continue to surprise me. JeffersonClay posted:Good criticism: the optics here are bad and obama should have been savvy enough to realize that and avoid this outcome. For being such a dense motherfucker you sometimes almost get it, only to stumble just before the finishing line. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 21:07
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JeffersonClay posted:This is even dumber. If obama wanted to protect Cantor for something that happened in 2013 he wouldn't have indicted at all. But I'm glad you've abandoned the crazy assertion that Cantor Fitzgerald was paying obama for not prosecuting their nonexistent residential mortgage banking fraud. oh? him indicting them in late december means he really wanted to do something about them? cause as far as I'm aware that just hands the case off to supercorrupt trump, who obama knows for drat sure isn't gonna prosecute. the assertion that he'd do nothing is dumb just on it's face. indicting when he knows the case will fall off the map gives him some cover (which you've tried to use!) for not prosecuting (that he really honestly really tried!  ) your narrative that he didn't throw the case for cantor and then get paid 400k for it is pretty laughable tho. i like the part where you claim obama had to do it to save ppaca.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:07
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Kilroy posted:Why are the optics bad? The optics are bad because the democratic party is portrayed as the party of rich coastal elites who want nothing more than to hand wave away the concerns of anyone that doesn't live in a major city. Now the most popular democrat in the country is taking a big sack of cash from wall st and underlining that point. If Obama announces he's donating the entire $400,000 to charity and spends the entire speech making GBS threads on wall st and saying "I wish I'd thrown some of you fuckers in jail while I had the chance" I'll give him a pass, but as of right now, the optics are pretty loving bad.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:07
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JeffersonClay posted:The optics are bad because people are dumb and think Wall Street is some giant nefarious octopus instead of a bunch of corporations in competition with one another with varying sizes and degrees of nefariousness and culpability for the financial crisis. So you admit that the Wall Street financial institutions are collectively responsible for the financial crisis, but think it's dumb for people to not like them. Makes sense.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:09
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the reason JC won't admit why this looks bad for the dem party is cause he'd have to admit hillary's wallstreet speeches were a bad look and hillary was bad in some way. he would be destroyed!
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Apr 28, 2017 21:10
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"obama only hangs out with the good kind of wall street bankers! the ones indicted for fraud!" - jc
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Apr 28, 2017 21:12
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JeffersonClay posted:The optics are bad because people are dumb and think Wall Street is some giant nefarious octopus instead of a bunch of corporations in competition with one another with varying sizes and degrees of nefariousness and culpability for the financial crisis. This is not why. This post explained it much better: Kilroy posted:It's never "just" optics. The reason something looks bad is because it very easily could be bad, even if there is a reasonable explanation (there really isn't for this, though). So the reason it's bad optics is because it looks corrupt as gently caress, and the reason it looks corrupt as gently caress is that it very easily could be corrupt as gently caress, and the only argument against it is to trust in the man who is receiving all this money - and who just got done loving with the DNC chair election and has made clear he will still be heavily involved in Democratic politics going forward - that he is not corrupted by it. Despite him going extremely easy on this industry during a time when he had every reason not to be and public support for prosecutions was very high. You're asking for a faith in Obama that he simply hasn't earned, and in fact has actively pissed away. This one also: steinrokkan posted:It's not about a one time speaking fee It looks bad because it could actually be something very bad. You, an out of touch idiot, do not actually believe that this 'very bad' thing is bad at all. This is why you do not get it. You don't get that there is something intrinsically wrong about this kind of relationship between business and politics. The relationships themselves are wrong, because they are conducive to anti-democratic behavior. You don't believe this is true. You believe that things can only be bad in the particulars; some specific Wall Street firm does some specific bad thing, once. But that isn't how this works. You don't seem to understand that the nature of these relationships, the incentives they create, their implications, have pretty wide-ranging repercussions to the health of the Democratic Party and the country itself. You live in a country with increasing distrust from voters towards their institutions, you support a party that's been dealt defeat after defeat in the last six years, you live in a country where a massive financial crisis wiped out the wealth of many citizens while banks and financial firms were protected from criminal acts, and your analysis of this is "people don't like Wall Street because they are dumb". Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 21:14
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NoEyedSquareGuy posted:So you admit that the Wall Street financial institutions are collectively responsible for the financial crisis, but think it's dumb for people to not like them. Makes sense. https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312
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Apr 28, 2017 21:16
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wall street bankers gave obama $400k almost immediately after he delayed their indictment until they would never have any chance of facing justice. jc: "this is almost definitely not quid pro quo! obama wants money for politics!"
