Tag: tuition free college

Where Does Someone Like Pete Buttigieg Come From?

~ rebelwillfarnaby ~ Leave a comment

Where I come from it’s cornbread and chicken

Where Pete comes from its crooked politicians

Where Pete comes from lotta billionaire lapsittin

Yes, we know it is late in the game to write a hit piece on Mayor Pete, but his past employer McKinsey has resurfaced recently after it was revealed that Mckinsey sold Purdue pharma a plan to skyrocket the sales of oxycontin. Yep, the company Pete clung to and defended, and even claimed “Most Americans work in the private sector. And I think the experience I got there served me well. If you’re going to manage the largest economy in the world, it’s probably a good idea that you’ve had a little bit of professional experience looking at a balance sheet or knowing what an income statement is.” And like they say on Rising, if someone tells you who they are, you should believe them. Let’s take a look at Pete’s history as a complete corporate sell out and complete fairweather politician. Don’t forget this is the same kid that wrote an award winning paper for a college scholarship about how amazing and inspiring Bernie Sanders was. 

While there is no shortage of Corporate sell out Dems, Pete is the quintessential, perfectly encapsulating, phony snake of a sellout. To be frank the only reason we are ok with writing a negative piece is because Pete will likely be the #1 adversary to the Bernie/Turner wing of the party moving forward. If we are not labeling and recording this guy’s moves, he will be the next Biden, becoming President after flip flopping his way through Washington for years seeking power. Pete’s brand of being the artificial midwestern white-gay Obama, was honestly just complete cynicism, they guy has abandoned every cause that can help working people since coming into power and become known as having phenomenal relations with donors. He has flip flopped so much it is really difficult to find a starting point to his corruption. 

Lets begin with Pete’s love of Bernie Sanders, yes that’s right, when Pete first took interest in politics he was feeling the Bern! Here is the link to the full paper here. To be honest it is really sad to see a completely corrupt adult at one time say things like “This disturbing trend reveals cynicism, a double-sided problem, which is perhaps, the greatest threat to the continued success of the American political system.

Cynical candidates have developed an ability to outgrow their convictions in order to win power.” “ It also calls into question what motivates a run for office – in many cases, apparently, only the desire to occupy it.”

Of course Pete chalks this up to being an immature kid. It is sad to know at one time he was dramatically opposed to the very type of politician he has become. It nearly begs the question, did he ever have good intentions or did he become entirely corrupted working at McKinsey? After Bernie was clearly in the lead after Nevada, this is what Pete had to say about him saying his campaign was a “revolution with a tenor of combat, division and polarization.”“Senator Sanders believes in an inflexible ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans,” 

This is the same guy who was singing Bernie’s praises saying  

“Candidates have discovered that it is easier to be elected by not offending anyone rather than by impressing the voters. Politicians are rushing for the center, careful not to stick their necks out on issues. Most Democrats shy away from the word “liberal” like a horrid accusation.” 

He literally goes on to praise Sanders courage for calling himself a socialist-

“Sanders’ courage is evident in the first word he uses to describe himself: “Socialist”….. Here is someone who has “looked into his own soul” and expressed an ideology, the endorsement of which, in today’s political atmosphere, is analogous to a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

We could literally start a Pete vs Pete twitter where he is arguing both sides of every position on record. He literally hasn’t held a position in Washington and already has a worse record of flip flopping than Biden or Kamala who have been there for years. We are actively lobbying websters to put Pete’s picture beside the word cynical. There is no one with a more cynical personally enriching story. From his very mouth we know he has changed views on everything that he once cared about. For TAR, that is enough for disqualification. However we are just scratching the surface on Mayor Cheat.

Let’s get into McKinsey, the experience that Pete claimed to be crucial to his ability to run the country. Funny your experience on extracting the absolute highest amount of profit from customers buying groceries is how you want to run the country. So who is McKinsey? We will do a complete deep dive into their other work, but for now let’s focus on their instrumental work in perpetuating the opioid crisis. You’ve likely heard of Purdue Pharma, they are the distributors of Oxy-Contin and the creators of the opioid epidemic. Well we can’t give them to much credit, McKinsey was the company that came up with the plan in 2007 to skyrocket sales and distribution. Yep, while Pete was there this company was architecting a plan to not only help boost sales but also how these companies can fight the public relations nightmare from willingly killing thousands of people. There is no sense in shying away from calling these people what they are, murderers. McKinsey was the company that wrote the game plan to give doctors kickbacks for distribution, they also wrote a policy to reimburse CVS for each of the predicted overdose deaths, a total to the tune of $37 million dollars. The most shocking part, they created this plan in 2007, Purdue was already under investigation, it was known how dangerous these substances were at this point. That didn’t stop them, to McKinsey that was an opportunity. They could collect fees for consulting Purdue on how to handle the government pressure and still boost sales through kickbacks and chemical addiction. 

