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U.S. Politics 2016: "You Suck!!!" "No, you Suck!!!"


Ser Scot A Ellison

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43 minutes ago, R'hllor's nasty lobster said:

But t would it not also generally benefit the poor and middle class as well?

Yes, but there is always some inefficiency: whenever there is such a redistribution, some industry generally pockets a substantial fraction of the transaction. In this case, the redistribution is mostly from the old to the young, with the colleges and universities doing the pocketing.

19 minutes ago, felice said:

Why should the 1% be given any choice in the matter? The 99% don't get to choose how much tax they pay.

Because they have the resources to tweak laws and regulations such that most costs fall on the 99% as well as pass on whatever taxes are applied to them on to consumers (which, again, are mostly the 99%). They have to be seriously afraid before they'll actually share the wealth.

In other news, there was a car-and-knife attack by a legal Somali immigrant which resulted in the injury of 11 people and the death of the perpetrator (who was shot very quickly after the attack began). People initially tried to spin this as an argument for gun control, but it quickly became obvious that initial reports of a shooter were wrong (the only shots were fired by the police at the perpetrator). Slate claims the attacker had made angry comments about the actions of the US in Muslim nations prior to the attack. Trump may be able to use this to bolster the appeal of his anti-immigration policies.

On a different note, CNN says:

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President-elect Donald Trump has selected Georgia Representative Tom Price, an ardent critic of Obamacare, to head the Department of Health and Human Services, according to an official briefed on the decision.

The official announcement will likely come Tuesday.

One of Price's top priorities as health secretary will be to dismantle the sweeping health reform law that his two predecessors spent six years implementing.

Price, an orthopedic surgeon who chairs the House Budget Committee, has long decried Obamacare as a threat to quality and affordable health care.

I guess we know now who will be rewriting the healthcare law.

And finally, here is an article about a white nationalist by the name of Richard Spencer getting to speak at a university (Texas A&M, to be precise). In the recent past, universities have cancelled events featuring a wide variety of speakers including pro-life activists, Muslim feminists (who are offensive to non-feminist Muslims) and widely known political figures such as Christine Lagarde and Condoleezza Rice. Spencer really does try to emulate German mannerisms from circa 1938, but so far, Texas A&M has resisted cancelling his speech (it's not clear that they can) despite a petition signed by around 10000 people. It will be interesting to see if the election of Trump reestablishes the primacy of freedom of speech over freedom from being offended in academia (I think most people would agree that this guy is offensive).

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11 hours ago, Datepalm said:

It's also a nonsensical counterfactual. This isn't like guaranteed income where its never quite been done before and we can theorize what goes where. Plenty of places have free or very low-cost higher education, through to tertiary. Aye, capitalist democracies with free markets in the higher education sector, even. There's limitations on admissions (which the USA has right now as well, so that wouldn't change anyway,) opportunity costs and inclination. There are not hoardes of people in Germany, Finland, or for that matter Israel (2000 USD annual tuition) getting vanity degrees or being students forever.

Yes: "free education" usually means only a (smallish) fee instead of tuition for the actual classes. But there are usually still the costs of living (and there is assistance for living costs for students in places like Germany but it is limited to the time it takes to get a degree, dependent on the parents' income etc.) which make being a student forever not too attractive for most people. Furthermore there are hurdles like decent grades from high school to be even eligible for university in the first place. At least until recently it was hard in countries with "free" universities to get into them at all, unless one was in the top 20-30% in secondary school.)

Generally, the education discussion suffers from oversimplification and from contrasting two conceptions of education (merchandise vs. fundamental individual right) that are both flawed, if not outright wrong. (This is not to deny that the educational system in the US has huge problems.) But even countries with free/cheap universities often have free and compulsory education only up to the age of 16 or 18 (typically 10 or 12 school years). So the fundamental right does not extend to tertiary education; one always has to show to be at least minimally apt for academical work.

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11 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

There is nothing to quantify. If it doesn't make you employable, it is of no worth, as someone else's tax money will just have to end up supporting you, either wholly or partially.

If you want to study liberal arts or some similar field that's your right, but then you better be independently wealthy, or be willing to starve. But my tax money should not be supporting your lifestyle choice. It is fundamentally unfair.

You have it exactly backwards. If the degree leads quickly to a well-paying job, it would make more sense to let the person pay for it because s/he will be easily able to pay it back and it will be a sound investment.

But the "luxury" things that do not simply pay off like e.g. archeology have to be paid for by the public (because otherwise one would be dependent on wealthy treasure hunters and the like to have any semblance of archeology at all and it would not be done in a scientific way but for treasure hunting). Of course this does not mean that *anyone* should get to study archeology. They should be "hand-picked", highly motivated and qualified, so they will be able to perform well in one of the few (usually also publicly paid) archeology jobs (professorships, museums etc.)

