The General American Politics Thread

[Nepenthe]

Who cares what one black man thinks? The person who originally designed it said it's for white supremacy. It was resurrected as a symbol of white supremacy by the KKK and anti civil rights opponents. It's literally so damn racist that right wing extremist groups over in Europe literally fly it in place of the swastika. The attempts to act like the confederate flag is worth standing up for or that people are trying to tear it down from some sanctimonious place is on par with Japanese denialism.

[Tani Coyote]

Ah, I always loved that old chestnut. A minority person agrees with the majority's take on a race issue, so suddenly the majority is right.

It's odd the same logic isn't applied when a white person admits to racism's existence. How strange.

Reminds me of how I have a black friend who says he's never experienced racism so he feels it is overblown.

If I'm not mistaken, he's also middle class. Which means two key details: 1. The fact you're middle class in the first place means you probably got lucky with the financial actors you encountered, and 2. as far as I know, the most overt racist behavior is concentrated against the lower classes, so of course you haven't experienced it. Cops get in a lot more trouble brutalizing a well-to-do person living the American Dream than a poor person who absolutely MUST be some sort of thug.

Remember, the ideology of America is that you're entirely self-made. The rich and middle class got where they are solely through hard work, while the poor are where they are solely because of laziness. It wouldn't do much good to attack society's heroic middle and upper classes.

Otherwise, you know, people might start to think we're in a police state.

[Tani Coyote]

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/06/republicans-meltdown-donald-trump-calls-jeb-bushs-wife-illegal-mexican.html

Christ Almighty.

I can't tell if Donald Trump is really this stupid or if he's the best Democratic actor who ever lived.

He is tearing the Party apart from the inside.

I can't get too mad at him for alienating huge swathes of voters from the GOP, though. The GOP can't apologize too much for all his insensitive remarks on issues like race because that would be PC and conservatives aren't allowed to be that, as you know.

Let's make like the postbellum South and cancel general elections in favor of just a Democratic primary. If this keeps up this election really will just be Sanders vs. Clinton.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

And here another golden shot to the foot for the GOP.

I have to say, Trump running for the GOP has turned out to be one of the best things ever in hindsight.

[Patticus]

If Trump's poll numbers remain high, if he keeps doing well with the party faithful as a sort of protest vote against establishment figures like Jeb, he's going to enter the debates. He'll be one of the ten candidates up there on the main stage, making a mockery of himself and his opponents in front of the country. That's a show I want to watch.

 

I also want to watch the Democratic debates, watch Hillary squirm as Sanders makes her complicity in the billionaire class' domination of the political sphere painfully well known.

[Tornado]

It's July of the year before an election year. Serious Presidential Candidate™ Donald Trump won't last to the end of this year, nevermind any serious politicking. That isn't to say that the GOP is benefiting in any way from having him directly insult entire voting blocks of people, nor is it to say that he's attracting those "he's the only one brave enough to say it" racist types the GOP has been trying really hard to pretend don't exist, but they are damaging themselves more by not tightening the screws on Hilary for the increasing amounts of nasty skeletons that keep falling out of her closet than they are by not sufficiently apologizing for the moronic words of someone that everyone in the country already knows is so far up his own ass that it creates a feedback loop.

 

 

 

Put another way, most people already hated Donald Trump anyway, so about the only real damage he can probably do is if someone who legitimately is interested in running for president does something particularly stupid like agree with anything he says; and the only way he can harm the GOP as a collective is if one of the obvious front runners like Jeb does so.

[Tani Coyote]

Well, I'm registered Republican.

I'll certainly be voting for him in the primaries. I'd love to see him actually become one of the contenders.

[Tani Coyote]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jeb-bush-people-work-longer-hours/story?id=32313997

And a case of why I don't really identify as Republican or Democrat.

Jeb Bush stated that in order to grow the economy, people who are working part-time need to work longer hours. Cue his comment being taken out of context to mean ALL people need to work longer hours.

However, that doesn't absolve him of error in his comment. He is implying that a powerful nation is built on long work weeks...

Mexicans work 45 hours a week on average. Average. So while a lot of Americans are surely going to bring up how they work just as much or more, average is the key word.

