US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1287

On September 13 2014 02:21 xDaunt wrote:
I'm trying to figure out how much I like Obama's plan. I'm not hot on the idea of getting massively involved in the Middle East again. I also like the idea of bombing ISIS with relative impunity. However, I have a hard time believing that we're going to accomplish anything meaningful without a significant ground presence. Obama is undoubtedly lying about American troops not being used on the ground. There will be special ops kill teams all over the place. But I think something more closely resembling an actual occupation will ultimately be necessary. Maybe the Iraqis will be able to do the job if they get their shit together with our help, but boy oh boy did they look bad over the summer.

Ten weeks after Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court's landmark ruling has emboldened a swath of separate legal attacks on birth control, many of which experts say have a real chance of succeeding.

In a case heard in an appeals court court this week, a Missouri state representative named Paul Joseph Wieland and his wife sued the Obama administration over the contraceptive coverage mandate because it could let their three teenage daughters access birth control in their family insurance plan at no extra cost.

"The employees are to Hobby Lobby what the daughters are to Paul and Teresa Wieland," Timothy Belz, the attorney for the Wielands, told the three judges, as quoted by MSNBC. Belz's message was that the Wielands object to birth control and expect their children to follow their religious beliefs. His case was previously thrown out by a district court judge.

The lawsuit is one of dozens of attacks on birth control coverage that enjoy new life as a result of the landmark Hobby Lobby decision. The Supreme Court's ruling applied only to the four types of emergency birth control methods (emergency contraceptives Plan B and Ella, as well as two types of IUDs) that were challenged, but lawyers quickly saw an opening to attack contraceptive coverage more broadly because the justices didn't distinguish the methods.

The owner of Eden Foods, an organic food producer, has enjoyed a boost in his effort to opt out of covering any contraception. Shortly after Hobby Lobby, the Court vacated a decision against the company and ordered an appeals court to consider the case. The Hobby Lobby reasoning appears to have strengthened Eden Foods' case that the mandate violates religious conscience protections under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Erin Mersino, a lawyer representing Eden Foods, told TPM the Hobby Lobby ruling plants the seeds for religious employers to opt out of covering all forms of contraception in their health plans.

"Since the mandate directly forced plaintiffs to violate the tenets of their faith under penalty of multi-million dollar IRS fines, the Court found that a substantial burden existed," said Mersino, who works for the conservative Thomas More Law Center. "Then the burden shifts to the Defendants, who under RFRA have to prove their actions further a compelling interest and use the least restrictive means. This is where the government failed to meet their burden."

On September 12 2014 22:50 Danglars wrote:
it is precisely facts like these that are troubling and difficult to ignore in the debate.

On September 13 2014 01:57 Nyxisto wrote:

The difference is that IS is just insane. People may find a brutal dictator disgusting but at least they can rationally understand why he is doing what he's doing. IS is just like some kind of crazy colony of killer ants, butchering everyone they can find with no apparent goal at all besides their religious fanaticism.

And they pose a serious threat to the Western world. Thousands of people fighting for IS have Western citizenship. If these people make it back here you'll have a large group of crazy people with combat experience right at home.

On September 12 2014 21:18 coverpunch wrote:

For posterity's sake, the remarks from the president:


There's a lot of window dressing, but essentially the point is that stability in the Middle East is vital in preventing terrorism from being exported to the United States. The US is doing this in part as a humanitarian mission but it is mostly in the fear that ISIS will establish a stable base of operations from which it can obtain a steady flow of funding and training to plan terrorist attacks.

I won't deny your criticisms of US policy in the Middle East because it has been muddled at best and more likely nobody has any idea what they're doing. The Lawfare podcast episode 90 has an excellent portrait of the government's view from Matt Olsen, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. The bottom line is that ISIS is not a major threat but it has the potential to become one, and right now they're in a fledgling, vulnerable state where the US can crush it early and it seems to pass the cost-benefit test to attempt to do so.

On September 13 2014 02:21 xDaunt wrote:
I'm trying to figure out how much I like Obama's plan. I'm not hot on the idea of getting massively involved in the Middle East again. I also like the idea of bombing ISIS with relative impunity. However, I have a hard time believing that we're going to accomplish anything meaningful without a significant ground presence. Obama is undoubtedly lying about American troops not being used on the ground. There will be special ops kill teams all over the place. But I think something more closely resembling an actual occupation will ultimately be necessary. Maybe the Iraqis will be able to do the job if they get their shit together with our help, but boy oh boy did they look bad over the summer.

