US Politics Mega-thread - Page 281

On June 09 2013 03:24 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Link

Why don't we just let companies build more rail and pipelines? Just make sure everything is safe, has modern pollution controls and then give the go ahead. More taxes, well paid blue collar jobs and lower prices. From an economic standpoint it's a good deal all around.

On June 09 2013 04:12 aksfjh wrote:

It's a large investment in what is a very rapidly developing sector/region, so there needs to be caution in that regard. We should probably avoid a strong oil-boom economy, but there does need to be some updating of pipeline networks.

I personally have conflicting worries in a microeconomic sense. These huge fields we're finding are generally in areas of the U.S. we need development in, like the Dakotas. As long as the oil can't move far without costs skyrocketing, the workers, businesses, and cities will benefit quite a bit from decreased cost of living/business, good pay, and reinvestment of infrastructure in the area. If you ship the oil away at cheaper costs to higher paying areas, you won't get the drastic local rewards that the region needs. There is the benefit of greatly reducing the need for drilling in populated areas (like NY, Appalachians, and North Texas), so there's that as well. I'm fairly certain the building of pipelines to decrease the cost of transportation would boost the economy as a whole right now, but the minor benefit to many might not balance out the huge benefit of the few.

On June 09 2013 04:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I would think the opposite - if the oil can't move out cheaply the local area that produces it will lose out on increased production. They're already producing more oil and gas than they need locally and the oil needs to be shipped out, refined and sent back before it can be used locally.

On June 08 2013 06:56 kwizach wrote:

You do know that he can't close Guantanamo Bay without the votes in Congress, right?

On June 09 2013 04:26 aksfjh wrote:

The pipeline would just send oil out then, since they are built to go one way (for the most part). The rest is what I'm talking about with local investment though. Eventually, they'll refine more in the area as well which offers more jobs etc. Like I said, there's a trade-off involved that is tricky to me.

Edit: There are refineries available in the area already, albeit low capacity.

On June 08 2013 07:03 Souma wrote:
Not a single thing you mentioned has hindered my freedom. Maybe someone else's, but not mine.

So, yeah, I feel safe and free.

+ Show Spoiler +

On June 09 2013 04:47 ziggurat wrote:

Is this actually true? Isn't this an executive decision? Why would he need votes in congress?

On June 09 2013 04:54 ziggurat wrote:

I will never understand how liberals can have such faith in big government. The problem with all these scandals is that they won't go away when Obama leaves power. Obama could be the most trustworthy, honourable guy on earth, and maybe he won't use any of these powers improperly. But what about the next president? What about the one after that? How can you have such faith in all future governments?

On June 09 2013 04:54 ziggurat wrote:

I will never understand how liberals can have such faith in big government. The problem with all these scandals is that they won't go away when Obama leaves power. Obama could be the most trustworthy, honourable guy on earth, and maybe he won't use any of these powers improperly. But what about the next president? What about the one after that? How can you have such faith in all future governments?

On June 09 2013 04:16 Sermokala wrote:

pipelines are easy targets for environmentalists and no one wants a rail line built next to their house killing their house's value?

On June 09 2013 08:55 coverpunch wrote:

Now that's not true. Liberals had plenty of skepticism about big government when Bush was president. Remember the whole "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" thing?

On June 09 2013 08:55 coverpunch wrote:

Now that's not true. Liberals had plenty of skepticism about big government when Bush was president. Remember the whole "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" thing?

On June 09 2013 05:25 Souma wrote:


Because we live in this thing called a democracy/republic and can vote, can protest, etc. and have no unrealistic fears of the government using military power to oppress the entire populace in some kind of brutal way? It's not like everyone has to worry about the CIA sending a swat team into their house just because they're having impure thoughts or something.

I have no doubt that there will be idiots in every administration that cross the line, but just because they do does not mean it's the end of our freedoms, and as long as the population isn't entirely apathetic then such blunders will be kept at a level that can be dealt with. The government will never be perfect, but they don't need to be. They never have been, and that's fine.

On June 09 2013 10:04 ziggurat wrote:

Remember the old slogan about those who forget history? That's you my friend.

