oblong Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 1 hour ago, mtutiger said: Certainly understand why he has weighed in, and that is likely reflects a majority of his constituents considering the demographics of Dearborn in 2024. But in general, I wish politicians at the local level would just focus on the basic 'blocking and tackling' of government and not draw some much focus / attention onto national politics. Not even saying that he's wrong to have an opinion or express it, but I'm not sure it should completely overshadow his day job either. He is in a bind though considering how many of his constiuents are directly affected by what is going on and his own heritage. The guy is young too, early 30's. But if you didn't watch the news or see him on twitter you would never know he's saying what he does. He doesn't speak about it at city functions or when he's in public, like a business opening. I think he does a decent job at separating his personal and professional life. He was a democratic member of the state legisature before running for mayor and is connected to the party. The big test will be what he does with regard to endorsing Biden. He loved to spend the money the democrats gave our city. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 (edited) 1 hour ago, mtutiger said: Trump has a Tower in Chicago. Edited June 18 by chasfh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romad1 Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 1 hour ago, chasfh said: Trump has a Tower in Chicago. They must be terrified of all the gun violence Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oblong Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 2 hours ago, chasfh said: Trump has a Tower in Chicago. I was bummed when I visited a few years ago and realized that awesome looking building was his. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chasfh Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 2 hours ago, oblong said: I was bummed when I visited a few years ago and realized that awesome looking building was his. It is a really good-looking building. Rancic did a good job on it. I miss having the Sun-Times in that spot, though. It was, like, seven stories and looked like it had been transplanted there lock stock and barrel from a nearby suburb. It looked so out of place against the backdrop of super skyscrapers and iconic buildings. I loved it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pfife Posted June 19 Author Share Posted June 19 It is a really beautiful spot being polluted by a trump sign Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.TaterSalad Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 (edited) Earlier in the thread, a few pages back, people were talking about damage done to the Democratic Party. When I think of damage done to an entire generation by a Democrat, I typically think of Bubba and not Bernie Sanders. It was Bubba's era of banking deregulations led to the 2008 Great Derivatives Crisis when he replead Glass-Steegall and replaced it with Gramm-Leach-Bliley. It was Bubba who deregulated the derivatives market in the first place when he signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Bubba supported legislation, like the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act that saw the closure of thousands of community banks and brought on a wave of destructive consolidation in the banking industry. It was Bubba's era of media deregulation led to the rise of Fox News and the far right media ecosphere. When Bubba signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that deregulated the airwaves, killed local radio as we know it, and gave rise to the right wing media empire. This act has directly led to more of the political polarization that we live in today. Bubba's trade policies like NAFTA and CAFTA, as well as normalizing trade status with China, decimated good-paying, union, manufacturing jobs across the country. NAFTA devastated manufacturing jobs with some job loss estimates as high as 700,000 jobs. Granting China permanent normalized trade status was always a big mistake, as it is a mistake to trade with any low wage country, and has resulted in job loss estimates into the millions. Bubba was a bigot and homophobic as well. His policies discriminated against the LGBTQ+ community and he worked against marriage equality for LGBTQ+ individuals with his signing of DOMA. As well, Bubba took a bigoted stance on people who are openly LGBTQ+ serving their country in the military with his support for Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Bubba also doubled the extreme rate of poverty in America by gutting AFDC and other social welfare programs and replacing them with TANF. The extreme rate of people in poverty more than doubled in the year after Aid for Families With Dependant Children was replaced by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Mass incarceration and the prison population exploded because of Bubba's tough on crime policies. The famous 1994 crime bill and Bubba's bragging about putting 100,000 new cops on the street helped to increase the incarceration rate in the Untied States and cause an already exploding prison system to grow exponentially more in the years since it passed. Edited June 19 by Mr.TaterSalad 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motown Bombers Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 (edited) You got me there. Bernie Sanders doesn't pass any legislation and is useless. Bill Clinton hasn't been president in 24 years. He's not actively turning a generation of people who weren't even alive when he was president against Democrats. Edited June 19 by Motown Bombers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.TaterSalad Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 I mean, first off, it was John McCain and Sanders who spearheaded the VA reform legislation. And if you'd rather see someone like Bubba who enacted all that devastating legislation then ok. Bubba is literally one of the reasons we have this right wing media ecosphere because of his having deregulated the telecom industry in 1996. That deregulation gave rise to the abundance of right wing talk radio that we have experienced over the past 20+ years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oblong Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 Rush Limaugh's rise came in the late 80s and early 90's. By 1996 he was already at his peak. Right wing talk radio didn't come about because of deregulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pfife Posted June 19 Author Share Posted June 19 How about we blame the unified reich for the unified reich? