It's just abundantly clear to me that this country is living in two entirely different spheres of perception and existence. Honestly, it's exhausting and I'm fine keeping it that way and just making sure the other one gets beaten soundly the next time around.
I think we're starting to retread old territory here. When people start repeating their points, the discussion tends to degenerate into semantics--and often it gets personal.
Often, it's best to let your existing arguments stand.
1 in 4 Americans also believe the sun revolves around the Earth. But if we're going to do a poll duel, one taken 3 days ago shows Americans trust the media over Trump by a 52 to 37 margin.
1 in 4 Americans also believe the sun revolves around the Earth. But if we're going to do a poll duel, one taken 3 days ago shows Americans trust the media over Trump by a 52 to 37 margin.
Yikes! It appears you're correct. I did a little searching though and it seems that as of 2016 only 18% of Americans believe that now. Progress???
Yes, I saw that one too afterwards. I guess 1 in 5 is better than 1 in 4, but we're probably talking about margin of error here. It's still obscenely high for something so fundamental. It's step above "is water wet??" It reminds me that the PG for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Kyrie Irving, just stated the other day he thinks the Earth is flat. And that kid went to Duke for 2 years.
I don't know if you caught this but Europe fared no better. So much for enlightened socialism...
Frightening. I mean, I realize I'm someone who always enjoyed studying the planets and the solar system when I was younger, but it's not like I'm expecting people to know that Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants or what the order of the planets is going outward from the center. But the sun revolving around the Earth?? Isn't this what Copernicus and Galileo went to jail for 600 years ago??
I'm pretty sure the mainstream media didn't give hillary a free pass. The emails were like big news everyday. They were critical of Hillary. And I don't believe that they have it in on Trump.
When he actually gets in front of a video camera in front of the public and (not in front of a rally of supporters who seem to believe his every word) he is exposed as he says the dumbest stuff. He says stuff that makes no sense that are easily provable to be false. He speaks with the a limited vocabulary and makes absurd claims
He lives in his own reality where he's great and anyone who says anything he doesn't want to hear can't be trusted. His policies are horrible for everyone but the top 1%. He has appointed people hostile to the government they are part of. There are critical government agencies that the American people rely on with people running them that are against the agency they are in charge of. Education, the EPA and the head of the deparment of energy have all at various times stated they want to abolish those agencies.
I don't know if you caught this but Europe fared no better. So much for enlightened socialism...
Frightening. I mean, I realize I'm someone who always enjoyed studying the planets and the solar system when I was younger, but it's not like I'm expecting people to know that Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants or what the order of the planers is going outward from the center. But the sun revolving around the Earth?? Isn't this what Copernicus and Galileo went to jail for 600 years ago??
My nine year old daughter knows more about the solar system than 1/5 of Americans. I'm proud and scared at the same time!
The White House's web site posted a list of Trump's actions in the first 30 days. The one thing that caught my eye was a ban on lobbying among his officials--that is, people who worked for him would not be able to lobby the government for several years after leaving their positions. It's the sort of thing I was hoping Trump would do.
U.S. News said that it was similar to an order that Obama enacted the day after his inauguration, which Trump said was full of loopholes. According to Politico, the Lobbying Disclosure Act allows former officials to avoid being registered as lobbyists if they spend less than 20% of their time meeting or preparing to meet with current officials. The "Daschle loophole" is a common trick where lobbyists slip under that 20% threshold by carefully scheduling their time so their direct contact with officials is minimal (they can just have someone else act in their stead).
Trump's order doesn't close that loophole, and I believe legislation would be needed to close it. To do that, he'll need Congress to get on board with it. But a separate Politico article said that Congress had previously passed a law to halt the flow of lobbyists, but individual Congressmen had deliberately weakened its provisions to make sure it wouldn't affect them.
No one has ever been punished for lobbying without registering because the relevant agency has never been able to prove they met the 20% threshold. The only people who have been punished are registered lobbyists who were "sloppy" with their paperwork.
We need Congressional support to make these measures count.
The White House's web site posted a list of Trump's actions in the first 30 days. The one thing that caught my eye was a ban on lobbying among his officials--that is, people who worked for him would not be able to lobby the government for several years after leaving their positions. It's the sort of thing I was hoping Trump would do.
U.S. News said that it was similar to an order that Obama enacted the day after his inauguration, which Trump said was full of loopholes. According to Politico, the Lobbying Disclosure Act allows former officials to avoid being registered as lobbyists if they spend less than 20% of their time meeting or preparing to meet with current officials. The "Daschle loophole" is a common trick where lobbyists slip under that 20% threshold by carefully scheduling their time so their direct contact with officials is minimal (they can just have someone else act in their stead).
Trump's order doesn't close that loophole, and I believe legislation would be needed to close it. To do that, he'll need Congress to get on board with it. But a separate Politico article said that Congress had previously passed a law to halt the flow of lobbyists, but individual Congressmen had deliberately weakened its provisions to make sure it wouldn't affect them.
No one has ever been punished for lobbying without registering because the relevant agency has never been able to prove they met the 20% threshold. The only people who have been punished are registered lobbyists who were "sloppy" with their paperwork.
