Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) comes out against the recently-signed Trans-Pacific "Partnership."This seems jaw-dropping, until you remember that Mr. Portman is up in 2016, in a state that hates "free" trade with a vengeance, and until you realize his problems with the TPP aren't fundamental. Still, a representative's job is, you know, to represent, though it'd be nice if he'd say it's what his constituents want him to do. I'd certainly hate to see him get re-elected and then vote "aye" in late November.
Matt Gardner, writing at Tax Justice Blog, reminds us that all that money American corporations say they make from their Cayman Islands subsidiaries doesn't exactly flow through the local economy. Indeed, American corporations pretend to earn 17 times the size of the entire economy of the Cayman Islands. Remember that when they tell you corporations need to move overseas to create jobs here. I know, it sounds nonsensical, but when has that ever stopped Our Glorious Elites?
On that note: dig the word salad Goldman-Sachs chair Lloyd Blankfein spews forth about the prospect of a Bernie Sanders candidacy. The only thing "dangerous" about Bernie Sanders is that though he'll go farther than any of the other candidates to bring the banksters to heel, he won't go far enough. And if Mr. Blankfein can't put a coherent sentence together, how can he claim to have earned his money? (No, the answer is not "he can pay someone else to put coherent sentences together." By the evidence, whomever he might be paying to do that makes too much.)
Some "establishment" Democrats start talking nasty about the prospect of a Bernie Sanders Presidency. But we can safely ignore folks like "free"-trade lover Gerry Connally and leading-his-district-from-behind Scott Peters and Claire McCaskill-who's-toast-in-2018, since they think their constituents all want Democrats to be like Republicans without actually dragging their knuckles on the ground. I think Bernie Sanders will resonate with a lot of conservatives and independents -- just not the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" and who have public swordfights about who's "more conservative." (And, ah, attacking Mr. Sanders "with a hammer and sickle" may not be as effective as Ms. McCaskill thinks. It might be that, after watching Republicans go after Mr. Obama with a hammer and sickle for eight years, voters might be tired of it.)
President Obama, rather surprisingly proposes a $10/barrel tax on oil in his upcoming budget, and several Republicans do Jeff George Victory Laps while proclaiming the proposal "dead on arrival." Again: it's only "dead on arrival" if we say and do nothing. It's not a perfect proposal, frankly (I've never been a big fan of dedicating single revenue streams to single purposes, even to a purpose as nobel as rebuilding our transportation infrastructure along more renewable lines), but I will pass along any action alerts I get about it.
Finally, Marco Rubio criticizes President Obama for going to a mosque, blissfully unaware that Mr. Bush did the same thing not six days after 9.11. But you see, it was different when Mr. Bush did it, because he was not Barack Obama, who apparently does something divisive merely by getting out of the shower in the morning. ("Did you see the way he planted his feet? Thinks he's so much better than us.")
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