US Politics- Stay Gold, Pony Boy

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

47 minutes ago, kairparabola said:

True. The rumours swirling also suggest the new guy's going to bootstomp the march on Saturday. So in case I'm hauled off to a gulag, I just wanted to say it's been fantastic bantering with you in the baseball threads.

I hadn't heard that part. I'll be there too, as will a lot of my local friends. I was even thinking about bringing my son (maybe.  @14 his attention span is rather short)

[Dr. Pepper]

30 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

A subject discussed here occasionally is how jobs are lost that are lost to changes in their industry.  Here is a short article about changes in retail and the stores planning closings of some stores and shedding of jobs in 2017.  The stores listed in the article are:  Macy's, Sears and KMart, JCPenny, CVS and The Limited.  Not listed is Hancock's Fabrics which closed a bunch this fall and it was awful!     It's been reported that even Walmart is closing some stores.

Online sellers are putting a lot of pressure on brick and mortar stores and some of these stores will be moving to having a larger online presence.  Expanding online could move some jobs to the customer service and warehouse, but I would think that more jobs would be lost than gained. 

With so many stores closing I wonder how this will affect the malls as well.  Will just to have to wait and see I guess.

 

Some of these closures hit my community particularly hard in 2016.  It's already a poor neighborhood.  Most people work in retail or the food industry because that's all that's here.  Then a Macy's, two Kohl's, AND several wal-mart neighborhood stores closed.  Fast food joints and other restaurants have started boarding up windows.  It's like this nasty domino effect.  And then everyone who was already living and working here is stuck indefinitely because they don't have the money to move or even travel to an area with better work opportunities.  

I'm sure the Trumpsters and other terrible human beings will tell these folks to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop taking government handouts and get back to work.

[Fragile Bird]

On ‎1‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 5:18 PM, Altherion said:

Washington (and Jefferson and Madison) owned plantations which were one of the main forms of top-tier wealth at their time and presented clear conflicts of interest with respect to several contemporary political issues (the most obvious is slavery, but tariffs are also important). By the standards of that ethics official and several people in this thread, they should have been expected to sell their holdings upon entering office to avoid conflicts of interest -- but of course the idea would have been completely absurd at the time and I doubt it was even brought it up.

Most of those either did not have any assets to speak of or had converted them to a cash or a similarly inoffensive form before they reached office. Carter did something weird with his peanut business; I'm not sure what exactly, but it was not sold off. I haven't looked into the others, although the Motley Fool article points out that Johnson almost certainly used his position as Senator to benefit his wife's radio business.

I think you are misunderstanding at least part of the issue. The wealth being in a trust fund is, in and of itself, not important. What matters is that it is in a blind trust. That is, the trustee does not know what assets are in the trust and thus no motivation of profit can influence his political actions. Kennedy almost certainly knew his father's business at least partially and if not, he was as close as a man can be to people who definitely knew it fully.

Again, I think you are a bit confused about why a blind trust is important. Control is a relatively minor part of the potential conflict. The main one is that Trump knows what his assets are and, unless they are sold, he will continue to know what they are even if he were to hand control over to an independent director. There is no way to make a blind trust out of real estate holdings because it is public knowledge who owns what and the prices are likewise publicly documented. This is why the only solution that truly avoids all conflicts of interest is for Trump to sell all of his holdings (which obviously isn't going to happen).

Thanks for the mansplainin', so much better the my Trusts class in law school.    However, if the trustee doesn't know what the assets in the trust are, that would be one MOFO of a blind trust.  It's the beneficiary who doesn't know what's in the trust.

That Motley Fool list of the ten richest presidents is useless to the discussion.  What the thoughts about conflicts of interest were in the 1700s and 1800s when the rich considered themselves the natural rulers of the great unwashed is pretty irrelevant today, with changes in attitude about conflicts. An article listing what the last 10 presidents did with their assets would have been far more useful to link, but there doesn't seem to be one out there that I can find, it's all piecemeal information.

The only useful part is to point out 2 modern day presidents are on the list, and both of them did not have the conflicts DT has. The Kennedy Trust was and still is run by professionals. Neither JFK nor RFK had anything to do with running it, nor did they choose the investments. Joe wanted them to concentrate on politics, they never worked in any Kennedy business. Don't forget, Joe outlived both of them. They probably didn't even know the details of the investments, other than the fact the trust owned and ran the Chicago Merchandise Mart. And no, JFK was not as close as could be to the investment advisors that ran the trust. He just collected cheques.