We need Congressional support to make these measures count.
I'd be willing to bet a significant amount of money this amounts to absolutely nothing. As you say, it has no teeth, and it's something easily put on paper that carries no actual weight. Furthermore, the idea that Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell would ever bring this up for a vote, much less push for it, is not realistic.
I'd be willing to bet a significant amount of money this amounts to absolutely nothing. As you say, it has no teeth, and it's something easily put on paper that carries no actual weight. Furthermore, the idea that Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell would ever bring this up for a vote, much less push for it, is not realistic.
they are like "ooh it says I can't be a lobbyist, okay change the business cards, I'm a consultant now."
For which she was promptly fired, unlike Lewandowski. I don't know what you mean by him "resigning". He was on the channel on the main panel on Election Night. I watched it with my own two eyes. And again, if anyone thinks Hillary Clinton knowing that there was going to be a question on the death penalty (as if she wouldn't be prepared for that question in the first place) thinks that swung even one vote in one primary, I don't know what to tell you. This idea that conservatives get to continue using Hillary Clinton as a foil 4 or 5 months after the election is laughable.
Again, this may be "well acknowledged" in the conservative media world, but liberals feel the exact opposite way about it. I also believe CNN is horrible, but for entirely different reasons. This idea that conservatives get to continue using Hillary Clinton as a foil 4 or 5 months after the election is
The American public thinks the media wants Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to win by an almost 10-to-1 margin, according to a new poll.
The Suffolk University/USA Today poll released Friday asks, "Who do you think the media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see elected president: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?"
The discussion was about the media, Trump and (ostensibly, at least according to you) what the American people think. I do not see how the poll I posted doesn't fit into every single one of those categories. I'm not disputing the numbers of your poll, I'm saying just because any amount of people BELIEVE something is true doesn't make it so.
The discussion was specifically about the media and whether it is 'right' or 'left' leaning in regards to its bias towards political parties or sides, that is exactly your post subject to which i replied too, not a general catch-all discussion of media and trump.
Evidently you wish to talk about another topic since how much Americans trust Trump or the media is a completely different topic and does not follow from the conversation.
The White House's web site posted a list of Trump's actions in the first 30 days. The one thing that caught my eye was a ban on lobbying among his officials--that is, people who worked for him would not be able to lobby the government for several years after leaving their positions. It's the sort of thing I was hoping Trump would do.
U.S. News said that it was similar to an order that Obama enacted the day after his inauguration, which Trump said was full of loopholes. According to Politico, the Lobbying Disclosure Act allows former officials to avoid being registered as lobbyists if they spend less than 20% of their time meeting or preparing to meet with current officials. The "Daschle loophole" is a common trick where lobbyists slip under that 20% threshold by carefully scheduling their time so their direct contact with officials is minimal (they can just have someone else act in their stead).
Trump's order doesn't close that loophole, and I believe legislation would be needed to close it. To do that, he'll need Congress to get on board with it. But a separate Politico article said that Congress had previously passed a law to halt the flow of lobbyists, but individual Congressmen had deliberately weakened its provisions to make sure it wouldn't affect them.
No one has ever been punished for lobbying without registering because the relevant agency has never been able to prove they met the 20% threshold. The only people who have been punished are registered lobbyists who were "sloppy" with their paperwork.
We need Congressional support to make these measures count.
The most significant action Donald Trump has done in his current tenure is ending the TPP as he has effectively stopped corporate global expansion in its tracks for the time being.
To put it another way, NAFTA destroyed manufacturing jobs in America, TPP is NAFTA on steroids and is so wide in scope it is ridiculous.
For example TPP was a stepping stone to allow corporations an actual legal status and legal power that started transcending nation states, there would be an actual universal Corporate Tribunal where corporations could sue Governments.
Not a surprise since the TPP was created in secret largely from Corporations.
The rest of thing's Donald Trump has done has been meh to good, but if the TPP went through, it was truly not unreasonable that the future could end up like a cyberpunk novel where Mega-Corps ruled everything.
He didn't end the TPP because we were never in it in the first place. It never passed. It's been dead as a doornail for over a year. He can't remove us from something we were never a party to to begin with. It was negotiated, pushed for, and defeated by activism. Congress never voted on it. Obama tried for fast-tracking, lost, saw the writing on the wall, and shelved it. At best Trump put a final nail in a coffin that was 90% shut.
Manufacturing in America started to die in the '80s. NAFTA certainly didn't help. But it was a mixture of 3 things: Reagan's destruction of unions, trade deals, but, more importantly than either of the first two.....AUTOMATION. The idea that with the advancements in technology we've seen in the past half-century that all these manufacturing jobs were going to stick around was naive, at best. Hate to break it to these blue collar Trump voters in the Rust Belt, but your manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. Those jobs didn't just go away to another country. Most of them just don't exist anymore because the corporations no longer need humans to perform those tasks.
