Battle lines: 2025 Agenda vs Bernie Sander's vision for America; if we must have one or the other, the choice is easy

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I’ve had this in my draft folder for a couple of days now while I considered whether to post it. Then I saw just now that Bernie’s giving a stump speech in which he promises to impose a national rent control program, which is what set me off in the first place, so I’ve cut and saved a very long essay on “The Rise and Fall of Socialism” and going with this (much) shorter version.

Biden begins touting 'working-class' agenda on advice of Bernie Sanders: report

President Biden has begun focusing on a ‘working-class’ agenda on the advice of Senator Bernie Sanders, according to a recent report in the Washington Post.

The Post reported on Saturday that Sanders visited the White House on Wednesday to discuss a potential second Biden term. Speaking to the President's closest advisors, the Vermont senator reportedly argued that Biden should focus on a 100-day plan aimed at "working class" voters.

In a social media post on Friday, Sanders claimed that Biden will enact a number of progressive policies – including ending all medical debt and raising the minimum wage – if elected to a second term.

"At a time when the billionaire class has never done better, and when we are experiencing unprecedented income and wealth inequality, President Biden tonight laid out an agenda that begins to speak to the needs of America’s working class," the tweet read.

Sanders also added that Biden would expand Social Security and Medicare benefits, lower the cost of childcare and build more affordable housing if elected, among other initiatives. On Friday night, Biden pledged to end all medical debt at a rally in Michigan. 

Biden Promises National Rent Control

“We’re going to make sure that rents are kept at 5% increase in corporate rents for apartments and the like. Homes are limited to 5%.”

Assar Lindbeck, the late left-wing Swedish economist who for many years chaired the committee that awarded the Nobel Prize, famously said: “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city–except for bombing.”

Economist David R. Henderson disputes that – he argues based on the experience of Vietnam that rent control is worse than bombing. Either way, it’s really bad.

So istead, they stayed inside, peering out for snipers, while the gunman was ON THAT VERY ROOF (UPDATED)

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Here’s the link, but really, is there anything more to be said? This woman still has her job, by the way, because she’s a Friend of Jill’s. Maybe she should look into joining the Friends of Bill’s.

UPDATE: Ok, I take it back — checking the comments on Twitchy, there are some great ones worth reading.

Even NMBC (!) is calling BS. The picture of the roof in question makes it even clearer how “dangerous” this sloped roof was. Hell, even snow wouldn’t fall off that thing, which is something the designers may want to think about.

Gold Bar Bob convicted (Update: Jonathan Turley says DC pols turned their backs on Bob because his type of corruption was so gauche)

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I was away today, and just saw this good news:

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez guilty on all charges in federal corruption trial

Unlike the recent trial of another politician, Menendez was actually guilty of a crime (s): selling his office, and accepting bribes to influence foreign policy. Further, the man was a crook while he was mayor of Union City from 1986-1992, and continued wallowing in graft for the next three years as he made his way up the Jersey Democrqat political machine. Yes, he was just following a time-honored tradition of New Jersey pols, but stashing gold bars in shoes in the closet and hundreds of thousands of cash in his wife’s own closet(s) was beyond the pale, even for the Garden State. Or so it was declared, once he got caught.

Just to balance things out, on the west coast, the Menendez brothers are claiming that newly discovered evidence entitles them to a new trial after 30 years of incarceration. Two for one, so to speak.

Turley:

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Washington elites appear to look down upon Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez for his “prehistoric” corruption style.

A jury found Menendez guilty of all 16 counts of federal corruption and bribery charges relating to the Egyptian government and three New Jersey businessmen paying him thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars in exchange for information. Turley said the senator’s form of corruption is old-school, as opposed to modern corruption, which often takes the form of influence-peddling.

“His form of corruption views in the beltway as virtually prehistoric,” Turley said Tuesday. “I mean, the idea of getting envelopes filled with cash and cars is really sort of Capone-era corruption stuff. I mean, in some ways, some people have contempt just for the lack of sophistication. That’s not how corruption works anymore… Corruption is influence-peddling, like we’ve seen in the Hunter Biden case, where you have all of these rather curious and dubious positions with millions of dollars being passed through accounts. This is really something that Washington has long ago turned its back on.

