Political Roundtable - Part VI

[hands11]

And that's why Republicans will never win a presidential election again. They can't see past their irrational hate, which is the basis of their philosophy. Irrational hate is easy to manipulate, making it the philosophy of choice of billionaires hoping to dupe millions of blue collar workers into voting against their own best interests.

But it also means you can't make rational fixes to your policy that could assure you never lose an election again. Republicans would rather hate and lose.

Boy or boy, going to start passing some legislation now.

Repeal Obama Care

20 more votes. 20 more votes. 20 more votes.

Woooooooooooooooooooo

Seriously though. Nothing was happening with then controlling one house. Nothing more is going to happen with them controlling two. Except maybe we get into a few wars.

[dckingsfan]

Bitter are we? Didn't you say that the Rs were going the way of the dinosaur?

[dckingsfan]

No we don't. Growth at a rate faster than the assimilation rate is counter productive - particularly when all the immigration is coming from one culture, giving them an incentive to avoid assimilation. We aren't growing, we are turning New Mexico and Arizona into Mexico.

We can curtail immigration (admitting only educated people) and then implement policies to promote Americans having children (larger child tax deductions and tax credits). We can also reach out to Asia and try and encourage more immigration for China, Korea and Japan.

Good points. I would say we need both. We need our laborers for the farms. And we need others to fill the jobs we aren't filling (programming, etc.).

We don't need laborers for our farms. We already have tens of millions of people on the dole. Cut their benefits and they'll go work on the farms.

OK, so you are saying that the Rs strategy should be to get folks to a place where they are desperate enough to move from the cities to the farmlands to harvest crops? These are largely transient seasonal jobs.

I think (I could be wrong) but if they go that direction, they will be soundly defeated in the next election.

One thing the Rs could work on is consolidating benefits. Right now there are many entitlements run by many different administration departments (food stamps, FDA, Social Security, SSA, etc.). The costs of providing these entitlements is high. Consolidation would help measure the costs and effectiveness of the entitlements. You could then tie work to entitlements in a more simple fashion.

[nate33]

I'm saying that it's illogical and wasteful to pay millions of Americans to sit on their asses and then also complain about the lack of able-bodied laborers to help with harvest.

I don't understand why things are so difficult. This is common sense to me. How in the world can we have high unemployment, millions on unemployment benefits, millions on welfare, and then complain that we have a lack of workers? Is this Bizarro World?

[dobrojim]

A lot of things that seem simple on their face are more complicated
than it would initially seem.

[popper]

Kasich won the swing state of Ohio by 31 points. He will be a formidable presidential candidate and one that can guarantee perhaps the most important swing state in the coming election.

[nate33]

A lot of things that seem simple on their face are more complicated
than it would initially seem.

Yes. But sometimes things actually are really simple.

The whole "lack of workers" argument went out the window in 2008 at the start of the Great Recession. We don't need to keep adding millions of unskilled, uneducated laborers anymore. Maybe when the workforce participation rate gets back up to the Clinton/Bush era levels, we can reopen this immigration conversation. But for now, immigration is financially illogical, and damaging to lower-income Americans.

[Zonkerbl]

pft, lack of workers. yeah, that's the problem.

One of our comparative advantages as a country is the fact that all the smart people in the world want to move here. Everytime the smartest person in China moves here is a gift of several million dollars from China to us.

I'm with Nate here, the flow of educated people into the U.S. should be strongly encouraged.

[dckingsfan]

A lot of things that seem simple on their face are more complicated
than it would initially seem.

Yes. But sometimes things actually are really simple.

The whole "lack of workers" argument went out the window in 2008 at the start of the Great Recession. We don't need to keep adding millions of unskilled, uneducated laborers anymore. Maybe when the workforce participation rate gets back up to the Clinton/Bush era levels, we can reopen this immigration conversation. But for now, immigration is financially illogical, and damaging to lower-income Americans.

OK, I think we agree that we need to expand immigration for skilled workers. Our education complex simply can't develop highly skilled workers very well. I think a combination of our culture (not making our kids work hard enough, no culture of continued education, the culture of the lower and higher education complex).

For farm laborers - we would need a large group of low-skill workers that would be willing to be transient and seasonal. Obama's enforcement the employment laws has been punitive against farmers, even ones that have used E-Verify have been fined heavily. So, for the short-term, we need to solve it with a large number of visas for those laborers. And yes, I know we are solving a problem that we created.

[dckingsfan]

just one more piece to this - it seems as if the Obama threat to stop deporting illegal aliens backfired badly for the Ds in this election cycle. But that doesn't mean it will backfire during the presidential elections.

[nate33]

A timely article from Matt Taibbi on the corruption of the banks and the plight of whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann:

Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.

She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way," Fleischmann says.

This past year she watched as Holder's Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called "statements of facts," which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts.

[Zonkerbl]

I disagree that our educational system doesn't produce educated workers. The best and the brightest come here all the time for education. We actually have the best higher educational system in the world. The more students we feed into that system the better, because they are fairly likely to stay here after they're done. So not only domestic students but foreign students are absolutely welcome here.

[Zonkerbl]

Yeah I worked in USDA for about 4 years and as a result my sympathy for farmers is pretty minimal. Our farm subsidy program is basically corporate welfare.

