US Politics: Donnie and the Mystery of the Anonymous Op-Ed

[A Horse Named Stranger]

4 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Huh?

Cross reference to Graham sounding off, that if Democrats want to pick judges they should win elections (I am not sure if Garland can laugh about that one). And Graham is one of those "concerned Republicans", who just happened to vote for the current President's policy and court picks by accident (that was the somewhat obscure thought behind that one liner).

At this rate, the GOP will turn into the Austria of American politics in no time.

"Mr. Trump? Never heard of him. Wasn't he from the Democratic New York City?"

[Martell Spy]

Inside the GOP’s rescue mission for Ted Cruz
The national party wasn't expecting to have to defend a well-known senator in a conservative bastion.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/09/ted-cruz-reelection-trump-813354

Quote

 

The push reflects a broader anxiety within the party about the electoral environment this fall. It also has practical implications for the GOP: The resources devoted to Cruz include money that could otherwise be used to oust vulnerable incumbent Democrats in red states like North Dakota, Indiana and Missouri.

With O’Rourke outraising Cruz more than 2 to 1 during the past quarter, right-leaning organizations have begun routing resources to the state. The anti-tax Club for Growth, which spent millions on Cruz during his 2012 Senate bid, has started a seven-figure advertising blitz aimed at tearing down the Democratic congressman. The organization has begun polling the race, and David McIntosh, the organization’s president, recently traveled to Texas to meet with donors who could help fund the barrage. More than $1 million has been raised so far, people close to the group say.

A handful of other well-funded groups are considering joining the effort, including the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, the Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, the newly formed Senate Reform Fund, and Ending Spending, which in the past has been bankrolled by major GOP financiers including New York City investor Paul Singer. Some of the groups have been in touch with one another as they weigh their next moves and try to determine how much their help is needed.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

Sessions Was ‘Enthusiastic’ About Trump-Putin Meeting During Campaign, Says Papadopoulos

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/sessions-liked-trump-putin-meeting-idea-says-papadopoulos.html

Quote

Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos has offered yet another indication that attorney general Jeff Sessions may have perjured himself when testifying before Congress about the campaign’s Russia links. In two television interviews and a court filing, Papadopoulos shared his account of a March 2016 Trump campaign meeting — the first full meeting of Trump’s national security team — during which he told Trump and campaign officials that he could set up a summit between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Sessions, a close ally and campaign advisor to Trump, was “quite enthusiastic” about the potential meeting, according to Papadopoulos — a detail which directly contradicts what Sessions told Congress under oath last year.

 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Many hospitals set up “abortion boards,” where women went to beg panels of male physicians to allow them to terminate a pregnancy, which was only possible if granted an exception due to extraordinary circumstances. Many of these women had to plead insanity or say their pregnancy was causing them to consider suicide — two of the few permissible justifications for obtaining permission. Public humiliations like these were common in the pre-Roe era.

This is what life was like for women in America before Roe v. Wade
“Massive numbers of women resisted the law”: a historian on life before Roe.

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/7/3/17530862/brett-kavanaugh-abortion-roe-v-wade
 

[Morpheus]

Trump praises Korea for a parade without bombs and SHS gives Kim kudos for a nice letter, even as intelligence suggests they are ramping up covert nuclear activity

[Bonnot OG]

On 9/9/2018 at 2:07 PM, Triskjavikson said:

@Bonnot OG - I get what you're saying about already being in an authoritarian situation, but I do think we're currently in a place where it's undecided where it goes from here.  To put it another way, I don't know that we're past the point of no return yet.  

Well, for us not to continue down the path of all out fascism, Dems need to realize that we do not live in a framework of morality and truth, but one of power, and the sooner they recognize that the appeals to truth and morality are ineffective in stopping fascism, the sooner they might be able to actually have a resistance that has an actual impact. That means do not fucking comrpomise with this administration or the GOP, like they did a few weeks back approving 11 Trump selected judges.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Bonnot OG said:

Well, for us not to continue down the path of all out fascism, Dems need to realize that we do not live in a framework of morality and truth, but one of power, and the sooner they recognize that the appeals to truth and morality are ineffective in stopping fascism, the sooner they might be able to actually have a resistance that has an actual impact. That means do not fucking comrpomise with this administration or the GOP, like they did a few weeks back approving 11 Trump selected judges.

    

 

Primaries here Thursday.  Hurricane(s?) also.  Kinda busy.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

52 minutes ago, Zorral said:

    

 

Primaries here Thursday.  Hurricane(s?) also.  Kinda busy.

Everything in South Carolina south and East of I-20 is closed for at least the rest of the week.  I think this may be a bit of an over reaction.

[Martell Spy]

The political power of preexisting conditions, explained
Watch Joe Manchin literally gun down the anti-Obamacare lawsuit.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/10/17842392/preexisting-conditions-political-power

Quote

 

No, when vulnerable Democrats wield Obamacare as a political cudgel against Republicans, they have one very specific section in mind: Title I, the protections for preexisting conditions.

