Warren & Castro Call Out Bloomberg's Redlining Lies About Democrats Causing The 2008 Crash
First off, this is bull shit:
Michael Bloomberg said at the height of the housing crisis in 2008 that getting rid of “redlining,” the biased housing practice that stopped banks from providing mortgages in low-income, largely minority neighborhoods, was to blame for the collapse.Bloomberg's presidential campaign said Thursday the former New York mayor's comments, which were made at a Georgetown University forum in 2008, were meant to make the point that “something bad – the financial crisis – followed something good, which is the fight against redlining.”The 2008 comments were first reported by the Associated Press.“It all started back when there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone,” Bloomberg said at the time. “Redlining, if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said, 'People in these neighborhoods are poor, they're not going to be able to pay off their mortgages, tell your salesmen don't go into those areas.'”
Bloomberg added that issues with people being unable to pay their mortgages began when “Congress got involved, local officials as well.”They “said, 'Oh that's not fair, these people should be able to get credit.' And once you started pushing in that direction, banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn't as good as you would like,” Bloomberg said during the forum.By blaming the financial crisis, in part, on redlining, Bloomberg appears to be defending a prejudiced system that denied low-income, often minority neighborhoods access to capital and loans.
Luckily, one Democratic Presidential candidate has been calling Bloomberg out on his lies:
Bloomberg's 2008 remarks stand in contrast with the decades-long positions some of his rivals have held.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's work as a professor and attorney has been devoted to the study of bankruptcy and the disastrous impact it has on the financial well-being of families. As a young Delaware senator, Joe Biden held hearings on unfair lending practices and sponsored legislation to ban discrimination in lending and crack down on industry figures who did.On Thursday, Warren criticized Bloomberg for suggesting the end of redlining caused the crash.“Out-of-control greed by Wall Street and big banks, and the corruption that lets them control our government, caused the crash,” she tweeted.“I'm surprised that someone running for the Democratic nomination thinks the economy would be better off if we just let banks be more overtly racist,” she said. “We need to confront the shameful legacy of discrimination, not lie about it like Mike Bloomberg.”Bloomberg's redlining remarks are the latest instance of his past comments by him that have resurfaced in recent days that make him appear racially insensitive.
I cannot emphasize this more:
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 13, 2020
And thank you Julian Castro for calling out the bull shit as well:
— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) February 13, 2020
Well said.
On the topic of Warren, the Nevada Caucuses are coming up and I wanted to check in and see what Former U.S. Senate Majority & Minority Leader Harry Reid (D. NV) has to say. Couldn’t agree more:
Harry Reid is done with Iowa.
The former Senate Majority leader, who remains a powerful force in the Democratic Party, led off a lengthy interview with VICE News by declaring the end of the Iowa caucuses.
“Iowa has forfeited its chance to be number one. I don't think that'll happen anymore,” Reid said, slamming the state and New Hampshire for their lack of diversity and pitching his home state of Nevada to replace them at the front of the pack.
“Since the debacle in Iowa, [pundits] have been talking about Nevada should be the first state. Why? Because we’re a state that’s heavily diverse,” he said. “It’s really a state that represents what the country is all about. So I think that Iowa really was an embarrassment to everybody.”
Nevada is the next state to vote — its caucuses are on Feb. 22. And in spite of his retirement and significant health issues, Reid remains the most powerful Democrat in the state and one of the most powerful nationally. What he says and does matters a lot to the presidential race over the next ten days and beyond.
Reid has said that he has been in touch with Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders campaigns while being treated for chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. He would not disclose who is voting for in the caucuses and that he plans on voting early. He said he will not be publicly endorsing anyone until after the Nevada Caucuses. But as I mentioned above, all the Democratic candidates are seeking his help because as The Atlantic points out, he can still be a kingmaker in the state:
Before the interview, I’d been warned that while Reid is in better shape than he seems, he speaks in a whisper these days and I might have a hard time hearing him. That didn’t prove to be the case, but he struggled at one point to lean forward enough to reach a water glass on the table. Still, he continues to keep close tabs on the candidates and take meeting after meeting. Late that evening, he brought in Warren and Biden for separate meetings with Nevada climate activists.
