In an op-ed in the Washington Post Elizabeth Warren presents her to-do list to an incoming Biden Administration:
As Democrats celebrate the election of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris, we need to have an important conversation about building a 50-state party that can win up and down the ticket. But with a hobbled economy, an international health crisis, a vanishing middle class and widespread racial inequities, we also need to answer another important question — how to deliver on our campaign promises and improve the lives of the American people.
I think she must have missed the last election. Voters were either voting for or against Trump; the results of the election are more that Trump lost than that Biden won. And for every ballot initiative favored by progressives that were approved by voters there was at least one that was shot down including in Deep Blue California. Not to mention J. B. Pritzker’s “Fair Tax”.
She opens her list with things that President-Elect Biden has already pledged to do:
The president-elect has already committed to reentering the Paris Climate Accord, reinstating DACA and ending the travel ban against certain Muslim countries.
I think that reentering the Paris Climate Accord is something between meaningless and counterproductive; I think that the Congress should enact a version of DACA and that the SCOTUS decided wrongly in keeping President Obama’s executive order in place; I think that the “travel ban” is partly symbolic and partly practical. We should maintain travel restrictions WRT Saudi Arabia. In particular state-sponsored Wahhabi clerics should not be allowed to emigrate to the U. S.
Here are some of the other items on her list. I have taken the liberty of highlighting those with which I agree in green and those with which I disagree in red:
- Cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt
- Institute command pricing on “key drugs like insulin, naloxone, hepatitis C drugs and EpiPens”, nationalizing their patents
- Issue enforceable OSHA health and safety standards for covid-19. Specifics?
- Raise the minimum wage for all federal contractors to $15 an hour.
- Establish a Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force by collecting and reporting covid-19 data and reviewing racial disparities in pandemic funding. While I agree with this I do think it needs a closely-specified charter.
- Declare the climate crisis a national emergency
- Prioritize strong anti-monopoly protections and enforcement. Specifics?
I find the authoritarian cast of a number of her ideas alarming. I guess it does tell you the direction in which the wind is blowing.
“Prioritize strong anti-monopoly protections and enforcement” does perk my eye as well.
Republicans have grown far more skeptical of “big tech” and big companies in general; so there is a basis for bipartisan cooperation.
On the other hand; Biden’s transition team is staffed with lots of folks from big tech, a lot of staff from the Obama administration now work in big tech, and big tech was a huge source of funds for the democrats.
They should allow competitive bidding by Medicare for drugs. That would give us a large decrease in costs. Most Republicans will oppose it but I think there is a chance at this point some might support it.
Steve
What is the status of the climate crisis?
Would Kommissar Kamala want to increase taxation to reduce increase in CO2?
That’s a fairly conservative radical position.
What I hear lately is that warm and dry summers due to past climate change lead to more fires. Past being 20 years ago.
What’s done is done.
So will she command climate engineering and control?
A Manhattan project, undefined and open ended, justified by a national state of emergency?
Is it any wonder gun sales are hot?
USA Today:
‘Past a point of no return’: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero still won’t stop global warming, study says
or, said another way, giving free passes to the countries increasing their emissions the most is, was, and always has been an error.
My point is, this is the new administration signaling their intent to dramatically increase executive power under pretense of a vague and unprovable threat, which has the advantage of having no discernable endpoint.
Is this what Americans voted for?
No. The actual plan is that we will kill all of the conservatives in the country and cut CO2 emissions by half. Win-win.
Ok, now that I have countered your stupid far reaching claims with one just as stupid, what we should be talking about is a larger emphasis on research and looking to scale down prices on alternatives. Those are already way down and in places wind and/or solar are the cheapest options. Solve the technology and engineering issues and other countries will adopt them also if they are cheaper, more flexible and environmentally friendly.
Steve