On 3/9/2020 at 6:25 AM, caze said:

You're wrong, read what I wrote again, I gave specific examples of policies which are incompatible with European social democracy. Proper socialism is 'owning the means of production', Democratic socialism is proper socialism in this sense; social democracy is not socialism in this sense, it is merely capitalism with a good social welfare system and some income redistribution (which is fine, all that's left is to argue about the details, if this was all Bernie was advocating I wouldn't have a problem with him).

All the policies that you mentioned are things that are discussed in the German social democratic party, except for abolishing private health insurance, which in Germany wouldn't make sense since the health care system doesn't require to be rebuilt entirely as opposed to the US.

he literally wants every company over $100m to move to being at first partially owned by the workers.  for this reason I would call him a democratic socialist not social democrat.  whether it's further to the left of anyone in europe, no idea.  this seems like the only detail that stands out as further left than social democracy though

https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-and-democracy/

>Share Corporate Wealth with Workers. Under this plan, corporations with at least $100 million in annual revenue, corporations with at least $100 million in balance sheet total, and all publicly traded companies will be required to provide at least 2 percent of stock to their workers every year until the company is at least 20 percent owned by employees. This will be done through the issuing of new shares and the establishment of Democratic Employee Ownership Funds.

>Democratize Corporate Boards. Under this plan, 45 percent of the board of directors in any large corporation with at least $100 million in annual revenue, corporations with at least $100 million in balance sheet total, and all publicly traded companies will be directly elected by the firm’s workers – similar to what happens under “employee co-determination” in Germany, which long has had one of the most productive and successful economies in the world.

  On 3/9/2020 at 5:51 AM, goDel said:

Yeah. It's one of those "It's not you, it's me" cases. The US just doesn't seem ready for a female president. It's not about her, I believe.

yes and no.. i mean.. hillary clinton is female (though a lizzard according to some).. she did win by 3 million votes.. so maybe america (except for those 30,000 voters in wisconsin) is ready for a female president? 

it was a crowded field and tough for candidates to gain traction and keep it.  she was a front runner for a bit but somewhere in there the polls took a dump. i don't remember why really. maybe if bloomberg was in one of the earlier debates to be evicerated by her she'd have climbed up in the polls.

it's hard to say what the deal is w/why some candidates don't appeal to  some voters. she probably would've done better were there fewer candidates. if biden had stayed out of it or if blomoberg had stayed out of it.. who knows.. 

she's not going away though. maybe she'll run again after trump's 2nd term. ouch. 

right wing fax

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/politics/erik-prince-project-veritas.html

Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate Liberal Groups

  Reveal hidden contents

Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate Liberal Groups

Mr. Prince, a contractor close to the Trump administration, contacted veteran spies for operations by Project Veritas, the conservative group known for conducting stings on news organizations and other groups.

 

 

 

 

Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has at times served as an informal adviser to Trump administration officials.Credit...Jeenah Moon/Reuters

By Mark Mazzetti and Adam Goldman

• March 7, 2020
• •  
  •  
  •  
  • 2542

 

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents.

Get a guide to navigating the political news cycle — every weekday by email.

 

 

Sign up

One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.

Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former C.I.A. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her.

Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon’s role in the teachers’ union operation — detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union — has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince’s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group’s activities.

 

 

Both Project Veritas and Mr. Prince have ties to President Trump’s aides and family. Whether any Trump administration officials or advisers to the president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear. But the effort is a glimpse of a vigorous private campaign to try to undermine political groups or individuals perceived to be in opposition to Mr. Trump’s agenda.

Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has at times served as an informal adviser to Trump administration officials. He worked with the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during the presidential transition. In 2017, he met with White House and Pentagon officials to pitch a plan to privatize the Afghan war using contractors in lieu of American troops. Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, rejected the idea.

 

• Unlock more free articles.

Create an account or log in

 

Mr. Prince appears to have become interested in using former spies to train Project Veritas operatives in espionage tactics sometime during the 2016 presidential campaign. Reaching out to several intelligence veterans — and occasionally using Mr. Seddon to make the pitch — Mr. Prince said he wanted the Project Veritas employees to learn skills like how to recruit sources and how to conduct clandestine recordings, among other surveillance techniques.

