jerseyhoya wrote:

Kirsten Gillibrand @SenGillibrand
I knew that calling on Al Franken to resign was a risk, but silence wasn’t an option. I’m running for president to fight for a country that values women, and I’m ready to share this vision with the American people. Will you give $1 to help us bring our vision to the debate stage?

I feel like Al Franken's fav/unfav with Dem primary voters probably isn't terrible. I guess this can work to get some buzz and raise money, but as a long term play seems not sustainable. Not to say she was wrong.

In general, I just don't get the Gillibrand campaign, why she thought running was a good idea, etc.

And Andrew Yang, who has already qualified for the first debate so is a more serious candidate than Kirsten Gillibrand, came out against circumcision, a very important public policy stance.

Monkeyboy wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Kirsten Gillibrand @SenGillibrand
I knew that calling on Al Franken to resign was a risk, but silence wasn’t an option. I’m running for president to fight for a country that values women, and I’m ready to share this vision with the American people. Will you give $1 to help us bring our vision to the debate stage?

I feel like Al Franken's fav/unfav with Dem primary voters probably isn't terrible. I guess this can work to get some buzz and raise money, but as a long term play seems not sustainable. Not to say she was wrong.

In general, I just don't get the Gillibrand campaign, why she thought running was a good idea, etc.

And Andrew Yang, who has already qualified for the first debate so is a more serious candidate than Kirsten Gillibrand, came out against circumcision, a very important public policy stance.

I think she's either overplaying the women's angle or she's actually sexist. She has zero chance of winning and I'm glad. I think it's time for this country to have a woman in the Pres or VP spot, but there are more deserving and electable options out there.

pacino wrote:Yang's campaign is being backed by some 4chana and 8chan trolls because of UBI and the way he tweets

not a fan of a Silicon Valley guy in the race that has been slyly courting the alt right

Soren wrote:would love to see the mental math on how capping how much a student can borrow will lower college costs.

Gimpy wrote:I think there’s a belief that students aren’t picking schools based on price and it’s easy to get student loans to cover the cost of school. So there’s this issue that it allows colleges to drive up tuition because they know that students are willing and will be able to pay it.

If that’s the case, capping how much a student can borrow would make colleges whose tuitions are in that range the only options for many students and since colleges want to attract students, they would need to have tuitions near the cap to be able to get them.

I don’t think that belief would quite work out like that in the real world.

JFLNYC wrote:

Gimpy wrote:I think there’s a belief that students aren’t picking schools based on price and it’s easy to get student loans to cover the cost of school. So there’s this issue that it allows colleges to drive up tuition because they know that students are willing and will be able to pay it.

If that’s the case, capping how much a student can borrow would make colleges whose tuitions are in that range the only options for many students and since colleges want to attract students, they would need to have tuitions near the cap to be able to get them.

I don’t think that belief would quite work out like that in the real world.

I think this is right. It's a poor solution to a real problem.

College loans are an unholy trinity among the government (who make it impossible to discharge the debt in bankruptcy and farm out the loan process to commercial banks), the commercial banks and the colleges. Once the banks realized the debt could not be discharged they were only too happy to loan as much as possible (and continually raise interest rates). Once the colleges saw students could borrow a virtually limitless amount, they were only too happy to raise tuition.

The result is now a generation of Americans who have literally mortgaged their future earnings to get an education so the banks' shareholders and colleges can get richer and richer. It's literally a form of indentured servitude for millions. In addition to the harm done to the students whose income is reduced for years, even decades, it slows the economy by making it more difficult for that generation to buy homes, cars, etc. And, of course, it's another very significant driver of inequality as it shifts wealth from the workers to the investor class. It has made a generation of Americans renters of their own futures.

Capping the amount students can borrow is an attempt to break (or at least slow) the cycle but, as with wage and price controls or trying to limit health insurance premiums, it misses the source of the problem. As with other serious domestic problems (the environment, healthcare, etc.) we've created huge vested interests in the system not changing. As usual the proposed solution doesn't directly address those vested, powerful interests (bank profits, college tuition) but, instead, would force the least powerful interest (i.e., the students) to change their behavior, probably to their detriment.

pacino wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Kirsten Gillibrand @SenGillibrand
I knew that calling on Al Franken to resign was a risk, but silence wasn’t an option. I’m running for president to fight for a country that values women, and I’m ready to share this vision with the American people. Will you give $1 to help us bring our vision to the debate stage?

I feel like Al Franken's fav/unfav with Dem primary voters probably isn't terrible. I guess this can work to get some buzz and raise money, but as a long term play seems not sustainable. Not to say she was wrong.

In general, I just don't get the Gillibrand campaign, why she thought running was a good idea, etc.

And Andrew Yang, who has already qualified for the first debate so is a more serious candidate than Kirsten Gillibrand, came out against circumcision, a very important public policy stance.

I think she's either overplaying the women's angle or she's actually sexist. She has zero chance of winning and I'm glad. I think it's time for this country to have a woman in the Pres or VP spot, but there are more deserving and electable options out there.

my guess is it's more likely that you are the sexist one, monkeyboy

pacino wrote:there was a 100% substantive town hall by Elizabeth Warren last night. So that was cool.

Federal prosecutors used a new law signed by Trump to go after his former fixer Michael Cohen, court filings reveal.

Investigators in the Southern District of New York obtained a search warrant to access Cohen’s Gmail account in February 2018. Google turned over some documents, but the tech giant “declined to produce data that it stored on computer servers located outside of the United States,” according to an affidavit submitted to the court by an FBI agent working on Cohen’s case.

Weeks later, Trump signed the CLOUD Act into law, which gave US law enforcement more legal pathways to pursue data stories overseas. The provision was tucked into the $1.3 trillion spending bill Trump signed to avoid a federal government shutdown.

thephan wrote:

California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes filed a major lawsuit seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages against Twitter and a handful of its users on Monday, accusing the social media site of "shadow-banning conservatives" including himself to influence the 2018 elections, systematically censoring opposing viewpoints and totally "ignoring" lawful complaints of repeated abusive behavior.

It would be hilarious if Nunes accidentally shuttered Trumps twitter horn. FWIW, Twitter is a company and it can do what it wants, just like Fox News does whatever it wants.