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Jill Stein is a moron and her recount effort is moronic, especially in Pennsylvania.  Apparently, her strategy for finding 27000+ PA voters, each needing to submit an affidavit, to fill out 9000+ petitions was to make a webpage with brief instructions and a video about the process.  Amazing.  They'd be lucky to find a dozen people willing to go through the process after reading that webpage.  In addition, from the webpage, it doesn't even seem the affidavit language has been worked out yet, so it's unclear that any voters who managed to find this webpage would be able to complete the process this Monday or Tuesday even if they wanted to, which the Stein campaign had been claiming was the deadline.  Turns out the deadline actually was Nov. 21, so they missed the deadline by a week.

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According to Wanda Murren, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, the deadline under the law for a voter-initiated recount at the county level had been Monday, Nov. 21. Many counties missed it but nearly half have already certified their results, precluding recounts there. That makes a lawsuit the only remaining option for initiating a statewide recount. 

Great use of time and resources Stein!  Was this complete ineptness or fraud? I noticed they updated their webpage to now include the following disclaimer, which wasn't there yesterday.  Not sure why the are still trying to get people to fill these petitions out.  Need to keep the charade going and the donations coming in?

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*We are supporting a voter-initiated recount in PA, in election districts where at least three voters in each precinct file affidavits with their County Board of Elections within the specified time frame. 

I'd be interested to know how many petitions were filed.  I'm guess less than 100 out of 9000+ needed for a statewide recount.  And these people would have had to file the petitions themselves using their own money, assuming these petitions were filed before the Nov. 21 deadline, which was before Stein announced her intent to pursue recounts.  That means Stein needed zero dollars for the voter-initiated recount, not the $500,000 she claimed.  Seems fraudulent to me.

Now that they've failed to get the voter-initiated recount started in PA, they've attempted to file a lawsuit in PA alleging:

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"To the best of Petitioners' knowledge and belief, the 2016 Presidential Election was illegal and the return thereof was not correct,"

How is a statement like this not casting doubt on the integrity of our elections?  The election was illegal and not correct to the best of their knowledge despite lacking any evidence of hacking or widespread voter fraud?  How is this any different than Trump's unsupported claims that he would have won the popular vote?  I give this lawsuit essentially a zero percent chance of success.  You need evidence to support your allegations in court, and right now there is essentially none.

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Stein's lawsuit would have to present evidence that election fraud was probable in Pennsylvania. Democratic Secretary of State Pedro Cortes says there's no evidence of voting irregularities during the Nov. 8 election

“Absolutely not,” Cortes told reporters. “There is no evidence whatsoever that points to any type of irregularity in any way, shape or form."

While Stein is essentially alleging that errors, tampering or  hacking had occurred to affect outcomes in the three states, even computer scientists who recommended a recount to rule out tampering have gone to great lengths to make it clear there is no proof of hacking or fraud in the election results.

 

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22 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Scot,

 

well, at least there are still journalists willing to report on Trump's issues. I am not sure there will be any left in four years' time. And not because I think the issues will be gone.

I'm hoping the structural protections in the US will prevent that eventuality.  The political certianly aren't working now.

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4 hours ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

That's true, but I think Democrats may have been a little been blind about the types of policies that may appeal to the rural working class. They see their communities slowly withering, while good jobs disappear. The Democratic response is to offer more social spending. The thing is, to put it crudely, they want jobs and revitalized local economies, not welfare. I believe that the vast majority of people would rather not be on welfare, and Democrats are perfectly capable of recognizing this in other contexts.

I too agree that most people would rather have jobs than welfare. And that's why I think its important for the Democratic Party to emphasize the goal of full employment is part of the party platform.

It used to be in the Democratic Party platform until 1992 where it went away. That was a mistake.

During the Great Depression, something like 25% of adult population was unemployed. The Democratic Party of old remembered how terrifying unemployment was for that generation of people. It's good that the Democratic Party is going back to its roots there. And it should emphasize that fact.

For most people, having meaningful work is key to their self-dignity and emotional well being.

Now conservative man, after listening to too much Rush Limbaugh, will say something dumb like "government doesn't create jobs, only the private sector does." That, of course, isn't quite correct, particularly when the reasons for unemployment had a lot to do with monetary problems, like were in effect over the last 8 years.

But aside from monetary problems, the Democratic Party does need to articulate how its going to ope operationalize the goal of full employment. 

Of course I'm not against welfare or state provided social insurance because sometimes people just need it. Shit happens. But, the goal of full employment is key. And the Democratic Party needs to emphasize that.

