US Politics - The old thread is dead, long live the old thread

[awesome possum]

So, let's start this baby off fresh with some linkage

• A report was released that every single US taxpayer pays around $1,259 per year to make up for the money the rich stash in their tax havens.
  

U.S. taxpayers would need to pay an average of $1,259 more a year to make up the federal and state taxes lost to corporations and individuals sheltering money in overseas tax havens, according to a report.

“Tax haven abusers benefit from America’s markets, public infrastructure, educated workforce, security and rule of law -– all supported in one way or another by tax dollars -– but they avoid paying for these benefits,” U.S. Public Interest Research Group said in the report released today, the deadline for filing 2013 taxes.

“Instead, ordinary taxpayers end up picking up the tab, either in the form of higher taxes, cuts to public spending priorities, or increases to the federal debt,” it said.

In total, the U.S. loses $150 billion in federal revenue and another $34 billion in state revenue annually because of money parked in tax havens, the Boston-based consumer advocacy group concluded.

It's just the small cost of freedom, is all.

• Republicans don't like Obamacare, no surprise. They'll tell you time and time again what a terrible thing it is and how it's killing, you guessed it, our freedom. Must be why Americans are increasingly choosing Democrats over Republicans when it comes to healthcare

Nearly one-third of respondents in the online survey released on Tuesday said they prefer Democrats' plan, policy or approach to healthcare, compared to just 18 percent for Republicans. This marks both an uptick in support for Democrats and a slide for Republicans since a similar poll in February.

• Speaking of Republicans going for that well-deserved support, I wonder why people might be dissatisfied with them for doing things like this:

Cities in Oklahoma are prohibited from establishing mandatory minimum wage or vacation and sick-day requirements under a bill that has been signed into law by Gov. Mary Fallin.

The rest is hidden behind a paywall but I'm sure she is only doing such a thing to protect that precious Okie freedom.

And in case anyone here thinks this is a liberal circlejerk, here's Obama being a douchebag about the NSA

After years of studied silence on the government’s secret and controversial use of security vulnerabilities, the White House has finally acknowledged that the NSA and other agencies exploit some of the software holes they uncover, rather than disclose them to vendors to be fixed.

The acknowledgement comes in a news report indicating that President Obama decided in January that from now on any time the NSA discovers a major flaw in software, it must disclose the vulnerability to vendors and others so that it can be patched, according to the New York Times.

But Obama included a major loophole in his decision, which falls far short of recommendations made by a presidential review board last December: According to Obama, any flaws that have “a clear national security or law enforcement” use can be kept secret and exploited.

In other words, the NSA must reveal bugs like Heartbleed, unless bugs like Heartbleed help the NSA.

• And for the Bundy fanboy(s) in the thread

Bundy is a bully who has used his threat of a range war and to do “whatever it takes” to stop the government from impounding his cattle to scare public officials.

The implications are that he would resort to a gunbattle. And who wants to see another Waco? I was one of those public officials who were told to back off at one point because of concern for violence.

What Bundy is doing is a criminal act, and he should be accountable for his actions rather than be held up as a hero fighting the federal government.

Most of the grazing permit holders on public land are good stewards and law-abiding citizens, and Bundy is doing them a disservice with his actions. He is a perfect example of someone who publicly states that he abhors the federal government but who relies on it for his welfare.

He is grazing free on the public’s land to the detriment of the environment and the honest taxpayers who support his welfare lifestyle.

This guy is so full of it, isn't he? This is obviously just another matter of the evil gubmint stealing our FREEEEEEDOMMMM!!!!

[aceluby]

What's funny about the taxes is that almost everyone on the right that I talk to has absolutely ZERO issue raising taxes on the '47%' of people that don't pay federal income tax, but when you point out that raising taxes on the rich would be less of a detriment to our economy all of a sudden taxes are TYRANNY!!! I just don't get the mentality. Can't 'punish success' by raising taxes on the rich, but they have no issue punishing people who are already struggling while literally removing that percentage of income from the economy that would have been spent on goods and services, which would cost us jobs and spiral us downward. Does the right even understand economics?

