Biden calls for ban on congressional stock trading
Right when he's completely useless, he pushes for this. Pathetic and disingenuous.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-congress-stock-trading-ban-dd9a17d7ea96a8f3a4705ebe1504c72dOpen linkView original on lemmy.world817
Comments121
Little fucking late, Joey.
Lol what's this from?
Dumb and Dumber!
Am I old?!
Thought it was Ace Ventura purely bc body movement so distinct!
No Hawaiian shirt. That's the dead giveaway
Good call!
Honestly everyone in my friend group loved that movie but I never got around to watching it, so for what it's worth imo it's less that you're old and more that I'm uncultured 😋
Back when it was up for debate and the party had the numbers....
I fucking hate how moderates waste the time for action, ignore everyone spending years demanding action...
Then turn around like that fucking pulp fiction meme asking why no one has thought to do the thing we've spent years telling them to do once there's no time.
At best they're completely incompetent, at worst they're not as dumb as a box of rocks and are just incredibly incompetent. Whatever the reason, we can do better. We have to do better.
I agree, but we won't.
Don't paint people who are against polarization with the same brush as incumbent old cash grabbing power hogs.
This is a class struggle and poor people on either side of the political isle get played against each other like a fucking Stradivarius. Poor and middle class (what's left of it) should unite, rather than fight each other.
Unite behind whom? The fascist that hates them openly, or the "moderate" that will preserve the status quo set by the previous fascist?
Well both of those are upper class and hence antagonistic. A leader of the people.
Well, we don't ever get better options.
You're days away from the end of your entire run and now we grow morals.
This is like those old racist folks on their death beds trying to make amends to anyone and everyone in their final days.
You just never looked into what they're really doing, and for some reason media isn't keen on reporting all the good proposals and legislations they were doing, I wonder why.
This administration was the best one in centuries, both in terms of legislation and in terms of administrative work. The only question they aren't good on is Palestine, and incidentally it's the only thing that media suddenly cares about, I wonder why(2).
Oh come on, don't give these sandbagging stooges more credit than they deserve. The only reason what you're saying doesn't sound quite as batshit insane as it should is that we haven't had a government that prioritizes the working class even close to as much as the rich since WWII. Biden isn't terrible compared to his peers but his peers have all been sucking the same corporate dick for so long that no one young enough to know what Lemmy is have ever experienced anything else. Calling that greatness is not being objective it's just a lack of imagination.
It's always important to thinglk about things in context and perspective. When I say best administration, I don't compare it to the administrations of my hopes and dreams, that's not useful at all. I compare it to what was before and what's the possible alternatives.
Oligarchs want you to lose perspective, hope, and stop doing actionable things. They want you to believe that unless the administration is doing luxury gay space communism, they are as bad as anything else and shouldn't be supported. Don't fall for it.
Believe it or not, for the amount of power they have, they are actually doing pretty good. We probably want them to ditch checks and balances and do good dictatorship for a moment to fix centuries of racist bullshit that permiated the US, but I am pretty sure it's not realistic. I wish it wasn't so, but the US is very, very racist country, and it reflects.
...at moving right.
Because the media is owned by Republicans
Stop expecting progressives to buy this just because you love the slide to the right.
Afghanistan was disorganized and incompetent through Bush and Obama too. It was the classic American "let's prop up a kleptocracy with American money, I'm sure that will be sustainable and not disintegrate immediately" story that we've been doing over and over and fucking over. Batista's Cuba, South Vietnam, the Shah of Iran, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Duvalier in Haiti, Marcos in the Philippines. I'm sure it'll work one of these fucking times.
It's such a good thing there is an alternative that really, really great at stopping genocides. We are so happy that now those evil genocidal maniacs will be out of the office and there will be no genocides forever. They will finally stop pressing that genocide button that they have, which controls genocides.
Biden didn't need to sell weapons to Netanyahu. Your "magic button'" shit trivializes what you're glad Biden did to enable genocide for you.
This reads as sarcasm. Except its not so much a button that stops genocides, its... a different mechanism
Edit: evidently this was not clear enough. The mechanism is not legal to mention.
Every genocide has to stop eventually. Otherwise it's not a very effective genocide...
Intent is just as important as the result.
I am starting to believe that Americans trully believe there is a mechanism that starts and stops genocides and it's located within reach of the American president. This notion is so fucking wild it's impossible to believe y'all really totally thinking it, but it is jingoistic enough for me to start believing y'all are bathsit insane enough for it.
If every politician that supports genocide gets removed from office, the genocides stop. What a surprise.
