Please explain for me, What is the mechanism by which you believe 'the rich' ("Amazon, Facebook and Google") get rich at your expense? If you think Bezos is overcharging/cheating you when you buy from Amazon, why do you keep doing it? And you do not ever buy anything from Facebook or Google, right? So how do those two profit at your expense?

Liz [11]

What is/are "the Blues"? If you're asking me about what music I listen to, it would be ABBA and The Irish Rovers.

This is the great fallacy of "Trickle Down." Far better to spend as much prosperity among all 100% of Americans so that people can buy ribs, which employees more people etc.

C.R. Stucki wrote,

WOW! Whoda ever guessed, that if you poll people with the question "Would you like to be made much better off at somebody else's expense?", that most people would be all in favor???

But the rich have been "made better off at somebody else's [read us 90%-er'expense]" going back to Reagan's tax cuts. I would note that since Reagan the top 10% has blossomed while the bottom 90% has been treading water, flatlining. And flatlining in an environment of crumbling infrastructure, skyrocketing healthcare and college expenses and so on.

Concentrating wealth in the top 10% means that the other 90% has less to spend. And less to spend means less wealth for everybody, ultimately the fat cats, too.

Do you like the Blues?

Surely you don't believe what you read in those discourses!

Besides, Biden always says that nothing is going to change for "The rich and Corporations". :)

Don't you follow this stuff on the news? The standard answer to that would be "The rich and Corporations", wouldn't it? I've read that a dozen times or more, in Democratic's discourses.

WOW! Whoda ever guessed, that if you poll people with the question "Would you like to be made much better off at somebody else's expense?", that most people would be all in favor???

I had you in mind when I chose the word"pox" instead of the f-bomb.

Very well reasoned - makes perfect sense to me.

Don't try to raise the debt limit via Reconciliation. Instead, March right up to the edge of the abyss and dare the Repugs to continue their Filibuster. Even better, if #MoscowMitch plays Chicken right up to impact, dare Manchin to not abolish the Filibuster.

We Progs have been waiting for legislation like this since before Gore lost. This time it's somebody else's turn to fold. A pox on both Clinton's, a pox on Obama and a pox on DINOs everywhere.

On the other hand, more discussion of the plain and popular benefits of the various sub-sections would seem to have been a good way to maintain pressure on the more conservative members and/or the two senators. And yes, the Dems are notoriously bad at selling the benefits of government programs that benefit most Americans.

Another aspect of the story, which got just a little coverage in the NY Times today, is the incredible offensive push by lobbyists for corporate and/or wealthy America to beat this bill down, due to its relative downsides for them. This kind of thing doesn't take place in public, for obvious reasons, and it takes pretty dedicated reporters with a real nose for the money to bring out to the public just how hard some wealthy and resourceful agencies are fighting to defeat the soft-infrastructure bill in committee, before it emerges from the afore-mentioned greasy machine.

It would be nice to think that the professional American media could see an upside to dedicated if difficult reporting about how lobbyists and influence-peddlers work to defeat popular and much-needed legislation on a regular basis. But if it ain't either sexy or really easy to explain, it doesn't get covered. That's the way it is.

Nice piece today, thanks.

I'm a huge proponent of not slashing a single program and simply scaling back the number of years that are funded. Let's say the magic number turns out to be $2.8T. That's 80% of $3.5T, so just put an eight year sunset on it. Or five years or whatever, just so long as each program is fully funded at $3.5T levels. Make it bold and transformative and the Repugs won't be able to take it away.

Democrats can even claim that although fully funded by tax increases on the rich and corporations "out of respect for fiscal concerns they're shortening the program length to allow for a revaluation of these programs, when that time comes"

When
here's no way the