[US Election 2016] Democratic Primary Megathread II

[Geilinor]

The donations are in a joint account, she's not laundering anything.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but having a joint account for campaigns isn't orthodox, no?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/h%20...%20ion-222044

Hillary Clinton in the first three months of the year raised $33 million into a joint account her campaign formed with Democratic Party committees, according to a report filed Friday night with the Federal Election Commission.

There's an agreement with the DNC and state committees but the exact terms are unknown. There simply isn't enough information to conclude. And these are private agreements, campaigns generally don't make all the details public.

[MERIZoC]

Pretty worried hearing about all the instances of people being unable to vote due to the registration rules, on all sides of things. We've got a terrible system here that needs fixing, and should have been fixed ages ago.

[Ashmoria]

it is a common democratic stance.

And therefore it's right?

therefore you hair shouldn't be on fire because Bernie sanders has that stance.

[Camicon]

Voter fraud, or electoral fraud?

One is basically proven at this point. (The latter. She's been laundering campaign donations.)

The donations are in a joint account, she's not laundering anything.

Individuals who have already hit their maximum contribution limit are able, through the HVF, to donate additional money to Clinton's campaign. They're circumventing the few campaign finance regulations still in place by putting their money into a slush fund that essentially has no limits on what it can give to Clinton's campaign.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but having a joint account for campaigns isn't orthodox, no?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/h%20...%20ion-222044

Hillary Clinton in the first three months of the year raised $33 million into a joint account her campaign formed with Democratic Party committees, according to a report filed Friday night with the Federal Election Commission.

There's an agreement with the DNC and state committees but the exact terms are unknown. There simply isn't enough information to conclude. And these are private agreements, campaigns generally don't make all the details public.

Politico's already detailed everything. In that exact article you tried to link (here, by the way).

She's getting the majority of money from the HVF, as well as some additional support in the form of campaigning and ads, and tossing a few tidbits down ballot to keep everyone else content.

[Ashmoria]

Nuclear power is one of the things that makes me not want to see Sanders the nominee. At least his position on GMO's isn't entirely horrible.

are you saing that Bernie is OK with gmos?

[Washington Resistance Army]

Nuclear power is one of the things that makes me not want to see Sanders the nominee. At least his position on GMO's isn't entirely horrible.

are you saing that Bernie is OK with gmos?

IIRC he wants them to be labelled but doesn't consider them bad or anything.

[Valrifell]

Pretty worried hearing about all the instances of people being unable to vote due to the registration rules, on all sides of things. We've got a terrible system here that needs fixing, and should have been fixed ages ago.

If anything, this cycle will bring more attention to the shitty way elections are handled in parts of the country and, luckily, bring up ways to improve or fix the situation.

[The Romulan Republic]

Just voted for Bernie!!!

Mark my words here folks.

When the votes come in, Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, and areas around Buffalo will go Hillary.

The rest of the state will go Bernie, but those prior boroughs will be enough to let Hillary win by 8-12 points. Calling it right now.

A Clinton win was always likely, but I think the margins for her will likely be better than they should be due to what appears, frankly, to be fraud (and no, I'm not saying she personally authorized said fraud, if in fact it occurred).

In fair vote, I'd lean toward a single-digit Clinton win, but I wouldn't predict a specific number.

[Ashmoria]

She used the term "super predators" in reference to drug gangs but she has said recently that she could have used a better word.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/very-brief-history-super-predators
And the fact is that there were teenagers like that because of lead poisoning. We don't have the problem now because lead has been taken out of more things.

This. THIS. God, SO much this.

I lived through the 90's (and the 80's, and the 70's, and the 60's...). I remember the conversation the Nation had about rising crime rates back then, Everybody knew there was something qualitatively different in the behavior of some of the criminals we were seeing show up in the crime blotter back then; we just didn't know (and couldn't agree) on what was causing it. Far right-wing idiots were spinning racist arguments about innate black criminality, while left-wingers were trying to attribute everything to poverty and urban decay and religious conservatives were decrying the breakdown of the family, so-called "latch-key" children, and the loss of "traditional values". It was out of this melange of speculation that the term "superpredator" arose. It wasn't a racist term per se, because everyone had a different theory about what was causing the problem; it was SEEN as racist, though, because SOME people imagined it to be a symptom of the "animal" nature of African-Americans.