James O’Keefe, the head of Project Veritas, declined to answer detailed questions about Mr. Prince, Mr. Seddon and other topics, but he called his group a “proud independent news organization” that is involved in dozens of investigations. He said that numerous sources were coming to the group “providing confidential documents, insights into internal processes and wearing hidden cameras to expose corruption and misconduct.”

Editors’ Picks

Daniel Craig Hosts ‘S.N.L.,’ but Elizabeth Warren Steals the Show

Thomas Piketty Turns Marx on His Head

‘The Plot Against America’ Imagines the Rise of an Intolerant Demagogue

 

“No one tells Project Veritas who or what to investigate,” he said.

 

 

 

 

Image

James O’Keefe, the head of Project Veritas, last year at a White House social media summit.Credit...Carlos Barria/Reuters

A spokesman for Mr. Prince declined to comment. Emails sent to Mr. Seddon went unanswered.

Mr. Prince is under investigation by the Justice Department over whether he lied to a congressional committee examining Russian interference in the 2016 election, and for possible violations of American export laws. Last year, the House Intelligence Committee made a criminal referral to the Justice Department about Mr. Prince, saying he lied about the circumstances of his meeting with a Russian banker in the Seychelles in January 2017.

 

Once a small operation running on a shoestring budget, Project Veritas in recent years has had a surge in donations from both private donors and conservative foundations. According to its latest publicly available tax filing, Project Veritas received $8.6 million in contributions and grants in 2018. Mr. O’Keefe earned about $387,000.

Last year, the group received a $1 million contribution made through the law firm Alston & Bird, a financial document obtained by The New York Times showed. A spokesman for the firm said that Alston & Bird “has never contributed to Project Veritas on its own behalf, nor is it a client of ours.” The spokesman declined to say on whose behalf the contribution was made.

The financial document also listed the names of others who gave much smaller amounts to Project Veritas last year. Several of them confirmed their donations.

The group has also become intertwined with the political activities of Mr. Trump and his family. The Trump Foundation gave $20,000 to Project Veritas in 2015, the year that Mr. Trump began his bid for the presidency. The next year, during a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump claimed without substantiation that videos released by Mr. O’Keefe showed that Mrs. Clinton and President Barack Obama had paid people to incite violence at rallies for Mr. Trump.

In a book published in 2018, Mr. O’Keefe wrote that Mr. Trump years earlier had encouraged him to infiltrate Columbia University and obtain Mr. Obama’s records.

Last month, Project Veritas made public secretly recorded video of a longtime ABC News correspondent who was critical of the network’s political coverage and its emphasis on business considerations over journalism. Many conservatives have gleefully pounced on Project Veritas’s disclosures, including one particularly influential voice: Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son.

 

 

The website for Mr. O’Keefe’s coming wedding listed Donald Trump Jr. as an invited guest.

Mr. Prince invited Project Veritas operatives — including Mr. O’Keefe — to his family’s Wyoming ranch for training in 2017, The Intercept reported last year. Mr. O’Keefe and others shared social media photos of taking target practice with guns at the ranch, including one post from Mr. O’Keefe saying that with the training, Project Veritas will be “the next great intelligence agency.” Mr. Prince had hired a former MI6 officer to help train the Project Veritas operatives, The Intercept wrote, but it did not identify the officer.

Mr. Seddon regularly updated Mr. O’Keefe about the operation against the Michigan teachers’ union, according to internal Project Veritas emails, where the language of the group’s leaders is marbled with spy jargon.

They used a code name — LibertyU — for their operative inside the organization, Marisa Jorge, who graduated from Liberty University in Virginia, one of the nation’s largest Christian colleges. Mr. Seddon wrote that Ms. Jorge “copied a great many documents from the file room,” and Mr. O’Keefe bragged that the group would be able to get “a ton more access agents inside the educational establishment.”

The emails refer to other operations, including weekly case updates, along with training activities that involved “operational targeting.” Project Veritas redacted specifics about those operations from the messages.

In August 2017, Ms. Jorge wrote to Mr. Seddon that she had managed to record a local union leader talking about Ms. DeVos and other topics.

“Good stuff,” Mr. Seddon wrote back. “Did you receive the spare camera yet?”

As education secretary, Ms. DeVos has been a vocal critic of teachers’ unions, saying in 2018 that they have a “stranglehold” over politicians at the federal and state levels. She and Mr. Prince grew up in Michigan, where their father made a fortune in the auto parts business.

