Donald Trump’s Unhinged Attack on Jon Tester
 

-John Nichols, The Nation
"The senator has always championed the causes of veterans. Apparently, this enrages the president."
The piece is well salted with links to sources on critical points.
I have plenty of problems with Tester's positions on many issues. However, his opposing the privatization of VA functions gets my respect. The profiteers are circling all federal health programs. I hope Tester has the same concern for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
[QUOTE]Tester has earned this bipartisan praise because, to a far greater extent than many of his colleagues, he has served as a senator is supposed to serve. When President Trump forwarded for Senate consideration the name of an unvetted and ill-prepared candidate to lead an essential agency with a $180 billion budget and almost 400,000 employees, the senator from Montana did not shy away from the duty the Constitution rests with him.

Motivated primarily by his concern for the veterans who rely on the VA for care—and whose continued care is [URL="https://www.tester.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=6119"]threatened [/URL]by the profiteers who seek to privatize major functions of the agency—Tester gathered information and discussed concerns that had arisen regarding a presidential nominee. He called for transparency and a serious review of that nomination. He refused to bend to political pressure, even though he faces what could be a tough reelection race in a state that handed Trump a 20-point advantage in 2016.
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It is a shame that presidential candidates are not thoroughly vetted by congress.

:whee:

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;486691]It is a shame that presidential candidates are not thoroughly vetted by congress.[/QUOTE]That was the idea behind the Electoral College.

[url=http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/385942-clinton-being-a-capitalist-probably-hurt-her-2016-election-prospects]Clinton: Being a capitalist ‘probably’ hurt me with Dem voters[/url] | The Hill -- Well, it *would* explain why she lost so much of the Midwest to well-known anti-capitalist crusader Trump, no?

[QUOTE=kladner;486687]I hope Tester has the same concern for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.[/QUOTE]
What if an American citizen doesn't want to participate in Social Security, do you have respect for that person as well? Even if I still had to invest the money that would have gone to social security and wouldn't get it back until age 60 or so, I'd rather do that than participate in social security.

Not all pyramid schemes are illegal, social security is an example of a legal pyramid scheme.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;486892][url=http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/385942-clinton-being-a-capitalist-probably-hurt-her-2016-election-prospects]Clinton: Being a capitalist ‘probably’ hurt me with Dem voters[/url] | The Hill -- Well, it *would* explain why she lost so much of the Midwest to well-known anti-capitalist crusader Trump, no?[/QUOTE]
As I like to say, and I wish it would catch on...You could cut the irony with a knife.

[QUOTE=jasong;486980][B]What if an American citizen doesn't want to participate in Social Security, do you have respect for that person as well?[/B] Even if I still had to invest the money that would have gone to social security and wouldn't get it back until age 60 or so, I'd rather do that than participate in social security.

Not all pyramid schemes are illegal, social security is an example of a legal pyramid scheme.[/QUOTE]
No. You also are pretty fuzzy on what a pyramid scheme is.

[QUOTE=jasong;486980]What if an American citizen doesn't want to participate in Social Security, do you have respect for that person as well?[/QUOTE]You might be shocked to find out that not all Americanos (that work at paying jobs), pay into or expect to get money from SS. And not all people that get money from SS have paid in.

[QUOTE=jasong;486980]What if an American citizen doesn't want to participate in Social Security, do you have respect for that person as well?[/QUOTE]

You might as well replace "participate in Social Security" with "break the law". Now I might still have respect for such a person if I deem the law in question to be inane (e.g. pot treated in law similarly to heroin, say) or unconstitutional (e.g. large parts of the Patriot Act and its successors). Not the case with SS - my main objections to SS are

[1] The rich only pay in up to a very limited salary cap. Made $1 billion this year, only pay SS on first $100K or so. ($128,400 for 2018). So Jeff Bezos and all the Wall Street hedge-fund billionaires pay the same roughly-$8000 that someone making just over 6 figures does.

[2] Government has for decades used the SS trust fund (and various others it has) as deficit-spending slush funds, which allows it to maintain the accounting fiction of "public debt", by which the total-government-debt number is [url=https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/pd_debttothepenny.htm]roughly 1/3rd less than the actual total[/url]. Even there my problem is not the debt per se - as an issuer of its own fiat currency the US government can never 'go broke', and deficit-spending which goes to the "little people" can be quite healthy for the overall economy - but rather what so much it goes for, such as blowing sh*t up all around the world and enriching the corrupt MIC in the process, and bailouts of Wall Street financial-fraud rackets.

As a callow youth I used to believe a lot of the nonsense about SS, like jasong does. With the benefit of hindsight let me say that no one under age 50 should think they have a clue about what their priorities and concerns will be once they near retirement age. Your job gets offshored and you find yourself unable to find work due to age bias, your body breaks down, those kinds of things can change your perception of such matters in quite profound ways.

[QUOTE=jasong;486980]What if an American citizen doesn't want to participate in Social Security, do you have respect for that person as well? Even if I still had to invest the money that would have gone to social security and wouldn't get it back until age 60 or so, I'd rather do that than participate in social security.
...[/QUOTE]As far as I understood in other threads, you declare that you live from an allowance ... from social security in other words*. You do participate but only by receiving not by contributing.

Jacob

* At least social security as we understand the concept in Europe for instance.

How Clintonites Are Manufacturing Faux Progressive Congressional Campaigns
 

[URL]https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/27/how-clintonites-are-manufacturing-faux-progressive-congressional-campaigns/[/URL]
We now have AstroTurf campaigns of self-styled Progressives from Intel backgrounds; in addition to DNC efforts to torpedo genuine Progressives who look too likely to beat the anointed candidates.

[QUOTE]But, precisely as Sanders had bellowed that night in Greenwich Village, the campaign was only the beginning. In the time since then, the progressive left has seen an upsurge in candidates seeking to unseat establishment Democrats in districts throughout the country. Democratic incumbents from [COLOR=#0563c1][U][URL="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/03/07/texas-primary-elections-women-are-running-and-winning/"]Texas[/URL][/U][/COLOR] and [COLOR=#0563c1][U][URL="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/03/22/what-do-the-illinois-primary-elections-tell-us/"]Illinois[/URL][/U][/COLOR] to [COLOR=#0563c1][U][URL="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/nyregion/cynthia-nixon-new-york-governor-cuomo.html"]New York[/URL][/U][/COLOR] and California now suddenly find themselves facing challenges from their left, forcing them to try to save their jobs by adopting progressive talking points.

While this upsurge could be seen as a welcome development for anyone interested in progressive causes, there is a dark side to the burgeoning left movement, one that remains mostly shrouded behind a veil of secrecy and omission.

For it seems that progressive candidates aren’t the only ones who learned the lesson of Bernie Sanders in 2016; the neoliberal Clintonites have too. So, while left-wing campaigns crop up in every corner of the country, so too do astroturf faux-progressive campaigns. And it is for us on the left to parse through it all and separate the authentic from the frauds.
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