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The Democrat's roster for a Trump - beater in 2020


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Sanders Feels the Bern on Hourly Wage Demands: https://www.cato.org/blog/sanders-feels-burn-hourly-wage-demands

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You really couldn’t script it.  

Faced with campaign staff complaining their hourly wages are too low, 2020 presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), he of “Fight for $15” federal minimum wage fame, is currently mitigating discontent by restricting the hours his staff can work rather than raising their pay.

Salaried Sanders field staff earning $36,000 have complained of working up 60 hours per week. Once one accounts for the number of weeks they work, they say this is equivalent to just $13 per hour.

Given Sanders describes $15 per hour as a living wage (something he wants to institute through federal legislation), the union representing his workers demands a rise in salary to $46,800 to fully compensate for their current activities. Instead, at least while discussions continue, Sanders will cap the hours the staff can work, such that their current salary equates to no less than a $15 minimum wage per hour.

This serves as a useful lesson in the trade-offs associated with pay hikes. In order to raise the hourly pay of his staff, Sanders is having to restrict the hours they work. Presuming they were at least doing something productive in the additional time they currently spend campaigning, this hour cap represents a fall in the overall “product” of the workers, and so, one imagines, will weaken the campaign.

The Sanders camp obviously thought other “channels of adjustment” to hourly wage rises were even more unpalatable. His campaign could have laid off field staffers, for example, cut back on other campaign expenses such as rallies or ads, or even sought to undertake one-off investments in campaign tools to “automate” workers by shifting to electronic electioneering. It turns out too that Sanders’ campaign doesn’t believe in fairy tales one hears about how higher wages will induce much more highly productive and loyal workers, making increased pay self-financing (in this case with a better campaign attracting more donations).

Perhaps next time Bernie Sanders advocates that all employers nationwide face an elevated minimum wage, his experience will make him realize the potential costs of cuts to jobs, hours, other worker perks, or the efficiency of the firms affected.

 

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Joe Biden's New Criminal Justice Platform Calls for Eliminating Harsh Policies Sponsored by Joe Biden: https://reason.com/2019/07/23/joe-bidens-new-criminal-justice-platform-calls-for-eliminating-harsh-policies-sponsored-by-joe-biden/

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Former vice president and current presidential candidate Joe Biden has a new criminal justice reform plan. It aims to remedy many injustices caused by policies backed by…Joe Biden.

"Equality, equity, justice—these ideas form the American creed. We have never lived up to it and we haven't always gotten it right, but we've never stopped trying," said Biden in a video released today. "The public is ready. They're ready. They've had enough."

In the video, Biden endorses the SAFE Justice Act. That bill, first introduced in 2017, would limit the application of mandatory minimum sentences to the highest-level drug offenders, according to a summary by the criminal justice reform group FAMM.

Biden has also endorsed a list of other, more substantive reforms, including the elimination of mandatory minimums, the abolition of private prisons, the expanded use of drug courts, and the end of the death penalty. He would also eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, and he thinks states should be allowed to pursue their own cannabis legalization policies without federal interference.

That last item is more tepid than what we've heard from some of his opponents, several of whom have endorsed the full legalization of recreational marijuana. It would nevertheless represent a significant step toward more liberalized cannabis laws nationwide.

Indeed, reformers will no doubt find a lot to like in Biden's criminal justice plan. (His endorsement of expanded drug courts, which have a very mixed record when it comes to keeping people out of jail, is an arguable exception.)

The most striking thing about Biden's proposals is how much they are a rejection of the candidate's own legacy. As former Reason criminal justice reporter Radley Balko once put it, "The martial/incarceral state has had no greater friend in Washington over the last 35 years than Joe Biden."

When he was a senator from Delaware, Biden was one of the original co-sponsors on the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. That law imposed mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders and created the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, two policies Biden now says should be eliminated completely.

Biden was also a sponsor of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which expanded the application of the death penalty—another policy he now says should be abolished.

Biden also supported the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act—indeed, he sometimes calls it the Biden Crime Law. That piece of legislation helped to drive mass incarceration at the state level by expanding federal funding for prison construction.

He now wants to that as well, with a $20 billion grant program encouraging states to shift their crime focus from incarceration to prevention.

Biden has not been totally devoid of self-reflection on his criminal justice record. He has described some of the harsh penalties for crack-cocaine as "a big mistake." Even as a senator, he criticized some mandatory minimums.

