12
   

Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

 
 
blatham
 
  2  
Reply Wed 14 Aug, 2024 05:06 pm
@izzythepush,
Yes indeed.
blatham
 
  2  
Reply Wed 14 Aug, 2024 05:07 pm
Quote:
Big Swing: The latest update to the Cook Political Report Swing State Project Survey shows Kamala Harris leading or tied with Donald Trump in all but one of the seven swing states surveyed. Harris leads Trump 48%-47% in the seven states (AZ, GA, MI, NV, NC, PA, and WI) combined. In the last iteration of the survey, in May, Trump was ahead of or tied with Biden in all seven states and led by three points overall.
TPM
Region Philbis
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Aug, 2024 05:09 pm
@blatham,

gonna be a https://i.postimg.cc/1zS3XPnk/yes-oh.gif come november...
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Wed 14 Aug, 2024 05:10 pm
@blatham,
Speaking of which this is a leaflet from the National Front in the 1970s. (The National Front were renamed the British National Party (BNP) nin the 1980s)

Doesn't it look familiar.

https://i0.wp.com/the70s80s90s.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/img_1635.jpg?resize=640%2C1533&ssl=1
hingehead
 
  2  
Reply Wed 14 Aug, 2024 08:56 pm
Not Biden, but contemporary

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/26/5e/e0/265ee09a1bd3b5e1944b6aedda949364.jpg
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  2  
Reply Wed 14 Aug, 2024 09:30 pm
@Region Philbis,
That is my hope.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  2  
Reply Wed 14 Aug, 2024 09:31 pm
@izzythepush,
Wow. Pretty much identical.
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  3  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 03:37 am
Quote:
The July report for consumer prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which came out today, showed that prices rose less than 3% in the previous twelve months. Core inflation has fallen to its lowest rate since April 2021. For well over a year, wages have grown faster than inflation.

President Joe Biden cheered the news but added in a statement, “Prices are still too high. Large corporations are sitting on record profits and not doing enough to lower prices. That’s why we are taking on Big Pharma to lower prescription drug prices. We’re cutting red tape to build more homes while taking on corporate landlords that unfairly increase rent. And we’re taking on price gouging and junk fees to lower everyday costs from groceries to air travel.”

When a reporter asked Biden if the U.S. has beaten inflation, Biden answered: “Yes, Yes, Yes. I told you we were going to have a soft landing…. My policies are working. Start writing that way.”

Just yesterday, the administration announced $100 million worth of investments in new housing in the form of grants to state and local governments to spur the production of new housing. Kriston Capps of Bloomberg reports that “more housing units are under construction now than at any point in half a century—some 60,000 multifamily units were completed in June alone—and rents are stabilizing in some areas as a result.”

Single-family home construction is slower, and with Senate Republicans having blocked a $78 billion tax deal that would support housing tax credits that promote the construction of housing, the White House is finding other ways to spur housing construction.

On Monday the White House continued its attempt to protect the interests of consumers after years in which they lost ground. Continuing to combat junk fees, it proposed rules to fight back against “all the ways that corporations—through excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people’s days and degrade their quality of life.”

Companies deliberately design processes to be burdensome in order to deter people from getting a refund or a rebate, or canceling a membership or a subscription. Those frustrations waste money and time, the administration said, and after listing some of its own proposals for making it easier to navigate ending subscriptions or activating insurance coverage, it invited Americans to submit their own on a public portal.

In a speech on Friday in North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to take on the issue of price gouging by large corporations. Researchers for U.K. think tanks Institute for Public Policy Research and Common Wealth found in late 2023 that profiteering, or “greedflation,” “significantly” boosted prices, leading to increases of 30% or more in corporate profits. “Excessive profits were even larger in the US, where many important sections of the economy are dominated by a few powerful companies,” wrote Phillip Inman of The Guardian.

Responding to today’s news that inflation is coming down, the stock market ticked up in expectation that the Fed will now be more likely to cut interest rates in September.

