The incomparable David Dayen at the New Republic describes the hurdles good liberals would have to clear in order to get heard in a Hillary Clinton Administration. The chief hurdle is the transition team Mrs. Clinton will put together if she wins -- transition teams wind up hiring basically the entire executive branch, and, in the words of one insider, "(p)eople are not spending time talking to people they don’t know really well." So if Mrs. Clinton were to stack her team with the same center-right corporatists Mr. Obama (and Mr. Clinton) did, you could expect it to be about as hard to get heard by her Administration. Still, our duty is to get heard, so we just need to take that into account at the beginning.
Donald Trump says he's going to spend more than Hillary Clinton on infrastructure by, essentially, taking on more deficit spending. I mean, that's what government bonds and loan guarantees are -- he sure won't tax the rich to pay for all that bridge-building. The Times doesn't need to do Mr. Trump's PR for him by calling this "another indication that the Republican presidential nominee is prepared to break with the fiscal conservatism that his party has evangelized over the past eight years," (eight?) particularly since the Times doesn't identify any of the other "indications." And, ah, you know he doesn't mean any of this anyway, right? And even if he did, he'd likely stiff as many workers as he could, because that's his way. Still, I expect his I'll-spend-more-than-Hillary-what-a-loser infrastructure plan will turn heads.
Private college executives criticize Mrs. Clinton's plan to make public college free for families making less than $125,000. Because of course they do! But would private colleges would be so utterly helpless before the prospect of more affordable public college education that there'd be an "exodus of middle-class students"? Is money really all that matters to young students and their families? And wouldn't the competition from the Clinton plan induce private colleges to do more to attract such students? I mean, that's what a bold and bright entrepreneur would say. Whiners, of course, don't say that.
U.S. District Court judge denies Uber's attempt to force an antitrust lawsuit into binding arbitration per Uber's terms of service -- because Uber can't actually prove that Uber users have agreed to that forced arbitration clause! Uber, apparently, doesn't even make you check a box indicating that you've even read their terms of service, and puts its forced arbitration clause deep into an agreement full of "highly legalistic language that no ordinary consumer could be expected to understand." Consent: it's actually really important.
Molly Knefel at FAIR notices the "liberal" media offering up its love of that "better billionaire," Michael Bloomberg -- you know, because he's "better" that other billionaire-maybe who's running for President. This is a quite praiseworthy article, listing Mr. Bloomberg's numerous sins against the New York electorate while Mayor (racist stop-and-frisk policies, cutting or eliminating numerous vital public services). She also subtly suggests in the last three paragraphs that the punditoids who praise Mr. Bloomberg are getting their talking points from the same place. I hope we hear more from this public school teacher named Molly Knefel.
Finally, Mediaite catches Fox and Friends hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade complaining that TEH NO ONEZ IN TEH LIBURULZ MEDIAZ COVERED TEH BENGHAZI MOTHER!!!! while she spoke at the Republican National Convention -- except that CNN and MSNBC did cover it, and Fox News, their own employer, did not. Could Messrs. Doocy and Kilmeade really be this dumb? It's a moot question, after eight years of Tha Bush Mobb -- the answer to the stupid-or-evil question is always evil.
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