They are, without fail, the most popular part of the ACA when pollsters break out the law’s individual pieces. Two issues most directly felled the Republican repeal plans: the Medicaid overhaul and the rollback of those preexisting conditions rules.

“The political potency of the protections that emerged in the repeal and replace debate was somewhat unexpected,” Larry Levitt at the Kaiser Family Foundation told me. “Protecting people with preexisting conditions is now like motherhood and apple pie.”

I think it’s no accident that these provisions, the most absolute and universal within Obamacare, are the most popular. They appeal to a basic sense of American fairness: You shouldn’t be denied insurance because you once got sick or had an accident.

It helps too that 50 million Americans have a condition that would have made them uninsurable before the ACA. Each of us either is one of those people or knows one of them.

That also breaks down typical partisan barriers that might still hold for programs like Medicaid, which are— fairly or not — seen as a kind of welfare. Notice that Manchin, even in a Medicaid expansion state that is hugely reliant on Medicaid, is focusing instead on preexisting conditions.

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

23 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Sessions Was ‘Enthusiastic’ About Trump-Putin Meeting During Campaign, Says Papadopoulos

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/sessions-liked-trump-putin-meeting-idea-says-papadopoulos.html

 

Unfortunate for Sessions this coming out now when his President wants him gone. "Oops, it looks like you told porkies under oath, you'd better resign to preserve the dignity of the AG office. Even if you weren't telling lies the suspicion is enough to make your position untennable so you need to resign. Alternatively I now have a sufficiently objective reason to fire you, that every conservative will be able to use to come to my defence in firing you."

[The Anti-Targ]

20 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Everything in South Carolina south and East of I-20 is closed for at least the rest of the week.  I think this may be a bit of an over reaction.

I'm in DC right now. Meant to be leaving for home Thursday morning, but have arranged to leave Wednesday night instead because of the hurricane. 10PM flight to LA getting in at 12:30AM, ugh. But better that than risk being stuck here for a few extra days under stormy conditions.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

39 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm in DC right now. Meant to be leaving for home Thursday morning, but have arranged to leave Wednesday night instead because of the hurricane. 10PM flight to LA getting in at 12:30AM, ugh. But better that than risk being stuck here for a few extra days under stormy conditions.

DC may be in the path of the rements with an extreme rain event as a result of this storm.  As such you choice makes a great deal of sense.

[Martell Spy]

The Judicial Assault on Roe v. Wade Has Begun
With Kavanaugh’s confirmation imminent, anti-abortion judges are declaring war on the right to choose.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/comprehensive-health-hawley-roe-wade-kavanaugh.html

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There’s no mystery why Shepherd chose this moment to flout the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence. So long as Justice Anthony Kennedy sat on the court, laws like Missouri’s were likely to get struck down at SCOTUS. But as soon as Kennedy retired, Roe’s demise was all but guaranteed. His probable successor, Brett Kavanaugh, has a strong anti-abortion record, and emitted anti-choice dog whistles throughout his confirmation hearings. Once he joins the bench, the court will begin upholding anti-abortion laws—starting, perhaps, with Missouri’s—by defining an “undue burden” downward. And after it has eroded that standard to the point of meaningless, it will overturn Roe altogether.

That’s why judges like Shepherd have been emboldened this summer. He isn’t the first to cheer on Roe’s downfall. In July, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee, bemoaned the “moral tragedy of abortion” and implied that Roe is illegitimate. In August, 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Joel Fredrick Dubina, a George H.W. Bush appointee, declared that the right to abortion “has no basis in the Constitution.”

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Isn't abortion an establishment issue? The only reason to totally deny abortion is religious, therefore any total ban on abortion is establishing religion, which is unconstitutional. At some point along the gestational path you start getting into discussions about the foetus' rights as an individual human needing protection. But that individual status does not  realistically exist while it is a collection of barely differentiated cells.

[Altherion]

10 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Isn't abortion an establishment issue? The only reason to totally deny abortion is religious, therefore any total ban on abortion is establishing religion, which is unconstitutional. At some point along the gestational path you start getting into discussions about the foetus' rights as an individual human needing protection. But that individual status does not  realistically exist while it is a collection of barely differentiated cells.

No. The debate (which we've done several times on this board and probably does not need to be repeated here) is where the point mentioned in your third sentence is located and it can be carried out without any reference to religion. You might be thinking of opposition to contraception which has no such foundation and thus gets much less traction in the courts.

[ThinkerX]

3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Isn't abortion an establishment issue? The only reason to totally deny abortion is religious, therefore any total ban on abortion is establishing religion, which is unconstitutional. At some point along the gestational path you start getting into discussions about the foetus' rights as an individual human needing protection. But that individual status does not  realistically exist while it is a collection of barely differentiated cells.

No.  A good moral argument without reliance upon religion can be made for prohibiting abortion in most cases. Because, ultimately, it comes down to taking a life.  That said, the religious right has gone utterly insane on the topic.

