Who is upset about Mexicans entering the country illegally and still calls themselves a Democrat?
Answer: a lot of people!
Raping kids still okay though.
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Do you at least understand why many of us here have soured significantly on Pete this past month?
https://twitter.com/ClintSmithIII/status/1189005762602917888
https://twitter.com/SawyerHackett/status/1188860878734708737
I like Julian Castro and I hope heās a part of whatever administration takes over in 2020.
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For me itās getting hard to pick someone. I guess most dems are in the same boat, only about a quarter are entrenched in their pick.
Sure. Iām just confused on what he thinks Iām trying to intentionally mislead this forum about.
I try to correct out-of-context takes that i see posted here that are obviously quoted or gleaned from clickbait headlines or tweets. I think Iāll just switch to posting Peteās tweets or blue check interviews, kinda like I see some people do with Bernie and Warren. The one up thread from Bernieās remarks at JStreet was good. He did a good job at that forum, it was like the Bernie of old. Seemed like the audience liked Bernie and Pete the best.
I have no expectation that anyone might actually read them, but hey, maybe we still have lurkers.
Here Iāll start with this:
https://twitter.com/NBChristinaGinn/status/1187347902781366272?s=20
Does Mayor Pete really want to increase the budget for the war department? To what? For what?
A politicianās job is to understand the issues, advocate for the best possible policies, and convince the public that their ideas are the best. If they canāt convince enough people, then they are bad at their job. Anyone talking about what is politically popular or polling well (these things change greatly over time) lacks conviction. I donāt care what people think that they want. I want what is best for people. Show them the way instead of capitulating.
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The big problem with healthcare is that much of the cost is hidden to the worker. They feel that their wages are stagnant and a large part of that is the increasing costs that employers eat via healthcare. At my last job they literally let us know how much they were paying per person for healthcare and it was like $1500/month a person or something insane like that (professional workplace but probably average wage in the place for the staff was <$45k). This is in addition to whatever the employee is having directly deducted from their paycheck when they opt in, so in effect mid level professionals are paying ~33% of their pretax for healthcare which is really shit and requires high out of pocket in the event that it is used.
The dirty secret is that if most employers owners werenāt going to pay significantly more taxes for M4A, they would gladly get rid of it because its a huge distraction and everyone hates them for it thinking the insurance their employer provides is crap. Behind they scenes they are paying tons of money that they would really just rather give to employees are a wage which they can tangibly see.
So ya its a bit off topic but basically we hate Pete because he gets on tv and asks how we are going to pay for it. The current system is paying $4500 for an epipen which cost like $50 5 years ago. It pay for itself by costing less because the vipers and leeches will be removed from the host.
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Where did you hear that?
Pete hasnāt put out a military/veterans policy yet, so the real answer is, I donāt know. He has talked a lot about foreign policy, recently in the JStreet Forum, and he also did a long-form foreign policy speech in June.
June Foreign Policy Speech < an hour of full-on foreign-policy-wonk Pete.
JStreet forum full comments < A good Q&A, mostly about Israel and the middle east. Also includes rare clip of Pete swearing
I could elaborate on the difficulties of the DoD budget if you want
But, where do they get that one line from? Whatās their source/methodology? They didnāt even link to any of Peteās actual policy page. I feel like it does all of those candidates a disservice when it says the want to boost the defense budget. I donāt think Iāve ever heard or read anything from Pete, Beto, or Booker saying they want that, but theyāre listed there.
I donāt know where they got it.
Iāve read through all of your posts in this thread and I canāt figure out which one may have set him off against you. Maybe it comes from a belief that anyone both intelligent and good would see things the same way that he does and assuming the least charitable interpretation.
I can give you my thoughts on health care. Basically, I think that the bigger issue is the role and size of government. I am vehemently anti-Reagan on this issue. When Elizabeth Warren refuses to say that she will raise taxes to pay for her plan, I donāt think she is ducking the issue. I think she is saying that people are framing the issue wrong and I applaud her for that. While I donāt claim to be a disciple of modern monetary theory, I do think that fighting the deficit is not necessarily a priority.
One thing that I love about her is that she is on the record as opposing a balanced budget amendment, which is a truly horrendous idea. You donāt need to āpayā for Medicare for All to do it. Either you do some deficit spending, viewing it as an investment in the countryās health, or you raise taxes, not necessarily income taxes.
So, I view questioning how Warren will pay for her plan as falling for a Republican narrative about how government should be run. And Buttigieg doing so doesnāt make him a Republican, but it makes him someone who I will view as less understanding of how things work. And that makes me less inclined to support him vs. Warren, but doesnāt really damage him vs. most of the rest of the field in my eyes. I still see him as one of the better options for her VP.
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I donāt mean to sound dismissive of that site, itās just that Defense spending is something I know very well, because procuring money for our projects was about 75% of my job in the air force. The entire process is a 4-year-long, convoluted mess. The DoD budget is one part of a ponderous, gargantuan whole in which every departmentās budget is interdependent on all the othersā. Itās nearly impossible to know from year to year how the DoD is going to shake out.
Iām too tired to coherently explain what I meanā¦just this: if any candidate promised me something about the defense budget during a campaign, iād take it with a huge grain of salt. I would rather hear them talk about their priorities for defense spending.
If they are going to keep the same defense budget but move the money from the F-35 to projects that make the military more climate-friendly, Iāll take that over just randomly cutting $XX billion and leaving the DoD to figure out where to cut it (that usually ends up being stuff like the quality of life things that got cut recently for trumps wall).
Yeah, but when the war department budget should be cut by 75% or so thatās quite a long list and you need to cut to the chase.