Still, it's breathtaking just how much Biden's criminal justice platform implicitly repudiates his own record. Voters will have to decide for themselves whether this represents a genuine change of heart or a more cynical attempt to stay in tune with a party base hungry for reform.

Anything to get elected.

 

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Occupational Licensing Stops Workers From Moving Across State Lines. Andrew Yang Wants To Fix That.: https://reason.com/2019/07/23/occupational-licensing-stops-workers-from-moving-across-state-lines-andrew-yang-wants-to-fix-that/

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Bipartisanship may seem to be going out of style. But at least one issue continues to unite Republicans and Democrats: licensing reform. Democratic presidential candidate and venture capitalist Andrew Yang—who is running on a platform centered around a Universal Basic Income—has just released his plan to chip away at licensing requirements in an attempt to "get America moving again."

Mobility is an important source of economic dynamism, yet it is hampered in many parts of the country by onerous regulations. According to Garrett Watson, Special Projects Manager at the Tax Foundation, 22.2 percent of Americans moved in 1948. That fell to an all-time low in 2015-2016, when just 11.2 percent packed their bags for greener pastures.

Yang's plan endeavors to change that by helping lower-income individuals move to areas with better job prospects. Most notably, his proposal seeks to increase state-by-state recognition of occupational licenses, a practice that only three states—Arizona, Montana, and Pennsylvania—have adopted so far.

Licensing requirements often trap workers in the states in which they began their careers. Why? Because those licenses are not recognized out-of-state. If such workers want to relocate to a new state, and stay in the same profession, they will have to start the costly and burdensome licensing process all over again.

More than 33 percent of professions in the U.S. now require a license. "Nationwide, workers whose jobs require a state-issued license lose out on between $178 million and $711 million they could have earned by moving to a different state, according to a 2017 paper by Janna Johnson and Morris Kleiner, a pair of labor economists at the University of Minnesota," wrote Reason's Eric Boehm in April. "Johnson and Kleiner examined 22 professions that are licensed across most states, and they found that workers in those professions were, on average, 36 percent less likely to move across state lines than workers in non-licensed professions."

Yang also proposes a tax credit—capped at $1,000—for moving expenses. The tax code previously provided for an above-the-line deduction for similar claims, although that provision was eliminated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

Watson of the Tax Foundation says that Yang's proposed tax credit for moving expenses may well help energize the economy. But he cautions that it would need to be part of much bigger reforms.

"This would have to be one prong of many that would have to be advance to make a dent in things," Watson says. "Other items—reducing licensing burdens, reducing zoning laws that drive up the cost of housing—all these other non-tax issues would have to be part of a robust plan to move the needle here."

Here's a novel idea;  get rid of occupational licensing by the state altogether.  I guarantee we will not suddenly have cars careening off of the roads due to shoddy repairs or people dropping dead in the streets due to a misdiagnosed or mistreated illness.

 

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7 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Occupational Licensing Stops Workers From Moving Across State Lines. Andrew Yang Wants To Fix That.: https://reason.com/2019/07/23/occupational-licensing-stops-workers-from-moving-across-state-lines-andrew-yang-wants-to-fix-that/

Here's a novel idea;  get rid of occupational licensing by the state altogether.  I guarantee we will not suddenly have cars careening off of the roads due to shoddy repairs or people dropping dead in the streets due to a misdiagnosed or mistreated illness.

 

So what’s gained? Those things are happening now.

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5 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

So what’s gained? Those things are happening now.

Did you even read the article, or educate yourself on what occupational licensing does to those who want to move to another state and work in the same profession?   No licensing means no more hundreds to thousands of hours of state mandated course work which costs thousands of dollars to take.  No more licensing means no more hundreds to thousands of dollars spent on to just obtaining the pretty piece of paper issued by the state which you can display in your place of business.  It means more freedom.

 

 

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Moving from state  to state to find more victims and stay ahead of the law is a pretty common con man's tactic already. Can't imagine why we'd want to make it even easier for them.

Simply having greater reciprocity between states in regard to honoring each other's licensing decisions would help alleviate many of the cost-associated concerns you've mentioned, while still protecting the public.  

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2 hours ago, Wabash82 said:

Moving from state  to state to find more victims and stay ahead of the law is a pretty common con man's tactic already. Can't imagine why we'd want to make it even easier for them.

Simply having greater reciprocity between states in regard to honoring each other's licensing decisions would help alleviate many of the cost-associated concerns you've mentioned, while still protecting the public.  

