Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[JoeKitchen]

But in other news, it looks Joe Biden has no idea what the hell he is doing. 

Anyone have any idea what his covid policy is?  I was told he had a plan, but I am not seeing anything.  On top of that, it is obvious he was bought and paid for the school unions.  All the science says schools should open by just opening, yet he has no balls to stand up the unions. 

Then, two nights ago we learned, from Joe Biden, that if you have a different culture it is okay to perform genocide.  How interesting.  I know many are writing this off as a gaff, but I see it more of an admissions he has no balls to confront anyone. 

And now it is coming out he may be re-engaging in one of the worst foreign policy decisions of the USA with the potential to be the absolute worse of all time, the Iran Nuclear Deal.  How nice.  Even after the Abraham Accords, the left still cant see the flaw in their Middle East Policy.  You would have thought the world would have learned from Chamberlain appeasement does not work with enemies who have not been defeated yet. 

Robert Gates, former Obama official, once said of Biden, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."  Biden really seems like he is really trying to live up to that.

[JoeKitchen]

She is a relative novice in politics, but has shown herself to be a pretty formidable opponent in her first two campaigns. She's also young and may improve her political skills as they mature. Time will tell.

As the say, don't count your chickens before they hatch. Not as colorful as your expression, but it will do.

This is not really true. She ran against someone who spent more time in DC that NY and seemed to be out of touch with his district.  He was an easy target.  Then, she was an incumbent Dem in a 20+ district where a dead guy with D next to his name could win. 

If when she gets drawn out, she will either need to go after Schumer or the incumbent in her new district.  Either is a loosing battle.  Maybe she can primary and beat Schumer, but it is extremely doubtful she win a state wide vote, especially with pushing Amazon away.  She has already developed a lot of baggage, and Schumer is a very skilled politician. 

As LBJ once said, "the difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit."

You got to admit it, LBJ had some great lines!

[TechTalk]

But in other news, it looks Joe Biden has no idea what the hell he is doing. 

Anyone have any idea what his covid policy is?  I was told he had a plan, but I am not seeing anything.

National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness - Warning: This is 200-pages long. It's not a presentation in comic book form prepared for Trump's short attention span.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/2021/01/National-Strategy-for-the-COVID-19-Response-and-Pandemic-Preparedness.pdf

[JoeKitchen]

National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness - Warning: This is 200-pages long. It's not a presentation in comic book form prepared for Trump's short attention span.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/2021/01/National-Strategy-for-the-COVID-19-Response-and-Pandemic-Preparedness.pdf

So, when can we stop wearing masks according to Biden?  Ever?  When can schools re-open?  Ever?  Why are FL and CA, with drastically different approaches, have the same results? 

All questions every one in the administration is circling back to ad infinitum.

[TechTalk]

This is not really true.

Which part of what I posted is not really true? Curious minds want to know and I have a curious mind.

[JoeKitchen]

Which part of what I posted is not really true? Curious minds want to know and I have a curious mind.

That she was a "pretty formidable opponent in her first two campaigns."

Like I said, she went after an easy target her first time around.  Then, she was an incumbent Dem in a district where it is pretty much impossible to lose as an incumbent Dem in the general.   

[TechTalk]

That she was a "pretty formidable opponent in her first two campaigns."

Like I said, she went after an easy target her first time around.  Then, she was an incumbent Dem in a district where it is pretty much impossible to lose as an incumbent Dem in the general.

Her 2018 victory in her first primary was considered a huge upset over a powerful, well entrenched, well connected, well funded, and long-serving incumbent. She was a total newbie and was outspent 18 to 1 ($1.5 million to $83,000). She didn't just squeak by him; she won by nearly 15 points. That strikes me as at least crossing the threshold of being a pretty formidable opponent for a first-timer against a seasoned opponent, especially Joe Crowley. No one had tried to challenge him in a primary since 2004—is there no political ambition in NYC? I mean for such an easy target?

She faced primary opponents on her second run in 2020 and won with 75% of the primary vote. People are free to form their own opinion, as you have, but I'd say what she has done in her first two campaigns gives her some credibility as a pretty formidable campaigner. I don't think any opponent is going to take her lightly as a competitor.