On September 13 2014 04:03 IgnE wrote: Do you think the world is better off than it would have been if we had never invaded Iraq, even after the Kuwait invasion?

On September 13 2014 04:20 xDaunt wrote:


I have to think about that one. It's a closer a call than I'd like to admit.

Environmental groups are suing the U.S. Department of Transportation over the shipment of crude oil in old railroad tank cars they say are too easily punctured or ruptured when derailed, leading to dangerous spills.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday by the Sierra Club, EarthJustice and ForestEthics says the agency failed to respond to a legal petition the groups filed in July. That petition sought an emergency order to prohibit crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana and elsewhere from being carried in older tank cars, known as DOT-111s.

"The Department of Transportation must take immediate action to halt the use of dangerous DOT-111 tank cars which are known to derail and explode when transporting volatile crude, and which have devastated communities across North America,” Devorah Ancel, an attorney for the Sierra Club, said in a statement.

Kevin Thompson, a spokesman with the Department of Transportation, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

Since 2008, there have been 10 significant derailments in the U.S. and Canada in which crude oil has spilled from ruptured tank cars. The worst was a runaway oil train that exploded in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic a year ago, killing 47 people.

The federal government in late July proposed rules that would phase out tens of thousands of older tank cars that carry crude oil and other highly flammable liquids.

But that process could take several years, and in the meantime, shipments of crude oil in older rail cars are putting small towns and major cities along the rail lines at risk, the groups said.

On September 13 2014 03:49 Falling wrote:
I do not understand how that can have so much traction. Canada' fertility rate is 1.66 in 2012. USA's is 1.86 in 2014 (I think) 1.88 in 2012. That's a whole lot of people not having babies, and so I assume some form of contraception. I'm from a big family, and the majority of the big families I know are nicely spaced out every two years, and that sort of thing. Point being, the belief argued in the courts, does not seem to be the belief practiced in the home... for pretty much anybody. And the ones that I do know that just go in for large familes without the nice spacing (Old Orders, Amish)... I don't think they are very politically active. (Or is there an Amish lobby group in the US?) The chief suspect would be Catholic lobby groups, but again, I don't know very many Catholic families in the west with comparable family sizes to the Old Orders.

On September 13 2014 05:51 mordek wrote:

Anecdotally, I'm related by law to a Catholic family in which the grandparents are one of 10+ children and they had 10+ children. I'm thinking it's not necessarily something that's common to all Catholics but certain groups of Catholics.

On September 13 2014 04:20 xDaunt wrote:


I have to think about that one. It's a closer a call than I'd like to admit.

On September 13 2014 06:38 xDaunt wrote:

Upon reflection, my answer is as follows:

I'm not sure that you're asking the right question. It may be that the world would be a better place right now had the US not invaded Iraq in the 90s, but that would be a very temporary thing. From my perspective the problems that we're seeing in the Muslim/Arab world have been a long time coming and were ultimately inevitable. They may have arrived a decade or two earlier as a result of US meddling in the Middle East, but there was no stopping it from happening. Dictatorships are unstable entities, and the popular and underlying social problems were going to surface eventually as the dictatorships fell. On the flip side, I do see some utility in the US imposing international order and stability upon the world by attacking Iraq in the Gulf War. Failure to act would send a bad message around the world.

On September 13 2014 09:22 coverpunch wrote:

I think you also need to put it in the context of the US continuing to feel very insecure of itself over Vietnam Syndrome and the emergence of Japan as a global business competitor,

On September 13 2014 10:48 Sub40APM wrote:

eh? by 90-91 Japan was in the 2-3 year of its mega-recession.

Half in English and half in Japanese, a big red poster in the subways here last week pronounced a Japanese verdict on the Persian Gulf War: ``Beikoku no Number One!'' - that is, ``America's Number One!''

The poster was an ad for one of the countless newspapers and weekly magazines here analyzing the postwar world and Japan's role in it. The conclusions in these journals range all over the map, but virtually every analyst here accepts one basic premise: The U.S. has emerged from the war as the world's dominant power.

That consensus represents a striking change in attitude for a country where it has become intellectually fashionable to regard the United States as an overextended, decaying society that passed its peak sometime during Vietnam.

