a425couple
2019-07-29 02:40:50 UTC
from
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/07/28/george-f-will-serious/
George F. Will: Serious questions for the Democratic candidates
Democratic presidential candidate, former vice president Joe Biden,
left, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.,
speak simultaneously during the Democratic primary debate at the
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Thursday, June 27, 2019,
in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
By George F. Will | The Washington Post
Washington • The Democratic presidential circus pitches its tent in
Detroit this week. It will be especially entertaining if the
presidential aspirants are asked some questions like these:
For Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders especially, but others,
too: Three of Barack Obama’s few large achievements were the 12-nation
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Affordable Care Act — the
most significant expansion of the social safety net since 1965 (Medicare
and Medicaid) — and Dodd-Frank, the most consequential financial sector
regulation since the 1930s. You opposed ratification of the first. By
advocating “Medicare for All” you are implicitly saying that the second
was not much. And by railing against the ongoing “corruption” of Wall
Street, banks, capitalism, etc. you imply that the third was not much.
Does it not follow that you think Obama’s presidency was not much?
For Joe Biden: Care to defend it, including its deportation of 5 million
illegal immigrants?
For Warren: You paused in your denunciations of crony capitalism,
government favors for the well-connected, etc., long enough to vote to
revive the Export-Import Bank, which funnels capital to
government-favored corporations. Explain.
For Sanders: Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, a liberal in the New
Deal-Great Society tradition, notes that you have advocated a top
capital gains tax rate of 64.2%, which is "substantially higher than in
Europe." And more than double that in Sweden, of which you are famously
fond. And you advocate the sort of financial transaction tax that Sweden
abandoned as a failure in 1991. Wilentz says that progressives like you
"seem to think that economic inequality can be conquered only by
confiscating as much as possible from the evil rich. The model they
implicitly adopt is the reactionary Malthusian one of zero-sum
economics." How is Wilentz wrong?
For Sen. Kamala Harris and others considering reparations for slavery:
Are the 1.9 million immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa who have chosen
to live in America today eligible for payments? Will you share your
formula for assigning degrees of eligibility? Is the first African
American president eligible? Is his opposition to reparations yet
another reason to judge him a disappointment?
For Mayor Pete Buttigieg: You propose a $10 billion fund reserved for
racial minority entrepreneurs. Do you have a limiting principle for your
policy of distributing federal funds to government-favored racial groups?
For Harris: You decry Donald Trump's shredding of constitutional norms,
authoritarian tendencies, etc. He has indeed used executive orders to
marginalize Congress. But you promise to give Congress just 100 days to
pass gun-control legislation pleasing to you and then you will resort to
executive "action." If you become president, must the nation get used to
your situational ethics?
For all of you who have demonstrated the obligatory apoplexy (have any
of you not done so?) about the U.S. women's national soccer team being
paid less than the men's team: Is it pertinent that in 2018 the men's
World Cup in Russia generated $6 billion in revenue, 46 times this
year's women's World Cup projected revenues of $131 million? Or that
women players receive a higher percentage of their World Cup revenues
than the men receive from theirs? Or that, as Christine Rosen writes,
"the path to qualifying for the men's World Cup is much more arduous and
competitive than it is for the women's World Cup. The men have to win
more games over a longer period of time to qualify than do the women"?
Are you also indignant — if not, why not — that the Rolling Stones make
more than comparable women's groups? And if there aren't such comparable
groups, do you, Sen. ("I have a plan for that") Warren, have a plan for
government to right this wrong? Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, you say: "If
you win 13-0 — the most goals for a single game in World Cup history —
you should be paid at least equally to the men's team." At least. So,
were the men ever to beat Thailand even more lopsidedly, would your
dollars-for-goals metric remain gender-neutral?
For Gillibrand: When Nike, buckling beneath the disapproval of a former
NFL quarterback, withdrew its line of sneakers adorned with the 13-star
Betsy Ross flag, you said that Nike was right to "admit when they are
wrong." Presumably, then, you agree with the quarterback, who said why
Nike was wrong: Because of the flag's connection to an era of slavery.
So, Senator, should Americans "admit when they are wrong" when they sing
the National Anthem, which was written in 1814?