AFT Michigan sued Project Veritas in federal court, alleging trespassing, eavesdropping and other offenses. The teachers’ union is asking for more than $3 million in damages, accusing the group of being a “vigilante organization which claims to be dedicated to exposing corruption. It is, instead, an entity dedicated to a specific political agenda.”

 

 

Project Veritas has said its activities are legal and protected by the First Amendment, and the case is scheduled to go to trial in the fall.

Other Project Veritas employees on the emails include Joe Halderman, an award-winning former television producer who in 2010 pleaded guilty to trying to extort $2 million from the comedian David Letterman. Mr. Halderman was copied on several messages providing updates about the Michigan operation, and in one message, he gave instructions to Ms. Jorge. Project Veritas tax filings list Mr. Halderman as a “project manager.”

Two other employees, Gaz Thomas and Samuel Chamberlain, were also identified in emails and appeared to play important roles in the Michigan operation. Efforts to locate Mr. Thomas were unsuccessful. A man named Samuel Chamberlain who matched the description of the one employed by Mr. O’Keefe denied he worked for Project Veritas. He did not respond to follow-up phone messages or an email.

Last year, Project Veritas submitted a proposed list of witnesses for the trial over the lawsuit. Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Thomas were on the list. Mr. Seddon was not.

Ms. Jorge, 23, did not respond to email addresses associated with her Liberty University account. In an archived version of her LinkedIn page, Ms. Jorge wrote she had a deep interest in the conservative movement and hoped one day to serve on the Supreme Court after attending law school.

In a YouTube video, Mr. O’Keefe described the lawsuit as “frivolous” and pointed to a portion of the deposition in which David Hecker, the president of AFT Michigan, said that one of the goals of the lawsuit was to “stop Project Veritas from doing the kind of work that it does.”

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement: “Let’s be clear who the wrongdoer is here: Project Veritas used a fake intern to lie her way into our Michigan office, to steal documents and to spy — and they got caught. We’re just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage.”

 

 

 

 

 

Image

 

In 2018, an operative working for Project Veritas infiltrated the campaign of Abigail Spanberger, who went on to win a congressional seat.Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

In 2018, Ms. Jorge infiltrated the congressional campaign of Ms. Spanberger, posing as a campaign volunteer. At the time, Ms. Spanberger was running to unseat a sitting Republican congressman in a race both parties considered important for control of the House. Ms. Jorge was eventually exposed and kicked out of the campaign office.

It was unclear whether Mr. Seddon was involved in planning that operation.

Mr. Seddon was a longtime British intelligence officer who served around the world, including in Washington in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He is married to an American diplomat, Alice Seddon, who is serving in the American consulate in Lagos, Nigeria.

Mr. O’Keefe and his group have taken aim at targets over the years including Planned Parenthood, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Democracy Partners, a group that consults with liberal and progressive electoral causes. In 2016, a Project Veritas operative infiltrated Democracy Partners using a fake name and fabricated résumé and made secret recordings of the staff. The year after the sting, Democracy Partners sued Project Veritas, and its lawyers have since deposed Mr. O’Keefe.

In that deposition, Mr. O’Keefe defended the group’s undercover tactics, saying they were part of a long tradition of investigative journalism going back to muckraking reporters like Upton Sinclair. “I’m not ashamed of the methods that we use or the recordings that we use,” he said.

He was asked whether he had provided any of the group’s secret recordings of Democracy Partners to the Republican National Committee or any member of the Trump family. He said that he did not think so.

In 2010, Mr. O’ Keefe and three others pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor after admitting they entered a government building in New Orleans under false pretenses as part of a sting.

COBRA from G.I. Joe was such an absurdly contrived and stereotypical criminal military organization and shadow corporation and yet Erik Prince and Blackwater have emulated it completely. 

Disgusting stuff

  On 3/9/2020 at 7:20 AM, ignatius said:

yes and no.. i mean.. hillary clinton is female (though a lizzard according to some).. she did win by 3 million votes.. so maybe america (except for those 30,000 voters in wisconsin) is ready for a female president? 

That HRC 2016 stat is an awkward one, i believe. I've read somewhere that if you dropped New York and LA from those numbers, Trump would have won the popular vote. Don't have the source available, so if anyone could confirm/denounce, you'll earn some leftover bonus points from the international women day.

