US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1375

On October 28 2014 06:56 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Bring in that land tax.

On October 28 2014 07:48 farvacola wrote:
To be frank, I don't think that the sticking of any single topic should be described as "shitting" things up; that there exists such a vehement disagreement indicates, at least in my eyes, that the issue being discussed occupies an interesting and worthwhile space in political discourse. Being shown that there are motivated and well-spoken individuals backing each side of a debate is a valuable lesson in how difficult some political problems can be. Many of the foreign posters on here have a difficult time understanding how it is that some topics, usually those relating to religion, money in politics, and the liberal/conservative divide, are so contentious in the United States; I think the reasons are put on display rather nicely in the preceding 5 pages or so.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think one side is right and one side is wrong, but that's politics for ya

On October 28 2014 07:57 oneofthem wrote:
would be better if the gmo discussion was actually something other than repeating the same thing for 10 pages.

On October 28 2014 08:44 Souma wrote:
Haven't the conversations in here been the same regurgitated things since the election thread?

Only so much you can talk about. :d Tis one reason why I hardly post in here nowadays.

On October 28 2014 09:49 xDaunt wrote:
There will be plenty to discuss once the midterms are over.

WASHINGTON –- Young voters are much more likely than senior citizens to say they'll vote for candidates who support cutting greenhouse gas emissions and boosting renewable energy, according to a poll released Tuesday by the University of Texas at Austin.

Sixty-eight percent of people under age 35 said they were more likely to vote for a political candidate who backs measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while half of respondents over age 65 said the same. More than 60 percent of the younger cohort said they wanted a candidate to expand incentives for renewable energy and wanted them to endorse policies requiring utilities to draw a certain percentage of power from renewables. Among voters over age 65, only 48 percent said they were more likely to vote for a candidate based on those two statements.

The poll surveyed 2,105 U.S. residents between Sept. 4 and Sept. 16. Forty-six percent of respondents overall said candidates' positions on energy policy are a major factor for them in deciding on a candidate.

For a man who constantly touts his plans to build a creationist empire in the United States, Ken Ham is surprisingly bad at his job. The professional charlatan’s greatest success, his mind-boggling Creation Museum, faces a serious decline in attendance. His next boondoggle, a Noah’s Ark–themed creationist amusement park, was so woefully underfunded that Ham began selling junk bonds to keep it from going under. Initial construction on the dramatically scaled-back “ark park” is barely underway. And now Ham has already run into legal trouble. His utterly predictable offense? Using taxpayer money to discriminate on the basis of religion.

The trouble began when the park, officially called Ark Encounter, listed its employment opportunities in August. Nestled among the requirements for all job applicants were three troubling obligatory documents: “Salvation testimony,” “Creation belief statement,” and a “Confirmation of your agreement with the AiG statement of faith.” (AiG is Answers in Genesis, Ham’s ministry and Ark Encounter’s parent company.) These first two requirements are problematic enough: The park is quite openly instructing all applicants to pledge that they personally believe in creationist Christianity. If an applicant has other beliefs, her application to Ark Encounter isn’t welcome.

But the third requirement is far, far worse. AiG’s statement of faith is no mere loyalty oath: It’s a four-part theological declaration mandating that all signatories accept dozens of fundamentalist Christian principles. Employees at Ark Encounter don’t just have to believe in God; they have to believe in Christ, the Holy Spirit, Satan (as “the personal spiritual adversary of both God and mankind”), Adam and Eve, “the Great Flood of Genesis,” a 6,000-year-old Earth, and the eternal damnation of “those who do not believe in Christ.” All employees must follow “the duty of Christians” and attend “a local Bible believing church.” Just for good measure, employees must oppose abortion, euthanasia, gay rights, and trans rights.