[Inigima]

I also figured as much as I am not liked here, he is doing a much better job of not being liked than me.

I think you're wrong about everything. I think he's an antisemitic bigot.

[TrackerNeil]

• Republicans don't like Obamacare, no surprise. They'll tell you time and time again what a terrible thing it is and how it's killing, you guessed it, our freedom. Must be why Americans are increasingly choosing Democrats over Republicans when it comes to healthcare

You know, this is the kind of thing I think of whenever people say, "Voters are stupid." Voters, and Americans in general, are not stupid. They can operate every damn app on an iPhone with one hand and half their attention, they memorize baseball statistics going back six decades, and they can crack any computer security that's ever been devised. They're not stupid. Most Americans don't follow politics very closely, but that doesn't mean they don't have a general understanding of who stands for what.

The concept that Democrats are more concerned with the underprivileged is part of the ABCs of adulthood, and most Americans have got it down cold. They may not understand the ins and outs of healthcare policy, but they know that, left to their own devices, Republicans would see to the insurance of the wealthy and (some of) the middle class and leave everyone else to muddle through the health care system as best they can.

(Incidentally, this is why I think it's perfectly acceptable for voters to pull the party lever when they hit the polls. Some call that the idiot switch, but I'm not among them.)

[Paladin of Ice]

What's funny about the taxes is that almost everyone on the right that I talk to has absolutely ZERO issue raising taxes on the '47%' of people that don't pay federal income tax, but when you point out that raising taxes on the rich would be less of a detriment to our economy all of a sudden taxes are TYRANNY!!! I just don't get the mentality. Can't 'punish success' by raising taxes on the rich, but they have no issue punishing people who are already struggling while literally removing that percentage of income from the economy that would have been spent on goods and services, which would cost us jobs and spiral us downward. Does the right even understand economics?

[satire of conservative politics by an arch-liberal, at least by American standards]

It's not about economics at all, and wrong to think of it as such. People who are rich are like kids scoring highly on tests, they're clearly doing the right thing and being successful. Sure, you can be rich just by being born to the right parents, but nonetheless rich = successful, and should be rewarded with the appropriate pats on the head.

Being poor is like the kids doing badly on tests.It's not success, so they clearly must be doing something wrong, and clearly they don't deserve to be rewarded or given anything for doing the wrong thing. And just like young kids doing poorly on school tests, the solution isn't to mollycoddle them, get them a tutor or find out if they have a learning disability like dyslexia or anything, the solution is to beat them. Beating the snot out of those kids and telling them the beatings will end once they improve their scores will give them the proper incentive to do better. Hell, keep beating them and take away their books at the same time if you can, this way they can get really creative and be more likely to show some initiative in order to make the beatings stop.

The "true conservative" response to poverty is to make life so intolerable for the poor that they either magically make sudden improvements and just decide not to be poor anymore, or they just give up and go away somewhere so they won't be a bother to and drain on the rest of us.

[/satire of conservative politics by an arch-liberal, at least by American standards]

[Spring Bass]

This is mildly depressing. Conservatives in several states have been trying to roll-back no-fault divorce:

The Washington Post

In cooperation with the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage, socially conservative politicians have been quietly trying to make it harder for couples to get divorced. In recent years, lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills imposing longer waiting periods before a divorce is granted, mandating counseling courses or limiting the reasons a couple can formally split. States such as Arizona, Louisiana and Utah have already passed such laws, while others such as Oklahoma and Alabama are moving to do so.

If divorces are tougher to obtain, social conservatives argue, fewer marriages will end.

I love that logic in a situation where the marriage rate has already been going down over the years. "If we make it harder to end marriages, then we'll get more marriages!" Someone should ask them if they think if making firing employees more difficult would help to reduce unemployment. More likely what happens is that this seriously fucks over young people who get pressured into marriage at a young age after sex or pregnancy in conservative areas, and reduces the overall marriage rate even more if it spreads.