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motown Bombers Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 19 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said: I mean, first off, it was John McCain and Sanders who spearheaded the VA reform legislation. And if you'd rather see someone like Bubba who enacted all that devastating legislation then ok. Bubba is literally one of the reasons we have this right wing media ecosphere because of his having deregulated the telecom industry in 1996. That deregulation gave rise to the abundance of right wing talk radio that we have experienced over the past 20+ years. I would like to see someone like Bubba instead of Maple Jesus. Biden voted for the Telecommunications Act, Biden voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, Biden supported Don't Ask Don't Tell, Biden voted for Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, and then we get to the crime bill which Biden authored. Bernie Sanders also voted for the crime bill and it included things like Violence Against Women Act and a ban on assault weapons. Bernie Sanders also voted against the Brady Bill and is against holding gun manufacturers accountable. I'm really not interested in your verbal diarrhea of acts from the 90's supported by the current president. Biden has been the most progressive president since Lyndon Johnson and all Bernie Sanders has done is turn a generation of voters against the party. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gehringer_2 Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 (edited) 3 hours ago, oblong said: Rush Limaugh's rise came in the late 80s and early 90's. By 1996 he was already at his peak. Right wing talk radio didn't come about because of deregulation. it didn't arise directly out of dereg, but it could not exist in it's current form under the old fairness doctrine. But the real sin goes back another step: the reason the fairness doctrine had to be dropped was because under Reagan the FCC declined to regulate cable and Congress wouldn't explicit expand the mandate (Reagan would have vetoed it anyway). The broadcast industry cried foul about the fairness doctrine - rightly - that they shouldn't be held to regs that the cable industry, putting the same product into the same markets, were not. Edited June 19 by gehringer_2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oblong Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 Isn’t the logic being that due to the fact the cable companies wired things up? The air is the air. But a wire technically belongs to someone and you choose to accept that signal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gehringer_2 Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 13 minutes ago, oblong said: Isn’t the logic being that due to the fact the cable companies wired things up? The air is the air. But a wire technically belongs to someone and you choose to accept that signal. yes - legally the issue is 'what is a public resource', but Congress easily could have redefined it they had been willing to deal with technical evolution or the Reagan admin hadn't been hell bent on dereg anyway. When you think about it, it's not there is anything special about over the air broadcast that led to it's regulation, spectrum allotment is just the fig leaf for the rationale. It was the content the orginal regulators were after. When you put cable up you are still using public right of ways, easements, etc. and you still need permits to string wire where you string it, so to me the difference is a legal fiction. And the reality is that most local cable cos operated under local government charters anyway. And its the same argument still playing out over IP reg in general, which is what we are talking about today. I have to imagine there can't be many coaxial RF systems still operating anywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.TaterSalad Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 5 hours ago, oblong said: Rush Limaugh's rise came in the late 80s and early 90's. By 1996 he was already at his peak. Right wing talk radio didn't come about because of deregulation. When Bubba deregulated broadcast radio with the 1996 Telecommunications Act it allowed for companies to consolidate and give control of many major and mid market radio stations over to a handful of media corporations. Prior to the 1996 Telecommunciations Act there was a cap on the number of stations a company could own and how many per market they could own. Removing this cap intern allowed companies to buy up more and more stations. It allowed them to then broadcast the same programs to a nationwide audience, on all of their stations. So you had companies like Clear Channel, Cumulus, Citadel broadcasting the likes of Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and others coast to coast on all of their stations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.TaterSalad Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 (edited) 5 hours ago, Motown Bombers said: I would like to see someone like Bubba instead of Maple Jesus. Biden voted for the Telecommunications Act, Biden voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, Biden supported Don't Ask Don't Tell, Biden voted for Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, and then we get to the crime bill which Biden authored. Bernie