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Apr 28, 2017 21:17
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Condiv posted:oh? him indicting them in late december means he really wanted to do something about them? cause as far as I'm aware that just hands the case off to supercorrupt trump, who obama knows for drat sure isn't gonna prosecute. It would obviously have been better for Cantor if Obama had decided not to indict at all. There's literally zero evidence to support your narrative here. But there's a democrat to poo poo on so drat the torpedoes! NoEyedSquareGuy posted:So you admit that the Wall Street financial institutions are collectively responsible for the financial crisis, but think it's dumb for people to not like them. Makes sense. No, that's the opposite of what I wrote. Agnosticnixie posted:"These lords are all competing for the king's favor, how can feudalism be real" These lords are all competing for the Kings favor so why would one want to reward a regulator who failed to punish crimes committed only by the others?
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Apr 28, 2017 21:20
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JeffersonClay posted:It seems like any exchange of services for money creates the possibility of untraceable corruption. what's the difference between a paid speech and a book contract, or a consulting gig? A couple things: - Speeches generally do not directly create value. As a result, it is very easy for them to effectively be a way to pseudo-bribe someone. Again, I'm not saying speeches will always be used in this way; only that it's a big problem that they can be used this way with zero form of potential recourse. If a president helps write a book, on the other hand, the company in question and president are making money in a direct and obvious manner. - Collusion between the government and certain industries (like finance, fossil fuels, military industry complex, etc) is a bigger issue than others. While government obviously exerts an influence on all industries, certain fields (like publishing) don't involve nearly as much political conflict as, say, finance. JeffersonClay posted:Anybody who wants to have obama speak is going to need to pay that much, and he certainly needs the money if he intends to spend his time post-presidency affecting political change, which is his stated intention. Surely even you realize how stupid this is. It is very obvious that you're just trying to coming up with literally any way to score points in this argument. If Obama wants to use money to affect change, he can volunteer to do things in exchange for having the money directly donated to a political organization. edit: This also applies to your "the healthcare industry is in dire need of Obama's speeches at this point in time" argument. These are not very convincing arguments. The biggest problem here is that you're not addressing the concern over things like this being a potential avenue for corruption. While some posters might be arguing that this specific incident is corruption, I'm not arguing that. My issue is that it is possible for things like lucrative jobs/speaking gigs/etc after finishing a term to be a form of indirect bribery, and that the potential harm from allowing such activity outweighs the benefits (especially since we know for a fact that it's entirely possible for presidents/politicians to just not do this stuff). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 21:21
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JeffersonClay posted:It would obviously have been better for Cantor if Obama had decided not to indict at all. There's literally zero evidence to support your narrative here. But there's a democrat to poo poo on so drat the torpedoes! sure there's evidence. the $400k speaking fee cantor is paying obama not a third of a year since he indicted them. also obama not indicting cantor till there was no chance of them facing justice
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Apr 28, 2017 21:25
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Condiv posted:wall street bankers gave obama $400k almost immediately after he delayed their indictment until they would never have any chance of facing justice. There's zero evidence the indictment was delayed. You made that up when i pointed out your narrative about mortgages was laughably wrong.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:26
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Agnosticnixie posted:"These lords are all competing for the king's favor, how can feudalism be real" 
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Apr 28, 2017 21:28
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JeffersonClay posted:There's zero evidence the indictment was delayed. You made that up when i pointed out your narrative about mortgages was laughably wrong. oh i'm sure obama needed 5 years to indict them. i'm also sure he was working as hard as he could to bring them to justice, just like he did with all the other wall street scum who flagrantly broke the law during his administration.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:28