As for LBJ, a Senator is not a President. The fact that he still owned his radio station network as a Senator doesn't matter, he sold it once he became President, or perhaps when he became VP, I don't remember now. And, technically, his wife owned the businesses, since they were purchased with her money at the beginning, and then funds were re-invested (though LBJ owned half of the profits as her husband).

Jimmy Carter placed his peanut farm in a blind trust. The manager of the farm was his brother Billy, who treated all the profits like his own. The Republicans appointed a special investigator who hounded Carter for half a year, convinced the money from the peanut farm was going in a slush fund, instead of his brother's pocket.

No, I'm not confused about why a blind trust is important. Trump's position is unique because of his enormous wealth.  No way are his businesses going to be immediately sold off. Control is the major issue in a blind trust, not a minor issue, which can't be separated from knowledge. You can't have your sons control the so-called 'blind' trust, it's not a blind trust then.

The US government definition of a blind trust: 

The US federal government recognizes the "qualified blind trust" (QBT), as defined by the Ethics in Government Act and related regulations. In order for a blind trust to be a QBT, the trustee must not be affiliated with, associated with, related to,

or subject to the control or influence of the government official. The trustee should not be a current or former investment advisor, partner, accountant, attorney, or relative.

Because the assets initially placed in the QBT are known to the government official (who is both creator and beneficiary of the trust), these assets continue to pose a potential conflict of interest until they have been sold (or reduced to a value less than $1,000). New assets purchased by the trustee will not be disclosed to the government official, so they will not pose a conflict.

As you see from the definition, the creator knows what's in the trust from the start, a blind trust doesn't have to start with cash. Trump's blind trust would have to start with his assets being transferred to a trustee totally unassociated with his family. That trustee could gradually sell off various assets in an orderly fashion and replace them with other investments. The Kennedy family, and then the trust, owned the Chicago Merchandise Mart from 1945 until 1998, and always knew it, I'm sure there are real estate assets that could be held by Trump's trust. Hell, a Kennedy ran the CMM. But Trump owns shares of hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of companies, and I bet most of them could be sold and replaced with other assets. Having his sons run the hotel business wouldn't be ideal, but they could probably do that while not knowing what other investments were being made as assets were sold off.

However, this logical solution doesn't seem to be the one Trump wants. And so far it looks like the Republicans don't give a shit.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, Swordfish said:

It's always been my understanding that pre existing conditions were more of an issue on the individual market, and that for group insurance, it was mostly handled via relatively short waiting periods.  

is that not accurate?

No, the example of the child with the congenital issue?  Private insurance said no, no now, not ever, ain't covered for that at all.  (a relative of mine) and sometimes the short period would be a year, if a short period would be available.  Plus, pre-conditions seemed to at times be pulled out of the insurer's asses, such as them deciding a previous pregnancy was a pre-existing condition so some things since weren't covered.  Pre-existing conditions had different criteria depending on the insurer and the 'condition.'

[LongRider]

38 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I'm sure the Trumpsters and other terrible human beings will tell these folks to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop taking government handouts and get back to work.

Yup.  When the recession struck in 2008 a Nevada Repub senator told the unemployed to shut-up and just sell shit on EBay because hey, EBay entrepreneurs could be millionaires!  Asshole.  So yeah, I guess the pulling out of stores in an already poor neighborhood just doesn't have the poignancy and meaning of the closed factories that the rust belt does.  (no offense to rust belters)

[Zorral]

Quote

 

Quote:

China warning the US of a devastating confrontation -- yes, you read that right -- is being given headline play in these two European papers, but was little noticed here, or did I blink and miss it? 

To quote a friend of mine: if all this is okay with you, do nothing. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/13/trump-risks-war-with-beijing-us-blocks-access-south-china-sea-state-media

Trump risks 'war' with Beijing if US blocks access to South China Sea, state media warns 
Threats by Rex Tillerson, would-be secretary of state, to stop access to islands are ‘mish-mash of naivety and shortsightedness’, says China Daily 

Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong 
Thursday 12 January 2017 22.59 EST Last modified on Friday 13 January 2017 02.26 EST 

The US risks a “large-scale war” with China if it attempts to blockade islands in the South China Sea, Chinese state media has said, adding that if recent statements become policy when Donald Trump takes over as president “the two sides had better prepare for a military clash”. 
China has controversially built fortifications and artificial islands across the South China Sea. Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, said China’s “access to those islands … is not going to be allowed”. 

China claims nearly the entire area, with rival claims by five south-east Asian neighbours and Taiwan. 

Tillerson did not specify how the US would block access but experts agreed it could only be done by a significant show of military force. Tillerson likened China’s island building to “Russia’s taking of Crimea”. 

“Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories,” said an editorial in the Global Times, a Communist-party controlled newspaper. 