When Sanders had a heart attack in Las Vegas at the beginning of October, his campaign was in a panic, not even telling reporters which hospital he was in. Reid called Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, to say he knew exactly where the candidate was, knew his doctors, had already talked with one of them, and wanted to come visit.
“Let’s be honest; Bernie Sanders isn’t eager to be sitting around with a lot of his fellow senators,” Shakir told me last week. “Harry Reid is in a special category. He was excited to hear—‘Harry Reid wants to come? Let’s make that happen.’” Sanders insisted on being dressed and out of bed, and he sought to make sure that the former leader would be comfortable. “They see into each other’s souls and understand each other,” Shakir said.
Ultimately, photos from the Reid visit were what the Sanders campaign used as proof of life after the heart attack: Bernie is alive, literally and politically. The Sanders team never formally asked Reid for permission to publish the photos for that purpose—permission was implied in Reid’s coming by and asking on the way out whether Sanders was planning to continue campaigning, Shakir told me.
Reid has a coyness that calls to mind the Thelonious Monk line, “What you don’t play can be more important than what you do play.” When I asked Reid whether he can envision Sanders in the Oval Office, given the senator from Vermont’s brusque personality and socialist ideology, he said, “Well, people couldn’t imagine him being elected to the House of Representatives,” and he pointed out his own role in weaving Sanders into the Senate’s Democratic caucus and putting him in charge of the Budget Committee. “Bernie has always been someone that’s shot over his—what’s the right word?—he’s always done better than people thought he would.” Reid noted Sanders’s “huge following,” and said he can’t be discounted. What he didn’t do was answer the question directly.
In contrast, when I asked whether he thought Elizabeth Warren would be a good president, he said, “Yep,” and added that she was “bright, hardworking.” He mentioned with pride that he helped discover her. Though he conceded that others thought she’d be hard to work with because of her strong views, as a senator, “she was always someone who would try to bring people in the caucus together.”
How about Biden? “I have the greatest admiration, respect for Joe. He’s treated me well from the day I stepped into the Senate—I have great admiration for his life story; I think he’s overcome a lot. And there’s not a negative thing I can say about Joe.” When Reid was leading the Senate Democrats and Biden was vice president, Reid’s approach to dealing with Republicans was more adversarial than Biden’s Let’s reach across the aisle to make a deal style, so I asked him if Biden is right when he says he’s the candidate who knows how to best work with Republicans. “That’s a different approach than I had, but maybe they needed him. So I’m glad he feels that way. I’ve worked with Senator McConnell, and I wish him luck.”
And the real fight is just beginning in Nevada:
The politically powerful Culinary Union hasn’t yet endorsed in the Democratic presidential primary, but it is making clear which candidates it won’t be supporting.
A one-pager from the union, the kind of document usually distributed in employee dining rooms and break areas, obtained by The Nevada Independent obliquely accuses Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren of wanting to take away union members’ hard-fought and much beloved health plans and warns that electing either candidate will lead to four more years of a Donald Trump presidency.
The union, which provides health insurance to 130,000 workers and their family members through a special trust fund, strongly opposes the Medicare-for-all plans the two candidates support, which would eliminate the union’s health plan by design.
However, until now, union leaders have directed their ire more generally at the policy than the candidates who back it.
“Trump and his Republicans are actively trying to destroy healthcare for working families, but presidential candidates suggesting forcing millions of hard working people to give up their healthcare creates unnecessary division between workers, and will give us four more years of Trump,” the flyer says.
Though the handout does not mention either candidate by name, Sanders and Warren are the only two remaining candidates in the Democratic presidential race who back Medicare for all.