Do you also believe they have egg prices dial? Oh, by the way, you got your wish, the current administration will be removed from the office, if a genocide will not stop in February, will you eat your words and admit that you were wrong or not?
Is this a new form of "their both the same?"
I read this as saying both sides (Republicans and Democrats) support genocide.
I mean they do. Theyre different in a lot of ways, i wouldnt normally dare compare the two. But as evidenced by bidens administration and their ineptitude, they dont really care about genocides or the poor. Thats not to say theyre the same. One side doesnt care, the other is actively malicious.
Which one doesn't support genocide?
He's talking about this now because he doesn't have morals. If he gave a damn he'd have pushed and passed this within his first year. This is just him trying to get some headlines before he happily steps aside for the fascist to come in and reverse it.
I said pushed, as in voiced it to the Democratic party to write legislation for it, and passed it if it got to him.
If only his party controlled both houses of congress during his first year.
And here is where I explain to the feigned learned helplessness wing of the party that Democrats, if they had wanted to, could have done away with the filibuster forever with the simple majority we gave them. This could have been passed with a simple majority. You're making excuses, and I'm not accepting them.
Yeah. He can only singlehandedly sell weapons for genocide.
If you want to tell me that I don't know how government works, if you really want to pull that particular bit of hackneyed centrist gaslighting, don't kick off the party with an excuse that fundamentally ignores how government works.
If you don't want people to act like you're carrying water for the Biden administration, don't make excuses on their behalf that aren't grounded in reality.
This could have been passed with a simple majority, contrary to your lie. There's always some fucking excuse for how powerless Biden totally is when it's something that centrists don't want to do.
But he's all powerful when it comes to shit they want more than keeping Trump out of office, which is why I brought up Netanyahu's genocide. There's no "we can't! Here's an excuse for why and gaslighting when you point out why that excuse holds no water" when it comes to genocide. Biden can just do it!
It's the one policy that centrists don't get in their own way and make flimsy excuses about. It's the one policy that centrists won't abandon it the first whiff of pushback.
Correctly identifying a problem while doing nothing that could possibly change it.
That's Joe's legacy, I guess
It’s a little late for that.
It's never too late for neoliberals to fuck shit up...
Pelosi just threw her weight around to get a 74 year old with terminal throat cancer as the head of the oversight committee...
Even tho he just broke the already weak insider trading laws 2 years ago.
Biden can mumble whatever he wants into a microphone, but it's never connected to the reality around him.
If he really wanted this to happen, he'd have pushed for AOC over Connolly
If he'd wanted it to happen, he'd have pushed through Pelosi's HR 1 back inside his first 100 days, rather than sitting on this for his last three weeks.
Liberals are going to be doing so much "You could have had nice things if you hadn't voted for Trump" whining and complaining and hand wringing over the next two years. Its going to be awful. But none of them want to talk about how they had both Exec and Leg branches of government twice in the last sixteen years and deliberately squandered it sucking up to Big Business both times.
the boomers are going to cling on to power until their dying breath, and on the way out, they'll usher in some kind of apocalypse, either nuclear war, or we all get eaten by self replicating elonbots.
AOC talks big game but she's just a populist. As a NYer, she hasn't done anything useful for her constituents. Don't expect anything from her beyond populist agendas
Why do people keep using "populist" like it's a negative?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism
Oh no! People like her and her policies are popular!!!!
/s
Like, Pelosi just got a 74 year old with terminal cancer and recently involved with I aider trading violations on the top seat of the oversight committee over AOC because AOC would have weeded out corruption.
That's what the people want, an honest party.
And you're big take down of her is that would have been popular?!
Like "AOC" didn't spend the last year talking out both sides of her mouth about a genocide, including endorsing one of its perpetrators. AOC isn't a "progressive", she's the epitome of the Democratic party, all appearance and no justice, "where protest movements go to die".
Activists have already moved on from her, what is taking the rest of you so long?
because it's virtually always tied to policies that are meant to be easily digestible for the lowest common denominator. as it turns out, however, that complex problems virtually never have simple solutions.
ie Trump and his border wall in 2016. Populist with a populist platform to stop illegal immigration. What does it actually accomplish? Nothing because
a) it's impractical to actually build a wall across the entire length of the border
b) majority of illegal immigrants come legally on tourist visas and then overstay
but why focus on "The Wall"? Because Trump understands that it's an easily understandable symbol he can point to.
