US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2135

On July 27 2015 20:20 Simberto wrote:
It constantly confuses me how disinterested americans are in the obvious and legal corruption in their system. You have companies and billionaires giving your politicians millions of dollars, legally. Do you really think they get nothing in return? It amazes me that that is legal.

On July 27 2015 23:53 JinDesu wrote:


Wtf, this is still going on??

On July 28 2015 00:08 ticklishmusic wrote:


I read somewhere that it costs $1.5M everytime the Republicans try to repeal Obamacare. Dunno how reliable/accurate the number is, but it's a fun (depressing) mental exercise.

On July 27 2015 23:54 Yoav wrote:


Disinterested means "without a personal vested stake" as in "judges should be disinterested so they can make fair rulings."

Uninterested means "thinking something is less than interesting" as in "judges should not be uninterested so they don't fall asleep at the bench."

The main point most people make is that in a sufficiently advanced democracy this kind of thing is inevitable, and its better out in the open than done in a million slick and slimy ways. I'm not certain that's true, but it would be hard to turn back the clock, to, for instance, insist that the US election only could occur over the course of a single month, or somehow ban de facto political advertising as done by Hanity, Stewart, Maddow, O'Reilly, etc. without essentially banning all public political discourse.

On July 28 2015 00:17 Plansix wrote:

But its so good for the election cycle and news. Trying to take down Obama care sounds amazing in a sound bite and makes people vote for or against it. Then you have amazing voting records like “voted with Obama 40 times on core issues like healthcare”.

Plus free media coverage. It’s not like it matters than Obama will just veto it and there is no change of an override. And since it is his last term, not like he cares about any possible PR hit(doubt there would be any.)

On July 28 2015 01:49 Millitron wrote:

I don't know about most people, but I'm uninterested because I feel like elections are pretty much always between two candidates that are actually the same. During the campaigns, they all say different things. The republican says he'll cut taxes, hand out guns for free, and lead a strong foreign policy. The democrat says he'll provide a social safety net, stop getting involved in foreign wars, and end the war on drugs. Yet no matter who gets elected, none of that happens. The foreign policy is both violent and weak, taxes go up for basically nothing, and the Constitution gets ignored (dems hate the 2nd Amendment, and sometimes the 1st Amendment; reps hate the 1st Amendment and the 4th and 5th Amendments, they both love exploiting the Commerce Clause like crazy).

On July 28 2015 01:49 Millitron wrote:

I don't know about most people, but I'm uninterested because I feel like elections are pretty much always between two candidates that are actually the same. During the campaigns, they all say different things. The republican says he'll cut taxes, hand out guns for free, and lead a strong foreign policy. The democrat says he'll provide a social safety net, stop getting involved in foreign wars, and end the war on drugs. Yet no matter who gets elected, none of that happens. The foreign policy is both violent and weak, taxes go up for basically nothing, and the Constitution gets ignored (dems hate the 2nd Amendment, and sometimes the 1st Amendment; reps hate the 1st Amendment and the 4th and 5th Amendments, they both love exploiting the Commerce Clause like crazy).


It's almost like the dems and reps are working together. The reps who vote in favor of repealing Obamacare score points with their base, and the dems who vote against repealing it also do. It's just like the war in Orwell's 1984. It's more important to them to look like they're fighting than to actually fight. Which is disgusting.

On July 28 2015 02:07 Plansix wrote:

I am hard pressed to find any reason why the Democrats would see this as anything but a waste of time. Not crazy shit bird Republicans too. Cruz is not well loved in the republican party and is one of those shit bird Republicans. So they will keep trying.

On July 28 2015 01:53 Gorsameth wrote:

Part because the Presidents power over such actions is very limited. Congress controls most domestic issues.
And part because the job is a lot more then soundbites. Reality has a way of getting in the way of a mans ideals.