``Since the start of the Gulf crisis, we haven't heard much at all from the decliners,'' chortled a senior U.S. diplomat here. ``All those professors who argued that Japan was No. 1 are busy rewriting their articles now.''

``The idea of America as No. 1 has been strengthened, and the pattern of the U.S. asserting power with an authorization from the U.N. will continue now,'' maintained political scientist Tsuyoshi Sasaki of the University of Tokyo.

From the initial Iraqi invasion of Kuwait last August, the Japanese government and people seemed confused and indecisive about how to deal with the war. Now that the shooting has ended, Japan seems equally confused about how to deal with the peace.

Stung by the angry response to its limited role in the Persian Gulf crisis (Tokyo offered verbal support and a large cash contribution but sent no personnel) Japan's government is actively looking for ways to have a future say in global politics.

Hardly any proposal calls for Japan to take a larger military role. Instead, the government - with much kibitzing from opposition parties and private analysts - is looking for ways that Japan can use its economic clout to spread its pacifist principles.

One view holds that Japan should settle in as a junior partner in the U.S.-led Western alliance, leaving political and military leadership to America and finding specific tasks that Japan can fill well.

``If America is going to be the world's policeman, maybe Japan can become the world's social worker,'' suggested Eiji Sawa, a former government official who is now a private consultant. He cites statistics showing that Japan is already the largest donor of foreign aid and operates the largest peace corps.

Millions of Americans struggle to get by on low wages, often without any benefits such as paid sick leave, a pension, or even health insurance. Their difficult lives are made immeasurably harder when they do the work they have been hired to do, but their employers refuse to pay, pay for some hours but not others, or fail to pay overtime premiums when employees’ hours exceed 40 in a week.

This failure to pay what workers are legally entitled to can be called wage theft; in essence, it involves employers taking money that belongs to their employees and keeping it for themselves. Amounts that seem small, such as not paying for time spent preparing a work station at the start of a shift, or for cleaning up and closing up at the end of a shift, can add up. When a worker earns only a minimum wage ($290 for a 40-hour week), shaving a mere half hour a day from the paycheck means a loss of more than $1,400 a year, including overtime premiums. That could be nearly 10 percent of a minimum-wage employee’s annual earnings—the difference between paying the rent and utilities or risking eviction and the loss of gas, water, or electric service.

Survey evidence suggests that wage theft is widespread and costs workers billions of dollars a year, a transfer from low-income employees to business owners that worsens income inequality, hurts workers and their families, and damages the sense of fairness and justice that a democracy needs to survive. A three-city study of workers in low-wage industries found that in any given week, two-thirds experienced at least one pay-related violation.1 The researchers estimated that the average loss per worker over the course of a year was $2,634, out of total earnings of $17,616. The total annual wage theft from front-line workers in low-wage industries in the three cities approached $3 billion. If these findings in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are generalizable to the rest of the U.S. low-wage workforce of 30 million, wage theft is costing workers more than $50 billion a year.

It is useful to compare the cost of these wage and hour violations with crimes that are better recognized and greatly more feared, though they are much smaller in their overall dollar impact. All of the robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts in the nation cost their victims less than $14 billion in 2012, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.2 That is well over one-third of the estimated cost of wage theft nationwide.

On September 14 2014 01:13 GreenHorizons wrote:


I know for a fact that Xerox is guilty of this on a pretty large scale. Think anyone is going to prison for stealing billions of dollars from people who would go to jail for stealing dinner?... Nope! MMMmmm. Taste like justice...

As if it wasn't enough that they are already getting paid a shit wage but employers are stealing what little they owe people too?!....

Source

On September 14 2014 01:20 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

You also don't get sent to jail if you steal time from your employer.

With wage theft you're generally talking about small transactions that are highly disputable and cut multiple ways.

On September 14 2014 01:33 GreenHorizons wrote:



No you get fired... I'd be ok with that too. But I don't think we can expect even that much. Nothing really disputable about setting up a workstation off the clock. You are supposed to get paid but they force you to do it off the clock. That's just plain theft.

On September 13 2014 04:03 IgnE wrote:
Do you think the world is better off than it would have been if we had never invaded Iraq, even after the Kuwait invasion?

On September 14 2014 02:11 kwizach wrote:

Would the world have been...
...better off if Saddam had not been forced out of Kuwait in the early 1990s? No.
...better off without the 2003 invasion? Probably, yes.