But what NONE of us knew at the time — because the science had not yet been done — is that both violent crime and teenage pregnancy rates correlate with environmental lead. We knew that an increased propensity towards both violence and promiscuity were symptoms of lead poisoning in individuals, because THOSE studies HAD been done. What we lacked were broad studies of whole populations; once those broader studies were performed, the pattern suddenly became clear.

To me, urban lead poisoning is Big Oil's version of the tobacco industry's decades-long product liability problem. The introduction of tetraethyl lead into gasoline as a "no knock" additive, combined with the growing amount of urban bus, truck, and automobile traffic from the 30's and 40's onward created the crime crisis of the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's. When we built the interstate highway system in the 50's, creating ring roads around municipal areas (most of which were routed through poorer neighborhoods by design [because eminent domain had to be used to acquire the land needed to build these bypasses, and poor homes and lots were cheaper to buy out and bulldoze than more expensive ones]), we expanded the problem dramatically. Plotting crime rates on a block by block basis against traffic patterns in the era before unleaded gasoline is extraordinarily revealing; the correlation is so bloody obvious as to become sickening, and with the medical science being as firm as it is, correlation very quickly substantiates causality.

The studies show an 18-20 year lag between widespread lead poisoning and crime rates. Crime in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's correlates with lead poisoning from bus, truck, and auto exhaust in the 40's, 50's, 60's, and 70's. Then unleaded gasoline comes into play, and rates start to fall from the mid-to-late 90's onward. There's still a huge amount of environmental lead out there, of course: But this also gives us a clear path forward. We can clean up those neighborhoods with lead dust, remove lead pipes, and take other steps to reduce infant and childhood lead poisoning. The resultant further drop in violent crime and teen pregnancy can only benefit society further.

tl&dr: Hillary shouldn't have to apologize for using the term "superpredator", because there really WERE "superpredators in the 90's, created by the lead poisoning of young urban Americans that peaked in the early-to-mid 70's. What she SHOULD do is use the crime problem of the 90's to push for infrastructure repair and lead remediation today.

ADDENDUM: Oh, and we should sue the shit out of the oil industry, because we knew there was lead everywhere even as far back as the 60's (cf. Clair Cameron Patterson). But Big Oil repeated lied to the public and to Congress about the deleterious effect of lead additives in gasoline in almost the same exact way as Big Tobacco lied about the link between their products and cancer, delaying the implementation of regulations against for a full decade.

Supporting Articles: Patterson and Kehoe, and the great lead debate, The Latest "Cosmos" Explains How Corporations Fund Science Denial, Is This the Greatest Public Health Achievement in the 20th Century?, The Secret History of Lead (behind The Nation's paywall)

AND Hillary's aggressive policy on lead remediation would pay off big time, so much so that we really ought to put the billions required into it as soon as possible.

[Napkiraly]

are you saing that Bernie is OK with gmos?

IIRC he wants them to be labelled but doesn't consider them bad or anything.

This pretty much. He doesn't want a federal mandated label either, just thinks states should be allowed to label if they want.

Though he did go after Monsanto for a little while in the campaign.

[Shrillland]

Just voted for Bernie!!!

Mark my words here folks.

When the votes come in, Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, and areas around Buffalo will go Hillary.

The rest of the state will go Bernie, but those prior boroughs will be enough to let Hillary win by 8-12 points. Calling it right now.

Yeah, that's pretty much my view of it too.

[Ashmoria]

are you saing that Bernie is OK with gmos?

IIRC he wants them to be labelled but doesn't consider them bad or anything.

I'm surprised. I thought I would have to say "its a common democratic stance" again.

[Corrian]

I think that tomorrow, when Hillary has been declared winner of the NY primary, we can read many accusation stories about fraud and uninformed voters.

I wouldn't call it specifically fraud or anything like that, but let's not pretend that stupid shit isn't going down in New York, because it blatantly is.

[Napkiraly]

IIRC he wants them to be labelled but doesn't consider them bad or anything.

I'm surprised. I thought I would have to say "its a common democratic stance" again.

Tbf Republicans are just as bad essentially as Democrats are. I'm pretty certain it's the issue that has the largest gap between what the scientific community believes and what the rest of the public believes.

[54e]

I think that tomorrow, when Hillary has been declared winner of the NY primary, we can read many accusation stories about fraud and uninformed voters.

I wouldn't call it specifically fraud or anything like that, but let's not pretend that stupid shit isn't going down in New York, because it blatantly is.