The Culinary Union, which represents 60,000 hotel workers in Las Vegas and Reno, has not yet decided whether it will endorse in the Democratic presidential primary. Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Arguello-Kline has said the union is likely to endorse in the presidential race should its parent union decline to do so, as it did in late January.
A union spokeswoman said in a text message earlier this week that there was “no endorsement yet” and “no updates” on the timing of a possible endorsement. She did not immediately have further details Friday morning about the flyer.
The handout takes a direct shot at Sanders, who told union members during a town hall in December that they would receive an extra $12,000 a year to their paychecks under Medicare for all.
“Some politicians promise… ‘You will get more money for wages from the company if you give up Culinary Health Insurance,’” the flyer says. “These politicians have never sat at our bargaining table or been on a 24/7, 6 years, 4 months, and 10 days strike line — like we have to make an employer pay for healthcare. We will not hand over our healthcare for promises.”
There, the flyer is referencing the six-year-long strike by workers at the Frontier Hotel and Casino, who walked off the job in 1991 over better wages and health care benefits. Union leaders often mention the strike in talking about why they don’t want to see their health plans replaced by a single-payer, government-run health system.
“We have fought for 85 years to protect our health care. Why would we let politicians take it away?” the flyer says. “A history of blood, sweat, and tears secured our healthcare, not politicians promises. We fought for our health care.”
And one particular Presidential candidate is heavily focusing on Nevada:
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign is pulling down its television ad buys in South Carolina and moving the money plus additional funds to Nevada and Maine, a source with knowledge of the moves told HuffPost on Tuesday night.The campaign will also start airing radio and print ads in South Carolina, and will continue to target the state with digital advertisements.Warren has long been one of the leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, but her campaign has been stagnant for a week following a third-place finish behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in Iowa. Warren is stuck between third and fourth place in polls both nationally and in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.The advertising move has both short-term and long-term implications. Moving money forward to Nevada could help the Warren campaign perform better in the next state to cast its ballots. And sending money to Maine reinforces the campaign’s insistence that the race is a long battle for delegates, not a short-term fight for media attention.Public polling in all three states is limited, though former Vice President Joe Biden’s strength with Black voters has long made him the favorite in South Carolina.The Warren campaign, which is skeptical of traditional campaign practices, has long spent less on television ads than its rivals. The campaign was heavily outspent on the airwaves in both Iowa and New Hampshire, choosing instead to pour its money into digital advertisements and field organizing.The shift in ad buying strategy comes on the same day Roger Lau, Warren’s campaign manager, sent a memo to supporters asserting that the Massachusetts senator remains in a strong position for Super Tuesday, when roughly one-third of the delegates to July’s Democratic National Convention will be awarded.“After New Hampshire tonight, 98% of pledged delegates will still be up for grabs,” Lau wrote. “And as the race consolidates after Super Tuesday, we expect the results to show that Elizabeth Warren is the consensus choice of the widest coalition of Democrats in every corner of the country.”
Nevada & Super Tuesday might just be what she needs to win:
That said, it’s worth noting that New Hampshire marks just the start of the primary — and far from the end for her campaign. Because of her strong organizing and expansive presence in Nevada, Warren is poised for a decent showing in the state and could well be among a handful of leading candidates in delegate-rich California on Super Tuesday.
Simply put, her campaign still has plenty of potential despite the recent losses.
Warren laid out this dynamic in her New Hampshire remarks on Tuesday night: “We might be headed for another one of those long primary fights that last for months. We are two states in,” she said. “We still have 98 percent of our delegates for our nomination up for grabs.”
Her point alludes to a longstanding quirk of the primary calendar in which Iowa and New Hampshire, two early states, serve to both winnow the field and grant specific candidates more momentum. The paradigm has endured even though they’re deeply unrepresentative of the country’s diversity and respectively comprise less than 1 percent of the total national delegate haul.
