US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2104

On July 15 2015 06:25 cLutZ wrote:
Just to be clear, your compromise position there, is just the Democratic position. So you don't advocate compromise, just acceptance of the POV you prefer.

Lets go with Medicaid. Republicans think its an expensive, ineffective, boondoggle that takes too much state power and puts it under Federal control. They would block grant and reduce overall spending.

Democrats want to expand the program with more Federal oversight and mandates. Find the compromise!

On July 15 2015 09:36 Wegandi wrote:


If you have no principles how does one determine what is 'best'? Is best to you, just straight down your preference checklist? The problem is that the country is too big to govern. There are too many differences to bring such a diverse ideological population together into one governing body without massive disapproval. You can't force 400 million people over such a large geographic area into one government. Also, please dispense with this ridiculous idea that there was some golden era of compromise and happiness throughout America at any point in our history. The country should have been split into 15+ different countries a century ago. That is best for everyone.

On July 15 2015 08:27 cLutZ wrote:

If you don't care for their positions, then why are you talking about compromise? Don't you see how disingenuous your narrative is when you say, "Republicans should compromise more" while really hoping for none of their policy prescriptions to prevail?

On July 15 2015 09:36 Wegandi wrote:


If you have no principles how does one determine what is 'best'? Is best to you, just straight down your preference checklist? The problem is that the country is too big to govern. There are too many differences to bring such a diverse ideological population together into one governing body without massive disapproval. You can't force 400 million people over such a large geographic area into one government. Also, please dispense with this ridiculous idea that there was some golden era of compromise and happiness throughout America at any point in our history. The country should have been split into 15+ different countries a century ago. That is best for everyone.

In his first interview as a presidential hopeful, Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) on Monday declared himself to be a candidate who will stand up for American workers, but also criticized the idea of the minimum wage.

"The left claims they're for American workers, and they've just got really lame ideas. Things like the minimum wage," Walker told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

"Instead of focusing on that, we need to talk about how we get people the skills and the education and the qualifications that they need to take on the careers that pay far more than the minimum wage," he continued.

Earlier on Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton attacked Walker's labor record during a speech, calling the governor's policies "mean-spirited" and "misguided."

"Republican governors like Scott Walker have made their names by stomping on workers’ rights," she said.

On July 15 2015 13:51 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Duuuuude minimum wage is lame. Instead, I'm gonna support American workers!

Where does Scott Walker rank among likelihood to get the Republican nomination? 27th?

On July 15 2015 14:14 Yurie wrote:
No minimum wage can work if you have strong unions. Which the US has had bad experiences with according to what I have read here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

According to that list Austria, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway... don't have a minimum wage. I think all of those countries do have a level of money for doing "nothing" from the government. Which is the real minimum wage, if working gives you as much money, why should you work?
So depending on how he wants to solve it without it it could work out.

A cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide generated $1.3 billion in benefits for nine U.S. states, a finding that may win converts elsewhere in the country.

Funding from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative also created more than 14,000 new jobs in the Northeast and saved consumers $460 million in lower electric bills over the past three years, according to a report released Monday by Analysis Group, a Boston-based consulting company. The benefits came mainly from customer rebates and efficiency measures spurred by the program.

The six-year-old carbon trading market, the first in the U.S., may serve as a model for other states, which all must now regulate emissions to meet new rules from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. California already has its own market, while Pennsylvania and Virginia officials have discussed joining RGGI.

“There are a lot of states that are looking carefully at doing the same thing,” said Paul Hibbard, an Analysis Group vice-president and co-author of the study, in a telephone interview. “It will be hard for states to not realize that from the standpoint of economic efficiency, that’s the way to go.”

Carbon emissions in the nine participating RGGI states have dropped by about a third since the trading market opened in 2009, Hibbard said.

