Tag: State of the Union

John Kasich is nothing like Elizabeth Warren

John Kasich, the virulently anti-middle class Republican who happens to also be the Governor of Ohio and a possible presidential candidate, went on CNN’s State of the Union political talk show and did two things that set me off. First, he bragged about being a part of the late 2000’s financial meltdown that destroyed this country’s economy (Kasich was the managing director of the Columbus, Ohio office of the Lehman Brothers investment bank until Lehman Brothers went bust). Second, he claimed that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a staunch supporter of protecting consumers and a staunch opponent of “too big to fail” financial institutions, is like him.

You can watch Kasich’s remarks here.

While Warren has zero interest in running for president, there is a night-and-day difference between John Kasich and Elizabeth Warren.

John Kasich has a decades-long track record of opposing labor unions, workers, the middle class, economic strength, and common sense. As a U.S. Representative, Kasich built a very conservative voting record, including demonizing welfare recipients and helping to enact Bill Clinton’s plan to gut the social safety net in this country. As a businessman, Kasich ran the Lehman Brothers office in Ohio’s largest city until Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the American economy began to collapse. As Governor of Ohio, Kasich tried to bust Ohio’s public employee unions, but Ohioans firmly rejected his anti-worker and anti-middle class policies at the ballot.

Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, is a champion of the middle class, economic strength, and common sense. Warren, who is the Paul Wellstone of our generation, has fought for more regulations on our nation’s financial institutions in an attempt to prevent another economic collapse like the Great Recession. Warren understands how income inequality, in which the wealthiest few percent of people in this country have the vast majority of the country’s wealth, is hurting our economy and destroying what little of our country’s middle class remains. Warren has also stood up to members of both major parties in this country in opposition to free-trade deals that undermine our nation’s sovereignty, such as the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

John Kasich is nothing like Elizabeth Warren, and he should quit trying to take credit for Warren’s work to make America a better place to live.


Joni Ernst likely wore bread bags over her shoes when Ronald Reagan was president

Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa gave a vague response to the State of the Union Address last night, in which Ernst talked about her life story for nearly half of her short speech, and then used typical GOP talking points about a handful of issues without going into much detail about the issues she did talk about (which there weren’t many of). It’s worth noting that, immediately after Ernst’s speech, Ernst was not trending on Twitter in my neck of the woods, which gives you a general idea of how her speech was viewed by the American people (i.e., they didn’t care).

One remark that Ernst made in her speech that did get quite a bit of attention, however, was her story of wearing bread bags on her shoes while going to school as a child. However, what Ernst didn’t mention is that Republican policies likely played a role in Ernst’s family being poor. Ernst was born in 1970, which meant that Ronald Reagan, whose trickle-down economic policies, which Ernst and the rest of the far-right Republicans support, led to rampant income inequality in this country, was president for much of her childhood. In fact, for much of the 1980’s, rural America was in the midst of a farm crisis caused by, among other factors, Reagan’s economic policies, and Iowa was one of the states that was greatly affected by the farm crisis.

You can watch my own response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address here.