"The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first"

<Sigh> Pedantry is tiresome. Tell your friends.

My original statement had to do with my belief that wealth inequality is not a bad thing. It had little to do with OP's assertion that he foolishly sees current wealth inequality as "staggering".

"Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion. "

You are free to heed whoever pleases you. If you crave my
forgiveness, consider yourself forgiven.

"If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. "

I too have to wonder what "excessive" wealth inequality actually looks like. I don't think I have ever seen a large scale example. So, I'll just pull a number out of the air: under most distribution models, I would say that I consider a Gini coefficient of, say, .9 to be "excessive".

"My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog....Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?!"

I thought we were talking about wealth distribution, not income distribution. Anyhow, to answer your question, the answer is "No", I do not consider that to be "excessive".

The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first, and now agree. Your position changed....and so has your argument now from 'staggering wealth inequality isn't a bad thing" to ' wealth inequality isn't staggering'.
Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion.

Wiki- in 2014 the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation's wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the "richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percent".[8] The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee "needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour"
If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog (at a job that is life and death for her customers, platelet donation, her department keeps our only local blood bank open as the only money making department, she doesn't make fries.)...Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?! Also, because he only pays taxes on what he spends, he pays less in taxes than we do.
Thpp!....Ack!

Is that Warren from Buffy...?

Warren could be good. I'm not 100% sold that she can play the political game particularly well -- the "Pocahontas" thing should have been pretty gracefully manageable, but she kinda fumbled there a bit. Still, if the Democrat primary system can avoid being the train wreck it was leading up to 2016, I think she could go through that and prove that she's got what it takes. So, maybe.

I love Sanders, but he's divisive because of the "Socialist" thing, which is still quite a scary word for Cold War-era people. I think that is surmountable by calmly explaining exactly what his brand of Democratic Socialism means, but there's always going to be that easy Fox News narrative against him. So between that, age, and other factors, he's not a slam dunk.

Obama? I'm assuming you mean Michelle? Name recognition yes. Firsthand political experience, not so much. I don't think I've ever heard her say anything about wanting to get into politics directly.

I concur about Avenatti.

I hope the D's don't screw this up. All of these celebrity / political celebrity candidates seem risky and hit or miss to me. Might be better to go with a relative unknown -- somebody who's been through a hairy campaign or two (because we know Trump will attack and try to rattle) and knows how to walk the line between giving those attacks legitimacy by responding to them and seeming too milquetoasty by ignoring them. (Barack) Obama was quite good at having that calm outer demeanor while also having a quick wit and knowing when to get counter-jabs in. Seems like someone with those kinds of skills could really lure Trump into a bunch of pitfalls.

What about a celebrity politician like Warren, Sanders, or even Obama? They all have name recognition and experience.
Abonetti is like nominating Clinton, not exciting and a bit scary for many Democrats and independents, totally divisive, and a reason to go vote for Republicans. Please let's not make that mistake again.

He is an idiot when it comes to being President, but he is an absolute genius when it comes to tearing apart potential contenders in elections. He knows there is a strong chance that Senator Warren will run against him in 2020, so he is always going to hit her in what is, admittedly, a huge weak spot for her.

I would still vote for her against him, but she needs to realize and be prepared should she run that this is something she is going to have to finally answer. It doesn't even have to be a difficult one, just say that she made a mistake based on bad family anecdotes which led her to believe she might have been part Native American. People will forgive a mistake if you are clear about it, but if you leave it vague (which she unfortunately has), then Trump WILL exploit it.

You can't possibly argue that the Pocahontas thing while at an event intending to honor Native Americans is acceptable behavior. If he thinks Warren is lying about her heritage, fine. Say she's lying about it some other time. Nobody put a gun to Trump's head and said he has to call her that. And on top of all that, at least have the courtesy to not do it at that event. Honoring World War II Native American veterans has jack shit nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren.

Even if you happen to think that there's nothing wrong with the Washington Redskins name, do you think it would be appropriate for the President of the United States to bust through the wall Kool Aid man style dressed head to toe in Redskins garb doing the Tomahawk Chop at an event intended to honor Native Americans? FFS!

