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U.S. Politics: The Bipartisan Dismemberment of the VA


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12 hours ago, Altherion said:

I've adopted the language a while ago. The position is my own, although it is admittedly not terribly original.

I found a thing you might find interesting.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/upshot/american-anger-its-not-the-economy-its-the-other-party.html?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&kwp_0=127324&kwp_4=581961&kwp_1=304399&_r=0

 

Data on the nation’s economic recovery, people’s reactions to current economic conditions and their overall sense of satisfaction with life do not suggest Americans are angry. In fact, historical measures indicate people are about as happy and satisfied with the economy and with their lives as they were in 1983, when Ronald Reagan told us it was “morning again in America.” So why does it feel more like a 1 a.m. bar brawl?

The answer may have more to do with political parties than economics, or at least with the interaction of the two. Today’s voters have sorted themselves and polarized into partisan groups that look very different than they did in the late 1980s. And members of each side like the other side less than before. Americans aren’t annoyed only by the economy; they’re annoyed with one another.

Objective economic conditions measured by the Federal Reserve suggest that the nation’s recovery began in 2010, when gross domestic product started to expand, unemployment started to fall and real disposable income began to increase. By 2015, the misery index — a combined measure of unemployment and inflation — was about as low as it had been since the 1950s, meaning an active demand for goods and services along with low unemployment and inflation. Most Americans seemed to appreciate this growth. Data on the Index of Consumer Sentiment, one of the longest-running measures of Americans’ views of the economy, shows that by the end of 2015, consumer sentiment was as positive as it had been in the mid-2000s and mid-1980s. It was nearly identical to where it was at the end of 1983, when Mr. Reagan’s re-election romp began to take shape.

Even breaking the consumer sentiment data down by income levels does little to buoy the argument that Americans were pessimistic. From 2009-2015, the average gap in economic satisfaction between the upper and lower thirds of the income distribution was 13.7 points, much lower than it was during the Reagan years (21.3) and lower than the gap during the administrations of the elder George Bush (14.7), Bill Clinton (16.7) and George W. Bush (18.4).

As we entered 2016, Americans of all income levels felt positively about the economy, though by some indicators many people had not recovered. The employment-population ratio and median household income, for example, began to recover only in 2015. To get a sense of whether these economic factors were affecting the general mood of the nation in a way not captured by consumer sentiment, I examined one of the longest-standing measures of general happiness. Since 1972, the General Social Survey has asked people to “take things all together” and rate their level of happiness. The 40-year trend shows only modest changes — and may actually suggest a small increase in happiness in recent years. Describing Americans’ mood as distinctively angry in 2015 elides this evidence. Americans were optimistic about the nation’s economy and generally happy — in fact, no less optimistic or happy than they had been historically.

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On April 10, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Altherion said:

Because that doesn't work when things are bad and keep getting worse. There must be at least some pretence of change which in the US is provided by occasionally switching parties. The alternative is control of the media and repression of dissidents neither of which is ever going to work in the US.

I'd be very interested in a reference to a timeframe when conservatives at the time thought things were good and getting better. That's the entire fundamental ethos of conservatism since it began as a political movement/reaction. Things are always bad and getting worse at the time in question.

Always.

When a conservative government wins, they are the embattled martyr fighting a losing battle to preserve the essence of what makes America (or wherever) great in the face of increasing internal corruption and weakness and growing external threats. When a liberal government wins, they are exploiting naivety and political correctness to expand federal dominance and undermine the power of individuals to preserve freedom and at the same time making us more vulnerable to our enemies. 

 

This. Always. Happens.

 

With very little tweaking for specifics, you can take a quote from someone like Buckley or Goldwater or Nixon and inject it into any contemporary discussion about how 'things are bad and getting worse' and no one would notice the difference.

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13 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I'd be very interested in a reference to a timeframe when conservatives at the time thought things were good and getting better. That's the entire fundamental ethos of conservatism since it began as a political movement/reaction. Things are always bad and getting worse at the time in question.

I don't think this description of conservatives is entirely accurate, but in any case, the interesting thing about the current situation is that it's not just the conservatives who are saying this. There are politicians on the left who are saying more or less the same thing, except that they don't stop at "it's getting worse," instead finishing with proposals for radical changes that will allegedly solve the problem. Do you think Elizabeth Warren is a conservative?

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I think a lot is there in Merenatheclones post, key being that Americans do not seem to think much of one another from identity group to identity group (im not referencing just race either). We seem pitted into some pretty entrenched positions and identities that do not show much sign of changing very quickly. These lines are drawn over socio-economic, cultural, class, tradition, religion, education and every other excuse and they are deep, deep, divides. 

Trump has spent a lot of energy criticizing Mexicans and Asians for taking American industry, ignoring that most of that mfg work has been exported by other Americans. It has been primarily other Americans that have made the decisions like whether to build that new plant in Kansas, Osaka or Mexico City. To blame Mexico or China for those decisions is to create a bogey man and ignore the main protagonists.

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47 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I think a lot is there in Merenatheclones post, key being that Americans do not seem to think much of one another from identity group to identity group (im not referencing just race either). We seem pitted into some pretty entrenched positions and identities that do not show much sign of changing very quickly. These lines are drawn over socio-economic, cultural, class, tradition, religion, education and every other excuse and they are deep, deep, divides. 

 

And how do you think we got there?  Who benefits?

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13 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

And how do you think we got there?  Who benefits?

How we got there may be a longer story than we can post easily in a thread? 

Who benefits are those who manafacture consent. Those that sell the population on being against their own interests and those who sucessfully sell the divisions and distractions. It's Orwellian, war is peace, affordable healthcare is bad, pollution is necessary, education is waste and low wages are the bestest of all.