As a Bernie supporter in the primaries, I initially thought this way about trade deals as well, but have come to realize that despite whatever their problems may be, we live in a global society and need things from all over that globe. And trade deals have become an easy scapegoat and a excuse not to deal with a simple fact: the world has move on. Those jobs that gave every family in the 50s/60s/70s a way to earn a good living are just gone.
He didn't end the TPP because we were never in it in the first place. It never passed. It's been dead as a doornail for over a year. He can't remove us from something we were never a party to to begin with. It was negotiated, pushed for, and defeated by activism. Congress never voted on it. Obama tried for fast-tracking, lost, saw the writing on the wall, and shelved it.
He ended the TPP through Executive Order by withdrawing US participation in it , Hillary Clinton most certainly would have pushed it, and it was still being pushed because Japan signed up for it.
Manufacturing in America started to die in the '80s. NAFTA certainly didn't help. But it was a mixture of 3 things: Reagan's destruction of unions, trade deals, but, more importantly than either of the first two.....AUTOMATION. The idea that with the advancements in technology we've seen in the past half-century that all these manufacturing jobs were going to stick around was naive, at best. Hate to break it to these blue collar Trump voters in the Rust Belt, but your manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. Those jobs didn't just go away to another country. Most of them just don't exist anymore because the corporations no longer need humans to perform those tasks.
The US lost 33% of its manufacturing jobs between 2000-2010. Germany lost only 11%.
Studies show that the USA lost proportionately more manufacturing jobs than comparable countries. For instance, between 2000 and 2009, U.S. lost 33% of its manufacturing jobs, while Germany only lost 11%. Why?
Moreover, Germany significantly boosted efforts to create a context for innovation throughout the 2000s, steadily bolstering the competitiveness of their manufacturing sector. “Germany set about enacting a range of comprehensive economic reforms to increase the competitiveness of Germany’s economy throughout the 2000s, including making its tax code more competitive, increasing investment in apprenticeship programs, increasing investment in in industrially relevant applied R&D
The picture in the U.S. is very different, as outlined in Competitiveness at the Crossroads (2012) an alarming report with far-reaching implications, written by three distinguished professors at Harvard Business School—Michael Porter, Jan Rivkin and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Its conclusion points to something fundamental: America has been losing the ability to compete in the international marketplace.
As Professor Porter explains, “The basic narrative begins in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Through globalization, it became possible and attractive for firms to do business in, to, and from far more countries. Changes in corporate governance and compensation caused U.S. managers to adopt an approach to management that focused attention on the stock price and short-term performance." -https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2016/12/05/could-donald-trump-solve-the-real-jobs-problem/#1d6d7d6e52d2
If you watch interviews by CEO's, and virtually any comment by business-owners, they will tell you outright that the reason they are moving their manufacturing base has nothing to do with automation but to do with the inability to compete on an international level if they stay in America primarily due to over-regulation and crippling tax.
Hillary Clinton was pretty much unequivocal in her opposition to pushing TPP throughout the entire general election. If she'd tried to push it her left-flank would have revolted on her. It wasn't going to happen no matter who was elected, and furthermore, it wasn't going to happen if in some fantasy universe Obama had had a 3rd term. It was dead.
I have no doubt Hillary, left to her own devices, would have supported the TPP. She wasn't left to her own devices. She was pushed to a new position by the base of her party.
Hillary Clinton was pretty much unequivocal in her opposition to pushing TPP throughout the entire general election. If she'd tried to push it her left-flank would have revolted on her. It wasn't going to happen no matter who was elected, and furthermore, it wasn't going to happen if in some fantasy universe Obama had had a 3rd term. It was dead.
I have no doubt Hillary, left to her own devices, would have supported the TPP. She wasn't left to her own devices. She was pushed to a new position by the base of her party.
Hilllary would have pushed for it when she was in power, on the campaign trail it was not popular so she downplayed it.
Obama failed to push it because he ran out of time and he developed an extraordinarily antagonistic relationship with Congress (being mostly Republican), also TPP was coming up for of course during the election.
If he tried, the Democrat party would have lost further.
Could Obama have pushed for it if he had time? he sure was able to completely circumvent Congress and the Supreme court when he felt like it on attacking other nation-states (Libya, Syria) and Obamacare.
ironically the un-checked powers of the President was greatly expanded under Obama, to Trump's advantage.
Obama asked for Congressional support to intervene in Syria, Congress said no, and we stayed out. That's not circumventing Congress; it's abiding by Congress' decision on the matter.
Congress passed Obamacare. Then it tried to repeal it, and Obama vetoed those attempts. That's not circumventing Congress; it's using the standard legal process to pass legislation. Obamacare is a law passed by Congress, not an executive order signed by Obama.
I wouldn't say Obama "developed" a bad relationship with Congress, as that would imply that things started out with a clean slate. As liberals often complain, Mitch McConnell said in a private meeting at the very beginning of Obama's first term that his primary goal was to make Obama a one-term president.
Congress is composed of many people, but some folks were opposed to him before he actually did anything.
Obama asked for Congressional support to intervene in Syria, Congress said no, and we stayed out. That's not circumventing Congress; it's abiding by Congress' decision on the matter.
