> Idk, the Wikipedia link said he approved the patriot act including warrantless wire taps. "As of 2015 the administration's proposals have not been implemented and the NSA retains the authority to collect and store telephone record metadata"
You originally said he expanded warrantless NSA surveillance. He did not. He contracted it in 2010 by stopping email metadata collection, as Snowden's leaks showed, and again in 2015 by stopping phone metadata collection.
> The companies who put their money in the bank uninsured were taking a risk and rather than face any consequence the government decided to swoop in and bail them out.
> Imagine this happening to an individual who had any sort of uninsured catastrophe.
Every company with more than $250k in deposits has uninsured deposits, and any company with Silicon Valley software engineers on its payroll is going to need more than $250k in deposits. The Fed did exactly what you suggested they do in the 2008 case. They guaranteed all deposits. The exact same reasoning for why you supported it in the first case applies to the second (the employees of these startups have to get paid), and there is no complexity from debts being repackaged and sold back and forth because it was all in Treasury bills. An individual with money at SVB would also have their deposits guaranteed.
> My memory of the TPP at the time was that it forced countries to extend copyright to match our draconian measures and let companies sue countries if their laws caused lost profits.
Standardizing on life+70 copyright was a very small part of the agreement. The main thing was that it cut thousands of tariffs. It also required signatories to criminalize bribery of public officials and enforce anti-corruptipn laws, putting US companies on even footing with companies in countries that don't have an FCPA equivalent, and generally improving governance in many countries. It also prohibited child labor and employment discrimination and ensured the right to collective bargaining. ISDS was an enforcement mechanism for all of these, not just IP protection.
> But I don't remember there being any sort of big comeuppance. Obamas financed by the same billionaires as everyone else.
Different billionaires. The healthcare billionaires didn't like the public option.
> For the public option they did have the votes if they were willing to get rid of the filibuster.
No, they did not. Moderate Democrats were against it. Electing a few more Democrats from places without a big health insurance industry presence would have made the public option possible.
> if the problem was the courts, the Democrats had a way to change that but they decided not to and refused to ever even speculate about doing so
They did not have the votes to rewrite the constitution.
Fair enoubh,I'll concede "Expanded" instead of "Maintained" for the NSA.
Re: SVB, I still think its important that the main customers for the bank were companies and not individuals. Particularly that they were evil silicon valley companies. I was rooting for them to go bust for their arrogance and they got bailed out regardless. Better than also bailing out the bank's investors too so it could have been worse.
Re: TPP, I believe you that there's more to it. The hubub I heard about it at the time was mostly on the IP stuff and the power it gave to companies over countries.
I guess the point I stand behind is that he had eight years and accomplished one very compromised insurance bill and not a ton else.
Yes, Obama could have done more with a better congress, and maybe Biden could have passed BBB with one too.
But in general the goal of the Democratic Party seems to be either ignoring or working directly against most agendas I have:
- Ending the police state
- Stopping the genocide in Gaza
- Getting money out of politics
- Reigning in corporations dramatically
- An end to oil
- Equal rights for all
- An end to billionaires
And imo. Obama accomplished very little of that, and didn't even call for half of it.
Neither did Biden.
And while both of them seem to have most of the same agenda as Reagan (free trade, low corporate taxes, no worker protection, trickle down economics, messing with other countries via monetary theory) they're at least a step above the rest of Dem leadership which I consider entirety hostile.
I don't believe Obama would have ended the filibuster or stacked the courts even if given the chance. He never called for it.
You originally said he expanded warrantless NSA surveillance. He did not. He contracted it in 2010 by stopping email metadata collection, as Snowden's leaks showed, and again in 2015 by stopping phone metadata collection.
> The companies who put their money in the bank uninsured were taking a risk and rather than face any consequence the government decided to swoop in and bail them out.
> Imagine this happening to an individual who had any sort of uninsured catastrophe.
Every company with more than $250k in deposits has uninsured deposits, and any company with Silicon Valley software engineers on its payroll is going to need more than $250k in deposits. The Fed did exactly what you suggested they do in the 2008 case. They guaranteed all deposits. The exact same reasoning for why you supported it in the first case applies to the second (the employees of these startups have to get paid), and there is no complexity from debts being repackaged and sold back and forth because it was all in Treasury bills. An individual with money at SVB would also have their deposits guaranteed.
> My memory of the TPP at the time was that it forced countries to extend copyright to match our draconian measures and let companies sue countries if their laws caused lost profits.
Standardizing on life+70 copyright was a very small part of the agreement. The main thing was that it cut thousands of tariffs. It also required signatories to criminalize bribery of public officials and enforce anti-corruptipn laws, putting US companies on even footing with companies in countries that don't have an FCPA equivalent, and generally improving governance in many countries. It also prohibited child labor and employment discrimination and ensured the right to collective bargaining. ISDS was an enforcement mechanism for all of these, not just IP protection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Cont...
> But I don't remember there being any sort of big comeuppance. Obamas financed by the same billionaires as everyone else.
Different billionaires. The healthcare billionaires didn't like the public option.
> For the public option they did have the votes if they were willing to get rid of the filibuster.
No, they did not. Moderate Democrats were against it. Electing a few more Democrats from places without a big health insurance industry presence would have made the public option possible.
> if the problem was the courts, the Democrats had a way to change that but they decided not to and refused to ever even speculate about doing so
They did not have the votes to rewrite the constitution.