US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2485

America's cops overwhelmingly do not see marijuana as a major threat to their communities, according to results of a survey released this week as part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's "2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary."

The DEA asked a nationally representative sample of over 1,000 law enforcement agencies what they saw as their biggest drug threats. Marijuana came in at the bottom of the list, named by only 6 percent of survey respondents. The share of law enforcement agencies naming pot has been declining steadily since the mid-2000s, even as states have moved to legalize medical and recreational marijuana during that time period.

By contrast, nearly three quarters of police departments named heroin and meth as their top drug threats this year. The perceived threat of heroin has more than quadrupled since 2007, according to the survey. And after rising sharply from 2007 to 2013, the threat posed by prescription painkillers has subsided considerably in the past two years.

The findings indicate a statement by law enforcement of a fact that drug policy experts and researchers have known for a long time: compared to other recreational substances, including alcohol, marijuana doesn't cause that much harm. It's probably even safer than many people think. And whether you're worried about potential harms to individuals or to communities, marijuana is very low on the list of recreational substances.

The state and local police also say that marijuana is not a big driver of crime. Only 6 percent said that marijuana was the most serious driver of violent crime in their communities in 2015, and 5 percent said it was the biggest contributor to property crime. This contradicts arguments made by some high-ranking law enforcement officers recently that marijuana is somehow driving an increase in murders this year.

Despite this shift in thinking, arrests for marijuana possession continue unabated. Cops keep arresting people for marijuana possession. This might be a simple question of low-hanging fruit: Marijuana is by far the most widely used illegal drug, and more users means more potential arrestees. But these arrests have serious consequences for the people caught up in them, and they divert precious police time and resources away from more serious crimes, like rape and murder.

On November 06 2015 06:57 Mohdoo wrote:
This primary makes me miss Romney so much.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating ExxonMobil for claims the company made about climate change, a source familiar with the probe confirmed to The Huffington Post.

The investigation centers on whether the oil and gas company misled investors and the public about the financial implications of climate change and its effects, The New York Times reports.

ExxonMobil confirmed it received a subpoena from the attorney general's office, and is "assessing [its] response."

"We unequivocally reject allegations that ExxonMobil suppressed climate change research contained in media reports that are inaccurate distortions of ExxonMobil’s nearly 40-year history of climate research that was conducted publicly in conjunction with the Department of Energy, academics and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," spokesperson Alan Jeffers said in a statement.

The Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News recently reported that Exxon scientists knew as early as 1977 that the use of fossil fuel contributes to global warming, but has since perpetuated climate change skepticism. The company has denied doing so.

According to Forbes, ExxonMobil is the seventh-largest publicly traded company in the world.

The Department of Justice has been under pressure to investigate the company over these claims, with Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley all supporting calls for an investigation.

On November 06 2015 08:01 Liquid`Drone wrote:
based on debate performance from the first three debates, Rubio has been looking like the best candidate the republicans can field for sure. He's a quick thinker, knows his stuff and speaks with conviction, while remaining a politician who presents actual policy suggestions. I don't like him on policy and don't want him to win the republican primaries for the aforementioned reasons, but I don't think the republians can field a better candidate against Hillary. For a little while I was blindsided by Carly Fiorina's oratorical abilities but then I realized that sometimes she just makes up things, and I don't think her brand of female would actually get much of Hillary's wominance (wow that's a glorious word). And while it doesn't seem like Rubio's background makes up for being republican with regards to the latin vote, he also seems to do somewhat better with them than the other republicans. I think - that was based on some very quick poll googling.

On November 06 2015 08:19 CannonsNCarriers wrote:


I still don't see how he explains his immigration heresies to the base. The DC Media has been pushing the Rubio narrative at full blast for the last two months and he has finally managed to break 10%. If the DC Media was right about him, at some point shouldn't the poll numbers back up their endless trumpeting of his greatness? No other candidate gets as many puff pieces in politico or the washingtonpost. Who among the Carson/Trump voters are going to jump ship from a true magical realism believer (Carson) or a hardline anti-immigration guy (Trump) to the bland Republican pablum of Rubio? Rubio is running on JEB's policy platform and his immigration past is going to come up.

Chris Christie failed to make the cut for the main stage at the upcoming Fox Business Network/Wall Street Journal debate, a major blow for the New Jersey governor who has struggled to gain traction in the presidential race.