If Bernie was here to make sure working people got the resources and care they need, you could say Pete was here to ensure the water was always muddied and working people never fully got what they needed. See Democrats like Pete are almost like forgein implants. They are on “our team” as regular americans but they are sponsored and placed by Billionaires who are not on our team. See Pete served to completely muddy the waters on Medicare for All and Tuition Free College. If we buy into this idea that Bernie’s dialogue alone opened the Overton Window, and made people more open to his ideas, then by the same logic people like Pete are combatting that shift and keeping it center right. See Pete gives a liberal policy but ultimately sows seeds of doubt about changes we desperately need. Take his healthcare plan, Medicare for those who want it. Essentially he checked the liberal box of saying people would no longer die in the streets, but he would not go near his donor friends in the insurance industry, they could keep ripping off the American people. No elimination of private insurance. And we are not talking about the extensive insurance policies of the wealthy, we are talking about the health insurance you have today, if you are lucky enough to have insurance. Even those covered by employers hate their insurance plans. This is where the skilled Corporate Dems thread the needle, they give a vague plan that appeases liberal voters who won’t research, while keeping them vague enough that they are never actually doing anything that could negatively impact donors. Pete was actively using Republican think tank talking points in an attempt to discredit Bernie and M4A.

Again look at Pete’s college plan, free college for everyone making less than $100,000/year. It is hard to actually explain how shitty it was of Pete to drop these little thoughts that aren’t good ideas but create massive traps for anyone seeking to make college free. Now we will have legions of people armed with the excuse, “Oh so we are going to pay for rich peoples college!?”. See Pete, while trying to taint an idea he would never have acted on, wanted to have a Bernie moment and please his donors. It made him look like Bernie to go against the wealthy, right? For more detail check out our post on tuition free college for all. If you know history, you know when FDR passed social security people lobbied to not give it to the ultra wealthy. While there seems to be merit there on the surface, FDR and his administration knew that any program passed must include all Americans if it is to survive. How many times have the wealthy like the Koch brothers and Joe Biden tried to destroy social security? Countless times, now imagine if they didn’t receive their money back from the program and only poor people got it? Social Security would have been destroyed in Washington with the passing of FDR. 

If we stand any chance moving forward, we must politically destroy the arguments of people like Pete, because he is spending every waking hour working to destroy us.

The Case for Tuition-Free Public Colleges and Universities

~ rebelwillfarnaby ~ 1 Comment

Debating the “sheer recklessness” of any real policy has become the mainstay of CNN and the Corporate Dems. Back when Bernie was running in the primary and they were forced to cover him, they spent all of their air time bashing his ideas as pie in the sky, featuring “experts” from conservative think tanks to explain how the policies ruin our system and never work. The idea that drew the most fire other than M4A was making public colleges and universities tuition-free. This is the idea that flew all over most people, especially corporate Dems. Let’s dive into why the plan and walk through the primary misunderstandings and benefits of the policy.

Perhaps it has always been this way, but attending college seems to become more and more political every year. By political I mean that not only are ideas and politics discussed there, it is becoming a difference of parties whether you are pro college or not. Many conservatives(anecdotally) seem to view college as an institution owned by the DNC that is made to brainwash and liberalize their kids. While this is certainly understandable, it is hard to say for sure that it is the college changing kids opinion as opposed to the fact that a child is moving out of their home and away from all of their childhood influences. While this isn’t an objective or rational argument, we need to be aware that the very mention of college can have negative implications to conservative, rural voters. This is where Bernie’s plan can begin to heal the issue by letting all people attend college regardless of income, as opposed to Bidens plan, which is going to further the wedge between us by offering a massive cash give away to college-educated liberals without letting the impoverished into college. Basically, if you are with us, here is some money, but for everyone else, kick rocks. 

