Joe Biden: "America is Back"

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

14 February 15

t was billed as an official Office of the Vice President event, not a campaign event. The vice president was greeted at the airport by the Republican governor Terry Branstad. The Dallas Republican Party sent out a press release thanking Joe Biden for coming to Iowa and pointing out how long it has been since Hillary Clinton has visited the Hawkeye State. Umm, she has a 40-point lead, so why would she start campaigning a year before the caucus?

Drake University students and other Iowans started lining up at 7 a.m. for a chance to see the man who is a heartbeat away from being president of the United States. They braved frigid temperatures for hours before being allowed into the Sheslow Auditorium on the campus of Drake University, the site of past presidential election debates. Over 800 people packed the auditorium.

This was the Democrats’ first 2015 salvo into the 2016 presidential election. Joe Biden came to Iowa to frame the economic debate, to serve notice that the administration’s policies have put America on the right path and the Republicans’ threats to change course would send the country in the wrong direction. From health care to jobs and financial reform, the VP claimed success:

In 2009, when the president and I were sworn into office, the middle class was in dire straits. On the day we were sworn in, we had already lost 800,000 jobs, just that month. Over the next few months we continued to lose 700,000 jobs a month. People were losing their homes. If they didn’t lose their homes, they lost the equity in their homes, they lost what is the only real source of wealth for middle class families, that equity ... The truth of the matter is pensions, life savings, dreams of hard working Americans were wiped out by the Great Recession … but thanks to the great determination of your parents and many Americans, we have gone from a genuine crisis to a recovery and to the prefaces of a resurgence, re-establishing the middle class’s place in America. Just last November we added over 400,000 jobs; nearly a million jobs the last three months.

“America is back,” proclaimed Biden. “America is leading the world again.” The vice president went on to argue that Democrats should run on the Obama/Biden record.

“It wasn’t that long ago that many in my own party were saying our plan didn’t work and distanced themselves from our policies. I think that would be a terrible mistake. In my view, those seeking to the lead the nation should seek to protect and defend, and yes, run on what we have done, own what we have done, and be judged on what we have done. Some say that would be a third term for the president. I think it would be sticking to what works,” said Biden.

The vice president said that North America is now the epicenter of energy production in the world and will be energy-independent by 2020 or possibly 2018. Biden said that the United States alone has more oil and gas rigs pumping than the rest of the world combined. When I first heard him say that, I wondered if that could be true. It is – the United States has 55% of the world’s oil and gas rigs. According to oilprice.com, “Global drilling for oil and gas is dominated by North America, in particular the USA. In January 1995 there were 737 oil and gas rigs drilling in the USA, 42% of the world total. By October 2011 this figure had grown to 2010 rigs, 55% of the world total.” Drill baby drill? We have been drilling more than the rest of the world combined for a long time already. Market Watch reports that North America will become a net energy exporter by 2020.

Of course, the bad news is we are destroying the environment to get there. Fracking is what is producing the increase in oil production. But Biden also trumpeted the administration’s gains in renewable energy. He said that our use of renewable energy has doubled in the last six years, and that we have tripled electricity production from wind, solar, and geothermal.

The gains in energy production have lowered our costs to the point where companies are now “in-sourcing.” Natural gas prices in the United States are three times cheaper than in Europe, five times cheaper than in Asia. Biden said the result is that companies are coming home. The global management firm A.T. Kearney did its annual survey of the world’s leading industrialists and they said, by the largest margin ever, the United States is the best market to invest in.

We all know things are going well for the wealthy again. But it is at the expense of the environment, and wages for the middle class and poor are not on the rise.

But Joe Biden has a point: clearly the country is better off than it was six years ago. The last two Democrats to hold the White House left the country better off economically than their predecessors. The Republicans are running on foreign policy and “speeding up” economic growth. That theme itself acknowledges that the economy is growing. While they blame the administration for ISIS, it was the Bush administration that broke Iraq.

The problem I see with the Democrats’ running on the Obama/Biden record is that the “recovery” is not being felt by many Americans. Unemployment is down, but the new jobs are not as good as the old jobs. Many Americans are still not ready to say things are better off for them than they were six years ago. But that is changing.

Biden acknowledged that more has to be done for the middle class and the poor. He said we have the greatest concentration of wealth in the United States since the twenties. Biden said productivity is up, yet wages have not risen for a decade. He said that in the past if your company grew and made a profit, everyone shared the wealth – not just the shareholders.

He also defended the bailout of the banks and the auto industry, and the efficacy of the stimulus package. He reminded the crowd that the banks paid back every penny with interest and that 92% of economists believe the stimulus prevented a much worse economic crisis.

Biden spoke for 90 minutes and stuck mostly to the economy, but he did slip in his foreign policy experience and touted his role in the administration for getting things done. He compared himself to Little Mikey in the Life cereal commercials. He mentioned that President Obama had put “Sheriff Joe” in charge of the TARP money.

