Miles Kampf-Lassin at Nation of Change evaluates what Sen. Schumer calls the Democrats' "strong, bold economic agenda," and finds it wanting. The plan's got antitrust enforcement, a $15/hour minimum wage, and paid sick and family leave, but no Medicare-for-All, no universal public college, no renewable energy grid refitting, and no 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, plus they're still plugging that damn retraining tax credit like that's ever been anything but corporate welfare. Also, too, "10 million more jobs over five years" will only run a little ahead of the population entering the workforce during that time, so it's not much of a promise. Remember, folks: don't invest yourself in the damn Democrats; invest yourself in the things you want your Congressfolk to do.
Speaking of corporate welfare, there's President Trump joining Rep. Ryan and Gov. Walker at a big to-do in Wisconsin announcing a new LCD screen-manufacturing plant supposedly to be built in Kenosha, which would create 3,000 jobs averaging $54,000 annually -- but would be financed by corporate welfare to the tune of at least $270,000 per job! Of course, if our state and federal governments were to spend, say, $54,000 on each $54,000/year job they created, Messrs. Trump, Ryan and Walker (who is, as you know, the King of Corporate Welfare) would call it SOCIALISM COMMUNISM NAZISM KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM!!!!! (Also, too, when you read the article, you'll find out that just about none of the promises made add up -- and that Foxconn, previously notorious for worker suicides at its Chinese plants, has walked out of deals like this before.)
The incomparable David Dayen tells us where a state-wide single-payer health insurance system could actually begin -- in Maryland, where many factors that would help establish a single-payer system (key among them being a) the relative absence of restrictive budgeting rules and b) the ability to level off hospital reimbursement rates) already exist. The Democratic front-runner for the 2018 gubernatorial race is a single-payer advocate, too, though we saw how that played out in Vermont. But then again, we can make things happen -- which is the only thing we should count on, since we're counting on ourselves.
Ho hum, major "liberal" media organs haven't critically investigated Amazon or its owner, newest-richest-man-ever Jeff Bezos, in nearly two years. This is despite (because of?) the fact that Mr. Bezos now owns the Washington Post (which has, I grant, surprised me at times since he took over). It's also despite the fact that close to one out of every two dollars spent online goes through Amazon, and that Amazon seeks to leverage its monopoly power in online commerce to get monopoly power in every other market eventually. I mean, no one thinks (in the absence of strong antitrust regulations) that Mr. Bezos will simply decide one day that he has enough money.
Finally, after the failure of the Republicans' latest (but surely not last!) health care "reform" effort, Fox and Friends's Brian Kilmeade bemoaned the fact that "the healthy people are paying for the sick people." Ugh, one more time: that's how insurance works -- and it's illogical to divide people into "healthy" and "sick," since anyone can be either healthy or sick at any time. And boy the Fox and Friends prettyheads sure complained a lot about Democrats celebrating the Republicans' failure. I wonder how they felt about the Republicans celebrating the passage of the House bill.
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