“China has enough determination and strength to make sure that his rabble rousing will not succeed … Unless Washington plans to wage a large-scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish.” 

If that policy became more confrontational, including denying China access to islands it already controls, “it would set a course for devastating confrontation between China and the US”, declared the state-run China Daily. 
China’s official response was more tame. Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China-US relations were based on “non-confrontation, non-conflict, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation”. 

Both newspapers also dismissed recent statements by Trump and his team – taking a similar stance to the Chinese government, which is waiting for Trump to be sworn in before equating his words with policy. 

Tillerson’s remarks “are not worth taking seriously because they are a mish-mash of naivety, shortsightedness, worn-out prejudices and unrealistic political fantasies”, the China Daily wrote. “Should he act on them in the real world it would be disastrous.” 

There are signs, though, that Trump shares Tillerson’s views and they will be carried into the White House. 

In December, Trump made similar comments in an interview with Fox News, accusing Beijing of “building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn’t be doing”. 

Peter Navarro, Trump’s pick to head the newly created national trade council, has been extremely hostile to China and encouraged the president-elect to pursue a “peace through strength” policy in the region. 

“Beijing has created some 3,000 acres of artificial islands in the South China Sea with very limited American response,” Navarro has previously written. 

 

 

[all swedes are racist]

Jesus. what do I always say? "never get involved in an artificial island war in asia"

[Larry of the Lawn]

9 minutes ago, chairman lmao said:

Jesus. what do I always say? "never get involved in an artificial island war in asia"

Incontinent-able!!!!

[LongRider]

29 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Peter Navarro, Trump’s pick to head the newly created national trade council, has been extremely hostile to China and encouraged the president-elect to pursue a “peace through strength” policy in the region. 

NO! NO! Fuck NO!        

[Martell Spy]

Quote

No, the example of the child with the congenital issue?  Private insurance said no, no now, not ever, ain't covered for that at all.  (a relative of mine) and sometimes the short period would be a year, if a short period would be available.  Plus, pre-conditions seemed to at times be pulled out of the insurer's asses, such as them deciding a previous pregnancy was a pre-existing condition so some things since weren't covered.  Pre-existing conditions had different criteria depending on the insurer and the 'condition.'

Yeah, I once faced a six month delay before my insurance kicked in on a new job due to pre-existing condition. I don't quite remember, but I think I could use the insurance for anything other than the condition, like if I got an infection. I never did use it during that period because I was healthy other than the condition. I think the law pre ACA was this type of period was waived if you had continual insurance. BTW some of the Republicans have talked about bring this back and claiming that it protects people with pre-existing conditions in a manner similar to the ACA. It doesn't.

[LongRider]

4 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Yeah, I once faced a six month delay before my insurance kicked in on a new job due to pre-existing condition. I don't quite remember, but I think I could use the insurance for anything other than the condition, like if I got an infection. I never did use it during that period because I was healthy other than the condition. I think the law pre ACA was this type of period was waived if you had continual insurance. BTW some of the Republicans have talked about bring this back and claiming that it protects people with pre-existing conditions in a manner similar to the ACA. It doesn't.

My experience with one insurance was the year waiting period.  The rules were made by each company for each product, so different insurers had different rules, and some just seemed to appear out of nowhere.  One of the many reasons to keep them gone, they didn't help people and the rules were opaque and subject to change.

[ThinkerX]

'border adjustment tax' causing a rift in the GOP?

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/forget-obamacare-heres-the-real-republican-civil-war/ar-AAlQo9E?li=BBnbfcN&ocid=msnclassic

 

Libertarians loath the concept.  Yet it supposedly brings in a fair amount of cash.  Hmm...

[Martell Spy]

 

Quote

 

Can anyone here (I'm thinking policy buffs like Fez or Kalbear) explain to me what's happened in the last few days with the ACA specifically WRT preexisting conditions? I've been seeing a lot of hoopla about this on facebook and around the net, but some cursory googling has been fairly ambiguous and not totally clear about what's actually happened and how it affects people with preexisting conditions. 

I'm a 26-year-old type 1 diabetic who just moved onto an exchange plan this year, so this is all very relevant to me and any help navigating this crap from anyone here would be hugely appreciated.

 

 

They can't get rid of the regulation regarding pre-existing conditions without a Democratic buy in due to how it was passed. They'd need 60 votes in the Senate. 

They can get rid of some ACA regulations using reconciliation, and thus not need the 60 votes. For example the mandate that employers provide insurance to employees. The reason being the penalty for violating the regulation is tax based. They can also get rid of the individual mandate, since one again the penalty is tax=based.