You wouldn't have some bias against AOC creeping into your judgment of her campaigning abilities, would you? C'mon now... be honest. We may disagree on a lot, but I think you're an honest guy—even if you think that I'm a liar (by omission anyway).

[John Camp]

So, when can we stop wearing masks according to Biden?  Ever?  When can schools re-open?  Ever?  Why are FL and CA, with drastically different approaches, have the same results? 

All questions every one in the administration is circling back to ad infinitum.

California and Florida don't have the same results. According to the best numbers I can find, Florida's reported death rate is about 12% higher than California's. You can find the stats on the CDC site. This, of course, doesn't take into account the Florida governor's desperate attempts to suppress reporting of the death rate -- including the firing of the woman who was once in charge of the stats -- which some say is considerably higher than he acknowledges. On the other hand, Florida has a higher percentage of old people, which may have increased their death rate.

[TechTalk]

When can schools re-open?  Ever?

When state and local officials make that determination. Biden isn't in control of that anymore than Trump was; though his administration is working at getting more money and support to schools to aid them in reopening efforts. How long has he been in office now?

Perhaps now that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is gone and no longer diverting coronavirus stabilization funds to private and religious schools, there will be an improvement.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200717193112/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/politics/betsy-devos-coronavirus-religious-schools.html

Refreshingly, Biden's nominee for Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, is actually a respected educator that started as a 4th grade teacher and rose thru the ranks to become Connecticut Commissioner of Education picking up a Ph.D in education along the way. He pushed for school reopening in Connecticut. He received bipartisan support for his nomination in his senate committee hearing (17-5). Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the committee’s ranking Republican, also voted for Cardona, citing his experience and priorities.“He’s stressed the need for students to be back in school, and that’s now, finally, a bipartisan mission,” Burr said of Cardona. I would expect his confirmation by the Senate soon.

Washington Post - Feb. 2, 2021: In Connecticut, Miguel Cardona led a full-court press for schools to reopen

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/:https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/cardona-education-secretary-schools-reopen/2021/02/01/

Last summer, as school districts across America were nervously considering whether to pry open the school doors for part-time learning, Miguel Cardona was in Connecticut, pushing districts hard to return five days a week.

Through a combination of pressure and cajoling, along with an open line of communication, Cardona saw all but one school district in his state adopt some flavor of in-person education in the fall, reopening school buildings even as teachers across Connecticut staged noisy protests and districts across the country remained online only.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/02/962050863/education-pick-miguel-cardona-is-new-to-washington-but-not-to-classrooms

It could be that Biden had an idea what he was doing in choosing a Secretary of Education, but I don't want to influence your opinion.

[TechTalk]

As LBJ once said, "the difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit."

You got to admit it, LBJ had some great lines!

LBJ on loyalty: "I don't want loyalty. I want loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket."

[jeremyrh]

Message from Alan's wife - please stop talking about AOC, the old boy's getting worked up and bothering her while she's trying to catch up with her soaps.

Thank you.

[Alan Klein]

I did. You might try reading the parts that I underlined. Amazon made an initial decision to locate 25,000 tech jobs in NYC and changed their minds. Political opposition was part of the decision to re-evaluate, but not the only one. AOC opposed the multibillion dollar NYC tax incentive, but the article makes clear that tax incentives were not the motivating factor in their decision. Virginia's tax incentive was far less at $750 million. A pipeline of tech talent was key.

They decided it was a "more manageable process" to have one large HQ in Virginia and distribute the remainder to "the company’s 17 existing tech hubs". Seems like a logical choice as it is no doubt easier to collect the needed talent in several locations than in just one. The tech talent they seek can be added a thousand or two or three thousand in each of several regions more quickly from a broader geographic base by expanding existing facilities. Though not mentioned in the article, some tech talent might be reluctant to move to NYC or far from family and friends. Sounds like a sound business decision on their part.

I know that you're itching to make it an entirely political matter and to blame AOC, but it's more complex than that. She no doubt played a role in the political portion with her tax incentive objection, but that's only one act in the play and she was only one actor out of an entire cast of characters.

Sorry if it's more complicated than you would like to make it.

Arguing about labor pools as a reason only makes sense if they never selected NYC.  But they spent over a year analyzing all these things, all the different cities, and where labor would come from, tax breaks, etc., and decided in favor of NYC.  It was only after the political firestorm led by AOC hit them after it was publicly announced in NYC's favor, that they reversed their decision. 