I joke, but it's pretty shitty. As the article points out, the rise of No-Fault Divorce was a huge boon for women (who now start more divorces than men), and for people with money the divorce restrictions were already becoming a farce by the 1950s and 1960s:

No-fault divorce has been a success. A 2003 Stanford University study detailed the benefits in states that had legalized such divorces: Domestic violence dropped by a third in just 10 years, the number of husbands convicted of murdering their wives fell by 10 percent, and the number of women committing suicide declined between 11 and 19 percent. A recent report from Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress found that only 28 percent of divorced women said they wished they’d stayed married.

. . . .

For most of American history, to obtain a divorce, one party had to prove to a judge that the other party was at fault, meaning he or she had committed certain grievous acts that irreparably harmed the marriage, such as adultery or being convicted of a felony. Emotional or physical abuse wasn’t always enough; even adultery or abandonment could be insufficient if a spouse reluctant to get divorced convinced a judge that his or her partner was similarly culpable. And as historian Glenda Riley showed in her 1991 book “Divorce: An American Tradition,” loveless couples often found creative ways to persuade judges to end their marriages: As recently as the 1950s, some couples would stage a bust, complete with hotel room, “mistress,” photographer and private detective who would testify in court about the husband’s (or wife’s) supposed illicit deeds.

You can see the potential ugliness there if you have to convince a judge that abuse or adultery happened, in terms of sexism. Of course for conservatives, I suspect the restriction on women's ability to get out of marriages is a huge bonus, especially if it makes them wait longer and lets their estranged husbands hang around more in their lives-

Such waiting periods are “fairer to the spouse who is being left,” the Family Research Council contends in a brochure titled “Deterring Divorce.” But inherent in that argument is an unfortunate and unavoidable reality: Making divorce less accessible harms women most. The right to divorce was a victory women fought for in the culture wars of the 1970s, and women today are twice as likely as men to ask for a divorce, according to Rosenfeld.

Get that? If you have a sociopathic drain-on-your-life spouse who doesn't want to end the marriage, they can drag it out even longer.

[Opisthokont!]

So Arizonans have to elope to get divorced?

[Spring Bass]

Or go somewhere where divorce is more liberalized. Before No-Default spread, there was the Reno Divorce (which showed up in Mad Men).

[aceluby]

It's not about economics at all, and wrong to think of it as such. People who are rich are like kids scoring highly on tests, they're clearly doing the right thing and being successful. Sure, you can be rich just by being born to the right parents, but nonetheless rich = successful, and should be rewarded with the appropriate pats on the head.

Being poor is like the kids doing badly on tests.It's not success, so they clearly must be doing something wrong, and clearly they don't deserve to be rewarded or given anything for doing the wrong thing. And just like young kids doing poorly on school tests, the solution isn't to mollycoddle them, get them a tutor or find out if they have a learning disability like dyslexia or anything, the solution is to beat them. Beating the snot out of those kids and telling them the beatings will end once they improve their scores will give them the proper incentive to do better. Hell, keep beating them and take away their books at the same time if you can, this way they can get really creative and be more likely to show some initiative in order to make the beatings stop.

The "true conservative" response to poverty is to make life so intolerable for the poor that they either magically make sudden improvements and just decide not to be poor anymore, or they just give up and go away somewhere so they won't be a bother to and drain on the rest of us.

And here lies my confusion. How can we talk about the economic impacts of tax policy when we talk about tax policy in terms of children taking tests and not... you know... economics?

It seems to me that there's this huge area in the GOP party platform which has policies and results, but instead of linking the two together through logic they instead wave their hands and declare it will help because of 'magic'.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

Get that? If you have a sociopathic drain-on-your-life spouse who doesn't want to end the marriage, they can drag it out even longer.

I'm a divorce attorney, and am very much biased in favor of "no fault" divorces.

The simple reality is, "marriage" is not the relationship. A marriage is a legal status that governs, through its dissolution, the handling of assets, liabilities, support and child custody. Forcing people to stay married doesn't help or repair a marital relationship damaged beyond fixing, it simply gives a recalcitrant or abusive spouse the ability to jerk the other party around for months and/or years by denying them legal relief, which is often necessary to safeguard and stabilize the children, provide a supported spouse with an income stream necessary to live, and safeguard the other spouse's access to marital assets.