  On 3/9/2020 at 7:09 PM, goDel said:

That HRC 2016 stat is an awkward one, i believe. I've read somewhere that if you dropped New York and LA from those numbers, Trump would have won the popular vote. Don't have the source available, so if anyone could confirm/denounce, you'll earn some leftover bonus points from the international women day.

i dont understand why you would tally without those cities, or what that would tell you..  theyre the 2 most populous metro areas in the country. just because people live in more density than much of the rest of the country doesnt make them a voting or idealogical monolith, nor should their vote matter less. im taking this personally because i lived in la and nyc hah.

the electoral college is a separate discussion imo..

No intention to go into the electoral college discussion whatsoever. I just think it's a meaningful stat if true, anyways. Two cities. And sure, they're big. But the regional support for HRC is surprisingly uneven, I'd argue.

Please don't take this from a pro-Trump perspective. And yes I understand the pro-Trumpers would love to push the narrative this way. But I really dont give a crap about which side argues what. If this is indeed what the data says, it's a meaningful statistic. Plain and simple. Not the whole story, obviously. So it's not a definitive "win the multi million dollars jackpot" kind of statistic. But a surprising one as far as I'm concerned.

  On 3/9/2020 at 7:09 PM, goDel said:

That HRC 2016 stat is an awkward one, i believe. I've read somewhere that if you dropped New York and LA from those numbers, Trump would have won the popular vote. Don't have the source available, so if anyone could confirm/denounce, you'll earn some leftover bonus points from the international women day.

 

yeah.. it's the coasts that go blue but there's lot's of purple everywhere. even  some of the states trump won. 30,000 votes isn't much.

There'd be so many alternative universe movies about the US. What if Gore won instead of Bush? And what if Hillz won instead of Trump. I can hear some of you already thinking about a "What if Sanders won, instead of ...". ;D

  On 3/9/2020 at 7:48 PM, goDel said:

No intention to go into the electoral college discussion whatsoever. I just think it's a meaningful stat if true, anyways. Two cities. And sure, they're big. But the regional support for HRC is surprisingly uneven, I'd argue.

Please don't take this from a pro-Trump perspective. And yes I understand the pro-Trumpers would love to push the narrative this way. But I really dont give a crap about which side argues what. If this is indeed what the data says, it's a meaningful statistic. Plain and simple. Not the whole story, obviously. So it's not a definitive "win the multi million dollars jackpot" kind of statistic. But a surprising one as far as I'm concerned.

two cities is a meaningless stat imo.. both of the metro regions sprawl out continuously into the surrounding region, and in the case of new york, into the surrounding states.  yes, a lot of people just happen to live in those parts of a very large country.

i drew the electoral college comparison to what you said because people make the same argument for keeping it around; they say it will give city-dwellers more power.

but my response is that so-called city dwellers are currently very underrepresented in that half the legislative branch (the senate) is unproportional, and the electoral college (which decides the entire executive branch, the branch arguably becoming most powerful as of late) also shifts voting power towards swing and smaller states.

  On 3/9/2020 at 7:58 PM, goDel said:

There'd be so many alternative universe movies about the US. What if Gore won instead of Bush? And what if Hillz won instead of Trump. I can hear some of you already thinking about a "What if Sanders won, instead of ...". ;D

Gore is the  one that really stings for  me. he probably did win if the votes had been correctly counted. sadly we don't live into timeline. there's always unforeseen circumstances but my guess is gore wouldn't have lied his way into iraq and probably would've made a start towards climate change mitigation. although  we all might've died from hearing his drawl too often.. killed by annoying boredom. there's a lot that separated bush and gore. 

Sanders on FOX again:

I must admit that I find US politics kind of entertaining, knowing that it's not the purpose of politics to be entertaining and it's probably even dangerous if it turns into a reality show rather than being about policies and addressing problems.

