US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1731

On March 14 2015 09:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

It CAN be, and insisting otherwise is ignorant. If men commit more rape than women you can absolutely arrest more men than women for that crime. The same applies to any other group and for any other crime.

Blacks moved into Ferguson. If you cannot be simultaneously able and unable to move. No one has suggested moving to be the penultimate solution, but please do not pretend that moving is an impossibility reserved only for the top 1%. The average american moves something like 11 times in their lifetime.

You can vote for the people who run your town who control the PD. In Ferguson whites are something like 3X more likely to show up for the local elections (at parity for state / fed elections).

Ferguson’s election system may also be a factor. For council elections, the city has three districts, or wards, and each ward elects two members each. That means it’s edging toward an “at-large” voting system, in which there are no districts at all, and all candidates face the whole electorate. Numerous jurisdictions around the country have used such systems to reduce minority representation, since it makes it harder for numerical minorities to elect their preferred candidates.

On March 14 2015 09:58 Gorsameth wrote:

And why did Blacks move into Ferguson do you think? Was it the highly regarded police force, the beautiful parks or the fact that it was cheap (because its shit) and there was work?

If you offer people with the choice of a shitty house with oppressive cops and a job at mc donalds or living on the street without a job anywhere else I think most will chose the former.

As I said I don't know the specifics of the local elections but yes I do think that elections are not the answer and that people stopped showing up because nothing changed regardless of who they voted for.

On March 14 2015 09:58 Gorsameth wrote:

And why did Blacks move into Ferguson do you think? Was it the highly regarded police force, the beautiful parks or the fact that it was cheap (because its shit) and there was work?

If you offer people with the choice of a shitty house with oppressive cops and a job at mc donalds or living on the street without a job anywhere else I think most will chose the former.

As I said I don't know the specifics of the local elections but yes I do think that elections are not the answer and that people stopped showing up because nothing changed regardless of who they voted for.

Senate Republicans will put forward a budget proposal next week that will include major revisions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, according to Republican lawmakers. In an article published Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told the Wall Street Journal that the proposed budget would change SNAP funding to more closely resemble a block grant model.

Currently, federal SNAP funding is designed to automatically increase or decrease based on the number of people enrolled in the program. For benefit programs that receive their funding through block grants, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the federal government provides each state with a lump sum and lets state governments decide how to allocate the money. These lump sums are a fixed amount and don’t change based on the number of beneficiaries.

In other words, if lawmakers alter SNAP so that it becomes funded through block grants, then states will have more flexibility to allocate benefits as they see fit. However, if a state experiences a sharp increase in applicants to the program, it will not receive an increase in funding to meet those needs.

“It’s just a better way to give flexibility on the ground, where people are at,” Graham told the Wall Street Journal. “The more you manage something far away, the more costly and less efficient it becomes.”

Republicans will also reportedly propose similar reforms to Medicaid. A spokesperson for the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee declined to comment on the budget before it is released.

The GOP has perennially advocated funding SNAP through block grants since at least the Reagan administration. In fact, the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee made the recommendation in its own budget proposal as recently as April. At the time, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, projected that the proposal would reduce SNAP funding by somewhere between $135 billion and $150 billion over the next decade.

Margarette Purvis, president of Food Bank For New York City, the country’s largest food bank, said that funding SNAP through block grants to the states would result in "giving them less resources, which you know will not cover the need."

SNAP has already experienced several billion dollars in cuts over the past two years as a result of the automatic expiration of emergency funds and changes to how SNAP benefits are calculated.

On March 14 2015 09:45 Chewbacca. wrote:

Over 60% of the population of Ferguson is African American, even if everyone else was racist against AAs they could still elect a completely non-racist against AA city council/other government officials.

NEW YORK — The U.S. has so much crude that it is running out of places to put it, and that could drive oil and gasoline prices even lower in the coming months.

For the past seven weeks, the United States has been producing and importing an average of 1 million more barrels of oil every day than it is consuming. That extra crude is flowing into storage tanks, especially at the country’s main trading hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, pushing U.S. supplies to their highest point in at least 80 years, the Energy Department reported last month.

If this keeps up, storage tanks could approach their operational limits, known in the industry as “tank tops,” by mid-April and send the price of crude — and probably gasoline, too — plummeting.

“The fact of the matter is we are running out of storage capacity in the U.S.,” Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Citibank, said at a recent symposium at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Morse has suggested oil could fall all the way to $20 (U.S.) a barrel from the current $50. At that rock-bottom price, oil companies, faced with mounting losses, would stop pumping oil until the glut eased. Gasoline prices would fall along with crude, though lower refinery production, because of seasonal factors and unexpected outages, could prevent a sharp decline.

The national average price of gasoline is $2.44 (U.S.) a gallon. That’s $1.02 cheaper than last year at this time, but up 37 cents over the past month.

Other analysts agree that crude is poised to fall sharply — if not all the way to $20 — because it continues to flood into storage for a number of reasons:

Sigma Alpha Epsilon ‘not ruling out a lawsuit’ against Oklahoma University, says lawyer

Although the fraternity seeks “to have some other resolution to this matter,” Jones said, the lawyer said he is “not ruling out a lawsuit.” Jones did not elaborate, but he said he was hired by the SAE board “to protect the due process rights, the first amendment rights, and the 14th Amendment rights” of the fraternity’s members.

“Above all else, the board of the local chapter that I represent is concerned about the physical safety” of its members, Jones said. Some of them, Jones added, “have frankly been afraid to go to class.”

Jones, who served as Timothy McVeigh’s lead defense attorney during the Oklahoma City Bombing trial, said he believes the university’s response to the video was a “premature rush to judgement,” and one that implicitly painted all members of the fraternity “with a tar brush” as bigots or racists. Jones thought the university should have taken a more “measured” response.

“There are a number of issues here that we have to review,” Jones added, “I’m new to the case.” The alumni board hired Jones to advise them on Thursday.

On March 15 2015 03:39 GreenHorizons wrote:


If nominating Debo Adegbile was supposed to be a huge insult to cops, what should Black people think about SAE hiring the guy who defended McVeigh?

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On March 15 2015 03:50 Millitron wrote:

Why does it matter that Jones was Timothy McVeigh's attorney?

Several Senate Democrats joined with Republicans in voting against Debo Adegbile, whose nomination was adamantly and vocally opposed by conservatives due to his participation in an appeal filed on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal -- an internationally-known prisoner convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

On March 15 2015 04:01 GreenHorizons wrote:


"If nominating Debo Adegbile was supposed to be a huge insult to cops"

I thought it wasn't an insult to cops, so I don't have a problem with McVeigh's former lawyer handling SAE
Not sure the leaving suing on the table helps SAE's image, but I don't have a problem with their lawyer choice because of who he defended in the past.



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The people who used Adegbile's client history against him are a different story.

On March 15 2015 04:07 Millitron wrote:

I don't really care who any lawyer defended. Even Saddam Hussein had an attorney. Everyone deserves legal representation, meaning at least some lawyers are going to end up defending some pretty despicable people.

On the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, Cruz said, “Mr. President, this is insulting to law enforcement officers everywhere. I stand with the Fraternal Order of Police in opposition to Debo Adegbile.”

On March 15 2015 04:08 GreenHorizons wrote:


I agree, it was most of the Conservative senators (and a few Democrats) that disagree with you. So perhaps you see the confusion?

Perhaps putting a name to it would help.


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