[The Undead Martyr]

It's not about economics at all, and wrong to think of it as such. People who are rich are like kids scoring highly on tests, they're clearly doing the right thing and being successful. Sure, you can be rich just by being born to the right parents, but nonetheless rich = successful, and should be rewarded with the appropriate pats on the head.

Being poor is like the kids doing badly on tests.It's not success, so they clearly must be doing something wrong, and clearly they don't deserve to be rewarded or given anything for doing the wrong thing. And just like young kids doing poorly on school tests, the solution isn't to mollycoddle them, get them a tutor or find out if they have a learning disability like dyslexia or anything, the solution is to beat them. Beating the snot out of those kids and telling them the beatings will end once they improve their scores will give them the proper incentive to do better. Hell, keep beating them and take away their books at the same time if you can, this way they can get really creative and be more likely to show some initiative in order to make the beatings stop.

The "true conservative" response to poverty is to make life so intolerable for the poor that they either magically make sudden improvements and just decide not to be poor anymore, or they just give up and go away somewhere so they won't be a bother to and drain on the rest of us.

No, they happen to have a background/training/skills that our economy puts a premium on. EG being very good at basketball, being pretty and a mediocre actor, or being very good at juggling the stock market. That does not make them work harder or inherently better. I find it frankly offensive that you believe the poor are simply "losers" or "dumb" or even that that should matter on whether or not they have opportunities for health care, jobs, education etc. To say nothing of their children, who have equally shitty chances in life.

To use a more accurate (but still inherently wrong IMO) your analogy, it's as if the math section of the SATs is weighted for 95% and the people who suck at math but are better at writing are ignored because they're a dime a dozen.

Actually it's not even that- paraphrasing Oscar Wilde we should be more concerned with what people are rather than what they do/can do. I'm pretty friggin smart and come from an educated white family but that doesn't mean I "deserve" to get paid more/guaranteed to have better job security than an urban black kid whose parents didn't go to college and divorced. Genetics and environment greatly impact on the individuals' development, but because of the commodification of labor our society wrongfully equates personal skills with personal character and attributes both to material success, or vice versa. The only connection is that some skills/talents are more valuable than others on the current market, and some people are luckier than others when it comes to opportunities and abilities, neither of which should have any moral bearing on their character or work ethic, or whether they "deserve" material success.

[DanteGabriel]

No, they happen to have a background/training/skills that our economy puts a premium on. EG being very good at basketball, being pretty and a mediocre actor, or being very good at juggling the stock market. That does not make them work harder or inherently better. I find it frankly offensive that you believe the poor are simply "losers" or "dumb" or even that that should matter on whether or not they have opportunities for health care, jobs, education etc. To say nothing of their children, who have equally shitty chances in life.

To use a more accurate (but still inherently wrong IMO) your analogy, it's as if the math section of the SATs is weighted for 95% and the people who suck at math but are better at writing are ignored because they're a dime a dozen.

Actually it's not even that- paraphrasing Oscar Wilde we should be more concerned with what people are rather than what they do/can do. I'm pretty friggin smart and come from an educated white family but that doesn't mean I "deserve" to get paid more/guaranteed to have better job security than an urban black kid whose parents didn't go to college and divorced. Genetics and environment greatly impact on the individuals' development, but because of the commodification of labor our society wrongfully equates personal skills with personal character and attributes both to material success, or vice versa. The only connection is that some skills/talents are more valuable than others on the current market, and some people are luckier than others when it comes to opportunities and abilities, neither of which should have any moral bearing on their character or work ethic, or whether they "deserve" material success.

You make good points but I believe you also missed the irony in Paladin's post.

[TrackerNeil]

This is mildly depressing. Conservatives in several states have been trying to roll-back no-fault divorce:

I think this is conservative revenge for losing the same sex marriage fight. "Oh, you want to be married, huh? Well, then you're gonna stay married!"

[Paladin of Ice]

You make good points but I believe you also missed the irony in Paladin's post.

Judging from responses, what I thought would be a very biting and obvious bit of ironic satire wasn't nearly obvious enough. Apologies all around for any confusion.

