US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1190

On July 24 2014 09:59 Gorsameth wrote:
How the fuck do you fail a lethal injection? seriously how incompetent are the people who deal with this?

On July 24 2014 09:59 Gorsameth wrote:
How the fuck do you fail a lethal injection? seriously how incompetent are the people who deal with this?

On July 24 2014 11:52 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
For anyone following the "is Herbalife a pyramid scheme?" saga, Bill Ackman of Pershing Square had another presentation yesterday. Link to the stream recording:

http://www.herbalifepyramidscheme.com/webcast/

Personally I thought the last presentation was more convincing, but this looked like it had some good research in it too.

I am not suggesting that the lunatics or extremists have won. Most Republicans in the Senate are not, to use John McCain's term, "wacko birds," and most Republicans in office would at least privately cringe at some of the wild ideas and extreme views. At the same time, the "establishment" is fighting back, pouring resources into primaries to protect their preferred candidates, and we are seeing the rise of a new and encouraging movement among conservative intellectuals—dubbed "Reformicons" by E.J. Dionne—to come up with a new set of ideas and policy prescriptions to redefine the ideology and the party in a positive way.

But there is a darker reality. Many of the "preferred" candidates—including Ernst as well as James Lankford in Oklahoma and Jack Kingston in Georgia—are anything but pragmatic.

On July 24 2014 11:32 Falling wrote:

I seem to recall hearing (CBC?), that what they normally used to lethal inject can't be used because it was manufactured in Europe, and Europe refused to sell it if was going to be used for lethal injections. So in the interim, there have been some American companies that have been trying to find a replacement... not all of which work so well- as in this case. It's also something drug manufacturers don't exactly advertise: "We invent drugs for executions." Not the PR most companies want.

On July 24 2014 12:53 Sub40APM wrote:

Herbalife went up 18% after the presentation

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/when-extremism-goes-mainstream/374955/


Before anyone jumps on this, the writer is a resident scholar of the conservative -- but business friendly -- AEI.

Often the most telling questions are the ones that don’t get asked. At a 13-minute press conference in Tennessee July 12, no reporter queried New Jersey Governor Chris Christie about the George Washington Bridge scandal that once threatened to torpedo his presidential hopes.

It’s a positive sign for the garrulous governor as he gets back on the road this summer–including a swing through the early-caucus state of Iowa–in an effort to repair his damaged reputation and raise money in his role as head of the Republican Governors Association. But it doesn’t mean he’s over that bridge yet. As Christie revs up for 2016, he remains a popular target for other, more conservative Republicans.

On July 24 2014 20:11 Gorsameth wrote:

So American pharmaceuticals are so incompetent they cannot actually make a drug that kills? Your average suicidal teenager can manage to overdose just fine but nope, to hard for the American legal system.

On July 24 2014 22:22 aksfjh wrote:

No, American pharmaceuticals don't manufacture most of these relatively old barbiturates because of their propensity to kill in large enough doses. They moved to other drugs a decade or 2 ago. Also, the goal is to kill them peacefully and not cruelly. Overdoses usually cause some amount of convulsions, vomiting, or other kinds of pain.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicted during an interview with Salon published Wednesday that climate change will have to "get very bad" before Congress feels threatened enough to advance meaningful environmental legislation.

"In my read of history, when things get very bad, people tend to come into agreement about what next steps they need to take and there's less arguing," Tyson said, citing the United States' reluctance to invest in space exploration programs until the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957.

"So I think maybe we have to sink lower before the pistons of Congress and the electorate align to take meaningful action, to protect the planet going forward," Tyson continued.

Expressing concern over some policymakers' "misinformed, or-under-informed" scientific views, the outspoken critic of climate-change denial maintained that his chief role in the science community is to educate the public on the "emergent scientific consensus." He said climate scientists should take a more vocal role as well.

"I'm just trying to get people as fully informed as they can be so that they can make the most informed decisions they can based on their own principles or philosophies or mission statement," the "Cosmos" host told Salon. "What concerns me is that I see people making decisions, particularly decisions that might affect policy or governance, that are partly informed, or misinformed, or under-informed."

On July 25 2014 00:05 GreenHorizons wrote:


Except the only preventable things killing more Americans than pharmaceuticals are cigarettes, alcohol, and the food (type and amount) we eat.

Terrorism (that thing we spend trillions 'protecting ourselves' from) doesn't even make the list of preventable causes of death. We should probably be less worried about killing people for justice, and focus a bit harder on the justice part.