Well it's too late now, Warren didn't even endorse Bernie.  This is how you know she's a corporate shill who only ran to stop him, and who doesn't even care about the policies she pretended to run on, because Biden sure as fuck does not care about those policies, but Bernie is running on them and a lot more.  What a joke, fuck Warren

  On 3/10/2020 at 6:25 AM, Zeffolia said:

Well it's too late now, Warren didn't even endorse Bernie.  This is how you know she's a corporate shill who only ran to stop him, and who doesn't even care about the policies she pretended to run on, because Biden sure as fuck does not care about those policies, but Bernie is running on them and a lot more.  What a joke, fuck Warren

... or she was actually mad at Bernie for lying about saying that he thought a woman couldn’t be president on national tv when she called him out on it and that made her look bad. 
If you put yourself in her shoes it’s not exactly a great spot to be in and it makes sense that she might be a bit sour with him. 
Saying she ran just to stop Bernie is accusing her of exactly what Hillary supporters accused Bernie of 4 years ago and calling Warren a corporate shill really shows how little you actually know about her. 
Maybe, instead of blaming Warren, just look at the situation for what it is. Bernie is the progressive candidate and Biden is the moderate and the progressives like Bernie and don’t like Biden and the moderates like either Biden or everyone else that dropped out (except Warren) but they are afraid of Bernie’s “extreme” brand of politics. 
In case you are wondering, I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary and I’m voting for him again if he gets the nomination so don’t think I’m anti-Bernie.
Everyone is afraid. I get it. 
 

  On 3/10/2020 at 7:16 AM, J3FF3R00 said:

... or she was actually mad at Bernie for lying about saying that he thought a woman couldn’t be president on national tv when she called him out on it and that made her look bad. 
If you put yourself in her shoes it’s not exactly a great spot to be in and it makes sense that she might be a bit sour with him. 
Saying she ran just to stop Bernie is accusing her of exactly what Hillary supporters accused Bernie of 4 years ago and calling Warren a corporate shill really shows how little you actually know about her. 
Maybe, instead of blaming Warren, just look at the situation for what it is. Bernie is the progressive candidate and Biden is the moderate and the progressives like Bernie and don’t like Biden and the moderates like either Biden or everyone else that dropped out (except Warren) but they are afraid of Bernie’s “extreme” brand of politics. 
In case you are wondering, I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary and I’m voting for him again if he gets the nomination so don’t think I’m anti-Bernie.
Everyone is afraid. I get it. 
 

Expand  

So her feelings take priority over her policy positions? You basically just reiterated what I said.  Think how many will die because of this, and the part she played

  On 3/10/2020 at 7:40 AM, Zeffolia said:

So her feelings take priority over her policy positions? You basically just reiterated what I said.  Think how many will die because of this, and the part she played

If I would have reiterated what you said, I would have said that she was a corporate shill and that she only ran to stop Bernie. 

  On 3/10/2020 at 8:11 AM, J3FF3R00 said:

If I would have reiterated what you said, I would have said that she was a corporate shill and that she only ran to stop Bernie. 

Okay, so she's just incompetent and devoid of actual morals, not a corporate shill.  Not much better

every time Bernie runs it's some woman's fault that he loses!!! it's definitely not on his own shoulders! of course, it all makes sense!!!!

I can't deny Biden's momentum and with Bloomberg out I am resigned to the possibility of pinching my nose as I vote straight ticked Dem but this still sums up the vibe of his candidacy and base following

Zeff, Warren and Sanders have obviously been friends for a long time. They largely believe the same things. He encouraged her to run in 2016. While it wasn't by much, she even announced her 2020 candidacy before he did. Sanders has denounced people attacking her, quite specifically the sort of crap you say. You need to lay off. You are helping no one, and you sound like a crazy ex. 

^Plus, Sanders insinuated that he would like to have Warren as VP at FOX News.

Soon, after Michigan, the last bit of hope of Sanders getting president will die. When Biden wins Michigan, which he most likely will, it's over for Bernie's presidency. For ever. If it hasn't been over already since Super Tuesday. But if against all odds Sanders wins Michigan he could gain momentum and still do it. If he doesn't I will start crying really loudly. Looking at the polls I'm certain that now is the time for bitter tears, though

As for Warren not endorsing Bernie. I think by postponing the decision of who she will endorse she is doing the most sensible thing. Obviously her policies are closest to Bernie's so by that standard she should endorse him. But at the same time, Sanders has little chance against Biden and when it's Biden vs Trump anyway it's better if she endorses Biden. Which of course is also not an optimal decision. So waiting for a bit until things get clearer might be a good thing, or possibly never endorsing any of the both. Also, she still wants to have a career. Endorsing Sanders could weaken her standing in her party (completely speculative point, though).