 

What we can glean is the longer work week does not create economic growth, at least certainly not by itself. All the labor of the Mexican people has not done anything to change their status as one of the poorest industrialized nations despite the country's vast wealth. Even if these long hours are growing the economy, there is clearly no benefit to the average citizen so much as a wealthy elite.

 

The same thing would happen here.

 

But there is hope! Research has gradually begun to pile up showing that part-time workers are more productive than full-time peers. I would say we should definitely consider cutting hours while raising wages. Workers will be more productive, and they will also have more time to consume goods, growing the economy by proxy. Never mind the presumable savings from less mental and physical stress.

 

Labor has a status on par with idolatry. Many feel more work must necessarily be good, or at least the best use of resources. I say we need to take this idol off its altar and smash it. We can do more with fewer hours. We can finally slay the bullshit economic idea that only those who work should eat.

[Patticus]

America's working hours are among the longest in the developed world. If the rest of it can get along just fine with less, then so can America. One could attribute America's obsession with hard work and the concept of the "self made man" to be a hold-over from the Protestant Work Ethic, which it was endowed with well before independence.

 

I'm a full-time worker, and I enjoy being so because of the benefits I receive from my employer - benefits which the part-time temps at my workplace do not have the luxury of enjoying. The temps I know routinely get screwed over, being given awful health insurance from Adecco, with no clear vacation policy, often working several years before either being hired on or quitting because they weren't. Most employers I know of take the view that, if you've been working for 3-6 months and can do your job to a reasonable standard, that you'll be hired on. Not Dealertrack! Oh no, not them. Can we please change the laws regarding temps, to give them the benefits they deserve, and force employers like mine not to string them along?

 

There needs to be incentive to employers and agencies to not screw their part-timers' handful of benefits over if a wage rise comes.

[Tani Coyote]

http://news.yahoo.com/video-released-shows-police-killing-unarmed-man-la-074451408.html#

 

On one hand, I want to think they were trigger happy.

 

On the other, removing his ballcap after being told to raise his hands back up... doesn't exactly strike me as the behavior a police shouldn't have been somewhat concerned by. The last thing you want to do when guns are on you, regardless of who is holding it, is lower your hands... especially after being told to keep them up a second time. I understand the man was drunk, but that's 20/20 hindsight. It sounds like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time rather than anyone here really being at fault.

 

What does disturb me is that the police force was fighting so hard to keep the video suppressed. And that an argument against releasing the footage is more cities will be dissuaded from installing surveillance technology.

 

Even if the police did nothing wrong here, the fact they were still inclined to try and hide it does not make me comfortable. It makes me begin to think that they're afraid of this becoming precedent and have something to hide in cases besides this one.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Sly the Tasmanian Ogilvie

[Tani Coyote]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/07/14/fox-news-is-not-real-news-see-what-happened-when-fox-reporter-confronted-san-fransisco-officials/

 

In which Fox News is owned.

 

While I'm here I'll chime in various subjects:

 

For one. The San Francisco supervisor who says "you're interviewing the wrong fucking person." I'm sorry, what? How the hell did you make public office? Good to know San Francisco has such high standards for its elected officials' behavior.

 

For two, right wing pundits' idiocy is confirmed. The right-wing media has seized upon the fact the killer in this case was an illegal immigrant, and folks like O'Reilly are blaming the left for "allowing" violence. This is in spite of the same city officials saying that nobody with a criminal record should be able to acquire a firearm. Who's really allowing gun violence here, that in mind?

 

The vast majority of illegal aliens are people interested in bettering themselves and their family, and they could give a rat's ass about a piece of paper when the rewards enormously outweigh the risks. They are not the criminal thugs Fox News likes to seize upon.

[Tani Coyote]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/native-americans-getting-shot-police

 

And there you have it.

 

When you account for all the age demographics, Native Americans are the most likely to be killed by police in this country.

 

Yet we don't hear that much about them, do we? They are the invisible victim. All 5 million of them.

[Vectorman]

 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/native-americans-getting-shot-police

 

And there you have it.

 

When you account for all the age demographics, Native Americans are the most likely to be killed by police in this country.

 

Yet we don't hear that much about them, do we? They are the invisible victim. All 5 million of them.

 

I'm not surprised about that, well no one should be considering the type of crap news that is on tv. 