Pretty sure the innocent people on death row couldn't care less how humane their deaths are. They would much rather just not be wrongfully on death row.

Though solar power is still far from surpassing coal as America’s primary energy source, the number of people employed by the solar industry has surpassed the number of coal miners. The non-profit Solar Foundation estimates that there are about 142,000 people in the U.S. workforce who spend “at least 50% of their time supporting solar-related activities,” according to Business Insider.

So what does this mean for the future of energy in America? Quite simply put, it highlights how solar power is growing at a rapid pace, with record-breaking 43 GWH estimated to be installed around the world this year, and the U.S. is estimated to make up about 6.6 GWH of those new installations. Other nations, including China and India, are investing even more heavily into solar though, and the race is on to make clean energy a cornerstone of every economy.

Meanwhile, the EPA is putting pressure on coal power plants to either clean up their act, or convert to natural gas power. This has sent coal mining employment plummeting in the past few decades, though the industry maintains a ruthless grip on many politicians on both the local and national level. Also, when you factor in every aspect of coal production and transportation, the fossil fuel industry still dwarfs solar power.

On July 25 2014 01:22 aksfjh wrote:

I don't agree with executions either, but I fail to see how most of your post is very relevant to the discussion. I swear you're worse than Texan politicians sometimes, always bringing up your talking points regardless of relevancy to questions and comments at hand. "The death of a violent criminal is NOTHING compared to the amount of devastation caused by OBAMACARE and NOT DEPORTING DREAMERS! TED CRUZ 2016!!!"

We stopped the firing squad, electric chair, and hanging of those on death row because of the likelihood of botched executions where they weren't killed immediately and were made to suffer. Opioids often associated with "euthanasia" or "end of life care" are normally administered to people who are so close to death to begin with that all they need is a soft push. Their body does not have the strength to fight back the poisonous dose they are given. An inmate is different, as we're seeing with these new rounds of executions. His (or her) body has the strength to reject the medication and fight to keep going, possibly causing pain and distress.

Without the barbiturates we used for decades, we are now "experimenting" with prisoners, except it's not scientists doing it. It's politicians, lawyers, and past victims of these crimes running the experiments. Beyond the controversy of punishment through death, it is ethically reprehensible to experiment killing humans, no matter who they are.

On July 25 2014 02:43 Stratos_speAr wrote:


Most companies now refuse to supply States with drugs that will be used to execute prisoners because they don't want to be associated with that practice, so the States are using shady drugs and practices to continue executions, and you end up repeated botched executions in the last few months.

U.S. President Barack Obama will call on Thursday for an end to a corporate loophole that allows companies to avoid federal taxes by shifting their tax domiciles overseas in deals known as "inversions," White House officials said.

Obama will make the comments during remarks about the economy at Los Angeles Technical College. The president is in California on a three-day fundraising swing for Democrats.

So-called inversion deals occur when a U.S. company acquires or sets up a foreign company, then moves its U.S. tax domicile to the foreign company and its lower-tax home country.

Nine inversion deals have been agreed to this year by companies ranging from banana distributor Chiquita Brands International Inc to drugmaker AbbVie Inc and more are under consideration. The transactions are setting a record pace since the first inversion was done 32 years ago.

Several Democrats have offered bills to curb inversions, which let companies cut their taxes primarily by putting foreign earnings out of the reach of the Internal Revenue Service.

Obama will throw his weight behind the Democratic bills, calling for a rule change that would deem any company with half of its business in the United States to be U.S.-domiciled.

The proposed changes, already put forward in Obama's annual budget, would be retroactive to May of this year and implemented independently of moves to achieve broader tax reform.

"We have seen increased activity from companies in the inversion space and as a result the president's view ... is that we should be acting as quickly as possible," a White House official told reporters on a conference call.

"That will buy us more time and space to ... reform our tax code as a whole."

Republicans prefer a change to inversions to be part of an effort to reform the U.S. tax code.

The White House supports broad tax reform but argues that action on inversions is needed now.

"We can't afford to wait to reform our tax code completely to deal with inversion," the official said, adding that such deals would cost the United States an estimated $17 billion in revenue over the next decade.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Paul Ryan proposed a new plan Thursday to merge up to 11 anti-poverty programs into a single grant program for states that he said would allow more flexibility to help lift people out of poverty.

Programs that would be merged include food stamps, cash welfare, housing subsidies, and heating aid for the poor, among others.