I doubt a con man moving from state to state today would even bother with acquiring a legal professional license issued by the state before starting his con.    Whatever professional license documentation he has is mostly likely counterfeit, therefore making it easier to start his con in a reciprocal state.

 

 

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19 hours ago, Muda69 said:

I doubt a con man moving from state to state today would even bother with acquiring a legal professional license issued by the state before starting his con.    Whatever professional license documentation he has is mostly likely counterfeit, therefore making it easier to start his con in a reciprocal state.

 

 

Yeah, of course. It makes complete sense that having to obtain counterfeit licensing documents in order to scam people is "easier" than not needing to obtain any documents at all to pull off your scams, because the libertarians did away will all licensing requirements....

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29 minutes ago, Wabash82 said:

Yeah, of course. It makes complete sense that having to obtain counterfeit licensing documents in order to scam people is "easier" than not needing to obtain any documents at all to pull off your scams, because the libertarians did away will all licensing requirements....

Caveat Emptor.  We evil libertarians, insisting that personal responsibility and private, voluntary licensing groups could ever hope to replace a government bureaucracy.

 

 

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On 7/23/2019 at 3:33 PM, Muda69 said:

Joe Biden's New Criminal Justice Platform Calls for Eliminating Harsh Policies Sponsored by Joe Biden: https://reason.com/2019/07/23/joe-bidens-new-criminal-justice-platform-calls-for-eliminating-harsh-policies-sponsored-by-joe-biden/

Anything to get elected.

 

I've seen the meme about this guy and the current speaker of the house and the length of years they have in the Legislative Branch compared to the current President, who they are blaming the country's problems on.....

Image result for reagen biden pelosi meme

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Most Democratic candidates are to the left not just of Americans but of their own party.: https://reason.com/2019/07/30/tonights-democratic-debate-will-be-long-on-personal-attacks-and-increased-government/

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....

As the second round of Democratic debates unfolds over tonight and tomorrow, expect more candidates, especially lower-polling ones, to pounce less on Donald Trump and more on their Democratic counterparts, especially Biden, who enjoys leads ranging from 13 points to 27 points in various polls of voters in early states. Especially over the past few weeks, Trump has delivered his critics an embarrassment of riches in the form of hostile, racist tweets directed at various Democratic members of Congress. But the serious contenders realize if they want to square off against the president, they must first win the Hunger Games that is their own party's nominating process.

Tonight's debate starts at 8 p.m. ET and can be viewed on CNN. As before, the 20 participants will be split into two groups debating on consecutive nights. Tonight's lineup includes motivational author Marianne Williamson, Rep. Tim Ryan (D–Ohio), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. The debate will be moderated by Dana Bash, Don Lemon, and Jake Tapper.

Sanders and Warren are the most consistently left-wing major candidates running for the nomination. They support similar plans to grow the size, scope, and spending of the government, and they describe the U.S. economy as fundamentally unfair to all but the top 1 percent. That ideological overlap, along with the fact they both hail from the Northeast and need strong showings early in New Hampshire, suggest they will go at it tonight—all while bashing Biden, who appears tomorrow alongside his nemesis Harris. For formerly hot candidates such as Beto O'Rourke, tonight may be make-or-break time, as he tries to regain the momentum that landed him on the cover of Vanity Fairand drew taunts of "Skateboard Jesus." Buttigieg has raised a ton of money but remains stuck at around 6 percent. These sorts of candidates need to start making themselves more memorable.

The tension in this week's debates will not be limited to personal attacks. There's a deep disconnect between almost all of the candidates and actual rank-and-file Democrats. As the candidates lay out more and more liberal programs—Medicare for All, student debt forgiveness, free college for all, reparations for slavery and for gay couples who couldn't get married until a few years ago, health care for undocumented immigrants, a Green New Deal—Democratic voters are saying they want a more moderate party. Earlier this year, Pew Research found that 53 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters agreed that they "would like to see their party move in a more moderate direction." Just 40 percent wanted it to move in a more liberal direction. Late last year, when Gallup asked the same question, 54 percent wanted a more moderate party, compared to 41 percent calling for a leftward lurch (other analyses show that, for instance, a vast majority of Democrats are against getting rid of private health insurance while a number of top candidates are calling for single-payer). Former Obama apparatchik Paul Begala fears that the nominating process has become "some kind of purity game to see who can be the most leftist." He and others worrythat they very thing that leads to success in the short run will make it harder for the Democratic nominee to win in a general election.