You should definitely be worried about the exchanges surviving, however. The Republicans can easily destroy them if they find the will to do so. They might even accidentally destroy them with repeal and delay. No one really knows what will happen. It is starting to look like the Republicans go for some kind of delayed repeal and insurance bailout scenario. They just did a minor ACA bailout/stabilization thing.

They can also destroy the Medicaid expansion, once again if they find the will to do so. Anything related to funding or taxes they can do.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

Republicans move to spend billions on Obamacare — before they kill it
Most concede they can't 'pull the rug out' from people until they replace it.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/republicans-obamacare-subsidies-233618

Oh my god, what a bunch of Rinos. First, they aren't going to deport ten million people. Now they're spending tax dollars on Obamacare. Are there no True Consarvatives left in Congress?

[Mexal]

Just now, Martell Spy said:

Republicans move to spend billions on Obamacare — before they kill it
Most concede they can't 'pull the rug out' from people until they replace it.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/republicans-obamacare-subsidies-233618

Oh my god, what a bunch of Rinos. First, they aren't going to deport ten million people. Now they're spending tax dollars on Obamacare. Are there no True Consarvatives left in Congress?

Also remember these are the same subsidies they sued to have removed a few years ago. These people are terrible.

[all swedes are racist]

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

'border adjustment tax' causing a rift in the GOP?

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/forget-obamacare-heres-the-real-republican-civil-war/ar-AAlQo9E?li=BBnbfcN&ocid=msnclassic

 

Libertarians loath the concept.  Yet it supposedly brings in a fair amount of cash.  Hmm...

and here is a breathlessly overwrought forbes article on the same thing. 

someone smarter than I (like @Mlle. Zabzie or @OldGimletEye) feel like explaining the implications of a tax like this? is this some kind of (ill-conceived) nod to trumps idea of protectionism? or just a straight up continued fucking of poor and working class by way of (to my eyes) a shitfully regressive consumer tax?

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

However, if the trustee doesn't know what the assets in the trust are, that would be one MOFO of a blind trust.  It's the beneficiary who doesn't know what's in the trust.

It's the blindest trust possible. But yes, I used the wrong word.

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

What the thoughts about conflicts of interest were in the 1700s and 1800s when the rich considered themselves the natural rulers of the great unwashed is pretty irrelevant today, with changes in attitude about conflicts.

Come now, that particular attitude of the rich has not changed at all. They don't talk about it as much, but it is still evident in their actions.

I'm not sure how much of the long quote is the definition and how much is your commentary, but in any case, that does not appear to be what the ethics official said (although it does correspond to what Elizabeth Warren has asked for). That kind of trust does not eliminate the conflicts of interest, but it is not as absurd as asking him to sell everything.

That said, I'm pretty sure he will not accept any restrictions or abide by the more recent traditions. There's a peculiar mechanic here similar to the boy who cried wolf: the Democrats have already thrown everything and the kitchen sink at him in terms of allegations, so, in a way, he has developed a resistance to it.

[Mudguard]

11 hours ago, The Fallen said:

Why do you keep saying that he was shopping the report. From what I understand he was paid to find out what he could about Trump. He then felt that the stories with regards to the Russians were credible and reached out to his Russian contacts. From what I've read there was no selling to the highest bidder.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/11/trump-russia-report-opposition-research-john-mccain

As far as the CIA goes, we don't know everything that they know. I'm sure they reached out to their own sources to gauge how credible the stories were. I'm speculating here, but it seems like the logical process.

It started as opposition research for Republicans, but when that money dried up, he found Democrats willing to pay for it.  I call that shopping the report around.  He eventually also passed the report along to a bunch of people, from intelligence agencies to reporters.  Apparently, the existence of the report was widely known among reporters, the intelligence agencies, and both Democrats and Republicans.

Would he have done this if he was really concerned about protecting his identity or the identity of his sources?  After passing the report to so many different people, it was inevitable that it would get out.  If there was any truth to his report, I think it's very likely that Putin can figure out who the leaks are.  I doubt that many people would have knowledge of the allegations.  All his sources, if they really existed and were telling the truth, have been put in jeopardy.  His family would have been put in jeopardy.  Seems massively unprofessional to burn your sources and it seems irresponsible to put your family in danger for a piece of opposition research.

More likely, this report was fabricated.  We still don't have any confirmation of any of the substantive allegations.  If this was a fake, then nobody would be put in jeopardy.

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

It started as opposition research for Republicans, but when that money dried up, he found Democrats willing to pay for it.  I call that shopping the report around.  He eventually also passed the report along to a bunch of people, from intelligence agencies to reporters.  Apparently, the existence of the report was widely known among reporters, the intelligence agencies, and both Democrats and Republicans.