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JeffersonClay posted:It would obviously have been better for Cantor if Obama had decided not to indict at all. There's literally zero evidence to support your narrative here. But there's a democrat to poo poo on so drat the torpedoes! You know if literally no one but you can understand the brilliance of your posts maybe the problem is you instead of everyone else
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Apr 28, 2017 21:30
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JeffersonClay posted:No, that's the opposite of what I wrote. quote:The optics are bad because people are dumb and think Wall Street is some giant nefarious octopus instead of a bunch of corporations in competition with one another with varying sizes and degrees of nefariousness and culpability for the financial crisis. But whatever. This sort of poo poo is exactly why people don't trust Democratic politicians, nor should they. If you want to present yourself as a champion of progressive values, you don't cozy up to Wall Street financial institutions. Obama doing this right after he gets out of office has the appearance that he's done pretending to care and can start cashing in now. That's not even going into his appointment of Eric Holder as AG and the "Too Big to Fail" legal memo.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:34
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JeffersonClay posted:Obama says he intends to spend his post presidency fighting voter suppression. Money will help him do that. He can make a lot of money by being paid to give speeches. The more he can charge, the better. It looks like his price will be 400K. If Obama ends up spending a majority of his liquid assets on activism, I will grant you this argument. For some reason I find this exceedingly unlikely, however. (Though this still does nothing to address the core of my argument, which is that this sort of thing makes a virtually untraceable form of corruption possible. The potential harm of allowing industry an extra avenue by which to influence politicians far, far outweighs the potential benefits of a specific politician maybe using a little more money towards activism.) edit: Another important point is that almost all of the defenses you are making could also be used to defend a current politician receiving money in this manner. The core issue here is that "if a politician/president acts in a way beneficial (or at least not hostile) to X industry, the industry in question is more likely to reward them handsomely" being true is a huge problem. Just like you can't prove that a sitting politician getting paid a bunch of money from an industry for some easy job is actually a bribe (unless it's explicitly stated "this money is so you'll do X thing for us"), the same applies to a politician having the tacit promise of profiting after their term ends. This is a big problem. The fact that it's difficult/impossible to prove that a specific incident is actually corrupt is one of the biggest reasons it is a problem! I just can't think of any good reason not to ban this sort of thing in order to prevent it from becoming a problem in the first place. If your concern is over presidents not having enough money for activism (lol), the government can give each president a $1M/year pension for all I care. The issue is that receiving the money from specific powerful interests can easily create conflicts of interest. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 21:37
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If Dems only spent half the effort on advocacy for the poor and the disenfranchised as they spend on apologizing for the plundering rich.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:55
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Ytlaya posted:Surely even you realize how stupid this is. It is very obvious that you're just trying to coming up with literally any way to score points in this argument. If Obama wants to use money to affect change, he can volunteer to do things in exchange for having the money directly donated to a political organization. The organization he's going to use doesn't exist yet. He hasn't been paid yet, either. If in September he takes the money and spends it on rims, that would be bad and dumb. Ytlaya posted:- Speeches generally do not directly create value. As a result, it is very easy for them to effectively be a way to pseudo-bribe someone. Again, I'm not saying speeches will always be used in this way; only that it's a big problem that they can be used this way with zero form of potential recourse. If a president helps write a book, on the other hand, the company in question and president are making money in a direct and obvious manner. The speech he's giving at this healthcare conference obviously creates value for Cantor, though. Sure, the potential to use speech fees as cover for bribes exists, just like consulting fees, or board member wages, or book advances. But we have no reason to think that's the case here.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:05
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JeffersonClay posted:spends it on rims This is the second time you've made this racist remark about what he would do with the money. Got any more thoughts to share about black people and rims?