"Wah, wah, we can't get enough people to pick grapes for $2/hour," cry me a river. Chile's grapes taste fine and we don't have to undermine our immigration laws or minimum wage laws to eat them.

[pineappleheadindc]

A timely article from Matt Taibbi on the corruption of the banks and the plight of whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann:

Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.

She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way," Fleischmann says.

This past year she watched as Holder's Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called "statements of facts," which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts.

This is a compelling read. And makes me really angry at Holder and the DOJ.

Grrrr.

[popper]

You can't make this stuff up. CA just passed proposition 47 which, among other things, reduces felony charges to misdemeanor charges for theft of a firearm and for possession of date rape drugs. I thought D's wanted to keep guns out of the hands of potential murderers? If so, this is an odd way of showing it.

Under the new law, police will no longer be able to arrest gun thieves and potential date rapists but instead can only issue a citation (like a traffic ticket). Couple this with their plan to release 10,000 convicted felons from state prisons and guess what's in store for Californians.

Also, with the impressive victories by Republican female and black candidates in this election can we finally end the ridiculous meme about the R's war on women and institutional racism charges. I think the public is finally starting to realize that much of D success in the recent past has had a lot to do with their ability to divide the nation along race, class and gender lines.

Wouldn't we all be better off if we pull together as one nation instead of allowing our political leaders to pit one against another in their desperate pursuit of power?

[Dat2U]

A timely article from Matt Taibbi on the corruption of the banks and the plight of whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann:

Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.

She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way," Fleischmann says.

This past year she watched as Holder's Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called "statements of facts," which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts.

Fact is, both politicals parties are complicit in the above so please don't single out Obama's administation as the lone guilty party in this. But yeah, this makes me sick to my stomach.

[dckingsfan]

You can't make this stuff up. CA just passed proposition 47 which, among other things, reduces felony charges to misdemeanor charges for theft of a firearm and for possession of date rape drugs. I thought D's wanted to keep guns out of the hands of potential murderers? If so, this is an odd way of showing it.

Under the new law, police will no longer be able to arrest gun thieves and potential date rapists but instead can only issue a citation (like a traffic ticket). Couple this with their plan to release 10,000 convicted felons from state prisons and guess what's in store for Californians.

Also, with the impressive victories by Republican female and black candidates in this election can we finally end the ridiculous meme about the R's war on women and institutional racism charges. I think the public is finally starting to realize that much of D success in the recent past has had a lot to do with their ability to divide the nation along race, class and gender lines.

Wouldn't we all be better off if we pull together as one nation instead of allowing our political leaders to pit one against another in their desperate pursuit of power?

Popper, you realize that many of those being released were on simple drug possession charges. You really want to incarcerate a 17 year old with 1/2 oz of marijuana? There were some really stupid laws passed that grew the CA penal system to a point where they couldn't maintain it.

Also, since I was in CA at the time these laws were passed, many of them go on the Rs books.

Just saying...

[nate33]

Fact is, both politicals parties are complicit in the above so please don't single out Obama's administation as the lone guilty party in this. But yeah, this makes me sick to my stomach.

I in no way meant to imply this was a problem with just one political party. I've been ranting about the unholy banking/government alliance for years - and I blame both parties. That said, I do think it's worth nothing that somehow Democrats have a rep for being "for the people" while Republicans are the party of corporate interest even though it's manifestly untrue. Both parties take tons of bribe money from corporate interests.

[popper]

You can't make this stuff up. CA just passed proposition 47 which, among other things, reduces felony charges to misdemeanor charges for theft of a firearm and for possession of date rape drugs. I thought D's wanted to keep guns out of the hands of potential murderers? If so, this is an odd way of showing it.

Under the new law, police will no longer be able to arrest gun thieves and potential date rapists but instead can only issue a citation (like a traffic ticket). Couple this with their plan to release 10,000 convicted felons from state prisons and guess what's in store for Californians.

Also, with the impressive victories by Republican female and black candidates in this election can we finally end the ridiculous meme about the R's war on women and institutional racism charges. I think the public is finally starting to realize that much of D success in the recent past has had a lot to do with their ability to divide the nation along race, class and gender lines.

Wouldn't we all be better off if we pull together as one nation instead of allowing our political leaders to pit one against another in their desperate pursuit of power?

Popper, you realize that many of those being released were on simple drug possession charges. You really want to incarcerate a 17 year old with 1/2 oz of marijuana? There were some really stupid laws passed that grew the CA penal system to a point where they couldn't maintain it.

Also, since I was in CA at the time these laws were passed, many of them go on the Rs books.

Just saying...

I do realize that and I agree we shouldn't be incarcerating drug users who are only harming themselves. So the real danger will come from some subset of the 10,000 released felons.

[popper]

Nice summary from what I've heard was written by a Purdue engineer-(can't confirm that however). 10,535 pages of ObamaCare condensed to 4 sentences: ...


1. In order to insure the uninsured, we first have to uninsure the insured.

2. Next, we require the newly uninsured to be re-insured.

3. To re-insure the newly uninsured, they are required to pay extra charges to be re-insured.

4. The extra charges are required so that the original insured, who became uninsured, and then became re-insured, can pay enough extra so that the original uninsured can be insured, which will be free of charge to them.

This is called "redistribution of wealth" ...