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4 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

How we got there may be a longer story than we can post easily in a thread? 

Who benefits are those who manafacture consent. Those that sell the population on being against their own interests and those who sucessfully sell the divisions and distractions. It's Orwellian, war is peace, affordable healthcare is bad, pollution is necessary, education is waste and low wages are the bestest of all.

I don't think it's a particularly long story.  The balkanization of the population has been going on for a long time, and has only accelerated as the tools for promoting it have gotten more effective.

Interestingly, i think the emergence of the tea party, and the presence of trump and sanders and their effect on this election cycle seem to indicate that perhaps the chickens of this political strategy may be coming home to roost.  it's possible after feeding and nurturing this particular dog to get more aggressive and vicious over the past decades, that it's beginning to escape the leash of the party machines and eyeing up it's master as it's next meal.

 

</dramz>

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1 hour ago, Altherion said:

I don't think this description of conservatives is entirely accurate, but in any case, the interesting thing about the current situation is that it's not just the conservatives who are saying this. There are politicians on the left who are saying more or less the same thing, except that they don't stop at "it's getting worse," instead finishing with proposals for radical changes that will allegedly solve the problem. Do you think Elizabeth Warren is a conservative?

1) Any shots at answering when, then, comservatives did not feel that things were going to the dogs?

2) What part of my description is faulty?

3) Everyone who says 'things are bad and getting worse' is not conservative, but rather every* conservative feels things are bad and getting worse. 

 

Here's an example: take civil rights. Go and read what Buckley Jr. wrote in the 60's about what ought to be done (about black people getting the vote) by the increasingly marginalized white American minority, what the dangers were to the social order, about how legitimizing an element prone to violence, crime and and from culturally incompatible origins threatened to redefine what America was, how speaking of those positions generated unfair/unconsidered/lazy accusations of racism and under-education from the knee jerk pseudo-intellectual liberals who were increasingly dominating politics and thus greasing the poke to inevitable godless 'chaos' and the loss of the American way of life. 

If/when you read about these oft-mentioned positions of one of the founders of the modern conservative movement, and you still don't see how much the exact same alarm bells are continuing to sound...with merely distinctions in specific stimuli...in contemporary conservative circles, let me know and I'll re-type the above with slightly altered text. 

 

 

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This is very interesting:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-14/say-goodbye-to-the-fed-you-once-knew

TLDR, The Fed has been able to set the funds rate and influence the market because liquid reserves were so low that banks were constantly borrowing (at the fed set rate) to meet their day to day needs.

With the additional liquidity requirements of Dodd Frank, banks do not need to borrow constantly, so changes to the Fed Funds rate have vastly less impact on the market, meaning the . AsFed's ability to influence the economy has been reduced as a result of the greater banking stability Dodd Frank causes. 

As a result, the Fed may switch from focusing on benchmarking the Federal Funds rate to focusing on benchmarking the Overnight Banking Rate, intriguingly, this is a more global market than the fed funds rate.

Did any one expect Dodd Frank to be so successful that it makes the Fed less influential and less powerful? 

This is also a little disconcerting, as the next recession will have to be fought by legislative policy rather than Fed imposed fiscal policy, given congressional gridlock, and Republican anti-math ideological commitment to sabotaging the economy whenever possible we could be looking at quite an economic disaster. Ironic.

Quote

Such a development would reinforce an already existent trend that has seen the fed funds market drop from $250 billion in 2007 to a mere $60 billion today, dominated by trades between Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) and a handful of other, mostly non-U.S., financial institutions.

"We think the Fed will soon have to begin a conversation with market participants about the problems of the FF market, the fading relevance of the FF rate as a reliable measure of banks’ funding costs and the need to switch to another, more meaningful policy target," Pozsar notes. "The overnight bank funding rate is the obvious candidate and we think the switchover will happen before year-end."

 

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6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think "break up the big banks" is basically a place holder for people's frustration with rampant monopolization across numerous industries.  

I agree, and that's fine as far as that goes.  It is, however, unfortunate when the candidate mistakes (or co-opts) the elevator speech for actual policy.

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7 minutes ago, BloodRider said:

I agree, and that's fine as far as that goes.  It is, however, unfortunate when the candidate mistakes (or co-opts) the elevator speech for actual policy.

Eh, the issue is a lot bigger than a single election, and it's been brewing for a long time. I wouldn't fault Sanders for the message as I would for the lack of an achievable plan.

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48 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think "break up the big banks" is basically a place holder for people's frustration with rampant monopolization across numerous industries.  

'break up the big banks' is sooooo 8 months ago.....

The new talking piont is that it was the little guys, like Lehmann Bros's who were ACTUALLY at fault.

Which is obviously quite convenient for HRC.

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3 hours ago, Swordfish said:

'break up the big banks' is sooooo 8 months ago.....

The new talking piont is that it was the little guys, like Lehmann Bros's who were ACTUALLY at fault.

Which is obviously quite convenient for HRC.

Does it aggravate you when reality favors those who deal in reality?

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I have been having some on and off debates with conservatives/libertarians on Facebook over the past few weeks.  Something I have noticed:

Their first response - and pretty much ONLY solution to a issue/problem - is to blame somebody.  Anything else is 'stupid liberal reasoning.'  When flaws in their methodology are pointed out, they start talking violence.

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21 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

I have been having some on and off debates with conservatives/libertarians on Facebook over the past few weeks.  Something I have noticed:

Their first response - and pretty much ONLY solution to a issue/problem - is to blame somebody.  Anything else is 'stupid liberal reasoning.'  When flaws in their methodology are pointed out, they start talking violence.

That's a fairly universal reaction.  you see the same thing from the left when it comes to trump, republicans, tea party members....

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