The shadow president is now running the country

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A friend of Glenn Reynolds predicted this yesterday:

Earlier today, Trump called for RFK to get Secret Service protection, and a friend messaged me: “Haha, when they do that, our crazy orange former president official becomes shadow chief executive. Making the common sense calls the Biden admin can’t quite manage.”

And later today, they did that, with Sec. Mayorkas announcing that RFK will get Secret Service protection. To which my friend comments: “Prediction: Here through Jan 20  will be the first six months of the second Trump admin.”

What makes Biden look so weak in this situation (as in all other matters) is that he has previously denied six different requests for such protection for his own political purposes. Certainly, the assassination attempt forced his hand, but his handlers must have known as the shots still echoed that, politically they had to give Kennedy protection immediately, and had they acted swiftly, they’d have come through unscathed. Instead, they hemmed and hawed until Trump demanded that they act, and then their reversal made it appear that they were bowing to Trump’s will; bad optics.

John Fund, National Review:

>>>

A Kennedy aide told me that the campaign has already spent $3 million on private security that accompanies Kennedy everywhere he goes. I asked why RFK didn’t have Secret Service protection despite his family history (his uncle, John F. Kennedy, and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated).

I got a stunning answer. The Biden Department of Homeland Security has six times rejected requests from the Kennedy campaign to provide such protection. Ironically, it was RFK’s death in 1968 that led the Secret Service to expand its protective coverage to leading presidential candidates. Some Kennedy advisers believe that Biden is worried enough about Kennedy’s support in key swing states as to be satisfied that Kennedy has to allocate millions in scarce campaign dollars to security.

But as the shooting at former president Trump’s latest rally in Pennsylvania has just proven, American politics can be suddenly volatile. Newsweek reports that 775 pages of documents obtained by the Freedom of Information Act detail 34 instances of direct threats and bizarre rants directed at RFK Jr. by various entities and individuals. One promised, on social media, to “kill rfk jr lawfully on USA soil. Bullets right into the head,” while another wrote, “RFK is not immune from a 7.62 caliber bullet.”

Kennedy’s lawyers have sent six letters to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas formally requesting protection, to no avail. Last month, cousin of RFK Jr. and former House member Patrick Kennedy weighed in with his own request: “I struggle to understand the administration’s persistent refusal to grant Secret Service protection to a presidential candidate deemed by the Secret Service itself to be at elevated risk.”

Even Democrats are starting to question the Biden administration’s preposterous refusal. Colorado governor Jared Polis and Arizona representative Ruben Gallego have demanded protection for Kennedy.

So too have some Republicans. Ari Fleischer, a former White House spokesman for President George W. Bush, says the Biden administration should have provided Secret Service protection to Kennedy “a long time ago.”

Thomas Balcerski, a presidential historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, says the Biden refusal looks both shortsighted and petty: “Giving Kennedy protection would give him political currency. The speculation is that Biden doesn’t want that.”

If that’s true, sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time that our cognitively failing, peevish, and narcissistic president has lashed out at his political adversaries. The attempted assassination of another presidential candidate, one expects, should be enough to alert the president to his folly.

Elizabeth Warren, eat your heart out: J.D. Vance is married to a REAL American Indian.

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Well, Indian-American, but that’s still closer to a tipi than Elizabeth’s ever been.

Usha Vance, née Chilukuri, born in 1986, was raised in San Diego, California, and attended Yale Law School, where she met the future Ohio senator, according to a report from the New York Times.

“I coulda been a contenda, if I wasn’t a pretenda”

A harbinger?

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I saw someone post the same Amazon search auto-fills and thought I’d try it myself. I used a fresh third-party browser install and from behind my VPN so none of my previous Amazon history would influence the results.

When Amazon’s own Prime Day comes in seventh behind Trump stuff, just the days before the big annual Prime Day sale begins, you know there’s something up.

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green

Pending

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(Prices shown are asking price; the short time on market for these four suggests that some or all will be selling for more than ask)

50 Sumner Road, $4.995 million, 11 days

You can find a discussion and your comments on this property in my July 1st column, here.

Woodside

3 Woodside Drive, $3.995 million, 19 days

silver beech

6 Silver Beech Road, Riverside NoPo, $1.275 million, 16 days

Rainbow Drive

5 Rainbow Drive, Riverside NoPo, $1.695 million, 24 days.