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Apr 28, 2017 22:11
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oh this is going to be fun watching him try to defend that
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Apr 28, 2017 22:17
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JeffersonClay posted:This is even dumber. If obama wanted to protect Cantor for something that happened in 2013 he wouldn't have indicted at all. But I'm glad you've abandoned the crazy assertion that Cantor Fitzgerald was paying obama for not prosecuting their nonexistent residential mortgage banking fraud. Plausible deniability. The Trump administration could theoretically go ahead with prosecution, but it's a safe bet they won't. The problem here is that Obama not prosecuting Cantor and then just happening to get a big payment Cantor is exactly what corruption would look like, if it had occurred. We can safely assume that both parties are competent enough not to leave any records, so it's impossible to tell afterwards whether there was actual impropriety or merely the appearance of impropriety.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:17
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Raskolnikov38 posted:oh this is going to be fun watching him try to defend that It's just a joke, like on Top Gear.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:20
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JeffersonClay posted:The speech he's giving at this healthcare conference obviously creates value for Cantor, though. Sure, the potential to use speech fees as cover for bribes exists, just like consulting fees, or board member wages, or book advances. But we have no reason to think that's the case here. Like I said, one of the biggest problems with this is that we would almost never have any way to confirm or deny if a particular job/speech fee/etc is a form of corruption. I'm not saying that we should prosecute Obama specifically or something. I'm saying that we should ban this sort of activity in order to prevent it being a potential avenue for corruption in the first place (and I think I'm being very generous calling it a "potential" avenue, given that the revolving door between politics and certain corporate sectors is already a huge problem). If ex-presidents still want to raise money for activism, there are other ways they can do that. As I mentioned in my last post, I have no problem with increasing the (already more than large enough, in my opinion) pension. The issue is that the mere possibility for large transactions to occur between politicians and businesses after their terms end constitutes a huge conflict of interest, because it effectively creates a positive incentive for politicians to not piss off corporations.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:22
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JeffersonClay posted:If in September he takes the money and spends it on rims, that would be bad and dumb. Just because Chris Rock made this joke, it doesn't make it not racist.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:23
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Raskolnikov38 posted:oh this is going to be fun watching him try to defend that If he were to do something several months from now that would retroactively justify making this joke, then it was good that he did it.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:27
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What are you talking about, using one's own racism to project racist motives onto others is a time proven liberal technique.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:29
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FuriousxGeorge posted:If he were to do something several months from now that would retroactively justify making this joke, then it was good that he did it.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:32
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WampaLord posted:This is the second time you've made this racist remark about what he would do with the money. Got any more thoughts to share about black people and rims? I think Obama's going to spend the money fighting racist voter suppression, like he said he would. But yes, I do think the people who are calling him a lying Uncle Tom who sold out his coalition so he could buy poo poo he doesn't really need might have some unexplored bias.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:39
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JeffersonClay posted:some unexplored bias. well let's just start exploring yours then shall we
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Apr 28, 2017 22:41
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WampaLord posted:This is the second time you've made this racist remark about what he would do with the money. Got any more thoughts to share about black people and rims? Okay what do you suppose he'll do with the money? Why is everyone here writing off Obama as a Wall Street stooge? EDIT: VV Fine whatever not worth derailing this poo poo thread over this.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:50
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SSNeoman posted:He was being sarcastic. Come on dude. ah yes because sarcasm is impossible without racism
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Apr 28, 2017 22:51
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SSNeoman posted:He was being sarcastic. Come on dude. When the person saying this is on record as saying the reason the Hillary campaign failed was that it was "too pluralistic," it becomes worth asking the question, imo. It seems JC has him some Opinions about the proper place of minorities in the democratic party, and it's not 'we should be paying more attention to their needs.'
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Apr 28, 2017 22:54
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JeffersonClay posted:The optics are bad because people are dumb and think Wall Street is some giant nefarious octopus instead of a bunch of corporations in competition with one another with varying sizes and degrees of nefariousness and culpability for the financial crisis. And they are not wrong actually. Collusion is a thing. The issue is, as you said, how the money will be used and also the scale. Complaining how Obama sold out over 400k is tilting at windmills compared to how much money is funneled into politics thanks to Citizen's United.
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Apr 28, 2017 22:56
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JeffersonClay posted:The speech he's giving at this healthcare conference obviously creates value for Cantor, though. Sure, the potential to use speech fees as cover for bribes exists, just like consulting fees, or board member wages, or book advances. But we have no reason to think that's the case here. Lmao.
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Apr 28, 2017 23:08
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Politicians creating value for specific corporations is A-OK in my hosed up world.
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Apr 28, 2017 23:09
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