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1 hour ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

But is Trump questioning the integrity of an election he won?

Not really, in my view. One thing we know about Trump is that he simply cannot abide any sort of slight, real or perceived, upon his abilities, his manhood, whatever. The fact that Hillary Clinton beat him solidly in the popular vote rankles, and since he is constitutionally unable to let that go, he's lashing out to "defend himself." Any excuse for his popular vote loss would do, really, but this one fits a theme he's been playing all year: non-white people are ruining this nation.

A bigger man would say to himself, "Self, I won the day so why do I care about the popular vote?" Trump is not that man, however, and so he's striking at whatever targets present themselves.

This man will be in charge of the executive branch of government. And the armed forces.

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2 hours ago, mormont said:

Meanwhile, the President-Elect is using his Twitter feed to harass and bully a journalist for daring to question his unfounded claims of voter fraud.

 

And he wasn't done there!

 

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More on conservative man claims about the "laws of economics":

Japan minimum wage edition:

One way to think about this: A country is at the ZLB. Pushing the real rate down past the natural rate is difficult. One way to lower the real rate is by increasing inflation expectations.

You can increase inflation expectations by increasing the minimum wage:

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This is especially the case for Japan, where there is a deep-rooted deflationary mindset and a large gap in wages and job security between regular and non-regular employees (part-timers, contract workers and temporary staff). The authorities have recognized the need for policies that stimulate wage growth to help Japan’s reflationary efforts, as well as counter the stagnation of incomes at the bottom. They have put in place plans to increase the minimum wage by 3 percent on a yearly basis, which would result in a hike from 798 PY to over 1,000 JPY per hour by the year 2023.

https://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2016/11/28/can-raising-japans-minimum-wage-accelerate-wage-growth/

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13 hours ago, LongRider said:

Wouldn't this education package include vocational ed for those whom would rather study HVAC, Law Enforcement, or many, many other areas of study that aren't a university degree?  A great public education through high school and then a good voc. school would be useful to many.

Absolutely. Not everyone is cut out for a traditional university. Their talents lay in other directions and that is a GOOD thing. 

So, along the lines of a 2 year post-high school technical or trades education, why not extend high school for 2 years and grant associate's degrees? Our school district allows some kids to dual enroll at community college while still in high school and to earn an associates that way. 

And can we please bring back OVT, when everyone was required to learn to cook and sew, and take wood shop or electrical. 

When a science geek is tone deaf and can't draw a straight line without a ruler, we shrug it off and say that's just not what they're good at. But artsy people are expected to be good at math and science regardless. It makes no sense. 

My generation was the first to go to college in droves. Somewhere along the way, we downplayed the value of the trades. We will always need electricians and plumbers, cooks and hairdressers, masons and bricklayers. Never underestimate the value of those skills. And they are very useful skills. It's not glamorous, but it pays the bills and there is always job security. 

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I love seeing Trump flip the burden of proof onto reporters demanding they "prove" voter fraud did not take place.  His ignorance is impressive.

:(

Heh. Guess he's never heard of a negative proof.

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1 hour ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Scot,

 

well, at least there are still journalists willing to report on Trump's issues. I am not sure there will be any left in four years' time. And not because I think the issues will be gone.

Assuming they don't punch themselves out (or give up, that's also possible)

They have no cachet with Republicans , hopefully the pitter-patter of reports on each Trump issue don't just get considered the new normal by the left and independents.

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Just now, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Absolutely. Not everyone is cut out for a traditional university. Their talents lay in other directions and that is a GOOD thing. 

So, along the lines of a 2 year post-high school technical or trades education, why not extend high school for 2 years and grant associate's degrees? Our school district allows some kids to dual enroll at community college while still in high school and to earn an associates that way. 

And can we please bring back OVT, when everyone was required to learn to cook and sew, and take wood shop or electrical. 

When a science geek is tone deaf and can't draw a straight line without a ruler, we shrug it off and say that's just not what they're good at. But artsy people are expected to be good at math and science regardless. It makes no sense. 

My generation was the first to go to college in droves. Somewhere along the way, we downplayed the value of the trades. We will always need electricians and plumbers, cooks and hairdressers, masons and bricklayers. Never underestimate the value of those skills. And they are very useful skills. It's not glamorous, but it pays the bills and there is always job security. 

I agree that a four year education isn't for everybody, nor should it be. For many folks, doing a two year technical degree would make sense. For one, there is some advantage in getting started in your trade at an earlier age.

In fact, I'd almost argue, that guaranteeing everyoneone at least two years of technical training, after high school is a no-brainer.

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