Fox Business announced the lineup on Thursday for its 9 p.m. main event and 6 p.m. undercard debate on Nov. 10. Christie failed to meet the 2.5 percent average polling threshold needed to make the primetime event, after having been on the main stage for the prior three GOP debates.

en. Lindsey Graham, former New York Gov. George Pataki and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore also got bad news, failing to register enough in the polls to participate in the event at all. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee also got bumped to the undercard stage.

The eight candidates on the main stage are: Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, former Gov. Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Gov. John Kasich, and Sen. Rand Paul.

On the undercard stage will be Christie, Huckabee, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and former Sen. Rick Santorum.

On November 06 2015 08:38 Toadesstern wrote:

he wasn't talking about who looks good for the republican only vote but who will perform the best in the general elections and I completly agree with him on that.

As in, if instead of voting you could just pick one for the general election that'd be rubio for sure. Of course their base doesn't want a moderate but that's just what wins elections on both sides.

On November 06 2015 13:58 LuckyFool wrote:
Christie and Huckabee might as well not even show up lol

On November 06 2015 13:58 LuckyFool wrote:
Christie and Huckabee might as well not even show up lol

U.S. hiring roared back in October after two weak months, with employers adding a robust 271,000 jobs, the most since December. The unemployment rate dipped to a fresh seven-year low of 5 percent.

The burst of hiring across a range of industries came as companies shrugged off slower overseas growth and a weak U.S manufacturing sector. Big job gains occurred in construction, health care and retail.

Healthy consumer spending is supporting strong job growth even as factory payrolls were flat last month and oil and gas drillers cut jobs.

The job gains could prove strong enough to persuade the Federal Reserve to lift short-term interest rates at its next meeting in mid-December.

Robust hiring also raised wages 9 cents to $25.20. That is 2.5 percent higher than 12 months ago, the largest year-over-year gain since July 2009.

Any gain above roughly 150,000 was expected to keep Fed policymakers on track to raise interest rates from record lows at their mid-December meeting.

Continued hiring should continue to reduce the unemployment rate over time. The economy typically needs only about 100,000 jobs a month to keep the unemployment rate from rising.

That figure has fallen in recent years as the aging population and increasing retirements by baby boomers have slowed the growth of the U.S. workforce.

On November 06 2015 12:02 Danglars wrote:
It is presumed that the Republican candidate must sustain a base of support from registered Republican voters before he thinks about attracting independent or Democrat support. It's a fair point to consider just how many general election voters or primary voters don't choose him/stay home on the basis of distrusting his pledged support for strong-borders immigration policy ("his immigration heresies"). Good debate performances, tough path to November.

A generation ago, opposition to the death penalty ended political careers.

Now, the three candidates sparring for the Democratic nomination are questioning the effectiveness and application of the death penalty.

Among them, only former secretary of state Hillary Clinton opposes abolishing the practice, and only in certain cases. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley signed into law a repeal of the death penalty in his state in 2013 and commuted sentences of the state’s remaining death row inmates in 2014. And Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has been a vocal opponent of the practice as matter or principle and policy.

As the candidates prepare to square off at a Democratic forum in South Carolina on Friday evening, the issue of the death penalty has emerged on the campaign trail as a point of contention in a race that has swerved to the left.

While in New Hampshire last week, Clinton said she did not support abolition and that “there are certain egregious cases” which merit the punishment. She expressed concern that the practice “has been too frequently applied, and too often in a discriminatory way”. She added that it is an issue she believes is best left to the states.

After the event, Clinton expanded on her remarks in an interview with a New Hampshire news network. “We ought to reserve it for terrorism and related incidents that are, like the Boston Marathon bomber,” she told NH1. “So that’s why I think we should be really limiting it but not abolishing it when it comes to applying it.”

O’Malley, who called the capital sentencing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “ineffective as a deterrent”, immediately responded to Clinton’s comments, declaring that as president he would work to “build consensus to end it nationally”.

“The death penalty is [a] racially biased, ineffective deterrent to crime, and we must abolish it,” O’Malley said in a statement.

The following day, Sanders, Clinton’s chief rival, took to the US Senate floor to declare that “the time is now for the United States to end capital punishment” and said ending the practice was the “right point of view”.

“I would rather have our country stand side-by-side with European democracies rather than with countries like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others who maintain the death penalty,” he told his Senate colleagues.

On November 06 2015 23:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Agreed. Plus, the sample size will be wayyy too small. It's probably better to look at some surveys/ research that have been done on a larger scale: