Joe Manchin's Dirty Empire | Hacker News Reader

Joe Manchin's Dirty Empire

theintercept.com

Funny how the intercept didn’t care about this in 2018 when Joe Manchin was running for re-election for the senate. Regardless of the merits, this is basically just a “shot across the bow” for doing what his constituents want instead of what the national party wants. But you won’t be hearing about it in 2024 when he runs for re-election and his winning might be the difference between a democrat or republican senate majority

You insinuate that The Intercept is a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. You couldn’t be further from the truth.

It is an independent media company that is fairly critical of both the US political left and the US political right.

Also, you seem to imply that The Intercept had this story available to them during Manchin’s last election campaign and sat on it. Do you have any evidence this was the case?

Don’t take my word for it, take the word of one of the founders: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...

“The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded”

I don’t argue they are a mouthpiece for the democrat party, only that this article supports the idea of “repression, censorship and ideological conformity” being a problem.

90% of the dates and events they talk about are prior to 2018. I have no evidence that they “had this story available to them” in 2018, at least in the sense of having been investigated and written in 2018. My point is why investigate it and write it now, and not then? There seems to be no significant new information that’s come out since 2018 that might have led to this article - to quote the article,“ For decades, Manchin has profited from a series of coal companies that he founded during the 1980s.” - did the intercept only just realize coal might be bad, or was it that they didn’t realize that the (democrat) senator of a state where coal is economically important might have historical links to that industry?

[edit] I also don’t claim that this is a problem specific to democrats, though the large majority of mainstream journalists are provably democrats rather than republicans - exactly the same thing happens in republican leaning publications. My point is that we should think not just about what is written in an article, but also what wasn’t and maybe should have been?

> why investigate it and write it now

Because he just sunk a major climate change policy initiative?

What evidence do you have for the claim that Manchin's constituents do not support the bill? As far as I can tell, the bill and nearly all of its provisions are popular in West Virginia. https://www.filesforprogress.org/memos/bbb-wv.pdf http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/...

The long, liberal knives come out

He is in with coal companies, others are in with pharmaceutical, solar, oil, financial, ISPs... I'd love to see improvements, but like I've heard a hundred times before... the climate crisis is caused by billionaires and now they want the middle class to pay for the problems they caused.

>the climate crisis is caused by billionaires and now they want the middle class to pay for the problems they caused.

Please tell us how the social and climate package being discussed here wouldn't make the billionaires pay the most (vs. the middle class), and how everyone got this wrong. I'm not sure how you can explain that Sanders hate them and support them at the same time.

The same package that first has to be paid for by a budget that comes from the taxes of people like the middle class, in order to tax those billionaires? I say, just raise the taxes on the billionaires and enact regulation to make them pay their share now rather than later.

At this point, they might as well wear clothes with the logos of their sponsors - you know, like the sports teams do.

Was there a non-dirty empire anywhere in politics?

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