Welcome Home, 'Made in U.S.A.' on the Rise

Mitch Cahn is the owner and founder of Unionwear, an apparel and accessories maker—all exclusively made in the U.S. Despite years of panicked manufacturing headlines—Japan is making everything! No, It's China!—Cahn has kept his business open for 21 years and counting, all on American soil.

The company's first core customers were unions that wanted to support union wages and "Made in USA" goods. Then more recently, a new crop of customers began ringing Unionwear headquarters in Newark, N.J.

East Coast fashion designers—including those in NYC's garment district—were shopping for U.S.-based contract manufacturers. With labor costs in China rising and that country's own economy accelerating, small U.S. shop owners couldn't get the attention of overseas manufacturers. In an ironic twist, they couldn't afford a "Made in China" strategy....

And small shop manufacturers aren't just dusting off shuttered businesses, locked up after jobs moved to countries such as Japan in the 1970s. Young entrepreneurs are innovating from scratch, creating new online communities such as Maker's Row—and even turning to emerging platforms such as crowdfunding—to bankroll U.S. manufacturing operations. ...

Earlier this year, Walmart announced it will boost sourcing of U.S. products. And more American and Chinese consumers are willing to pay a 10 percent to 60 percent premium for "Made in USA" goods, according to BCG research released last fall.

Meanwhile, a shift in manufacturing away from China will begin to take hold around 2015, according to BCG forecasts. Rising labor prices there will create a ripple effect.

Certain industries—in which labor is a lower percentage of total product costs—are more likely to pack up overseas for North America, including Mexico, where labor costs are stable. Product categories likely to reshore first include appliances and electronics, transportation, machinery, plastics, furniture and chemicals, BCG's Sirkin said. ...

This week’s revelations about the extent of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities have prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to revisit its options related to a hard-fought, high-profile legal case it lost earlier this year.

The ACLU’s lawsuit, known as Amnesty et al. v. Clapper, was an attempt to challenge a 2008 law called the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which broadened the power of the NSA to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and emails. The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of a number of attorneys, human rights, labor, legal, and media organizations whose work involved sensitive and sometimes privileged telephone and e-mail communications with people located outside the United States.

The ACLU filed the suit almost immediately after President George W. Bush signed the FISA Amendments Act in to law in July 2008. The following summer, a district court judge in New York dismissed the suit on “standing” grounds, because the ACLU’s clients could not prove that their communications would be monitored under the new law. A federal appeals court reversed that ruling in 2011, and the Obama administration appealed the issue to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit in a 5-4 decision in February 2013, holding that the plaintiffs did not have the right to challenge the law.

The NSA’s practice of collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers was revealed by The Guardian on Wednesday. Then, on Thursday, The Washington Post reported that the NSA and the FBI are tapping into the central servers of nine major U.S. internet companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google.

“The recent disclosures raise serious questions about the government’s representation to the Supreme Court about the speculative nature of dragnet surveillance,” Brett Max Kaufman, a national security fellow with the ACLU’s National Security Project, told TPM. “And the ACLU is considering and researching the available options in terms of further action on the FAA. Throughout the Amnesty litigation, the ACLU consistently argued that a broad interpretation of the FAA would permit the government to conduct the very kind of surveillance that has been disclosed in the past few days, and the government was dismissive of the possibility.”

According to Kaufman, this week’s news demonstrates “how important legal issues like standing are, because they take away the ability of the American people to challenge the very kind of surveillance that we’ve learned about.”

Mark Rumold, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggested that the ACLU and its plaintiffs still had a tough fight when it came to standing.

On June 09 2013 13:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
*snicker* (source)

A Vermont marijuana legalization is making a wave in the headlines today, as the LA Times reported this Friday, June 7, that the state governor Peter Shumlin officially signed a bill this week that has made Vermont the 17th state in the country to no longer consider possession of minor amounts of marijuana a serious crime.

The new Vermont marijuana law signed into effect will instead decriminalize the carrying of pot, as people found with 1 oz. or less of weed will now only be given financial penalties (not that much different than receiving a driving ticket). Before this, however, carrying marijuana in Vermont of up to just two ounces was a major misdemeanor offense that could lead one up to six months in jail to two years for repeated charges.