Sanders also voted for the crime bill and it included things like Violence Against Women Act and a ban on assault weapons. Bernie Sanders also voted against the Brady Bill and is against holding gun manufacturers accountable. I'm really not interested in your verbal diarrhea of acts from the 90's supported by the current president. Biden has been the most progressive president since Lyndon Johnson and all Bernie Sanders has done is turn a generation of voters against the party. I'm not interested in your same condescending argument against Bernie Sanders that you make all the time. Bernie Sanders went out and campaigned for both Hillary and Biden dozens of times after he lost both primaries. He did TV ads, digital ads, social media ads with both candidates encouraging his supporters to vote for them. You ignore all of that though. Imagine having an entire career in politics and then having to work at the end of your career to undo everything you supported throughout your career. Biden being progressive-ish now doesn't excuse or undo all the real world pain and suffering he did at the begging and middle parts of his career. It doesn't excuse Bill Clinton for supporting these policies either. It doesn't excuse all of the LGBTQ people who were denied the right to marry who they loved in the 15 years that DOMA was around. It doesn't excuse not allowing LGBTQ people to serve openly for their country. It doesn't excuse all of the mothers and fathers who were forced into extreme poverty when their benefits were taken away. It doesn't excuse all the people who lost their lives because of a war based on false pretenses and fabricated intelligence reports. It doesn't excuse all the economic pain caused by banking deregulation and bad, one-sided trade agreements. The amount of damage Bill Clinton's era of deregulation and center-right social policies did was immense and far more destructive than anything Sanders did. Edited June 19 by Mr.TaterSalad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutiger Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 (edited) Interesting but not surprising... Edited June 19 by mtutiger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gehringer_2 Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 (edited) 24 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said: The amount of damage Bill Clinton's era of deregulation and center-right social policies did was immense and far more destructive than anything Sanders did. the thing you don't credit enough here is that it wasn't only Bill Clinton that stopped guy marriage or Joe Biden that led a law and order swing. Those were where the majority of public opinion was at that time on those issues. The public moves on issues-it's a process, and sometimes the move is a huge distance, culture evolves. Politicians in general move with it, not ahead of it. Sometimes leadership makes a difference - maybe it did on LGBTQ issues to some degree, or maybe not. But in the majority of cases political outcomes are lagging, not leading, indicators of where the public is on an issue. It was the same 28 yrs ago as it is now. Why can't Biden just turn around the country? - because a huge number of voters are still electing GOP members of Congress and may even re-elect Trump. 30 yrs ago same sex marriage was still losing a fair number of ballot initiatives. California of all places, had its voters overturn same sex marriage as recently as 2008. A Congressperson is supposed to be a representative. If the people he represents change, he has to change with them at least enough to be re-elected. The US public has always had a deep reservoir of reactionary tendency. Of course that's become more obvious today than ever. Edited June 19 by gehringer_2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutiger Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 We may be underrating the idea that RFK is a non entity when it's all said and done Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romad1 Posted June 20 Share Posted June 20 Lots of polling movement for Biden since the trial ended and Trump started going out and ranting and raving. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.TaterSalad Posted June 20 Share Posted June 20 4 hours ago, gehringer_2 said: A Congressperson is supposed to be a representative. If the people he represents change, he has to change with them at least enough to be re-elected. The US public has always had a deep reservoir of reactionary tendency. Of course that's become more obvious today than ever. A Congressperson is supposed to do the right thing, even if the public they represent hasn't caught up to what the ring thing to do is just yet. Sanders voted no on DOMA as did 65 other House and 14 Senate Democrats at the time. So clearly they had the courage to stand up and do the right thing when others wouldn't. Public opinion doesn't mean much to me when it comes to civil rights issues. There was a time when public opinion said blacks and women didn't deserve the right to vote or hold certain jobs. If a leader took a stand on civil rights but lost the next election because of it, I think I'd prefer that person over someone who did the wrong thing but kept their job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gehringer_2 Posted June 20 Share Posted June 20 34 minutes ago, romad1 said: Lots of polling movement for Biden since the trial ended and Trump started going out and ranting and raving. That's why the Dems want the debate. For good or ill they think Trump works better as an idea than a reality so they want to help get the reality out there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romad1 Posted June 20 Share Posted June 20 More criming from the criminals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romad1 Posted June 20 Share Posted June 20 So, you want to see a reaction to public confidence in Trump winning a second term? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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