[Tani Coyote]

http://news.yahoo.com/tennessee-shootings-armed-citizens-guard-recruiters-055810618.html#

 

In response to the shootings at the recruitment center last week, centers around the country are seeing groups of armed citizens taking up posts outside them to deter any repeat crimes.

 

The government has said that while the gesture is nice, they prefer to trust professional first responders. Bystanders have likewise issued concerns about the mental capacity of these individuals to shoot responsibly.

[Tornado]

This is truly fascinating. Has they ever been a "candidate" before who simply did not give a fuck?

[Tani Coyote]

This is truly fascinating. Has they ever been a "candidate" before who simply did not give a fuck?

Referring to Trump, I presume?

 

I... I really don't know. All the successful third party candidates I can think of - Teddy and Perot - actually had a good deal of political tact and realistically could have won with a slightly different set of circumstances.

 

Trump is just... I don't know. I understand the lack of financial backers means he doesn't have to tread carefully around issues, but he's just pissing off every demographic on the map. What is he hoping to gain from all this? I'm seeing lots of negative publicity, but it really is negative because of the damage it's doing to his brand everywhere.

 

I imagine he was trying to appeal to the radical right of America by brushing all illegal immigrants as rapists and the like (it should be noted he was going to alienate a lot of Latinos no matter what he said, since a lot of Latinos don't even believe in the concept of illegal immigration for historical reasons), but then he immediately squandered those points with the McCain comment.

 

Just what is he hoping to accomplish? Never mind a lot of private security officers are veterans as I recall, so when he has drug barons possibly threatening to kill him, it just looks ludicrous.

Edited July 24, 2015 by Sly the Tasmanian Ogilvie

[Tani Coyote]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/nyregion/new-york-minimum-wage-fast-food-workers.html?_r=0

 

It looks like New York will be raising the minimum wage for fast food workers gradually to $15 over the next few years.

 

I predict this wage increase will be cut short by political pressures in the meantime, as people begin to realize they don't want a $2 dollar menu over a $1.

 

While it turns out the robotic McDonald's story was false, the prevalence of Micky D's in the fast food industry means they're probably going to lead the charge in automation. I know some have already introduced tablets for ordering, so they're on their way towards cutting employees.

[Patticus]

A minimum wage hike won't mean a $2 menu, it'll mean a $1.25 or a $1.50 menu. If that means that the kitchen staff aren't living in squalor, I'm fine with that.

My workplace has a TV in the break room, which is always set to CNN. I know there's a long time to go until the election, but it seems to me that Trump and his whacky antics are getting wall to wall coverage on that network - there's always a new Anderson Cooper interview, a panel of Trump voters sounding off, a Republican strategist etc. I rarely see any mentions of other candidates, let alone Sanders or Clinton. Are they just the Trump News Network now?

Edited July 24, 2015 by Patticus

[Tani Coyote]

In light of the Louisiana Theater shooting, I just have this sigh of resignation, because it's just going to be the same debate over and over as a result:

 

"If everyone had guns everything would have been okay" vs "If gun regulations were tighter this wouldn't have happened!"

 

I lean towards A. Why?

 

1. There's data - courtesy of Harvard: http://bearingarms.com/harvard-gun-control-doesnt-work/ - to support the fact violent crime drops pretty far when the chance of a victim packing increases. It's a sad world where we have to mandate gun ownership for the public safety but it's obvious American society is too fucked up at present to simply tighten some regulations and hope things go well.

2. Gun regulations don't stop real criminals. Sure, they might stop a few ordinary people from being armed when they're not in their right mind... but those aren't the people we REALLY need to be stopping.

3. There is no such thing as a shooter profile. The criminal record/mental capacity requirement, no matter how stringent, doesn't amount to squat. Consider the case of the mass murderer; how many were ordinary, kind people before being found out? Real sociopaths are excellent at hiding their nature.

4. What worked in other countries won't work here. Guns are woven into American culture and you're going to have just as much luck restricting them as alcohol or marijuana.

 

America's in a position where you can't realistically restrict the supply of firearms. But we do have a clear problem with gun violence. What do we do?

 

And that's why I lean towards expanded ownership instead. I sure as Hell feel a lot safer with one. Once I got over the initial fear of it being in my house... I quickly learned to appreciate the fact I can defend myself without the need for desperately hoping the cops get here in a few minutes.

