US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1197

On July 31 2014 03:10 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
It begins:



Source

On July 31 2014 02:02 IgnE wrote:
I linked the article jonny. It's from NPR. Are you telling me that you think Mcdonalds office employees were outside protesting in Mcdonalds restaurant uniforms?

No offense to Sarah Palin, but Stephen Colbert thinks he can do The Sarah Palin Channel better than she can.

The "Colbert Report" host, a self-declared "huge fan" of Palin, took note Tuesday of her brand-new SarahPalinChannel.com, a site that will let Palin share her thoughts with no "lamestream media" filters.

Also from TheWrap: Stephen Colbert Embraces Separate 'Poor Doors' for the Non-Rich (Video)

Colbert was so impressed that he bought a similarly named site: TheSarahPalinChannel.com. Colbert's site boasts that it is "the only Sarah Palin Channel on the internet with a definite article in the address!"

Colbert also explained the appeal of the original Sarah Palin Channel -- the one run by Palin.

"This is all part of Sarah's continuing mission to protect our freedoms at any cost -- specifically, $9.95 a month," Colbert said. "Sure, that's more than Netflix, but it's just as good as 'House of Cards' with even more threatening monologues into camera."

Also read: Stephen Colbert Endorses Darth Vader, Sounds Iffy on Nate Silver (Video)

Colbert also notes that the site is a place where Palin fans can freely discuss issues and ask questions. One of the most popular: "What is your cancellation policy?"

"Palin fans want to be just like her, and quit halfway through our commitment," he said.

On July 31 2014 03:46 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

lol, no that would be ridiculous. What I was telling you is that the guy was remarking with regards to the restaurant workers who work at a restaurant owned by McDonalds, as opposed to a restaurant owned by a franchisee.

On July 31 2014 07:29 IgnE wrote:


Would you argue that franchisees, burdened with franchise agreements and licensing fees, should/could pay more than a corporate-owned McDonalds? Which do you think pays more on average or is there no difference?

Source

Also there's that instance (probably widespread) of corporate headquarters setting hourly wages for franchisers.

On July 31 2014 07:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I'm not going to speculate on that. I don't see the relevance anyways. This isn't about who pays what, it's about where one company ends and another begins.


What instance? Corporate telling a franchisee "you're paying too much" is corporate giving the franchisee advice, not an order. There's a huge difference there. McDonalds can't force the franchise owner to accept a given pay convention as it could at the restaurants it owns.

Edit: Let's follow the NLRB's logic here. The government can tell an employer how much to pay its employees, etc. Therefore the government is the real employer and we can direct all our lawsuits to the government instead or in addition to.

On July 31 2014 08:09 IgnE wrote:
Well, what do you know? There is a way to complain to the government if you have problems with the minimum wage. It's called voting. Let's apply this logic to corporations now. If the workers think they aren't getting paid enough, then they can take a vote on it.

A corporation telling a franchisee, hey the only way you can make money given the way we suck funds out of you in the highly competitive fast food market is to pay extremely low wages and avoid anything that costs money to improve labor standards isn't just advice, it's extortion.

On July 31 2014 08:27 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Voting is a decision making system, not a "logic". If employees want to vote on something they can vote to raise the minimum wage or vote to unionize. What they can't do is vote to become owners and appropriate someone else's property.


Oh just stop. You want the employees paid more and so 'the ends justify the means' and all that. The merits of the NLRB's decision mean nothing to you.

On July 31 2014 08:36 IgnE wrote:


I take offense jonny. I'm a trained lawyer after all.

If you are going to make distinctions about who can and can't appropriate property you better leave your inartful analogical thinking about the government to the side. The "logic" I was using in my post was that if you want to say the government and corporations belong in the same class, then both should share important features germane to this discussion. One such feature is representative democracy. If you aren't going to have representative democracy in your corporation about what to do with the profits, then let's not open up the government to civil suit for private business practices either.

But for someone who professes to be such a practical, non-partisan thinker businessman, it seems odd that you should care so much about some legalistic fictions at the expense of real-world relationships and processes.

On July 31 2014 09:12 IgnE wrote:
Government is different from private capital. If you want to liken the two, you should liken the two.

Supplying a franchisee with scheduling software and advice is hardly the only grounds of the case.

A franchisee has multiple legal ties that restrict his own control over his capital. The legal fiction is clear cut only insofar as it is clear that a franchisee is not a "normal" corporation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican senators blocked an election-year bill Wednesday to limit tax breaks for U.S. companies that move operations overseas.

The bill would have prohibited companies from deducting expenses related to moving their operations to a foreign country. It also would have offered tax credits to companies that move operations to the U.S. from a foreign country.

The Senate voted 54-42 to end debate on the bill, six short of the 60 votes needed to advance it. The White House says President Barack Obama supports the legislation.

"Today in the United States, any time an American company closes a factory or plant in America and moves operations to another country, the American taxpayers pick up part of that moving bill," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Frankly, a vote against this bill is a vote against American jobs."