Geroge F. Will
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/07/28/george-f-will-serious/
George F. Will: Serious questions for the Democratic candidates
Democratic presidential candidate, former vice president Joe Biden,
left, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.,
speak simultaneously during the Democratic primary debate at the
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Thursday, June 27, 2019,
in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
By George F. Will | The Washington Post
Washington • The Democratic presidential circus pitches its tent in
Detroit this week. It will be especially entertaining if the
presidential aspirants are asked some questions like these:
For Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders especially, but others,
too: Three of Barack Obama’s few large achievements were the 12-nation
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Affordable Care Act — the
most significant expansion of the social safety net since 1965 (Medicare
and Medicaid) — and Dodd-Frank, the most consequential financial sector
regulation since the 1930s. You opposed ratification of the first. By
advocating “Medicare for All” you are implicitly saying that the second
was not much. And by railing against the ongoing “corruption” of Wall
Street, banks, capitalism, etc. you imply that the third was not much.
Does it not follow that you think Obama’s presidency was not much?
For Joe Biden: Care to defend it, including its deportation of 5 million
illegal immigrants?
For Warren: You paused in your denunciations of crony capitalism,
government favors for the well-connected, etc., long enough to vote to
revive the Export-Import Bank, which funnels capital to
government-favored corporations. Explain.
For Sanders: Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, a liberal in the New
Deal-Great Society tradition, notes that you have advocated a top
capital gains tax rate of 64.2%, which is "substantially higher than in
Europe." And more than double that in Sweden, of which you are famously
fond. And you advocate the sort of financial transaction tax that Sweden
abandoned as a failure in 1991. Wilentz says that progressives like you
"seem to think that economic inequality can be conquered only by
confiscating as much as possible from the evil rich. The model they
implicitly adopt is the reactionary Malthusian one of zero-sum
economics." How is Wilentz wrong?
For Sen. Kamala Harris and others considering reparations for slavery:
Are the 1.9 million immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa who have chosen
to live in America today eligible for payments? Will you share your
formula for assigning degrees of eligibility? Is the first African
American president eligible? Is his opposition to reparations yet
another reason to judge him a disappointment?
For Mayor Pete Buttigieg: You propose a $10 billion fund reserved for
racial minority entrepreneurs. Do you have a limiting principle for your
policy of distributing federal funds to government-favored racial groups?
For Harris: You decry Donald Trump's shredding of constitutional norms,
authoritarian tendencies, etc. He has indeed used executive orders to
marginalize Congress. But you promise to give Congress just 100 days to
pass gun-control legislation pleasing to you and then you will resort to
executive "action." If you become president, must the nation get used to
your situational ethics?
For all of you who have demonstrated the obligatory apoplexy (have any
of you not done so?) about the U.S. women's national soccer team being
paid less than the men's team: Is it pertinent that in 2018 the men's
World Cup in Russia generated $6 billion in revenue, 46 times this
year's women's World Cup projected revenues of $131 million? Or that
women players receive a higher percentage of their World Cup revenues
than the men receive from theirs? Or that, as Christine Rosen writes,
"the path to qualifying for the men's World Cup is much more arduous and
competitive than it is for the women's World Cup. The men have to win
more games over a longer period of time to qualify than do the women"?
Are you also indignant — if not, why not — that the Rolling Stones make
more than comparable women's groups? And if there aren't such comparable
groups, do you, Sen. ("I have a plan for that") Warren, have a plan for
government to right this wrong? Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, you say: "If
you win 13-0 — the most goals for a single game in World Cup history —
you should be paid at least equally to the men's team." At least. So,
were the men ever to beat Thailand even more lopsidedly, would your
dollars-for-goals metric remain gender-neutral?
For Gillibrand: When Nike, buckling beneath the disapproval of a former
NFL quarterback, withdrew its line of sneakers adorned with the 13-star
Betsy Ross flag, you said that Nike was right to "admit when they are
wrong." Presumably, then, you agree with the quarterback, who said why
Nike was wrong: Because of the flag's connection to an era of slavery.
So, Senator, should Americans "admit when they are wrong" when they sing
the National Anthem, which was written in 1814?
Geroge F. Will