Thursday, July 07, 2016
Won't get anything?
Interesting contrast between two articles on Sanders this morning.
Bloomberg has a long harsh personality judgment on Sanders. His insistence on absolute purity makes him an ineffective politician. His 25 years in the Senate produced only one noticeable piece of legislation, an improvement in VA benefits. Now the same purity means he won't get anything from the DNC.
USNWR has an article on how Sanders has pulled the DNC platform in his direction.
Declaring that "no bank can be too big to fail," they vow to push through a 21st century version of the Glass-Steagall Act. This Depression-era law separated investment and commercial banking activities so that banks couldn't use depositors' savings to gamble in the financial casino. The Bill Clinton administration repealed this protection in 1999. To provide an alternative to the big banks and the predatory payday lenders, the platform comes out in favor of providing some basic financial services through the postal system. The draft also expresses support for "a financial transactions tax on Wall Street to curb excessive speculation and high-frequency trading, which has threatened financial markets." This innovative idea was absent from the 2012 platform, and in fact Obama Treasury officials have sided with the industry in opposing it.EXACTLY what Sanders wants. Also EXACTLY RIGHT. HUGELY NECESSARY CHANGES. If you could count on platforms, this would make me vote D. Of course you can't count on platforms. They rarely get used or implemented. Even so, this destroys the Bloomberg judgment that Sanders won't get anything from DNC. ¶ 3:48 AM