[aceluby]

Judging from responses, what I thought would be a very biting and obvious bit of ironic satire wasn't nearly obvious enough. Apologies all around for any confusion.

I totally got the satire... unfortunately I also think that many people actually believe what you wrote. In fact, I think that the majority of those on the right think along those lines. That 'punishing' successful people through taxes is wrong, but punishing people that are struggling will give them incentive to not be poor, as if people who are given the choice of being poor or well off would choose to be poor because it's so much easier than dealing with taxes as a millionaire.

[Wise Fool]

I totally got the satire... unfortunately I also think that many people actually believe what you wrote. In fact, I think that the majority of those on the right think along those lines. That 'punishing' successful people through taxes is wrong, but punishing people that are struggling will give them incentive to not be poor, as if people who are given the choice of being poor or well off would choose to be poor because it's so much easier than dealing with taxes as a millionaire.

Exactly. An alarming segment of conservatives view poverty as a moral failing, and that therefore poor people ought to have suffering and degradation heaped upon them since anything else would be "rewarding" this moral failing, i.e sin. Once this assumption is accepted - that poor people are poor because of their sinful, morally reprehensible nature - it's easy to suggest that the poor have other moral failings as well: they're greedy ("wanting entitlements" "gimme" "handout nation"), lazy, dishonest ("welfare queens," welfare cheats, Fox News's Surfer Dude, "sucking the government teat"), that they aren't even "really" poor ("they have cell phones and TV and indoor plumbing!") so are just malingerers who are faking poverty, and of course the increasingly accepted conspiracy theory that all of this is part of the Democrat plan since poor people (allegedly) vote Democrat. And of course, they're often religious, ethnic, or racial minorities. ("Urban.") Who are violent. ("Thugs.")

What's extra sickening about all of this is the same people who hold these kinds of views also claim to be Christians, who will hold up their alleged Christianity as the reason they oppose civil rights such as gay marriage ("sodomy"). And though one can point out something like Ezekiel 16:49 ("Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.") to them all you like, but the contradiction is a deliberate blind-spot for them. Because in truth they don't hate gay marriage because of "religious beliefs" so much as they are themselves fear-driven, media-infused bigots - the same reason they seem to hate the poor despite such an attitude being basically anti-Christian.

The modern conservative's religion of choice is not Christianity - it's mass media in service of the ego.

[Mazigh]

I think you're wrong about everything. I think he's an antisemitic bigot.

Baseless accusation and viscous attack The only antisemitic people are the Democrats like Obama who are bombing children in Yemen (actual Semites)

[DanteGabriel]

Without getting into the semantics of what constitutes a Semitic person, in the Western discourse that most of this site uses, "anti-Semitism" refers to bigotry against Jews, which drips from your every post.

[Guest]

More possible evidence that O'Malley is running in 2016.

What I wonder is to what extent he thinks he can actually challenge Clinton versus whether he just thinks its a good opportunity to build name-recognition in the future.

I think there's certainly a segment of the left that has Clinton fatigue and worries she's a sell-out or what have you, but I will be surprised if its enough to beat Hillary.

Still, if one attempts to imagine a scenario in which Clinton could lose, it would have to be someone to her left with pretty good credentials, and O'Malley seems to have that. Not sure if he inspires people the way that Warren does, but perhaps he's just not well-known enough?

[aceluby]

More possible evidence that O'Malley is running in 2016.

What I wonder is to what extent he thinks he can actually challenge Clinton versus whether he just thinks its a good opportunity to build name-recognition in the future.

I think there's certainly a segment of the left that has Clinton fatigue and worries she's a sell-out or what have you, but I will be surprised if its enough to beat Hillary.

Still, if one attempts to imagine a scenario in which Clinton could lose, it would have to be someone to her left with pretty good credentials, and O'Malley seems to have that. Not sure if he inspires people the way that Warren does, but perhaps he's just not well-known enough?

Not well known can work in his favor. Clinton, Obama, and to some degree Bush were all elected on not being 'establishment' or that well known nationally (Bush only because of his daddy). Now Clinton is part of that establishment, and is pretty old to boot. Someone not that well known that can get people excited, a la Obama 2008, could repeat her 2008 run.