Republicans called the bill an election-year stunt. They noted that Democrats tried to pass a similar bill two years ago, right before the last congressional elections.

On July 31 2014 09:32 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
*golf clap*



Source

The Satanic Temple, which has started a campaign for a religious exemption from certain anti-abortion laws, said that while legal action isn't planned, the group may file lawsuits if doctors fail to comply with the exemption forms they drafted, a member of the group told Salon.

The group argues that "informed consent" laws, which require doctors to give women seeking an abortion state-mandated information on the procedure, violate their belief that "personal decisions should be made with reference to only the best available, scientifically valid information." The group cited the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling, which allows closely held businesses to opt out of paying for contraception if they have religious objections, to support their campaign.

The Satanic Temple has drafted letters that women can bring to doctors to demand that they be exempt from viewing the material.

Jex Blackmore, a minister at the Satanic Temple, told Salon that these letters may lead to legal action.

"In terms of the exemption form we’ve created, we’re not looking to proactively sue to have informed consent laws repealed. However, we will definitely follow up with a legal suit if those exemption forms fail to be recognized," she said. "We’re certainly not trying to force anyone to use it if they don’t feel comfortable or don’t agree with it, but we’d like to put it out there to make sure that people are respected. That they aren’t forced to review or view state-mandated information that is largely biased."

Blackmore said that the group wants to assert that religious freedom encompasses a wide variety of beliefs, and that they all should be respected, especially when it comes to women's health.

On July 31 2014 09:29 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I'm not likening government to private capital. I'm applying the standard of what constitutes an employer-employee relationship. The NLRB is arguing that a much looser definition of who has control, and is thus the real employer, is appropriate.

What are the other merits of the case? The only other thing I recall you citing was a quote from McDonald's CEO where you misinterpreted what he said.

So what of the legal ties? A lender may require debt covenants, it does not make the lender the owner and responsible for employment practices. The lender would only be the real owner if they were really acting as such. For that, you'd need a fair amount of evidence as proof.

On July 31 2014 09:54 IgnE wrote:


If you want to discover what constitutes an employer-employee relationship maybe you should start with profits. The government doesn't earn the profits, nor does it collect franchise fees. I really don't feel like this particular thread needs to continue. Your suggestion that there is no difference between a franchisee and a government that imposes a minimum wage is a dumb one.

"Lending" the name McDonalds is nothing like "lending" a car that a private businessman drives around in.

How much international collaboration is too much? When it comes to foreign instruments provided to NASA planetary science missions, the answer is anything more than 33%.

Earlier this month, NASA unveiled a draft set of rules for its next Discovery competition, which funds planetary science missions costing no more than $450 million. Today, at a meeting of asteroid and comet scientists in Washington, D.C., NASA officials explained some of the new rules for the next mission, to be selected in 2016. Among them was a stipulation that the principal investigator would not be allowed to recruit foreign instrument contributions in excess of one-third the value of the U.S. instruments on the payload, even though those contributions don’t count against the $450 million cap.

The new rule is a response to a current Discovery-class mission with no major U.S.-made instruments. InSight, a Mars lander built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, that will launch in 2016, carries a French-made seismometer and a German-made heat probe. “The American scientific instrument community was not happy with that,” says Michael New, the lead Discovery Program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

NASA wants to make sure that some of the $18 million a year the agency invests in developing planetary science instruments pays off, New says. He also points out that NASA has less ability to enforce the on-time delivery of foreign instruments and ensure that data from those instruments get shared quickly with the public. “With foreign contributions come increased risk and increased potential problems with data archiving,” he says.

On July 31 2014 10:12 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I never argued that there was no difference between a franchisee and a government. My argument was that if "rule setting" with regard to labor practices is the defining characteristic of an employer, than the government is "employing" fast food workers since it sets rules for them.

I don't see where profits come into the picture. McDonalds doesn't earn profits off of its franchisees. They do collect fees, but so what? Lenders receive cash flow from the business as well. So do employees and various governments.

But yeah, I'm fine dropping the discussion too.

House Republicans will vote to rein in the Obama administration’s power to halt deportation for undocumented immigrants — a surprise move that comes as they struggle to attract support for their bill to address the crisis at the border.

The new plan, described by multiple GOP aides Wednesday evening, comes as House Republicans were unable to lock up 218 GOP lawmakers to vote for the $659 million emergency funding package.

On Wednesday evening, House GOP leadership was setting up a process that would schedule a Thursday vote on the Republican funding package. If it passes, the House would be required to vote on legislation targeting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programs, which has shielded from deportation hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who have grown up in the United States.

The House GOP language would block President Barack Obama from expanding DACA and prevent him from granting a similar reprieve to other immigrants here illegally. The administration is actively considering executive action on deportations, and a final decision is expected by the end of the summer.
The latest twist from Republican leadership is a way to appeal to conservative Republicans, who want a vote to prevent the Obama administration from halting deportations. But a vote will only come after the House passes the other legislation.