Left wing populism is similar. For example "tax the rich!" is a common mantra. And sure, taxing the rich is good. But what use is there in increasing tax revenue by a fraction of a percent when we are bleeding money at the seams to corruption? It's not going to solve our deficit. It's not going to lower taxes for the average American. Look at how the military will spend $100k on a bag of metal bushings that me and you can buy on Amazon for $100.
But how are you going to tackle the problem of deeply ingrained corruption? It permeates from our local institutions all the way to the upper echelons. Look how Haliburton got billions of dollars worth of "no-bid" contracts during the Bush administration. Just happens that Cheney, the most powerful VP in history, used to work there.
There is no easy solution. So populists come and say "tax the rich" or "build a wall" when in reality it does absolutely nothing to fix the actual problems. But the real solutions are complex and hard to relay to voters. and in fact, the solutions are painful and no politician would ever campaign on painful policies. For these reasons I think we are doomed as a society and that technocratic countries like China are going to dominate us in the next century unless we can radically change course
Your comment ignores that not all simple ideas are bad.
A lot of neoliberals just want an excuse to never go deeper than "I will fix ____" because they don't have any policy or desire to fix shit
AOC of all people can give a broad message quickly and effectively, then deep dive into specifics.
If she gives policy they say she should be simpler, if she keeps it simple they say she has no policy
There's no consistency, they just want to try and break her stride and keep pivoting.
And most of them never go further than "shut up, we're second worst."
i gave two examples of simple ideas that don't fundamentally change the status quo yet are popular
that doesn't mean that simple ideas can't work
there are simple ideas, I think, that would work very well. however a populist would never go for it because it's bad marketing.
for example I think in all cities with significant junkie populations we should have clinics giving out free heroin shots to addicts. simple idea. i think it'll work
but the majority of the people would not approve of this. they don't want to see the data and research about lowering HIV rates, lowering crime, lowering healthcare costs, etc. they don't like junkies and they feel icky giving out free heroin to addicts
i'm not saying simple idea = bad. I'm not even saying populist = bad. i said that in practice it's usually tied to ideas that seem good on the surface but when you scratch the veneer off it's not nearly as good as it seems.
like i brought up above, if we restructured how our government spends money we could increase our effective spending while lowering taxes and it would have magnitudes more impact than the marginal increase in revenue from taxing the rich. so why don't we do it?
because it's a complex overhaul that would require a large initial investment and you wouldn't see the fruits for more than a couple election cycles- something a populist cannot afford.
She's got excellent constituent services, wtf are you even talking about? That's why she wins big every cycle. Joe Crowley, the Dem she primaried out, had shitty services which ended up costing him the seat in 2018.
Constituent Services are populist.
Don't worry. Whenever Biden calls for doing something, centrists will uncritically treat it as an accomplishment.
There are still centrists who falsely insist that Biden rescheduled cannabis.
In the month he has left in office?
This is just a fucking PR stunt and won’t go anywhere.
If it reveals GOP hipocracy on how they treat Pelosi vs their own stock traders, then maybe a little PR would do a lot of good.
The ball is in Republican court, money where their mouth is, the DNC is ready to ban stock trading for its members even if it means expulsion of Nancy Pelosi who married a stock broker decades ago.
Yeah, NOW he wants. The last 4 years wasn’t time enough to get this done.
Fuck off.
Or any time in like the 40 years he was in congress….
Or when he had the ear of the president from 2008-2016 as VP.
He couldn't and didn't pursue this when he wasn't a lame duck. Get real on that fixing your legacy in a month thing
Please describe how he has been a lame duck president. Given he represents a party that is outnumbered in the Senate. And let's table the Israeli/Palestine conflict since this forum of discussion doesn't really work well for full history and geopolitical strategy history lessons.
He's the definition of a lame duck president right now. That's not saying anything bad, or good, about the man, just the fact of his current position.
Just using it for a temporal reference as he's out of time in his presidency. Any other meaning not intended.
All presidents become lame ducks after their last election but before the next president takes office.
Useless gesture that will never ever get passed. Thanks Joe.
"Look he said he was against something bad, that's just as good as getting rid of it! Is nothing good enough for you?!"
how selfish of you not to blindly and emphatically support the person who is pretending to be on your side!
Jesus Christ Joe, are you trying to take food from their children's mouths? How dare you sir, insider trading is the only real perk they get...well Healthcare and insider trading.
Thanks for nothing dipshit.
Making the calculated decision to do this not only in his lame duck period but also right up against Christmas and before the new congress is sworn in on Jan 3. So brave.