Congress passed Obamacare. Then it tried to repeal it, and Obama vetoed those attempts. That's not circumventing Congress; it's using the standard legal process to pass legislation. Obamacare is a law passed by Congress, not an executive order signed by Obama.
I wouldn't say Obama "developed" a bad relationship with Congress, as that would imply that things started out with a clean slate. As liberals often complain, Mitch McConnell said in a private meeting at the very beginning of Obama's first term that his primary goal was to make Obama a one-term president.
Congress is composed of many people, but some folks were opposed to him before he actually did anything.
We didn't stay out of Syria, Obama approved the arming of Syrian rebels to topple the Syrian Government ie a Proxy War (which most wars are done now).
Ergo not much different from the debacle of the CIA arming mujahadeen forces in Afghanistan and those forces later coalesced into the Taliban.
Even the players are the same, Russia on the side of Assad and America arming the rebels.
Of course the fine politics is that Obama made legislation later saying he was doing it to fight ISIS, despite you know, saying on TV he is arming the Syrian rebels to explicitly screw over Assad.
Its geo-politics at its finest, just a bunch of world leaders destroying everything because of territorial dispute.
Congress was pissed Obama missile-ed Libya without their approval, the only thing Obama was prevented was explicit military excursions into Syria.
Obamacare has a rocky history with the Supreme Court, not helped by Obama targeting the Supreme Court when it didn't go his way and calling them judicial activists, and then subsequently not helped by the Supreme Court caving in later and giving Obamacare an exception to its clearly un-constitutional elements by proclaiming it now enjoys tax status which is not even defined in its papers.
The precedent set forth by this is terrifying as it is now legally possible for the Government to take money from the people on vague grounds and proclaim it constitutional via saying its a 'tax'.
To read up on the ridiculous-ness of the ruling from Roberts, he actually contradicts himself on whether it is a Tax or Not and whether it is unlawful or not.
“The text of the pertinent statutes suggests otherwise,” Roberts continues. "The Anti-Injunction Act applies to suits ‘for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.’ Congress, however, chose to describe the ‘[s]hared responsibility payment’ imposed on those who forgo health insurance not as a ‘tax,’ but as a ‘penalty.’ There is no immediate reason to think that a statute applying to ‘any tax’ would apply to a ‘penalty.’
“Congress’s decision to label this exaction a ‘penalty’ rather than a ‘tax’ is significant because the Affordable Care Act describes many other exactions it creates as ‘taxes,’” said Roberts.
“The same analysis here suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty,” he says.
In terms of illegality, i won't make a massive extension to this post but look up the convoluted ridiculousness of Obama trying to keep Insurer's on exchanges by bailing them out (yes kind of like the banks) which Congress already made clear multiple times in the past is illegal, Courts have already struck down as illegal Obama's repeated spending billions of money (from where exactly?) to prop up Obamacare since its struggling.
In an effort not to get side-tracked and keep this thread on-top of current events.
Tom Perez is elected Chairman of the DNC.
Worser choice of the two, though i thought Keith Ellison wasn't good either.
The Democrat party needs to win back the working class and Tom Perez is arguably even less viable then Keith Ellison as he is perceived as yet another corporate-politician.
An interesting article on a company behind some of the social media strategies of the Leave / Trump campaigns (only Trump had to pay for their services, although the Leave campaign 'forgot' to declare this contribution). Another example of how national plebiscites are being intervened in by transnational actors.
I have to step back from the point-counterpoint here to comment to the members of this forum (and this thread in particular). I think you folks are awesome. I rarely delve into the comments sections of any of the media web-sites anymore due to the flame wars, insults and downright assholish behaviour of the commenters on those sites. This includes all outlets I frequent for news (CNN, Fox News, Politico and the Detroit Free Press mostly). It's really rare to find an outlet where I can express my views without being called a Nazi, racist, redneck or even sometimes a Communist, depending on said view.
If you watch interviews by CEO's, and virtually any comment by business-owners, they will tell you outright that the reason they are moving their manufacturing base has nothing to do with automation but to do with the inability to compete on an international level if they stay in America primarily due to over-regulation and crippling tax
That is how they spin it.
It is true that safety regulations and the strength of the dollar make taxes higher. It does indeed cost more to pay a manufacturer in the USA than it costs to pay some poor exploited slave wage person in China or some 3rd world country.
The global corporations can outsource labor to countries with little to no safety regulations and pay them pennies. They don't need to negotiate with the American worker they can pit all the worlds workers against each other and like true capitalists go with whatever situation lets them pay the least amount for labor.
There is no reasonable way for an American worker to outbid a sweatshop in Malaysia. So CEOs can dress up their argument for moving jobs from the USA as "too much tax and regulations" but really they don't give a darn about that. They aren't going to tell the truth that they are just going to go wherever they can pay the least. And it's always going to be the place that they can exploit the workers the most. Unless we implement the slavish factory conditions found in many places around the world here in the USA again and outdo the grim labor situations in other countries they will keep doing it. Bottom line is that they want to pay the least amount so they can earn the highest profits for themselves. They can pit the entire worlds workforce's against each other to do that.