Although it is true that just one Democratic candidate in recent memory has won the nomination without first winning Iowa or New Hampshire (Bill Clinton in 1992), the size of the current field — and the disparate strengths that the candidates possess — brings more uncertainty than usual to the race this cycle.
Warren is in a prime position to capitalize on this dynamic, though she has some significant hurdles to overcome. She’s missed out on the initial momentum boost that strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire have provided other top candidates. And she’s seen middling national polling among African American and Latino voters, two groups that are central to strong performances in Nevada and South Carolina.
And Warren does have a great ground game in Nevada:
The Warren campaign, which has one of the largest payrolls of any candidate seeking the Democratic nomination, has had an outsized presence in Nevada almost from the outset. The senator has assembled a small army of more than 50 campaign staffers on the ground in Nevada, and has dispatched top-flight surrogates like former rival Julián Castro to the state to underscore her closing “unity candidate” message.
“The Warren team was the first one on the ground here and has a large team with many field offices,” said Donna West, chair of the influential Clark County Democrats, when asked about Warren’s ground game in the state. “They have been working on their grassroots voter contact and engagement, as have most campaigns.”
In a 2,000-word memo released to campaign staff and supporters on Tuesday afternoon, campaign manager Roger Lau highlighted the fact that Warren’s ground team is “closing in on nearly a million contacts” with voters in Nevada.
“Our campaign has been organizing in traditionally red and blue areas of Nevada, South Carolina and states voting in March for months, and in some places nearly a year, and we are confident that we'll continue to show strength by competing everywhere, not just in pockets that reflect one segment of our party or another,” Lau wrote.
In her election night address to supporters on Tuesday, Warren indicated that her team is preparing for a longer, harder primary than she might have hoped for, noting that “we still have 98 percent of the delegates for our nomination up for grabs, and Americans in every part of our country are going to make their voices heard.”
She’s also been expanding her base:
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released a plan Thursday that would potentially help low-income and other underserved Asian Americans.
Warren announced her “Working Agenda for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders,” shared first with NBC Asian America, in which she called for the collection of demographic data on specific ethnicities. Roger Lau, the presidential hopeful’s campaign manager, said the plan would help reveal disparities within the racial group.
“When I was growing up, I heard claims that all Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders fit the 'model minority' mold — but around me, families were struggling to keep the lights on,” Lau, one of the first Asian American campaign managers for a major American presidential candidate, said. “The Asian American and Pacific Islander community is not a monolith and Elizabeth's Working Agenda shows her commitment to collecting the data and implementing policies that will ensure every AAPI family can build a future.”
Warren said she would establish a task force to work with Asian American communities to obtain disaggregated data across all agencies and departments, as well as key surveys, by the end of her first term. The plan also detailed her position on several other issues including affordable housing, criminal justice reform and fighting white nationalism.
“Data equity is a civil rights issue,” the agenda reads. “And from the wage gap to the 2020 Census, communities that have been perpetually erased are calling to be counted and have their experiences made visible.”
Some federal agencies, but not all, currently collect and publish data on Asian Americans as a whole. The Obama administration had issued a guidance that agencies should collect and publish data that are disaggregated by detailed origin whenever possible. The guidance was largely spurred by the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders’ efforts, Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of AAPI Data, said. The administration made progress with several agencies, including Health and Human Services and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
And Warren’s coming back to rile up her base:
Top Democratic presidential hopeful and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to return to Reno this weekend.
Warren’s campaign on Monday announced a “get-out-to-caucus” event set to begin 3 p.m. Sunday at Reno High School, 395 Booth St. in Reno. That event will be bookended by a trio of similar stops in Las Vegas.
The event is free and open to the public, though attendees are encouraged to RSVP through the candidate’s website.
Warren last visited Northern Nevada in December, when she hosted a town hall at Truckee Meadows Community College.
If you can’t make it. Click here to donate and get involved with Warren’s campaign.