The Wisconsin Republican and 2012 vice presidential nominee is a respected voice within his party. His new "Opportunity Grant" plan would impose work or job training requirements on aid recipients and require states that choose to participate to set up at least two service providers, a move he says would encourage partnerships with locally-based nonprofits and community groups that may better know the needs of their communities.

Ryan, who has traveled the country in the past year visiting with the poor and with those who help them, said current anti-poverty programs are "fragmented and formulaic" and that his new grant program would allow greater collaboration within communities to help lift people out of poverty.

"The idea would be to let states try different ways of providing aid and then to test the results — in short, more flexibility in exchange for more accountability," Ryan said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "Get rid of these bureaucratic formulas. Put the emphasis on results."

In the speech, Ryan said his plan would permit greater innovation to help people find opportunities to get jobs. A single mother who wants to be a teacher, for example, might focus on getting help with transportation and child care to take night classes rather than on getting other forms of aid like food assistance.

On July 25 2014 03:51 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Republicans will kill it faster than they did the last time Democrats tried to close tax loopholes.



Source

Rules for Money Market Funds Arrive, Finally

Six years ago, a huge chunk of the financial system nearly imploded, and it took an enormous federal bailout to prevent it from bringing down the whole system. That would be money market mutual funds, which millions of American individuals and businesses use to park $2.6 trillion in savings. ...

What actually happened back in the fall of 2008 is that one money fund, the Reserve Primary Fund, “broke the buck,” or informed its investors that their shares would no longer be worth the $1 each that was widely assumed. As investors yanked billions from money market funds, the risk was that it would cause a funding crunch for the banks and large companies that rely on them for funding, creating a cascading series of failures that would severely damage the rest of the economy.

So the Treasury and Federal Reserve deployed various emergency authorities to backstop the money market mutual funds. They weren’t supposed to have deposit insurance or a lender of last resort, but when push came to shove, they got just that. ...

The rules approved on Wednesday aim to prevent any future runs through a combination of measures. In one important change, certain money market funds will have to report a floating net asset value instead of a fixed value of $1 a share. This change is meant to remind investors that the funds are not without risk and that their value can decline periodically.

But not all funds will be covered by that rule. Only funds whose investors are institutions and that purchase corporate debt or municipal securities are covered. Funds whose investors are individuals are not subject to the change.

In addition, the S.E.C. adopted rules that give funds the ability to stem investor redemptions during times of stress. Money market funds, in these situations, will be able to impose fees and delays that temporarily prevent investors from taking out their cash.

On July 25 2014 04:32 Mercy13 wrote:


An interesting aspect of this plan is that it is revenue neutral, a big change from his budget proposals that called for huge cuts to social welfare programs. There is definitely room to reform these programs; it will be nice if the GOP broadly adopts a reform approach to social welfare rather than just constantly screaming about deficits and cuts.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday filed an amendment in the Senate that would protect states that implement medical marijuana laws, as well as patients and physicians in those states, from federal prosecution.

Paul's Amendment 3630, filed Thursday morning to Sen. John Walsh's (D-Mont.) jobs bill being heard on the Senate floor, allows states to "enact and implement laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of marijuana for medical use" without fear of federal prosecution. There are 33 states that have enacted laws protecting some form medical marijuana.

The amendment also prohibits prosecution of patients and physicians in those states for violating federal laws against the drug.

"What we're trying to do is look at the law and allow states that have changed their laws and have allowed medical marijuana to do so, for doctors to be able to prescribe and for people to be able to get those prescriptions without being worried about the federal government coming in and arresting them," Brian Darling, Paul's communications director, told The Huffington Post.

To date, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical use. Another 10 have legalized CBD, a non-psychoactive ingredient in cannabis frequently used to treat epilepsy, for limited medical use or research. Still, the federal government continues to ban the plant, classifying it as a Schedule I substance with "no currently accepted medical use."

In June, Paul introduced a Senate amendment to the Justice Department budget bill that would restrict DEA agents and federal prosecutors from using allotted funds to pursue providers of medical marijuana and patients using it in states that have legalized its use. A similar version of the amendment, co-sponsored by Reps. Dana Rohrbacher (R-Calif.) and Sam Farr (D-Calif.), surprised even longtime supporters of marijuana policy reform when it passed in the House in May.

But Darling argued that Paul's new measure could provide additional protections beyond that which the Rohrbacher-Farr amendment offers.