If you watch interviews by CEO's, and virtually any comment by business-owners, they will tell you outright that the reason they are moving their manufacturing base has nothing to do with automation but to do with the inability to compete on an international level if they stay in America primarily due to over-regulation and crippling tax
That is how they spin it.
It is true that safety regulations and the strength of the dollar make taxes higher. It does indeed cost more to pay a manufacturer in the USA than it costs to pay some poor exploited slave wage person in China or some 3rd world country.
The global corporations can outsource labor to countries with little to no safety regulations and pay them pennies. They don't need to negotiate with the American worker they can pit all the worlds workers against each other and like true capitalists go with whatever situation lets them pay the least amount for labor.
There is no reasonable way for an American worker to outbid a sweatshop in Malaysia. So CEOs can dress up their argument for moving jobs from the USA as "too much tax and regulations" but really they don't give a darn about that. They aren't going to tell the truth that they are just going to go wherever they can pay the least. And it's always going to be the place that they can exploit the workers the most. Unless we implement the slavish factory conditions found in many places around the world here in the USA again and outdo the grim labor situations in other countries they will keep doing it. Bottom line is that they want to pay the least amount so they can earn the highest profits for themselves. They can pit the entire worlds workforce's against each other to do that.
In an effort not to get side-tracked and keep this thread on-top of current events.
Tom Perez is elected Chairman of the DNC.
Worser choice of the two, though i thought Keith Ellison wasn't good either.
The Democrat party needs to win back the working class and Tom Perez is arguably even less viable then Keith Ellison as he is perceived as yet another corporate-politician.
I wouldn't have minded Bernie Sanders.
This idea that the DNC chairmanship is some kind of omnipotent entity is yet another side-effect of the Russian hacking. The entire purpose was to make it seem like Bernie was cheated out of a win against Clinton, and that the DNC had the power to do this. They didn't. They favored Clinton, they wanted her to win, but they did not CAUSE her to win. They have been ascribed a power that they don't actually wield.
What caused Bernie to lose is that he got in the race a year too late, and that he simply did not have even a modicum of support in the Southern primaries where Clinton racked up a nearly insurmountable delegate lead. She was winning those States by a nearly 75-25 margin. As a Bernie supporter, I knew the night of the Ohio primary, based on simple math, that Clinton had the race locked up. That was in the middle of March. Sanders and many in the left-wing online media continued to pretend Sanders had a chance, when he simply did not, all the way til June, fostering resentment and giving rise to this myth of a grand conspiracy (most of which the supposed events to which described in the hacked emails took place long after the race was technically over).
In the end, Tom Perez and/or Keith Ellison (and it really makes no difference, since they have agreed to be Chair and Vice Chair in what is basically a partnership) won't win or lose one House seat. It's impossible to put the DNC chair on the ballot. As in nearly every mid-term (aside from Bush in 2002, who received a pass because of 9/11), the Election will be about the anger and enthusiasm of the voters who belong to the Party out of power. The 2018 mid-terms are about Trump, and nothing else.
I really doubt Bernie would have had any more success than Clinton. He would have gotten more young voters for sure but would likely have lost older voters and more moderate democrats.
I have to step back from the point-counterpoint here to comment to the members of this forum (and this thread in particular). I think you folks are awesome. I rarely delve into the comments sections of any of the media web-sites anymore due to the flame wars, insults and downright assholish behaviour of the commenters on those sites. This includes all outlets I frequent for news (CNN, Fox News, Politico and the Detroit Free Press mostly). It's really rare to find an outlet where I can express my views without being called a Nazi, racist, redneck or even sometimes a Communist, depending on said view.
Thank you all!
I'm glad to hear that.
At root, I think the primary reason politics is usually so acrimonious is because it's become fashionable for folks to attack each other's motives and intelligence, instead of discussing issues of substance. It's what people have been taught; it's what people feel is normal. But attacking other forumites is against the Site Rules, and we enforce that one rule more than any other.
This thread has kind of been my personal project as a moderator, and I've found that, once you take personal attacks out the equation, you can see people like @jjstraka34 and @vanatos disagree on virtually every single tiny point, and still be perfectly respectful and friendly. It's the reason I still feel optimistic about the future of politics and our country.
This idea that the DNC chairmanship is some kind of omnipotent entity is yet another side-effect of the Russian hacking.
I dont believe in Russian hacking, the majority of leaks of the DNC came from wiki-leaks.
The russian hacking angle is using Russia as a scapegoat for local politics, European countries use the same excuse whenever they say the 'far-right' gain unusual results, according to politicians Russia is almost singularly responsible for the entire rise of nationalism in the West.
Many Bernie supporters are outraged over Perez's appointment, so the Democrat party has lost more votes.
What caused Bernie to lose is that he got in the race a year too late, and that he simply did not have even a modicum of support in the Southern primaries where Clinton racked up a nearly insurmountable delegate lead. She was winning those States by a nearly 75-25 margin. As a Bernie supporter, I knew the night of the Ohio primary, based on simple math, that Clinton had the race locked up. That was in the middle of March. Sanders and many in the left-wing online media continued to pretend Sanders had a chance, when he simply did not, all the way til June, fostering resentment and giving rise to this myth of a grand conspiracy (most of which the supposed events to which described in the hacked emails took place long after the race was technically over). .