 

I do ponder what sort of effects increased firearm ownership would have on police brutality, though. It might decrease it... but it might likewise increase it because now every single person shot had a weapon they were CLEARLY threatening the officer with.

Edited July 24, 2015 by Sly the Tasmanian Ogilvie

[Tornado]

A minimum wage hike won't mean a $2 menu, it'll mean a $1.25 or a $1.50 menu. If that means that the kitchen staff aren't living in squalor, I'm fine with that.

People in Western and Northern New York making $9 an hour aren't living in the same "squalor" as people making $9 working in New York City. Deciding that only fast food workers are worthy of not living in "squalor" but not any other worker making under $15 an hour only makes it more bizarre.

[Patticus]

People in Western and Northern New York making $9 an hour aren't living in the same "squalor" as people making $9 working in New York City. Deciding that only fast food workers are worthy of not living in "squalor" but not any other worker making under $15 an hour only makes it more bizarre.

Fast food workers are by far the most visible face of national wage stagnation, and it may be that they couldn't pass a bill raising the minimum wage for all workers immediately, so some staggering for other workers had to happen.

 

Also, $9 is not even close to being a living wage, unless you live in some Mad Maxian wasteland like Detroit. I earn $9.52/hr doing my job, and even if I had a solid 40 hour work week, I couldn't afford more than a two room efficiency apartment without my wife's additional income. We don't even live in a big city, we're out in the boondocks between them.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Patticus

[Tani Coyote]

I personally oppose minimum wage increases because they squeeze small businesses.

 

A guaranteed minimum income is much better because it ensures the burden of a living wage falls on society's wealthiest. A minimum wage is like a sales tax on business owners; the poorest business owners suffer the most.

[Candescence]

While I do support the idea of a universal basic income (something that would also greatly simplify the welfare state while also preparing a buffer against the inevitable results of automation in various industries), I should note that research indicates that a liveable minimum wage at least greatly reduces costs in the long run, such as less employee turnover, reducing the costs of retraining new staff.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Candescence

[Patticus]

I agree with the guaranteed minimum income and would certainly prefer it to the minimum wage, but on the scale of what is doable today and what is just not going to happen yet, minimum wage hikes are doable, and the guaranteed minimum income won't happen until the country becomes a lot more liberal, and only then after several other countries have had that kind of system in place for a few years or decades. That's just how America operates in matters of this kind - doing everything worthwhile decades after the rest of the developed world has already figured it out.

Anyway, the costs of minimum wage rises can be transferred to the costs of products, among other things, and the economic benefits of a people not living in poverty are substantial. I would happily pay 50 cents more for everything I buy in Walmart, Kroger or any other shop if their workers earned a living wage.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Patticus

[Tani Coyote]

I understand the benefits of it all, but as a small business owner... my interests lie with opposing it. "Think of someone besides yourself!" A noble proposal... but big box stores don't. To think of someone besides myself is to shutter my doors. Business inherently brings out the worst in people because you can't survive if you're a good guy. Because all it takes is one bad guy to force every good person to likewise be bad or else go downhill. This is why we need regulations; not all businessmen are eager to destroy the environment, but that one guy who will happily dump his waste into rivers forces everyone else to do the same to remain competitive. It's the same reason we need armies and police forces; most people aren't violent psychopaths, but that small minority who are ruin it for everyone else.

 

A suitable compromise would be to more actively tip workers besides those who work in a handful of industries. If there's really as much sympathy towards low wage employees as people claim, this shouldn't be that difficult.

 

Overall you can see what I'm getting at here: I'm opposed to a policy that's focused on the private sector for enforcement. There's so many things that go wrong when we rely on companies as the agents of socioeconomic equality. The minimum wage is basically a half-assed way to claim one is doing something about society's problems, kind of like health insurance mandates. It doesn't address the underlying problems, it merely puts a Band-Aid on things and politicians proceed to call it a job well done.

 

America's going to become far more liberal in the coming decades. I don't think a citizen's dividend is really that far away. Doubly so if its advocates use the real trump card: it's far less wasteful than the means testing obstacle course conservatives insist on constructing. The GOP is the real party of waste, since they want to micromanage citizens' income.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Sly the Tasmanian Ogilvie