What next? Meet with a Chinese delegation and walk in doing slant eyes and the ol' "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, *lift shirt* LOOK AT THESE!!!"

All he had to do was turn his "be a dick" switch off for a few hours to honor war veterans. Is that so hard? Apparently, it's impossible for him.

Watching this guy as President is just astounding to me. Every damn day seemingly he finds new ways to be a total dick when he completely doesn't have to be. Elizabeth Warren is going to be fine, I don't care he insulted her. But acting like an ass clown in a way that's very likely to offend actual war heroes in the process?! Zero justification, zero excuses.

Being President isn't supposed to be a 24/7 reality TV show where everything revolves around petty partisan/personal vendettas, including disregarding basic tenets of acting like a mature adult.

Elizabeth Warren confirmed it as well recently. She was asked if the campaign was rigged and she simply said Yes.

HRC was NOT going to let another upstart like Obama come out of nowhere and take her 'rightful' place as the next President. Instead of letting the people choose, she forced the hands of the voters and now we have the worst President in history.

Sad thing, she WILL NOT admit it. In her book she blames everyone with just a small amount of criticism of herself, mostly about how she didn't reach out to the voters, etc.

He is right, GTFO of the way HRC! *nsfw *promote

I'm not at all convinced of that (Clinton's political career being over).

It would be the sane response. And yet, clearly the DNC (and US politics in general) aren't reined in by trivialities like sanity. I think that unless the fickle public gets really riled up over this, the DNC would swing just as hard for Clinton or some other corporate-friendly type over anybody like Sanders or Warren in 2020.

Sanders being an Independent in the Senate was held against him hard by party bigwigs. Somewhat understandably. That being said, Sanders' brand of "Independent" was/is a fantastic guide to what the Democrat party should be working to become.

Politics is all bullshit, all the time. As a result, a huge percentage of voters are quite disenfranchised and don't really see any candidate as being on their side. Sanders turned that on its head. And old, rather-eccentric, Jewish dude got people excited (me too!). Massive gold-plated opportunity, with giant fucking neon signs pointing at it saying "pounce on this NOW", and the DNC took a big shit on it instead because they can't fathom a world without being 99.9% funded by massive corporations in return for congressmen, vetoes, and judges being bought and paid for.

I think that's what the guy is talking about with regards to "taking over the party". The "Justice Democrats" thing is about progressive candidates funded by actual goddamn people instead of laundered corporate money. I'm not real optimistic about their chances of really shaking up the status quo, but by god I sure hope they do.

As they mentioned, Warren Buffett famously bragged for years that he pays less in taxes than his secretary. The rich get such value on deductions, loopholes, capital gains rates, etc. that they can avoid taxes overall.
I'm in the bottom 20%...my uncle Sam has never even sent me a birthday card, he sure hasn't ever paid me a dime of assistance. Has Trump ever taken public funds for his projects? Hmmmm.

Another fail, Dimitri.

Congratulations! Your comment on Ending Free Speech-Elizabeth Warren Silenced In Senate has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

WooHoo ... another Birthday to celebrate Warren. And a Friday to boot! TGIF-HB2U

@newtboy
i like the 'failing liver" analogy.
appropriate and easily understood.

and i can understand where milkmandan is coming from,but my perspective is more aligned with yours newt.

what consistently baffles me,is how so many people are willing to simply accept this short term strategy from our politicians.

there is no surprise when corporations push for this,they are just focusing on their own interests and bottom line,which is short term profit.

or the politicians who bow to their neoliberal masters to receive those tasty campaign contributions.

or even the banks,who again focus on their short term gains.

these players are all behaving as they always have:for their own self interest.so there should be no shock or surprise when they act exactly as they have always acted.

but when i see everyday,normal people defend the behavior and actions of oliticians,financial institutions and multi-national corporations.it baffles me as to why they would choose to do such a thing.

we can understand why those players seek to retain a system which benefits them,their shareholders and their bottom line,but that system no longer serves the interests of the people,community and society as a whole.

so why make arguments defending it?