The Bernie phenomenon is one of the more criminally under-analysed things in the election, while it is true Donald Trump utilized the social media to bypass the mainstream media in a way that will be mimicked by future politicians, Bernie put up a damn good fight against Clinton and he was criminally under-reported by the mainstream media for a long time which shows he also got through to people without the mainstream media.
There is no reasonable way for an American worker to outbid a sweatshop in Malaysia. So CEOs can dress up their argument for moving jobs from the USA as "too much tax and regulations" but really they don't give a darn about that. They aren't going to tell the truth that they are just going to go wherever they can pay the least. And it's always going to be the place that they can exploit the workers the most. Unless we implement the slavish factory conditions found in many places around the world here in the USA again and outdo the grim labor situations in other countries they will keep doing it. Bottom line is that they want to pay the least amount so they can earn the highest profits for themselves. They can pit the entire worlds workforce's against each other to do that.
I can't speak for large corporations since i've never run one, but i have run small businesses and over-regulation and taxation is at this point the biggest obstacle to profit today.
Obamacare didn't make it easier.
Regulations really ramped up under Obama and without any clear benefit to me or even my employee's.
Take Obamacare just as an example, to offset the cost i've had to rearrange employment so I've had to work far more and let off workers (or have less full-time and more part-time, or casual).
My employee's aren't happier they get less money or are out of a job, i've asked them if they like Obamacare with this trade-off and they hate it since they say they are also paying more under Obamacare and they don't even use it.
The younger adults who also have university debt absolutely hate it, being young they use virtually nothing of Obamacare but have to pay out of the teeth and they have crippling University debts on top. You have to pray you live in a good State where their welfare system is good enough they can get State Assistance, i've actually heard of a few students that literally move states just for this.
Comments
http://time.com/7809/1-in-4-americans-thinks-sun-orbits-earth/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2014/02/17/1-in-4-americans-believe-sun-revolves-around-the-earth/#.WLJLgDsrJPY
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/15/newser-earth-circles-sun/5508413/
Often, it's best to let your existing arguments stand.
When he actually gets in front of a video camera in front of the public and (not in front of a rally of supporters who seem to believe his every word) he is exposed as he says the dumbest stuff. He says stuff that makes no sense that are easily provable to be false. He speaks with the a limited vocabulary and makes absurd claims
He lives in his own reality where he's great and anyone who says anything he doesn't want to hear can't be trusted. His policies are horrible for everyone but the top 1%. He has appointed people hostile to the government they are part of. There are critical government agencies that the American people rely on with people running them that are against the agency they are in charge of. Education, the EPA and the head of the deparment of energy have all at various times stated they want to abolish those agencies.
So if you report on what's going on you're against him? Donald Trump rejects intelligence reports on his travel ban because it doesn't say what he wants it to. Objective reality is against him.
U.S. News said that it was similar to an order that Obama enacted the day after his inauguration, which Trump said was full of loopholes. According to Politico, the Lobbying Disclosure Act allows former officials to avoid being registered as lobbyists if they spend less than 20% of their time meeting or preparing to meet with current officials. The "Daschle loophole" is a common trick where lobbyists slip under that 20% threshold by carefully scheduling their time so their direct contact with officials is minimal (they can just have someone else act in their stead).
Trump's order doesn't close that loophole, and I believe legislation would be needed to close it. To do that, he'll need Congress to get on board with it. But a separate Politico article said that Congress had previously passed a law to halt the flow of lobbyists, but individual Congressmen had deliberately weakened its provisions to make sure it wouldn't affect them.
No one has ever been punished for lobbying without registering because the relevant agency has never been able to prove they met the 20% threshold. The only people who have been punished are registered lobbyists who were "sloppy" with their paperwork.
We need Congressional support to make these measures count.
I would love to see what the Romney Obama split with this poll.
Evidently you wish to talk about another topic since how much Americans trust Trump or the media is a completely different topic and does not follow from the conversation. The most significant action Donald Trump has done in his current tenure is ending the TPP as he has effectively stopped corporate global expansion in its tracks for the time being.
To put it another way, NAFTA destroyed manufacturing jobs in America, TPP is NAFTA on steroids and is so wide in scope it is ridiculous.
For example TPP was a stepping stone to allow corporations an actual legal status and legal power that started transcending nation states, there would be an actual universal Corporate Tribunal where corporations could sue Governments.
Not a surprise since the TPP was created in secret largely from Corporations.
The rest of thing's Donald Trump has done has been meh to good, but if the TPP went through, it was truly not unreasonable that the future could end up like a cyberpunk novel where Mega-Corps ruled everything.