It’s a Damn Good Deal

The deal — can we call it the “Vienna Plan,” please? — looks pretty much like the framework deal that was reached in Lausanne in April. I went through the documents, including the White House fact sheet, as well as my own notes from conversations with administration officials. It would seem that the agreement is as good or better in all important respects than what officials described in the spring.

The reduction in centrifuges remains substantial — the limits are the same as those reported when the framework was announced. Moreover, little worries I had, like whether Iran would agree to remove piping and other infrastructure along with the centrifuges themselves, were resolved favorably.

The Vienna Plan also provides a path to resolve the outstanding issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding Iran’s past covert nuclear weapons program (known delicately as “possible military dimensions”) and provides a public description of something U.S. officials had only described in private — a R&D schedule that limits Iran’s development of new centrifuges over the next eight to 10 years.

And, if like me you think “breakout,” or the time it would take to turn nuclear material into one bomb, is a dumb measure, the agreement also has lots of provisions to deal with “sneak-out,” or an attempt to get a bomb covertly. These provisions include granting inspectors access to military sites and monitoring of centrifuge workshops and uranium mines. But this shouldn’t be a surprise: it was in the bag in Lausanne.

[...] The real issues in Vienna were how to re-impose sanctions if the deal collapsed, as well whether to lift the United Nations’ arms embargo and the sanctions on Iran’s missile programs.

The mechanism to re-impose sanctions — called “snap back” by people who don’t wear baseball caps — is pretty clever. Any of the parties can raise an issue within a Joint Commission created to administer the agreement. If the party is unsatisfied, it then can notify the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council has 30 days to act — and if it does nothing, the sanctions are automatically re-imposed. That gives the United States and other parties the ability to blow up the deal and return to sanctions regime with no chance for Russia or China to veto.

On July 15 2015 20:38 Leporello wrote:
The Iran deal is the only deal. It's multi-lateral, and years in the making.

Of course it's a good deal. There are no alternatives, there is no renegotiating. Republicans better take some deep breaths before they try to politicize this.

And in regards to Walker's comments on Minimum Wage: FUCK Scott Walker, what a snake. "We need to give workers better skills so they can get better jobs."

I hate these moronic BS statements. Guess what? Someone has to make your fast-food burgers. Someone has to maintain your local gas-station. These jobs suck, they can be demanding, and the people doing them are doing hard work -- just raise the Minimum Wage and fucking pay them enough so they can take care of themselves.

On July 15 2015 21:58 Sermokala wrote:
Wow you really are a joke of the minimum wage movement. You're against training people skills so they get out of minimum wage jobs because you think burger flipping is so vital to our economy that people should be able to live off it?

You can't bash reps for being obtuse when you're wearing ideology blinders like that.

The iran deal is pretty bad compared to say cold war deals but the enemy in this case is on a hard clock and we're not. So any deal is good.

On July 15 2015 20:44 Acrofales wrote:

But.. you don't understand! If the burger flippers, fruit pickers and shelf-stockers had a college (or even a high school) degree, they would be paid much more for the same work! Wouldn't they?

On July 15 2015 22:54 screamingpalm wrote:
I've said it before, but I still don't agree with the raising the minimum wage and I think it will turn into a be careful what you wish for scenario. Moving the goalposts like this will actually hurt the poor and unemployed more than help. Cost of living will skyrocket as companies simply raise prices and pass the burden onto consumers. $15 becoming the new $7.25 is not the answer imo. Maybe I'm wrong, can some of the resident economists here show me the light? Expanding the EITC as an alternative just seems to make more logical sense to me.

On July 15 2015 23:12 Mercy13 wrote:

There isn't much data on the effect a $15 minimum wage can have, because it is outside the bounds of what economists have traditionally looked at. That's why it's good that different cities, like Seattle, are testing it out. It will give us an idea of whether it is too high or not.

Based on what I have read, most economists think that a minimum wage of between $10 and $12 per hour won't lead to a ton of jobs being lost, though there should probably be some regional variation based upon cost of living.