In the long run, that disconnect between the party's candidate and its voters will be more important to the 2020 election than any of the gotcha dramas that play out in tonight's and tomorrow's debates.

 

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37 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Most Democratic candidates are to the left not just of Americans but of their own party.: https://reason.com/2019/07/30/tonights-democratic-debate-will-be-long-on-personal-attacks-and-increased-government/

 

If the left wing of the party is located more in States that matter, the right wing of the party will not matter.

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2 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

And we’ll have four more years of Trump.

I forced myself to watch 2 full minutes of the debate tonight. Democrats are definitely doing everything they can to get Trump re-elected. Sad sad sad.

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Democrats Forget the Flint Water Crisis Was Caused By a Bold New Infrastructure Plan: https://reason.com/2019/07/30/flint-water-crisis-democrat-debate-infrastructure/

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During the CNN presidential debate in Detroit on Tuesday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) was asked about her plan to address infrastructure, "including the water issues so that another Flint issues does not happen again." The question referred to the 2014–2017 crisis in Flint, Michigan—a city 70 miles north of Detroit where contaminated water was linked to deaths of a dozen people from Legionnaire's disease.

Klobuchar responded by proposing massive infrastructure programs that would create new jobs—and union jobs, at that. The senator was in good company: Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren also talked about the need for more public investment and more government-run programs to create economic prosperity. Both scoffed at John Delaney's contention that there was only so much the government could reasonably accomplish.

The irony, of course, is that the Flint water crisis was a direct result of precisely the kind of job-creation-focused infrastructure plan that so many of the Democratic presidential candidates feel is absolutely necessary to create economic prosperity.

As my colleague Shikha Dalmia wrote in 2016, the decision to cancel Flint's 30-year-old contract with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) and switch to the Karegnondi Water Authority was made in part because the new plan required the construction of an expensive pipeline. "Genesee County and Flint authorities saw the new water treatment as a public infrastructure project to create jobs in an area that has never recovered after Michigan's auto industry fled to sunnier business climes elsewhere," wrote Dalmia. The plan was pure fiscal stimulus, which is why it enjoyed the bipartisan support of Michigan's Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, Democratic State Treasurer Any Dillion, and Flint's Democratic city council.

Many in the media have parroted the absurd claim that the water crisis was caused by austerity, as if the government cared more about saving pennies than saving lives. The truth is exactly the opposite: Keeping DWSD as Flint's water provider was a cheaper option, but one that would have created zero new infrastructure jobs.

Two other notable facts: First, Flint's most pressing problem—prior to the unsafe drinking water, at least—was that its taxpayers could not afford to continue paying the pensions of city government retirees. As I wrote when the Flint water crisis story broke, "As recently as 2011, it would have cost every person in Flint $10,000 each to cover the unfunded legacy costs of the city's public employees."

Second, state employees received access to reliable, clean drinking water—in the form of water coolers—a full year earlier than everybody else in Flint. After the water problem became well-known, Flint's private residents finally began receiving safe water in the form of donations from Walmart, Coca Cola, Pepsi Co. Nestle, and other corporations.

Marianne Williamson also addressed the Flint water crisis, noting that she used to live in the wealthy Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, and "what happened in Flint would not have happened in Grosse Pointe." To the extent that's true, it's because no government bureaucrats have felt the need to promise massive job-creating infrastructure plans to the people of Grosse Pointe.

 

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1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Democrats Forget the Flint Water Crisis Was Caused By a Bold New Infrastructure Plan: https://reason.com/2019/07/30/flint-water-crisis-democrat-debate-infrastructure/

 

11 years ago, I seem to remember the mantra of shovel ready infrastructure jobs......that apparently weren't so shovel ready. 

https://www.countable.us/articles/21984-obama-signed-787-billion-stimulus-law-10-years-ago-date

It seems to me that there are basically two schools of thought here:

1. Government is the answer to all my woes.

2. Government needs to get out of my way so I can do it myself. 

 

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19 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

11 years ago, I seem to remember the mantra of shovel ready infrastructure jobs......that apparently weren't so shovel ready. 

https://www.countable.us/articles/21984-obama-signed-787-billion-stimulus-law-10-years-ago-date

It seems to me that there are basically two schools of thought here:

1. Government is the answer to all my woes.

2. Government needs to get out of my way so I can do it myself. 

 

Any principled person who truly values personal freedom and responsibility would choose #2.

 

 

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