Manufacturing in America started to die in the '80s. NAFTA certainly didn't help. But it was a mixture of 3 things: Reagan's destruction of unions, trade deals, but, more importantly than either of the first two.....AUTOMATION. The idea that with the advancements in technology we've seen in the past half-century that all these manufacturing jobs were going to stick around was naive, at best. Hate to break it to these blue collar Trump voters in the Rust Belt, but your manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. Those jobs didn't just go away to another country. Most of them just don't exist anymore because the corporations no longer need humans to perform those tasks.
As a Bernie supporter in the primaries, I initially thought this way about trade deals as well, but have come to realize that despite whatever their problems may be, we live in a global society and need things from all over that globe. And trade deals have become an easy scapegoat and a excuse not to deal with a simple fact: the world has move on. Those jobs that gave every family in the 50s/60s/70s a way to earn a good living are just gone.
Germany lost only 11%.
Studies show that the USA lost proportionately more manufacturing jobs than comparable countries. For instance, between 2000 and 2009, U.S. lost 33% of its manufacturing jobs, while Germany only lost 11%. Why?
Moreover, Germany significantly boosted efforts to create a context for innovation throughout the 2000s, steadily bolstering the competitiveness of their manufacturing sector. “Germany set about enacting a range of comprehensive economic reforms to increase the competitiveness of Germany’s economy throughout the 2000s, including making its tax code more competitive, increasing investment in apprenticeship programs, increasing investment in in industrially relevant applied R&D
The picture in the U.S. is very different, as outlined in Competitiveness at the Crossroads (2012) an alarming report with far-reaching implications, written by three distinguished professors at Harvard Business School—Michael Porter, Jan Rivkin and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Its conclusion points to something fundamental: America has been losing the ability to compete in the international marketplace.
As Professor Porter explains, “The basic narrative begins in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Through globalization, it became possible and attractive for firms to do business in, to, and from far more countries. Changes in corporate governance and compensation caused U.S. managers to adopt an approach to management that focused attention on the stock price and short-term performance."
-https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2016/12/05/could-donald-trump-solve-the-real-jobs-problem/#1d6d7d6e52d2
If you watch interviews by CEO's, and virtually any comment by business-owners, they will tell you outright that the reason they are moving their manufacturing base has nothing to do with automation but to do with the inability to compete on an international level if they stay in America primarily due to over-regulation and crippling tax.
I have no doubt Hillary, left to her own devices, would have supported the TPP. She wasn't left to her own devices. She was pushed to a new position by the base of her party.
Obama failed to push it because he ran out of time and he developed an extraordinarily antagonistic relationship with Congress (being mostly Republican), also TPP was coming up for of course during the election.
If he tried, the Democrat party would have lost further.
Could Obama have pushed for it if he had time? he sure was able to completely circumvent Congress and the Supreme court when he felt like it on attacking other nation-states (Libya, Syria) and Obamacare.
ironically the un-checked powers of the President was greatly expanded under Obama, to Trump's advantage.
Congress passed Obamacare. Then it tried to repeal it, and Obama vetoed those attempts. That's not circumventing Congress; it's using the standard legal process to pass legislation. Obamacare is a law passed by Congress, not an executive order signed by Obama.
I wouldn't say Obama "developed" a bad relationship with Congress, as that would imply that things started out with a clean slate. As liberals often complain, Mitch McConnell said in a private meeting at the very beginning of Obama's first term that his primary goal was to make Obama a one-term president.
Congress is composed of many people, but some folks were opposed to him before he actually did anything.
Ergo not much different from the debacle of the CIA arming mujahadeen forces in Afghanistan and those forces later coalesced into the Taliban.
Even the players are the same, Russia on the side of Assad and America arming the rebels.
Of course the fine politics is that Obama made legislation later saying he was doing it to fight ISIS, despite you know, saying on TV he is arming the Syrian rebels to explicitly screw over Assad.
Its geo-politics at its finest, just a bunch of world leaders destroying everything because of territorial dispute.
Congress was pissed Obama missile-ed Libya without their approval, the only thing Obama was prevented was explicit military excursions into Syria.
Obamacare has a rocky history with the Supreme Court, not helped by Obama targeting the Supreme Court when it didn't go his way and calling them judicial activists, and then subsequently not helped by the Supreme Court caving in later and giving Obamacare an exception to its clearly un-constitutional elements by proclaiming it now enjoys tax status which is not even defined in its papers.
The precedent set forth by this is terrifying as it is now legally possible for the Government to take money from the people on vague grounds and proclaim it constitutional via saying its a 'tax'.
To read up on the ridiculous-ness of the ruling from Roberts, he actually contradicts himself on whether it is a Tax or Not and whether it is unlawful or not.
“The text of the pertinent statutes suggests otherwise,” Roberts continues. "The Anti-Injunction Act applies to suits ‘for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.’ Congress, however, chose to describe the ‘[s]hared responsibility payment’ imposed on those who forgo health insurance not as a ‘tax,’ but as a ‘penalty.’ There is no immediate reason to think that a statute applying to ‘any tax’ would apply to a ‘penalty.’
“Congress’s decision to label this exaction a ‘penalty’ rather than a ‘tax’ is significant because the Affordable Care Act describes many other exactions it creates as ‘taxes,’” said Roberts.