Would he have done this if he was really concerned about protecting his identity or the identity of his sources?  After passing the report to so many different people, it was inevitable that it would get out.  If there was any truth to his report, I think it's very likely that Putin can figure out who the leaks are.  I doubt that many people would have knowledge of the allegations.  All his sources, if they really existed and were telling the truth, have been put in jeopardy.  His family would have been put in jeopardy.  Seems massively unprofessional to burn your sources and it seems irresponsible to put your family in danger for a piece of opposition research.

More likely, this report was fabricated.  We still don't have any confirmation of any of the substantive allegations.  If this was a fake, then nobody would be put in jeopardy.

You keep trying to wrap yourself in this logic but it's not sound.

1. There is nothing in his past to suggest it's fabricated. He is known as a stone hard professional who was in the business for a long time. He worked the Russian desk, lived in Russia for a few years, had strong relationships with the head of MI6, UK's Ambassador to Russia and everyone in the intelligence community. His work on the Fifa probe directly lead to multiple arrests. Everything we've ever heard about him suggests there is very little chance he made this up. You should read the articles because you clearly haven't (Mother Jones, Guardian, Independent, Independent 2, Huffington UK). There is zero reason that a professional intelligence office who has been a ghost his entire life would purposely out himself with a fabricated story, destroy all of his credibility and likely his business to put something out there he didn't believe. Give me one good reason why he would do that.

2. The suggestion he shopped it around doesn't exactly line up. Maybe the company that hired him shopped it around, but given he had no knowledge of either client, it's highly unlikely he had anything to do with it. And if by shopping it around, you mean being hired by someone then hired by another on the opposite side when the first client had no need for it, sure, then it was "shopped around". It's not like he finished the report, put it on an auction site then sold it to the highest bidder. From what the Independent says, Steele was so troubled by what he found, he continued to work past the election without payment. That doesn't sound like it's a guy who was just doing this for the money so he could "shop it around" especially as he gave it to MI6 and the FBI because he didn't think it should just be in the hands of Trump's political opponents, the ones who originally hired him.

3. A lot of people had it but that doesn't mean a lot of people had it from him. He gave it to the FBI. They didn't do much with it from everything we can see. Clearly they were so caught up in EMAILS! So he gave it to MI6 and a reporter (David Corn from motherjones). From there it got around. We have no idea if it'll burn his sources. We don't know the web Putin has or how connected this MI6 agent is. Clearly he felt that what he found was so dangerous that he had to give it to people who could investigate it, sources or no. And he's right. If there is any truth in there, it's a huge fucking deal for the United States and western democracy.

All that being said, we still don't have any idea if there is truth in there. Steele's sources could have been wrong or fed misinformation. Steele could have misinterpreted the intelligence he received. I don't know. There are reasons to doubt the veracity of the claims though Steele himself is not one of those reasons from anything I can see. Comey refuses to confirm whether he's investigating Trump's ties to Russia., which leads me to believe he is. The Senate Intelligence Committee is going to conduct an investigation into the Russian hacking and Trump's ties. MI6 is likely looking into it and I'm sure other foreign governments. So if there is any truth to that dossier, it'll come out over the next few months, whether in the US or in the UK (their reporting on this is much better than US). 

[Fez]

14 hours ago, IamMe90 said:

Can anyone here (I'm thinking policy buffs like Fez or Kalbear) explain to me what's happened in the last few days with the ACA specifically WRT preexisting conditions? I've been seeing a lot of hoopla about this on facebook and around the net, but some cursory googling has been fairly ambiguous and not totally clear about what's actually happened and how it affects people with preexisting conditions. 

I'm a 26-year-old type 1 diabetic who just moved onto an exchange plan this year, so this is all very relevant to me and any help navigating this crap from anyone here would be hugely appreciated.

Nothing concrete at all has happened yet, and nothing probably will in regards to that provision (though I could be wrong; that one's just my opinion). So far there's been no bill passed that makes any changes to the ACA, all that's happened is Congress passed a budget framework to let them start working on a reconciliation bill to make changes to the ACA.

No one really knows what those changes are yet. And its probable that pre-existing conditions won't be affected. Both because that provision is very popular and because it'd be very hard (though I don't think impossible) to justify under reconciliation rules.

It is possible that Republicans effectively destroy the entire insurance market through reconciliation (if you eliminate the individual mandate but keep insurance regulations in place, you create a death spiral like the one New York's insurance market had a while back) in the hopes of forcing Democrats to agree to regular bill full of conservative reforms that may include repealing the pre-existing conditions provision. But that's speculation too.

Bottom line, be wary of the future but nothing has happened yet.