While it wasn’t billed as a campaign speech, Biden was clearly testing the waters. He told reporters that he will decide by the end of the summer if he will run for president.

For the question and answer portion of the event, Biden left the stage and walked back and forth ... He took only three questions, but gave very long, wide-ranging answers. When he was asked about immigration reform, we learned that Biden has met almost every world leader, clearly a hint that he is prepared to be president. He became most animated when talking about how it makes no sense to send people back to a country they were not even raised in. He pointed out that five-year-olds couldn’t prevent their parents from bringing them across the border. He also said that one of things that make America work is immigration.

When asked what needs to be done to get more people to vote, Biden answered that we have to get the money out of politics. He told the crowd that he supports public financing of campaigns. He also pointed out that 92 senators voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including Strom Thurmond, and that the Supreme Court was wrong to strike down some of its key provisions. He blasted Republicans for passing restrictions on voter access.

All in all, I was left with the impression that the former senator from Delaware still wants to be the president of the United States.

Biden closed with his rephrasing of a famous quote from Plato: “One problem with good people not getting involved in politics is they end up being governed by people worse than themselves.”

One student in the crowd, Mark Reiter, was impressed with Biden’s “intentional candor” and asked the vice president if he would be back for the caucus. He said Biden flashed him a big smile and said “maybe.”

Scott Galindez co-founded Truthout and will be reporting on the presidential election from Iowa throughout 2015.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

Scott Walker and Education Don't Mix

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

14 February 15

s we mentioned last week, ol' alma mammy is getting quite a workout in the news these days. First, there was the blow-up concerning Professor John McAdams and his blog. Then there was the gumshoeing that my fellow one-time Marquette Tribune editor Jennifer Haberkorn did on one of the straw people behind the King v. Burwell suit. And now, there's all kinds of news concerning the most prominent non-alumnus we've had since Maurice Lucas took the money and ran in 1974. That would be Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. At the moment, Walker is in England, thereby becoming an international man of mendacity. There he found that the tap-dance that flies on the Sunday Showz doesn't quite work on British television interviewers who don't particularly give a damn if he likes them or not.

In his last response, Walker declined to answer a question and follow-up from his interviewer about whether evolution was real, saying politicians were better off steering clear of that issue. "I'm going to punt on that one as well," Walker said. "I'm here to talk about trade, not to pontificate about other things."After Walker declined to state his views on evolution, the event's moderator, Justin Webb of BBC Radio 4, told him that he believed any British politician would answer such a question by making clear that he or she believed evolution was true.

This rather dubious view into the Walker brain cavern leads us inevitably to the sudden interest in the national press concerning Walker's unsuccessful pursuit of the degree they were nice enough to hand me in 1975. (That this interest is prompted by the fact that this low-rent grifter is now considered by a lot of people, including me, to be a serious contender for the presidency is something on which I am trying not to dwell.) The details are still pretty murky, but there's no question that his friends on campus looked up one day and -- poof! -- young Scott was gone.

And then he left Marquette altogether. Walker's disappearance from campus became a mystery that his political rivals seized on. As recently as 2013, the state's Democrats were still alleging that he might have been kicked out for election-related misdeeds. They dropped that after Marquette officials told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Walker had left "in good standing."...At the time, the Journal Sentinel found, Walker was not close to graduating. After four years, he was at least 34 credits short - about one-quarter of the required total away from earning his degree, according to its report. Walker's political spokeswoman said she would not contest that finding.

Which leads us inevitably to the fact that Walker's general attitude toward truth-in-campaigning hasn't improved very much since he absented himself from the academic end of Wisconsin Avenue. In Iowa, during his well-received speech at which people were astonished that he wasn't a wax figurine after all, Walker told the sad tale of how the 2010 "Teacher Of The Year" in Wisconsin, a woman named Megan Sampson, had been laid off because of those nasty teacher's unions that he has done so much to crush. (The teacher he name checked wants no part of him, either.) Well, we just happen to have one of the 2010 Teachers Of The Year right here. Not only that, but Ms. Claudia Klein Felske also happens to be a good daughter of Numen Flumenque her own self.

Your tenure as Governor has demonstrated nothing less than a systematic attempt to dismantle public education, the cornerstone of democracy and the ladder of social mobility for any society. How our paths have diverged from that August afternoon in 1986. True story: it was freshman orientation just outside Memorial Union. We were two of a couple thousand new Marquette University freshman wistful about what our futures held. Four years later, I graduated from Marquette and later became Wisconsin High School Teacher of the Year. You never graduated, and you became the Governor of the State of Wisconsin bent on dismantling public education. Ironic, isn't it? Situational irony at its best. I'd laugh if its ramifications weren't so utterly destructive for the state of Wisconsin.

A mark, that will surely leave.

This is what can happen when you close a place like Jim Hegarty's.

(H/t to Booman for grabbing the Felske letter)