Imagine if college attendance matched the real demographics and income distribution of real Americans, it wouldn’t be possible to have strong political leanings. This is where those who didn’t attend college are wrong, it isn’t that colleges are super liberal, they are filled with wealthy elite professors talking to wealthy elite students. It is just by chance that the Corporate Dems have also recently abandoned the working class for college-educated elites. If everyone in the country had the same opportunity to be educated without strangling debt, this would destroy one of the best gatekeepers to prosperity. 

Perhaps the most flak that the plan caught was from an economic perspective. CNN railed constantly from Lincoln Project talking points that the plan was way to expensive to ever happen. They argued that like all of Bernie’s plans it would make the deficit skyrocket. Oh, the deficit, the magical trump card for anything you don’t like, don’t mind spending billions on a fighter plane, but how dare you try to educate us and raise the deficit! Ironically we never hear someone mention the economic impact of a large swath of the country holding massive amounts of debt. As of today there is over $1.5 Trillion in student debt, with 65% of it being held by people under 40. So how does this impact our economy? Well according to one study a 10% rise in student debt decreases homeownership by 1.5%. See this economy is a pie and we all have a slice. Your money is finite, if you have student loans that is monthly payments that will never circulate in the economy. You won’t spend that $100-$500/month on a local restaurant, the stock market, rent, a home, or anything else. On top of the economic damage from not spending, carrying that debt makes it harder to get a loan, to buy a car or home, so no more borrowing to stimulate the economy. This is already a big deal, just imagine in the next 10-15 years as our generation is the bulk of the economy and 66% of us have lingering student loan debt, that does not bode well for us long term compared to countries like Germany where you can get your higher education like a masters tuition-free. 

The other argument that conservatives and corrupt Dems like Mayor Pete make is, why should we pay for some rich kids college? If you know history as a democrat you understand how disgustingly cynically it is for someone like Pete to try and twist this in voters’ minds. You might be familiar with the name Franklin D. Roosevelt or FDR, only the most popular democratic President of all time. See Roosevelt went head to head constantly with people like Pete, always slamming them for cynically seeking self-empowerment. When FDR was leading the charge to create social security, the same argument was used, “Why would we pass a plan that includes rich people?”. See people like Pete aren’t just magically pulling a Bernie and turning on their donors, this is just a ploy to kill the bill and make sure no one can receive the benefit. FDR and his administration knew Social Security would never work if any group was excluded, not to mention the most powerful group. See when you include everyone the argument of fairness is completely removed. If you start giving tuition-free college to everyone making less than $120,000/year, imagine the anger and hostility for everyone hovering right on that line for household income, you would be incentivizing them to stop working once they approached that number. Imagine you have 4 kids, once you earn that $120,000th dollar, on the absolute lowest end you’ve just lost $160,000 that you will pay intuition. See Pete’s argument is a double poison pill, on the front end it makes the policy much harder to pass, but it also implants future troubles that will doom the policy. 

While Biden’s plan to just eliminate all student debt, would be extremely divisive, it would create an economic explosion. Granted it would not be anywhere near the results we would see from UBI or from M4A. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the velocity of money, check out our post about it here. Essentially, the $1.5 Trillion would no longer be going to a small group of predatory lenders, and instead flow back into the economy. However, this would be going to a group that does contain some of the wealthiest most upwardly mobile people in the country. So to some degree, this is a Wildcat liberals way of giving tax cuts to the rich, they are finally helping the minorities who are more likely to carry student debt, and at the same time enriching their donors and constituents. 

This is why you must eliminate tuition and student debt together. Playing favorites with literal money is one of the most divisive political moves possible, at a time when the country has never been more divided. Or we can open the gates of upward mobility, reviving the American Dream. Imagine the spark of hope for so many impoverished students that if they work hard, they can go to college, regardless of money, and make a better life for their family. 

And finally, the main reason we have so much confidence in Bernie’s plan is that we have seen it work before, in America. See the most economically successful period in America was after WWII when every soldier was given free college tuition in the GI bill. We have seen free tuition pay dividends down the road, clearing roadblocks to an individual’s success in this economy.

Erasing Student Debt without Tuition-Free College?