[Alan Klein]

I thought that you believed it's a mistake to let governments pick winners and losers. So governments should never give tax breaks/incentives/holidays/deals to anybody.

Anyway, I don't understand your problem. If Amazon decided to not build in NY, that just means they built somewhere else. That other place, it's American too, and the people working in that place are Americans. So what's the problem. Why are you trying to create friction between two areas of the same country? What purpose does that serve?

We were discussing how AOC hurt the very people she represents for political gain rather than being concerned about their economic well-being.  She also hurt NY and NYC in general.  Amazon tech facilities would be a boon to NY which had been trying to diversify into the tech industry as competition to California's Silicon Valley.  Especially now because of Covid, NYC is hurting.  The loss of Amazon and those jobs hurts more.  When she runs for NY Senator, New Yorkers won't forget. 

[Alan Klein]

I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I don't believe that the "tax incentives" were money out of NY's pocket -- they were tax reductions that Amazon would have received had they located their headquarters there. NY would not have paid the company anything, but they wouldn't have hit the company as hard with taxes as they might have without the reduction agreement. Overall, it meant a very large tax loss for New York -- the income taxes that would have been paid by 25,000 workers. (Although I suppose many of those workers already had jobs of some kind.) Again, I may be remembering this incorrectly, but when "unions" are included among the objectors to the Amazon plan, that might be overstating it -- some unions might have had a problem, but I seem to remember that some other unions were extremely upset by the loss of the jobs that the Amazon campus would have created.

Workers would pay NYS and NYC income taxes as well as federal Social Security and Medicare taxes. Those cannot and were not waived.  What was waived to a certain extent were corporate taxes of different sorts.  That was the argument against Amazon. That the City and State would lose those taxes.  However, by not moving to NYC, NY loses those taxes anyway.   100% of nothing is still nothing.  The state can't tax a company that isn;t there. What the City and State did lose were the 25, 000 jobs, all that new construction, all the associate jobs created by the Amazon Campus, a huge seed of technology growth into NY.  It also would gain from employee taxes and other industry jobs created by the Campus.  It was a win-win for Amazon and NY.

[Alan Klein]

Actually... One final post on the subject with comments that I intended to make earlier...

In addition to the objection to the tax incentive, the impact on current residents was another concern expressed by AOC and other politicians. They are indeed her constituents which she was elected to represent. The concern was how many of the relatively poor residents would actually benefit from new tech employment opportunities versus the impact on existing housing and increases in the cost to the residents already living there. There was a legitimate question about massive new building and new employees coming from outside the area displacing current housing and the impact on housing costs.

It appears the constituents she represents were not unhappy based on her election results after the decision was made. She attended a community meeting with constituents after Amazon's decision to explain her concerns and answer questions. One the concerns she expressed and shared by some residents was how much of what Amazon proposed wound be an investment benefitting the existing community as opposed to replacing the existing community.

After Amazon canceled the Queens HQ2 project, they signed a lease for a huge million square foot warehouse in Queens near the site of the canceled HQ2. It may prove to be more beneficial to the residents that already live there than the HQ2 project.

https://www.amny.com/news/amazon-signs-lease-for-massive-warehouse-in-queens

Amazon signed a lease for a massive 1-million-square-foot warehouse in Maspeth, not far from where the e-commerce giant had planned to build its HQ2 campus in Long Island City.

The facility is currently under construction at 55-15 Grand Ave., which was home to the old Cascades Containerboard factory.

“We are excited to increase our investment in the New York City area with a new delivery station that will provide fast and efficient deliveries and create hundreds of job opportunities for the talented local workforce,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

While the new delivery station won’t bring 25,000 jobs that Amazon vowed to create at the scuttled HQ2 campus along Anable Basin, the Maspeth facility will offer entrepreneurs the opportunity to build their own business delivering Amazon packages, as well as independent contractors the flexibility to be their own boss and create their own schedule delivering for Amazon Flex.

No. They decided on what they called a more manageable plan expanding seventeen existing tech hubs.