“The same analysis here suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty,” he says.
He then further concludes that it would not be “unlawful” for Americans to disobey the law’s declaration that they “shall” buy health insurance, so long as they pay the "penalty"—or, strike that, the "tax"--for disobeying the law's unambiguous mandate.
-http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/chief-justice-roberts-its-not-tax-it-tax-its-law-its-not-unlawful-break-it
In terms of illegality, i won't make a massive extension to this post but look up the convoluted ridiculousness of Obama trying to keep Insurer's on exchanges by bailing them out (yes kind of like the banks) which Congress already made clear multiple times in the past is illegal, Courts have already struck down as illegal Obama's repeated spending billions of money (from where exactly?) to prop up Obamacare since its struggling.
Tom Perez is elected Chairman of the DNC.
Worser choice of the two, though i thought Keith Ellison wasn't good either.
The Democrat party needs to win back the working class and Tom Perez is arguably even less viable then Keith Ellison as he is perceived as yet another corporate-politician.
I wouldn't have minded Bernie Sanders.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit
Thank you all!
It is true that safety regulations and the strength of the dollar make taxes higher. It does indeed cost more to pay a manufacturer in the USA than it costs to pay some poor exploited slave wage person in China or some 3rd world country.
The global corporations can outsource labor to countries with little to no safety regulations and pay them pennies. They don't need to negotiate with the American worker they can pit all the worlds workers against each other and like true capitalists go with whatever situation lets them pay the least amount for labor.
There is no reasonable way for an American worker to outbid a sweatshop in Malaysia. So CEOs can dress up their argument for moving jobs from the USA as "too much tax and regulations" but really they don't give a darn about that. They aren't going to tell the truth that they are just going to go wherever they can pay the least. And it's always going to be the place that they can exploit the workers the most. Unless we implement the slavish factory conditions found in many places around the world here in the USA again and outdo the grim labor situations in other countries they will keep doing it. Bottom line is that they want to pay the least amount so they can earn the highest profits for themselves. They can pit the entire worlds workforce's against each other to do that.
What caused Bernie to lose is that he got in the race a year too late, and that he simply did not have even a modicum of support in the Southern primaries where Clinton racked up a nearly insurmountable delegate lead. She was winning those States by a nearly 75-25 margin. As a Bernie supporter, I knew the night of the Ohio primary, based on simple math, that Clinton had the race locked up. That was in the middle of March. Sanders and many in the left-wing online media continued to pretend Sanders had a chance, when he simply did not, all the way til June, fostering resentment and giving rise to this myth of a grand conspiracy (most of which the supposed events to which described in the hacked emails took place long after the race was technically over).
In the end, Tom Perez and/or Keith Ellison (and it really makes no difference, since they have agreed to be Chair and Vice Chair in what is basically a partnership) won't win or lose one House seat. It's impossible to put the DNC chair on the ballot. As in nearly every mid-term (aside from Bush in 2002, who received a pass because of 9/11), the Election will be about the anger and enthusiasm of the voters who belong to the Party out of power. The 2018 mid-terms are about Trump, and nothing else.
At root, I think the primary reason politics is usually so acrimonious is because it's become fashionable for folks to attack each other's motives and intelligence, instead of discussing issues of substance. It's what people have been taught; it's what people feel is normal. But attacking other forumites is against the Site Rules, and we enforce that one rule more than any other.
This thread has kind of been my personal project as a moderator, and I've found that, once you take personal attacks out the equation, you can see people like @jjstraka34 and @vanatos disagree on virtually every single tiny point, and still be perfectly respectful and friendly. It's the reason I still feel optimistic about the future of politics and our country.
The russian hacking angle is using Russia as a scapegoat for local politics, European countries use the same excuse whenever they say the 'far-right' gain unusual results, according to politicians Russia is almost singularly responsible for the entire rise of nationalism in the West.
Many Bernie supporters are outraged over Perez's appointment, so the Democrat party has lost more votes. The Bernie phenomenon is one of the more criminally under-analysed things in the election, while it is true Donald Trump utilized the social media to bypass the mainstream media in a way that will be mimicked by future politicians, Bernie put up a damn good fight against Clinton and he was criminally under-reported by the mainstream media for a long time which shows he also got through to people without the mainstream media. I can't speak for large corporations since i've never run one, but i have run small businesses and over-regulation and taxation is at this point the biggest obstacle to profit today.
Obamacare didn't make it easier.
Regulations really ramped up under Obama and without any clear benefit to me or even my employee's.
Take Obamacare just as an example, to offset the cost i've had to rearrange employment so I've had to work far more and let off workers (or have less full-time and more part-time, or casual).
My employee's aren't happier they get less money or are out of a job, i've asked them if they like Obamacare with this trade-off and they hate it since they say they are also paying more under Obamacare and they don't even use it.
The younger adults who also have university debt absolutely hate it, being young they use virtually nothing of Obamacare but have to pay out of the teeth and they have crippling University debts on top.
You have to pray you live in a good State where their welfare system is good enough they can get State Assistance, i've actually heard of a few students that literally move states just for this.