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<font size="+1">Here is a response to Paul Krugman's opinion in the
NYTimes today 8 April 2016:<br>
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The commentator is Cenk Uygur, host of TYT, The Young Turks, on
tytnetwork.com and a frequent contributor of videos to YouTube. <br>
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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEcD6At9Ytk&nohtml5=False">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEcD6At9Ytk&nohtml5=False</a> <br>
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Time Length: 8:51<br>
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<br>
Ken<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 4/8/2016 2:48 PM, Nicholas Gier
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAH=vCc6Vap+KwYog9XOt1Cg8zigkCrXrHViDX8Lm=iZLu5NDtg@mail.gmail.com"
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<div>"The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and
energy that the progressive movement needs. It has also,
however, brought out a streak of petulant selfrighteousness
among some supporters. Has it brought out that streak in the
candidate, too?" <br>
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NYTimes The Opinion Pages | OPED COLUMNIST
Sanders Over the Edge
Paul Krugman APRIL 8, 2016
<div><br>
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<div>From the beginning, many and probably most liberal policy
wonks were
skeptical about Bernie Sanders. On many major issues —
including the
signature issues of his campaign, especially financial reform
— he seemed to
go for easy slogans over hard thinking. And his political
theory of change, his
waving away of limits, seemed utterly unrealistic. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Some Sanders supporters responded angrily when these
concerns were
raised, immediately accusing anyone expressing doubts about
their hero of
being corrupt if not actually criminal. But intolerance and
cultishness from
some of a candidate’s supporters are one thing; what about the
candidate
himself?
Unfortunately, in the past few days the answer has become all
too clear:
Mr. Sanders is starting to sound like his worst followers.
Bernie is becoming a
Bernie Bro. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Let me illustrate the point about issues by talking about
bank reform.
The easy slogan here is “Break up the big banks.” It’s obvious
why this
slogan is appealing from a political point of view: Wall
Street supplies an
excellent cast of villains. But were big banks really at the
heart of the financial
crisis, and would breaking them up protect us from future
crises?
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Many analysts concluded years ago that the answers to
both questions
were no. Predatory lending was largely carried out by
smaller, nonWall Street
institutions like Countrywide Financial; the crisis itself
was centered not on
big banks but on “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers that
weren’t
necessarily that big. And the financial reform that
President Obama signed in
2010 made a real effort to address these problems. It could
and should be
made stronger, but pounding the table about big banks misses
the point.
Yet going on about big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders
has done. On
the rare occasions on which he was asked for more detail, he
didn’t seem to
have anything more to offer. And this absence of substance
beyond the slogans
seems to be true of his positions across the board. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>You could argue that policy details are unimportant as
long as a politician
has the right values and character. As it happens, I don’t
agree. For one thing,
a politician’s policy specifics are often a very important
clue to his or her true
character — I warned about George W. Bush’s mendacity back
when most
journalists were still portraying him as a bluff, honest
fellow, because I
actually looked at his tax proposals. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>For another, I consider a commitment to
facing hard choices as opposed to taking the easy way out an
important value
in itself.
But in any case, the way Mr. Sanders is now campaigning
raises serious
character and values issues.
It’s one thing for the Sanders campaign to point to Hillary
Clinton’s Wall
Street connections, which are real, although the question
should be whether
they have distorted her positions, a case the campaign has
never even tried to
make. But recent attacks on Mrs. Clinton as a tool of the
fossil fuel industry are
just plain dishonest, and speak of a campaign that has lost
its ethical
moorings. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>And then there was Wednesday’s rant about how Mrs.
Clinton is not
“qualified” to be president. What probably set that off was
a recent interview of Mr. Sanders by The
Daily News, in which he repeatedly seemed unable to respond
when pressed to
go beyond his usual slogans. Mrs. Clinton, asked about that
interview, was
careful in her choice of words, suggesting that “he hadn’t
done his homework.”
But Mr. Sanders wasn’t careful at all, declaring that what
he considers
Mrs. Clinton’s past sins, including her support for trade
agreements and her
vote to authorize the Iraq war — for which she has
apologized — make her
totally unfit for office. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This is really bad, on two levels. Holding people
accountable for their past
is O.K., but imposing a standard of purity, in which any
compromise or
misstep makes you the moral equivalent of the bad guys,
isn’t. Abraham
Lincoln didn’t meet that standard; neither did F.D.R. Nor,
for that matter, has
Bernie Sanders (think guns).
And the timing of the Sanders rant was truly astonishing.
Given her large
lead in delegates — based largely on the support of
AfricanAmerican voters,
who respond to her pragmatism because history tells them to
distrust
extravagant promises — Mrs. Clinton is the strong favorite
for the Democratic
nomination.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Is Mr. Sanders positioning himself to join the “Bernie or
bust” crowd,
walking away if he can’t pull off an extraordinary upset,
and possibly helping
put Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the White House? If not,
what does he think
he’s doing?
The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and
energy that
the progressive movement needs. It has also, however,
brought out a streak of
petulant selfrighteousness among some supporters. Has it
brought out that
streak in the candidate, too? <br>
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<div><span style="font-size:13.3333px">A
society grows great when old men
plant trees whose shade they know
they shall never sit in. </span><br
style="font-size:13.3333px">
<br style="font-size:13.3333px">
<span style="font-size:13.3333px">-Greek
proverb</span></div>
<div><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence
from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use
one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is
self- imposed when its cause lies
not in lack of understanding, but in
lack of resolve and courage to use
it without guidance from another.
Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use
your own understand-ing!—that is the
motto of enlightenment.<br>
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--Immanuel Kant<br>
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