A warehouse does not get you 25,000 jobs. A couple of thousand maybe.  Mainly low-tech, low paying jobs.  On the other hand, an Amazon Tech Campus would have brought in 25,000 jobs many high paying.  I would also create many lower-paying support jobs.  Buildings have to be cleaned and maintained, sidewalks swept and snow removed.  It would bring in small vendors selling food from carts helping smaller entrepreneurs. It would upgrade the neighborhoods helping the poorer people as well. Today, in some of the previously worse neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, little homes go for over $600k and up in minority neighborhoods.  Comparing a warehouse with people moving boxes around to a technical facility of 25,000 is no comparison. NYC is great because it's the best in finance, communications, advertising, theater, museums, restaurants, etc.  It didn't get that way with warehouses.  It missed out on a big chance to bring in tech, something it's not known for.

[Alan Klein]

Amazon’s HQ2 deal with New York, explained

https://ny.curbed.com/2018/11/16/amazon-hq2-nyc-queens-long-island-city-explained

The agreement comes with a number of incentives: Specifically, Amazon will receive $897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) and $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP). It will receive an additional $505 million in a capital grant and $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits if its job creation goals are met. That brings the total amount of public funds granted to $2.988 billion—in other words, the city and state will pay Amazon $48,000 per job.

Half the grants are part of the government's regular granting to any business that moves to NYC.  It wasn't granted to Amazon in particular.  The remaining specific grants for Amazon as part of the negotiations to get them to move to NYC would quickly be paid back by the taxes and business generated by their move.  It was a win-win for everyone except the politicians who opposed it.   

[Alan Klein]

But in other news, it looks Joe Biden has no idea what the hell he is doing. 

Anyone have any idea what his covid policy is?  I was told he had a plan, but I am not seeing anything.  On top of that, it is obvious he was bought and paid for the school unions.  All the science says schools should open by just opening, yet he has no balls to stand up the unions. 

Then, two nights ago we learned, from Joe Biden, that if you have a different culture it is okay to perform genocide.  How interesting.  I know many are writing this off as a gaff, but I see it more of an admissions he has no balls to confront anyone. 

And now it is coming out he may be re-engaging in one of the worst foreign policy decisions of the USA with the potential to be the absolute worse of all time, the Iran Nuclear Deal.  How nice.  Even after the Abraham Accords, the left still cant see the flaw in their Middle East Policy.  You would have thought the world would have learned from Chamberlain appeasement does not work with enemies who have not been defeated yet. 

Robert Gates, former Obama official, once said of Biden, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."  Biden really seems like he is really trying to live up to that.

Unfortunately, the left and Democrats refuse to credit Trump with anything, even if it was the right thing to do.  So they want to reverse everything he did in a knee-jerk reaction, rather than seeing if his policies made sense and then keeping them if they do. I do think that Biden is trying to walking a fine line there.  For example, he seems to maintaining the pressure in the South China Sea.  He's put off changing tariffs on China.  But I agree some of his other reversal policies will just hurt America and make the world more dangerous.

Putting troops back into Germany has told our NATO partners there it's OK to not keep their financial agreements on defense, again shifting more of the military burden and cost to the US.  Sitting down with Iran will put us back where we were and encourage them to be more aggressive in the Middle East and developing nuclear.  You know Biden's going to drop trade restrictions on them.  His shutting down the XL pipeline loses high-paying jobs for Americans just when we need them.  Shutting down fossil fuel exploration and fracking will raise the price of gas at the pump.  It will raise the cost of everything for Americans including food production and other products just at a time when we're broke.  We lost other 800K+ jobs last week. 

He must be getting economic advice from AOC. 

[Alan Klein]

National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness - Warning: This is 200-pages long. It's not a presentation in comic book form prepared for Trump's short attention span.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/2021/01/National-Strategy-for-the-COVID-19-Response-and-Pandemic-Preparedness.pdf

It's Trump's Warp Speed that's getting my wife and me our second Covid shot today.

[Robert Roaldi]

Here's an interesting phenomenon, a support group on Reddit for spouses of Q-cultists: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/19/qanon-conspiracy-theory-family-members-reddit-forum-469485. It it walks like a cult and talks like a cult...

[Robert Roaldi]

On another note, I am glad to see that political discussion about Biden is in the realm of whether his policies are sensible or not or whether or not they're working. The usual political argy-bargy, in other words. Makes a change from the daily dose of insanity of the last 4-5 years.