it is,quite frankly,killing us slowly as a species.

look at germany.
that country has slowly been recruiting,educating and now poised to corner the market in:new energy,renewable energy and are leading the world in breakthrough technologies in all energy fields.

germany has long played the long game.
they now dominate the entire EU in finance,and are now focusing on dominating the globe with new energy technology.

and what are we doing here in america?
pushing through more and more neoliberal policies that immiserate the working poor,both here and abroad.desperately continuing our destruction of entire ecosystems to exploit our natural resources for:oil and gas.military conflicts,which only make this country less safe,all to exploit other nations and extract THEIR oil and gas,and the cost in human lives is absolutely indefensible.

all of it.
every single bit of it for short term gains for an extremely small minority.

and here we are,with trump opening the flood gates to further exploit and destroy our natural resources with no thought or plan for the future.no investment in our communities,nor our society as a whole.

and for those who wish to make an argument that hillary would be better.i will only concede that on a domestic level this may have been true,but hillary is a neoliberal corporatist,and she would have pushed for even MORE military intervention in the middle east.MORE sanctions against countries unwilling to play ball,in order to politically squeeze them out,and even MORE of this countries policy of "regime change" to exploit and extract from those countries their precious resources.

i strongly suspect Iran would have been next on her agenda.

so when are some of these people going to step up,and realize that both trump AND clinton are (or would have been) disasterous for us as a community,a nation and as a species?

because they both only offer short term solutions to long term problems.and those short term solutions only benefit a minority of the population.

we could turn this ship around TODAY,right now,if we so choose.
we need more politicians like elizabeth warren and tulsi gabbard.we need more integrity in our media and journalists willing to do their job and criticize power,not bow to it just for access.we need the people to become engaged and confront their representatives,and make them uncomfortable,not treat them as celebrities.

and we need to reject the system where rich people choose who we get to vote for,and begin to dismantle this two party duopoly.

because trump vs hillary?
this election cycle has just revealed that both these candidates are not the disease,but rather the symptom of a very broken,and dysfunctional political system.

we need to begin to invest in the future.
and reject the status quo as no longer being viable for the continued existence of the human species.

and with the newly energized american public,who are growing in numbers daily,and is a direct response to the unmitigated disaster that is trump.there may be hope for us yet.

because if we stay on this trajectory,we are fucking doomed.

Trump has sunk political discourse to new lows, I agree. But I think she'd suffer worse slings and arrows than "Pocahontas" no matter who her opponent is. That's the game and it always has been. She's got to "man up" and anticipate a certain amount of mud being slung her way. Hillary Clinton, for all her faults, would never be caught unaware by a provoking one-liner like that.

Or as another example, think about Bernie Sanders, in the Democratic primary. From his own party; not yet from archfiend Trump. Sanders' own party called him a kook, didn't take him seriously, and harped on the "socialist" charge that they presumed would be a rallying standard against him for Republicans, etc. But I don't remember him showing any discomfort with that or letting on that it was getting to him.


I really do like Warren, but it is of paramount importance for any Presidential candidate to develop a thick enough skin to weather the smear campaign that is guaranteed to be headed their way. And this small throwaway interview isn't a sign that she can't get there, but it is a sign that she's still got plenty of work to do if she has those aspirations. Based on that, at this point I'd feel better if Sanders was the heir apparent (although that seems very unlikely given the current heads-up-asses state of the DNC). But Warren definitely has plenty of time to get to where she needs to be.

It would be like calling a black politician "Uncle Tom" if the opposition had been doing it first.

Trump has been relentless with his little jabs if he smells blood in the water. "Little Marco", etc. Taking offence is precisely what Trump wants to see. Maher arguably gave her a chance to own it and show that it didn't bother her, but she didn't take it.

My take is that Warren was expecting softball. Maher got a bit impatient with her going full tilt with politician-speak and threw a changeup. By the end of the interview he seems to regret having prodded her a bit. But the thing is, that interview was softball compared to what she'd face if she runs in 2020. Then, interviewers won't throw changeups, it'll be chin-music fastballs instead.