The White House took notice today of the fact that applications for small businesses continue to boom across the country, with 19 million new business applications since Vice President Harris and President Biden took office, an annual growth rate 90% higher than prepandemic averages. The White House also noted that congressional Republicans are trying to cut the Small Business Administration and to cut taxes for big corporations.

Politico greeted today’s economic news with a headline saying, “Inflation is easing. Now, Harris has an even bigger problem with the economy.” And the New York Times reported that in a speech in North Carolina, “Harris Is Set to Lay Out an Economic Message Light on Details,” adding that she is expected to tweak Biden administration themes “in a bid to turn the Democratic economic agenda into an asset.”

The United States economy under Biden and Harris has been the strongest in the world, and now that inflation seems to be under control as well, Harris needs to turn that record “into an asset”? Political journalist James Fallows wrote: “Now they are all just trolling us.”

The Biden-Harris administration has changed the orientation of the United States government from relying on markets to order society and protecting the interests of wealthy Americans in the expectation that they would invest in the economy more efficiently than they could if the government interfered by protecting workers and consumers. Biden and Harris, along with the cabinet officers and staff of the executive branch, revived an older ideology calling for the government to promote the interests of the American people as a whole. This means regulating business and providing government services and oversight to make sure no interest can run the table.

What the two different worldviews look like was on display earlier this month, when Republicans and a few Democrats in the Senate killed a bipartisan expansion of the child tax credit, a tax break for parents with dependent children. A hike in that credit during the pandemic cut child poverty dramatically, only for that rate to bounce back when the pandemic relief expired and dropped five million U.S. children back into poverty in 2022. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that the change “underscores the fact that the number of children living in poverty is a policy choice.”

On January 31, 2024, the House passed an expansion of the child tax credit that was smaller than the one in place during the pandemic, and Republican vice presidential hopeful Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who has been criticized for comments about “childless cat ladies,” seemed to support the measure when he said, “If you’re raising children in this country, we should make it easier, not harder. And unfortunately it’s way too expensive and way too difficult.” He then falsely accused Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris of calling for ending the child tax credit (she has actually called for expanding it).

But Vance missed the vote, and before it, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told colleagues that passing the bill would “give Harris a win before the election.” According to Chabeli Carranzana of The 19th, Tillis “printed out fake checks made out to ‘millions of American voters’ with the memo: ‘Don’t forget to vote for Kamala!’”

The two different worldviews were also on display Monday night when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump complimented X owner Elon Musk for firing workers who threatened to strike. The right to strike is protected under federal labor law, and the Biden-Harris administration has stood firmly for workers’ rights.

On Tuesday the United Auto Workers union filed charges against Trump and Musk with the National Labor Relations Board for threatening and intimidating workers. “When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean,” said UAW president Shawn Fain.

Tonight, Trump gave a speech in Asheville, North Carolina, that was supposed to be about the economy. Before he could appear, Trump had to pay the city $82,247.60 in advance, with city officials apparently concerned about the candidate’s habit of skipping out on costs associated with his rallies. Once on stage, he tossed economic issues overboard and concentrated on personal attacks on Biden and Harris, along with stream-of-consciousness musings on tampons and socialism. Apparently speaking of his campaign aides, he said: They wanted to do a speech on the economy. They say it’s the most important subject. I’m not sure it is.”

The era of unfettered markets and the concentration of wealth may be coming to an end. In late July, the finance leaders of the Group of 20 (G20), a forum of the world’s major economies, agreed to cooperate on fair taxation of "ultra-high-net-worth individuals,” although they did not agree as to whichinternational body should lead.

But yesterday, Joe Perticone of The Bulwark noted that MAGA Republicans appear to have figured out a way to use the struggle over the nation’s economic ideology to elect Trump.