On July 27 2015 21:48 Plansix wrote:

The fact that it took AP and NPR over 2 months just to find out exactly where who funded and super PAC and where their home office was shows how stupid the system is. And for the record, the home office was in Florida and it was just a guy ordering the TV ads by phone part time. He didn’t even know who he worked for exactly.

The system is broken because the Super PACs can break laws and commit fraud and it would take investigators months to even bring charges. After that the election would be over and the damage would be done, sapping the political will push for a full investigation.

On July 27 2015 23:53 JinDesu wrote:


Wtf, this is still going on??

On July 28 2015 05:06 farvacola wrote:

Your lack of nuance in describing the differences between Democrats and Republicans fits perfectly with how lazy your 1984 comparison is. But yes, go on and trumpet your disgust alongside populist summaries of mainstream political platforms that leave zero room for the details of reality. Surely that won't make you part of the problem.

High in the San Bernardino Mountains, on a steep slope covered with brush and ferns, a bunker-like stone structure protrudes from the mountainside. Behind its locked metal doors, water is collected from wells and flows into a pipe to fill bottles of Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.

The U.S. Forest Service has long been allowing Nestle to pipe water out of the national forest from a collection of wells using a permit that lists an expiration date of 1988. The company has been paying the San Bernardino National Forest an annual permit fee of $524, and the water has continued to flow, even as the drought has prompted questions about the potential impacts on a stream and wildlife in the national forest.

Documents obtained by The Desert Sun reveal that in the 1990s and early 2000s, there were discussions about conducting a review of the permit and carrying out environmental studies, but those steps didn’t lead to action. The records also show that at times, Forest Service officials turned down requests by Nestle and by Arrowhead’s previous owner to tap more water sources in the forest.

The documents — including letters, emails, an audit presentation, and notes of meetings — reveal that officials failed to follow through on plans for a permit review that would have involved assessing the environmental impacts of drawing water from the national forest. During one meeting, some in the agency questioned the legal basis for the company’s use of water from the forest. But the Forest Service ultimately authorized Nestle to keep using its wells and water lines, and also permitted the company to rebuild flood-damaged pipelines — even as the permit issue was left unresolved.

n explaining the nearly three decades of inaction on the permit, Forest Service officials have cited a heavy workload of other priorities, wildfires and floods, a tight budget and limited staffing. But the agency’s records clearly show that efforts to review the permit were initiated between 1999 and 2003. Then those efforts suddenly stopped, and nothing in the records indicates exactly why.

Gene Zimmerman, the forest supervisor who was in charge at the time, retired in 2005. He now does paid consulting work for Nestle.

WASHINGTON — For several years, a handful of lawmakers in Congress have tried to scale back tough sentencing laws that have bloated federal prisons and the cost of running them. But broad-based political will to change those laws remained elusive.

Now, with a push from President Obama, and perhaps even more significantly a nod from Speaker John A. Boehner, Congress seems poised to revise four decades of federal policy that greatly expanded the number of Americans — to roughly 750 per 100,000 — now incarcerated, by far the highest of any Western nation.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has long resisted changes to federal sentencing laws, said he expected to have a bipartisan bill ready before the August recess.

“It will be a bill that can have broad conservative support,” said Mr. Grassley, who as recently as this year praised the virtues of mandatory minimums on the Senate floor.

Even in a Congress riven by partisanship, the priorities of libertarian-leaning Republicans and left-leaning Democrats have come together, led by the example of several states that have adopted similar policies to reduce their prison costs.

As senators work to meld several proposals into one bill, one important change would be to expand the so-called safety-valve provisions that give judges discretion to sentence low-level drug offenders to less time in prison than the required mandatory minimum term if they meet certain requirements.

Another would allow lower-risk prisoners to participate in recidivism programs to earn up to a 25 percent reduction of their sentence. Lawmakers would also like to create more alternatives for low-level drug offenders. Nearly half of all current federal prisoners are serving sentences for drug crimes.