Honestly this is more of an insult than helpful for those of us who actually want to see this happen.
it says, "we acknowledge your concerns and will continue to do it because you're helpless to stop it"
Destroy Wall Street. Literally remove it brick by brick if you have to. That cancer is killing us all and we're all tied to it.
im sure congress will get right on the thing that literally makes them all wealthy, and theyve made sure to enshrine as a-ok in their own rules.
Why wait until the last possible second to go for this? What a complete knob
Because he doesn't need to work in politics ever again and this is going to be a pretty unpopular policy to lobby for. No one who ever has to whip votes on the Hill would ever put this kind of proposal forward. It was always going to come from a fringe of a caucus or a lame duck President.
Well, he claimed that his intent was to be a one-term President. Now we see that was a lie.
Next up, he'll try to introduce a bill that states free healthcare for all, paid through the taxes. Everyone wants it, but nothing will come of it, because America will be a fascist country in about a month. Good luck, America!
You could have pushed for it when there was actually an attempt to make that bill (before Pelosi killed it, she repaid you by pushing you out).
Four years too fucking late, asshole
Pelosi won't let that happen.
We don't need to bribe them to do their jobs. We need to make them afraid of what will happen to them if they don't.
It's both. Otherwise noone would be dumb enough to do such a high profile, high stress, and apparently low paying job. I do want the smartest, hardest working and best people leading my country, not some random guy would couldn't get a better job.
Fuck Joe Biden.
Fox News actually covered this for about 2 minutes and their talking points were as follows:
Actually, the word is that there is a bipartisan bill moving though Congress to prohibit stock sales. Crazy, right? Anyway, this is just Biden saying he'll sign it.
Give them all 401ks like most people get.
As if congress is going to bring up a bill that would restrict one of the quickest ways to make money for themselves.
Hahaha. Good one.
I can hear Michael Cole from WWE:
LET'S GOOOO!!
Ignoring how long it took, big ups joey b
I'd be fine with congressional stock trading if congress members were required to immediately report trades instead of the 45 days or so they are currently legally required to
Nah, they already got their money by then. Their trades go through first then everyone else's? And prereporting trades is ripe for stock manipulation. They should not be able to personally manage a portfolio and imho insider trading should carry hefty corruption penalties for congress.
If they wish to invest, it should be in a fund that is managed for them by people without insider knowledge.
I'd only be okay with it if those trades were reported and published publicly within the hour of the trade.
Let everyone benefit from inside trader or do the right thing and make everyone subject to the law.
I thought that was currently the case they just had a 45 day max reporting timeline, unless my Nancy pelosi clone portfolio has been lying to me. Apparently her average reporting time is 14 days
Just curious... How is your Pelosi clone portfolio going? Is it a legitimate investment strategy compared to the usual suggestion of index funds?
There's two ETFs now for tracking democrat trades and republican trades if you have any interest in tracking this kind of portfolios performance! I don't think there's an ETF for Nancy specifically but she's definitely a part of the dem ETF
Cool, I tried looking it up.
Seems like the tickers are NANC (D) and KRUZ (R)
Are those the ones you are taking about? If so, I love the tickers.
Yes! I had totally forgotten the names and just remembered theyre silly, those are the ones!
That would be so funny if the ETF for the Dems was called Nancy
So far over the past year I've had it active, I'm up 40%. It seems to be working well, I have it automated through a service called Autopilot and it has already paid for itself. I wish I put more into it at the start but so far I've got no complaints.
Take what you can get. Bitching about how you got there isn't helpful.
Wow. This guy was everyone's hope?
No
you must not be very tuned in. we only voted for him because he was running against Trump.
He's electable if you vote for him.
It's funny how much tankies run this community. Very different from Reddit.
Do you honestly consider anyone criticizing Biden from the left to be a "tankie"?
I'm not sure how much in the loop you are with USA politics, but Biden, just like every public facing member of the two party system, is a representative of private interests. The democratic party is incorporated, just like the republic party.
It only makes sense that a tankie wouldn't be in support of a figure head of corporate interests.
What I'm asking is do you have to be "a tankie" in order to criticize Biden from the left? That seems like a laughably broad definition of "tankie".
Oh, crap—I totally misinterpreted your initial comment. My bad man! Thanks for clarifying!
The term, already uncritically broad, has absolutely become laughably broad.
It takes a special kind of stupid to think much of anything on .world is run by tankies.
If you don't like it, go back to Reddit.
Pretty sure their statement is neutral. The only statement they made was that it was funny, which is a net positive depending on how you view a 50/50 glass of gas and water.