The House recessed in late July having failed to pass a single one of the 12 appropriations bills the government needs to stay in operation because, although the appropriations bills are traditionally kept “clean” of anything extraneous, extremist members of the House Freedom Caucus insist on making extreme cuts and adding their culture war items to the bills. Congress doesn’t reconvene until early September, and the new fiscal year starts on October 1, leaving the House very little time to pass the necessary bills.

Yesterday, members of the House Freedom Caucus called for Republicans to return to Washington, D.C., to pass the bills “to cut spending and advance our policy priorities.” If they can’t pass the bills—and they failed all spring—the extremists want a short-term fix just into “President Trump’s second term.” But they also want the fix to include the SAVE Act, “as called for by President Trump—to prevent noncitizens from voting [and] to preserve free and fair elections in light of the millions of illegal aliens imported by the Biden-Harris administration over the last four years.”

It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. As Perticone notes, Trump’s own 2017 commission to find evidence that undocumented immigrants voted in 2016 disbanded without finding any, and another audit, led by Georgia Republicans before the 2022 midterms, found not a single successful attempt of noncitizens to vote in the previous five years.

Perticone reports that the measure is designed to suppress legitimate Democratic voting and, if Trump still loses, by claiming that Trump lost, again, because the election was stolen by illegal voters.

Trump continues to insist that Biden’s replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket was a “coup,” partly because he wants to face off against Biden, rather than Harris. But he also is priming his supporters to believe that those Americans who want the government to work for them rather than the very wealthy are illegitimate.

hcr
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 06:17 am
A Russian court on Thursday sentenced the US-Russian dual national Ksenia Khavana to 12 years in prison on a treason conviction for allegedly raising money for the Ukrainian military.

The rights group the First Department said the charges stemmed from a $51 (£40) donation to a US charity that helps Ukraine.

Russia’s federal security service said she “proactively collected money in the interests of one of the Ukrainian organisations, which was subsequently used to purchase tactical medical supplies, equipment, weapons, and ammunition for the Ukrainian armed forces”. (The Guardian)

Since Lash recently wrote:
Reminds me of the stalwart leftists here, attempting to discredit various sources, by using very suspect sources to do so.
here's the TASS report
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 06:52 am
@Walter Hinteler,
For many years, Vladimir Putin was a welcome guest in the West. The Financial Times now reports that Russia was preparing for a possible conflict as early as 2008. And apparently practised attacks on targets in Europe.

The newspaper cites a total of 29 secret Russian military files to which it gained access through Western sources. These were compiled between 2008 and 2014, long before the start of the invasion of Ukraine and apparently also to a large extent before the annexation of Crimea in early 2014.

According to the Financial Times, the documents reveal plans for ‘a series of massive attacks throughout Western Europe’. They include, for example, target lists for missiles that can carry either conventional warheads or tactical nuclear weapons. It is not clear from the publication how an attack would ultimately be carried out. However, the paper writes that Russian officers emphasised the advantages of the early use of nuclear weapons in the documents.

The documents also indicate that Russia has retained the ability to transport nuclear weapons on surface ships, the report continues. Experts see this as an additional risk of escalation and accidents. Thanks to its manoeuvrable navy, the country is in a position to carry out ‘sudden and pre-emptive strikes’ and ‘massive missile attacks from various directions’, according to the documents. The option of a so-called demonstration strike, i.e. the detonation of a nuclear weapon in a remote area for intimidation purposes, is also discussed in the files.


Russian navy trained to target sites inside Europe with nuclear-capable missiles


The publication is also controversial because Russia had a very different standing in the eyes of the world between 2008 and 2014 than it does today. From 2008 to 2012, Dmitry Medvedev, who was considered comparatively liberal at the time, served as president, and the country was still a member of the G8 until the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 12:11 pm
I know the announcement on prescription pricing is supposed to be good news, but I still find it shocking.

Some of the examples given,

Eliquis, for blood clots, list price US$521, reduced price US$231.