[mormont]

39 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

No.  A good moral argument without reliance upon religion can be made for prohibiting abortion in most cases. Because, ultimately, it comes down to taking a life. 

This is known as 'begging the question': your conclusion is assumed as a premise. Ultimately, the abortion question in secular moral terms comes down to whether or not you are taking a life, as well as a whole slew of other related questions about the limits of state power, something which mysteriously ceases to become an issue when those limits involve a woman's body. 

[Mya Stone]

As a medical professional, I truly can not imagine what overturning Roe v Wade will do, and the ethical and moral dilemmas it will cause many practicing doctors and nurses. If it comes to pass, it’s going to be an absolute logistical nightmare - I can only liken it to what Prohibition must have been like in terms of changing legality. 

 

That doesnt even begin to explain my very strong thoughts on whether or not an embryo or fetus can viably live outside of the womb - without being able to do so, I struggle calling it “a life.” 

 

Also, nice to see that 14+ years later we’re all still debating this. 

[Jo498]

No, it comes down whether taking a life is permissible or even justified (as it can be when another life is in danger or when one needs food (as in killing animals for food)). Nobody in his right mind can deny that the fetus is alive and to my knowledge hardly anybody arguing pro abortion (certainly not the "Singer tradition") denies that.

The viability of living outside the womb is not necessarily relevant. I cannnot survive in outer space either, still I am alive among my "proper" or typical conditions. The typical condition of a fetus is being in the womb, so it is moot that it would die outside.

But it is also beside the point. There are secular arguments contra abortion, so it is not an exclusively religious issue.

[OldGimletEye]

@Rippounet

A couple of quick points:

Quote

I'm surprised that some studies suggest wages can go up as a result of immigration (Ortega and Verdugo, 2011). However it seems those studies have shown correlation not causation, so I'd be cautious about drawing conclusions from them.

The issue of causation in applied econometric work is often intimately tied up with the issue of identification in econometric models.
Ideally when you attempt to identify a model you'd like to have an exegenous event that helps to cut through the dependency between endogeneous varialables. 
In other cases, you might have to rely on plausible arguments to identify the model. For instance in estimating the multiplier in a VAR model, you might have to make a parameter restriction on the idea that GDP usually falls before extra fiscal stimulus is passed.
You could argue that higher wages drives immigration. Supposing you had the following model.
W = a_1 + b_1*I + v (1)
I = a_2 + b_2 * W + u (2)
Where W is wages and I is immigration. If I tried to estimate b_1 in this model, I'd get nonsense basically because of the circularity between variables. In order to estimate all the parameters in a system like this, I'd basically need an exegeneous variable in equation 1 and in equation 2.
Supposing though, I had the following:
W = a_1 + b_1*I + v (1)
I = a_2 + b_2 * W + c_1*Z + u (2)
In this set up I could achieve at least a partial identification, being able to estimate b_1 using the exogeneous event Z to estimate b_1 by having the moment condition E[Zv] = 0.
One of the classic and early paper's in this line of literature was David Card's Mariel boatlift study, which found the flood of immigrants that came to Miami had little effect on native's wages. And the flood of immigrants that came there had really nothing to do with higher wages in Miami, but rather Castro's decision to let them leave Cuba, providing a exegenous event and a pretty good causal explanation.

Supposing, however, I don't have a clear exogenous event. Then in order to identify a model, I might have to rely on a casual argument. I might argue that higher wages doesn't cause immigration to happen at the same time. It takes time for the news of higher wages to reach immigrants. And then it takes time for immigrants to prepare to leave. In short, higher wages leads immigration by one or two lags. Is this a plausible argument for both purposes of establishing identification and causation? I think so.

Also, I just add there is something hilariously odd about upper class Republicans just worrying their little old hearts out about the difficulties encountered by labor on this topic, as they've never seemingly gave a fuck before. I'll be cynical here and suggest they could care less, but will do anything to get their guys elected so they can get tax cuts, to include playing to anti-immigration sentiment.
They are kind of like Meatloaf. They'd do anything for a tax cut, except, unlike Meatloaf, they'd even do that.

Quote

*by "monopsony power of companies" I assume you mean the ability of very large companies to keep wages low because there are very few of them that oversee the labor market in a given sector, right?

When I talk about monopsony power, I mean basically the ability of employer's ability to set wages below the theoretical value of an employee's marginal product. And there is growing evidence that many employers do have this power. And I believe the primary cause of this is because of the search  cost of finding a new job. Workers don't have all the information about where other jobs are, what they pay, or the terms of employment. Gathering that information takes time and can be costly.
But, lets leave aside the monopsony issue for a moment. Most employers have some degree of monopoly power. Most businesses go to great lengths to convince consumers that their products or services are different from the their competion, giving them some ability to set prices, and collect some monoply rents. You can view one function of unions as negotiating for a fraction of these monopoly rents.