Were Ark Encounter merely a ministry, the First Amendment would protect its discriminatory employment practices. If it were a privately funded company with an explicitly religious purpose, the law might still permit it to hire based on its prejudices. But Ark Encounter isn’t privately funded; the citizens of Kentucky have been roped into paying for it, whether they like it or not. Earlier this year, Kentucky’s Tourism Development Finance Authority gave preliminary support for $18.25 million in tax credits for Ark Encounter, citing Ham’s promise that the project would create 600 to 700 jobs. And that’s just for the first phase of construction; ultimately, the state could grant Ark Encounter up to $73 million in tax breaks.

On October 28 2014 04:11 xDaunt wrote:
Jesus Christ. This GMO/herbicide crap is actually shitting up the thread worse than the repetitive economic theory arguments.

On October 29 2014 00:26 Lord Tolkien wrote:

it's odd really. To overly generalize, the American Right is distrustful of the science of climate change and embraces the science of biotechnology, while the American Left embraces the science of climate change and rejects the science of biotechnology.

On October 29 2014 00:40 aksfjh wrote:

It's hardly "left vs right." Even politically, there isn't a huge track record to go off of. Really, it seems like one of those issues you can use to find the ideologically extreme on the left (in terms of anti-corporatism), like you can with climate change on the right.

On October 29 2014 00:57 Lord Tolkien wrote:

I think that's a fair assessment, but I think you do underestimate the number of people who are hysterical about GMOs and who downplay climate change.

Anecdotally, the people i know most strongly opposed to these issues can hardly be described as ideogically extreme.

On October 29 2014 01:39 aksfjh wrote:

Those encompass 2 different levels of radicalism. Climate change deniers and GMO doomsayers are in the same category. Climate change downplaying and GMO caution are in the same category.

As for anecdotes, people I know are mostly rubes when it comes to politics and facts surrounding positions. They create opinions based on some lifestyle and somebody's strong, well versed opinion who shares that same lifestyle. They don't formulate a consistent worldview, or their worldview is created by a single issue point ("Corporations are EVIL," "Abortion is WRONG," etc.) and they then justify everything else to get their way and make allies on that major point.

On October 28 2014 09:26 Sermokala wrote:

The only regurgitated thing we've been discussing since the election thread is obamacare and related topics.

Trust me I've been here the whole way.

pouring out some fourty for my boy sam!zdat

WASHINGTON — In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations.

The number of requests, contained in a 2014 audit of the surveillance program by the Postal Service’s inspector general, shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses is lax.

The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an important role in the nation’s vast surveillance effort since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The audit, which was reported on earlier by Politico, found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests to monitor an individual’s mail without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization.

The state of Alaska stands to gain $23 million in annual tax revenues from a fully ramped-up legal marijuana market, according to a report released this week by the Marijuana Policy Group, a research organization that does not take a stance on marijuana legalization issues. If Alaska voters approve a legalization measure on the ballot next week, the report estimates that total sales in a legal marijuana market would climb from $56 million in 2016 to $107 million in 2020.

The report, by the same nonpartisan group of academics and private researchers that provided marijuana market estimates to Colorado upon legalization in that state, aims to apply lessons learned from Colorado to Alaska's situation. "Previous studies incorrectly assume that all demand will quickly shift to regulated markets," the group wrote in a release. "In our experience, such assumptions are naïve."

On October 29 2014 04:39 Souma wrote:

No dude, we've gone through literally everything again and again. Guns, immigration, religion, taxes, education, foreign policy, etc. etc. with the same arguments being drummed up every single time. It's inevitable obviously since this is a political thread, but for me it's just too tiresome to rehash the same debates. It's just ridiculous since nothing gets done in Congress so we have no choice but to bring up the same things. The most interesting topics seem to be when individual states have something going on nowadays. At least there's that.

On October 29 2014 04:39 Souma wrote:

No dude, we've gone through literally everything again and again. Guns, immigration, religion, taxes, education, foreign policy, etc. etc. with the same arguments being drummed up every single time. It's inevitable obviously since this is a political thread, but for me it's just too tiresome to rehash the same debates. It's just ridiculous since nothing gets done in Congress so we have no choice but to bring up the same things. The most interesting topics seem to be when individual states have something going on nowadays. At least there's that.