Imbruvica, for blood cancers, list price US$14934, reduced price US$9319.

I deliberately chose the cheapest and most expensive examples given.

It does look good, but over here prescription charges are a flat UK£9.90 per item, and that's for people who have to pay. The disabled, people on benefits, people over 60 and cancer patients all get their prescriptions for free.
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 12:30 pm
@izzythepush,
izzythepush wrote:
It does look good, but over here prescription charges are a flat UK£9.90 per item, and that's for people who have to pay. The disabled, people on benefits, people over 60 and cancer patients all get their prescriptions for free.
Here, in Germany, for prescription drugs, patients with statutory health insurance are usually required to contribute a co-payment of 10 percent per pack, subject to a minimum of 5 euros. The upper limit is 10 euros.
If the drug costs less than 5 euros, the full price is covered by the patient themselves. Medication for children under 18 years of age and medication to be taken in conjunction with pregnancy or birth are also available without co-payment. In addition, statutory health insurance funds may also exempt a range of low-priced drugs from co-payment. These are referred to as “co-payment-exempt”.
If an individual’s co-payments exceed a certain portion of their annual income (1% or 2%), they are eligible for exemption from additional co-payments.
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 12:31 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
That's not a lot different from here.
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  3  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 12:34 pm
@izzythepush,
izzythepush wrote:


I know the announcement on prescription pricing is supposed to be good news, but I still find it shocking.

Some of the examples given,

Eliquis, for blood clots, list price US$521, reduced price US$231.

Imbruvica, for blood cancers, list price US$14934, reduced price US$9319.

I deliberately chose the cheapest and most expensive examples given.

It does look good, but over here prescription charges are a flat UK£9.90 per item, and that's for people who have to pay. The disabled, people on benefits, people over 60 and cancer patients all get their prescriptions for free.


The way you have it is the way it should be for any civilized, intelligent society. But here in the US, the American conservatives are neither...and because of the way our Constitution is written, the American conservatives wield an inordinate amount of the power.

We will eventually get there. Trump is helping our cause by showing that element to be what it actually is...buffoons.
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 12:46 pm
@Frank Apisa,
I was genuinely shocked when I saw how much you had to pay, I knew it was a lot, but I never realised how high it actually is.
0 Replies
 
tsarstepan
 
  4  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 12:49 pm
@Frank Apisa,
Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal wrote:

“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Source from 2009
MAGA-ism defined in a single sentence.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  3  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 01:01 pm
@Frank Apisa,
My personal example:
Last year I had a robot-assisted total prostate operation, this year a robot-assisted kidney carcinoma (benign), then 40 radiotherapy sessions as radiotherapy and accompanying chemotherapy.
I paid 10 euros/day for the hospital stay (i.e. for 6 days each) and twice 10 euros for injections (outpatient), one would otherwise cost around 700 euros. That was for all and everything.

In November I'm going to have a three-week rehab programme in a clinic (unfortunately there are extremely long waiting times), where I also went last year: everything is totally free of charge, including a transport service there and back (130 km).

Edit: I pay 80 euros/month for my health insurance (is automatically deducted from my pension).
2nd edit: if I was still working, I would have got sick-pay (100% of my salary) for six weeks from my health insurance, afterwards for 72 weeks 70% of my salary (but not more than 120.75 euro per calendar day).
neptuneblue
 
  2  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 03:55 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
I pay $365.75 for Trelegy Ellipta, after a $200 discount from the manufacturer. Without insurance ($461.22 family plan per month) or the discount (only available after the first three months of the year, it's $731.34. Just to breathe every day. It's crazy and since there's no generic equivalent, that's what I'm stuck paying every month until I retire.
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Thu 15 Aug, 2024 10:44 pm
@neptuneblue,
That sounds really crazy (is 7,96 euros here).
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Fri 16 Aug, 2024 01:43 am
@Walter Hinteler,
It's shocking.
0 Replies
 
 

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