~ rebelwillfarnaby ~ 3 Comments

With the stage set for Joe Biden to take the White House, many on the left are praying he will pass anything from Bernie’s agenda. By the looks of his complete corporate sell-out of a cabinet, from Amazon to Air B’n’B people, we are crazy to expect anything but a social security cut. However, they have recently floated the idea of eliminating all college debt. While this seems like a victory at first, this falls right in line with the Wildcat Democrats, they only move on things when it enriches or empowers them. With the election results showing the new American divide is the college-educated vs the non-college-educated, this seems to be a massive payout to highly educated people who supported Biden. This has the potential to incite class warfare, this is a trillion-dollar wealth transfer to the most upwardly mobile segment of the population. You are probably thinking, wait wasn’t Bernie for this? Are the companies that loan this money preying on minorities that receive the worst end of the bargain? Let’s break down how this plan differs from Bernie’s and why exactly the corporate Dems are keen on it.

First off, we should know, the Corporate Democrats that sell out constantly would never actually pass a bill to help working families, it is strictly against their donor’s demands. So how does this debt relief bill gets approved by the lenders that pay for their mansions? This is where Wildcat liberalism comes in. See the Dems find a way for these seemingly liberal policies to line the pockets of them and their rich donors. Stated more clearly the Pelosi brand of liberalism is to back a cause once it is financially profitable for her and her donors. Someone like Elon Musk becoming one of the wealthiest men on earth from renewable energy is a great example. They only get on board once they can make money doing so, just like all these consumer brands running marketing campaigns for social justice. Is the cause morally there? Sure, but they are ultimately doing it to make money. Nothing is sacred to this group of corporate elite Dems, and their donors who run these marketing campaigns. Remember Nike backing Collin Kapernick, all the while using slave and child labor to make their shoes overseas. While the call for social justice is real and legitimate, the movement has been overtaken by those profiting off the campaign. This is the case for every “liberal” cause that the corporate Dems have backed, it either makes them wealthy or at the least cost them nothing, for example publicly backing the #metoo movement yet not passing any legislation. 

So how could relieving student debt not excite the Bernie Base? Well if you are familiar with the debate on student loan debt there are a few different ways to slice this cake. The plan Elizabeth “The Snake” Warren and the Bidens corporate administration back calls for erasing all student debt. Is removing student debt a bad thing? No, at first take it is a really good thing. We know that minorities are more likely to take on student debt to attend college. If you are younger than 45 you know the pressure of attending college, do it or flip McDonald’s hamburgers for the rest of your life. We are also aware of the predatory practices with student loans, for example it does not disappear with bankruptcy. Student loans also cripple those in the most critical roles in society like social workers, who the market system tell us are worthless based on their paycheck. From this perspective you are probably wondering how could we not be excited about their plan? 

This is where it is important to highlight the difference in the Corporate plan and the Bernie plan. Bernie’s plan included making all public colleges and universities tuition free. This is the crucial part that Biden is missing, and also the part that risk further dividing the country. Imagine being in the massive group of people who did not attend college and you have no student debt, but you have plenty of debt on your home and car. You voted for Trump, he losses and Biden devises a plan to transfer as much wealth as possible to his voters and not you. He does it by erasing all student loan debt, not UBI or free healthcare that all voters receive, but by erasing the debt that majority of his voters carry. This is the major difference in Bernie’s plan and theirs, they are breaking FDR’s golden rule, never create a program that doesn’t include everyone. They are choosing a specific group to help, if we should ever cry foul play it is now. When the governement starts segmenting people you enjoy it until you are on the losing end of the deal. What happens if the Republicans are propelled by angry voters to give UBI only to those who didn’t attend college?(it would never happen) We would be in an outrage! This is why Bernie’s plan of making public universities tuition free is superior, it includes everyone and prevents this nightmare student debt crisis. 

This is the the primary divide between Bernie and the Corporate Dems like Pete and Warren, he is actually fighting for all people, not just his voters or donors. For the Corporate Dems the greed and thirst for personal power aligns with todays cynical climate. They flourish speaking negatively about the other side, scoring internet sound bites are much more important than actually legislating, Kamala Harris is a great example of that. This is why they will only back progressive seeming policies when they are lucrative to them and their base. They aren’t in the game to help the nation, they don’t care about red states or red voters, just the next election.