LOL CHILL OUT YOU CRAZY BERNIE BRO! THERES NO CONSPIRACY. FUCKIN MISOGYNIST

[Ngelmish]

If the Democratic Party is going to put up a conservative candidate like Hillary Clinton who is to the right of President Obama, then it has failed to be sufficiently liberal and should be dismantled. It's disgusting to live in a country where your choice for President is either a conservative or a super conservative.

No.

Hillary Clinton is a conventional liberal in most respects, and as we discussed yesterday, she's actually to the left of Bernie on specific issues. There are legitimate criticisms of Clinton to be made from the perspective of wanting a comprehensively progressive Democratic nominee, but a blanket assertion that she's conservative is not one of them.

[Corrian]

For example, my dad knows a musician in New York, who as SOON as Bernie Sanders announced, he changed to Democrat. Guess what? Oh yeah, his voter registration got fucked over and he's registered as independent, which he found out after seeing people talking about getting screwed over when it was too late to fix it. Though he voted today anyway with an Affidavit ballot.

[54e]

If the Democratic Party is going to put up a conservative candidate like Hillary Clinton who is to the right of President Obama, then it has failed to be sufficiently liberal and should be dismantled. It's disgusting to live in a country where your choice for President is either a conservative or a super conservative.

No.

Hillary Clinton is a conventional liberal in most respects, and as we discussed yesterday, she's actually to the left of Bernie on specific issues. There are legitimate criticisms of Clinton to be made from the perspective of wanting a comprehensively progressive Democratic nominee, but a blanket assertion that she's conservative is not one of them.

She also loves arming dictators in Latin America and creating power vacuums in the middle east! So liberal! #YASQUEEN

[Geilinor]

No.

Hillary Clinton is a conventional liberal in most respects, and as we discussed yesterday, she's actually to the left of Bernie on specific issues. There are legitimate criticisms of Clinton to be made from the perspective of wanting a comprehensively progressive Democratic nominee, but a blanket assertion that she's conservative is not one of them.

She also loves arming dictators in Latin America and creating power vacuums in the middle east! So liberal! #YASQUEEN

There are no actual dictators in Latin America right now.

[54e]

She also loves arming dictators in Latin America and creating power vacuums in the middle east! So liberal! #YASQUEEN

There are no actual dictators in Latin America right now.

Eh, semantics.

[Valaran]

There are no actual dictators in Latin America right now.

Eh, semantics.

So, if that's not accurate then, its only Libya which is an issue?

[54e]

Eh, semantics.

So, if that's not accurate then, its only Libya which is an issue?

Yes, because Latin America has suddenly achieved peace since I said "Eh, semantics."

[Ngelmish]

No.

Hillary Clinton is a conventional liberal in most respects, and as we discussed yesterday, she's actually to the left of Bernie on specific issues. There are legitimate criticisms of Clinton to be made from the perspective of wanting a comprehensively progressive Democratic nominee, but a blanket assertion that she's conservative is not one of them.

She also loves arming dictators in Latin America and creating power vacuums in the middle east! So liberal! #YASQUEEN

Okay, you've got one area of policy. How about Clinton being to the left of Sanders on guns, immigration, and anti-scientific energy policies? And that's just the stuff where we don't have to debate about what the granular effects of, say, protectionism versus open markets have on the broader population. A little nuance is better for determining somebody's ideological positioning than sarcastic broadsides.

[Corrian]

Of course Clinton's "Left" stance on guns is stupid, and I'm not even remotely pro-gun. Being to the left isn't exactly always a good thing.

[54e]

She also loves arming dictators in Latin America and creating power vacuums in the middle east! So liberal! #YASQUEEN

Okay, you've got one area of policy. How about Clinton being to the left of Sanders on guns, immigration, and anti-scientific energy policies? And that's just the stuff where we don't have to debate about what the granular effects of, say, protectionism versus open markets have on the broader population. A little nuance is better for determining somebody's ideological positioning than sarcastic broadsides.

Nah, Democrats like Clinton won't make meaningful changes to the policies you listed, because they haven't. Though I do agree that Sanders doesn't fit my positions on a lot of policy a lot of the time. He's just lengths ahead of the field on everything.

Welcome to the internet! Nuance is a myth, especially when you've proven yourself to be a Fantastic Generalizer of Political Movements!