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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On February 04 2016 11:12 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2016 09:12 IgnE wrote:On February 04 2016 06:08 cLutZ wrote:On February 04 2016 05:47 Nyxisto wrote:On February 04 2016 05:43 cLutZ wrote: Sure, but that just results in a change in the value of property, aka a capital loss for the owners of the now, higher taxed land. In the future, people will simply buy something else to preserve their money, they bought that property because it was a good deal (which includes the cost of taxes). Well then they should go buy something else, if they're not doing anything with it that's their loss. It's completely perverted to treat a city, which is a real place where people are supposed to work and life as some kind of bank-deposit box. It doesn't really matter if capital flows out of a city if the capital is only virtual and doesn't actually produce any kind of real benefit. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/planners-must-take-back-control-of-london Look, I don't mind your social argument, I am just explaining that your proposal wouldn't do what you think (aside from freeing up some space for workers to live), and tangentially explaining that the reason they invest that way is because that is what the government has incentivized them to do (through taxes and other policies). So, you are basically saying "the government was wrong, we should incentivize them to keep money in other ways." Which is mostly correct, downtown lofts should not be a great investment, but governments like it because (as you said) its really easy to tax and control real estate. I'm not sure what you thought he thought it would do, but freeing the city from real estate speculators is an important goal for the city and the people who live in it. "They will just put their money elsewhere" is kind of a dumb non sequitur. He said it was a very useful wealth tax. So, bringing up the advantages of stopping high value real estate speculation was the non-sequitur (although a fine point). The problem I have with bringing up that point is that its basically feigning ignorance about why people think city property values will always be going up, which is because of lack of development caused by zoning regs, rent controls, and uncertain permitting processes. Also its because they don't trust their own governments in Russia, China, Qatar, etc so they park it here, and we don't just let them park piles of gold in a secure fashion. Its a bit of a ridiculous way to solve a problem...that has really obvious other causes.
Sure.
But, it's a fine way to solve another problem.
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The Justice Department has named a veteran prosecutor from Philadelphia as the new leader of its pardon office, which is trying to review more than 9,000 petitions in the final year of the Obama presidency.
Robert Zauzmer, 55, has worked since 1990 at the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Justice Department leaders said Zauzmer represented a "natural choice" for the pardon job, in part because of his experience training prosecutors all over the country in how to evaluate prisoners' requests for early release.
"There were many occasions over the years where I saw these sentences of 20, 30 years, life imprisonment imposed on low-level offenders based on mandatory sentencing laws that troubled me," Zauzmer told NPR in an interview this week.
"Prosecutors are very knowledgeable about these cases and about the laws and about the need to do justice," he added. "They are passionate about this, and they are dedicated to doing the right thing and correcting any erroneous sentences that need to be corrected, and I am equally passionate about it."
His first task? Making sure that thousands of prisoner petitions are reviewed and worthy candidates are forwarded to the White House for action before the end of the Obama presidency, whether the applications come from trained lawyers or from inmates themselves.
Source
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anyone watching the townhall? there was a super random zoom in on clinton's face lmao
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your Country52797 Posts
On February 04 2016 12:13 ticklishmusic wrote: anyone watching the townhall? there was a super random zoom in on clinton's face lmao Not currently, how has it been going?
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i just tuned in at the end of Bernie's. I think the questions from the audience are pretty solid, Hillary seems a little off honestly like she doesn't have super set down answers to questions (which I think are kind of complicated) and is thinking them through and trying to give an answer that isn't too policy-paperish.
Actually, she had a good one (softball I guess):
Q: How are you gonna defend yourself against rightwing attacks? A: I've had a lot of practice
So a few thoughts: -Bernie supporters are fucking toxic. Present company excluded. That Reddit thread makes some of my LoL games look like civilized discussion. -I liked Hillary's answer about not trying to label who is progressive and who isn't and focusing on ideas -Didn't see much of Sanders' piece, but from the transcript he definitely had easier questions -Bernie had better rapport with the audience -Hillary warmed up as she went on, lots of rambling but made some pretty good points
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If, by easier questions, you mean "why are you a socialist hurrrrduurrrr???" wasn't asked, then yea, I guess he had easier questions. I thought the moderating was relatively fair overall to both candidates.
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On February 04 2016 14:33 darthfoley wrote: If, by easier questions, you mean "why are you a socialist hurrrrduurrrr???" wasn't asked, then yea, I guess he had easier questions. I thought the moderating was relatively fair overall to both candidates.
Yeah I think AC was pretty fair, there were some softballs for both though.
Always curious how the audience is selected. Surely more than 200 people wanted in, but who gets in?
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Hillary the "Progressive" links Heroin deaths to Marijuana. Also doesn't regret speaking to Goldman Sachs, I look forward to her campaign releasing the transcripts.
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So Rubio's already under attack for being a 1 term Senator with no accomplishments. Sounds like the establishment lane is going to remain clogged for a while.
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If Rubio places third behind Trump and Cruz in NH the establishment lane will unclog pretty quickly. Bush, Christie, and Kasich have essentially bet everything on NH, so if they lose to Rubio they're basically finished.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
investment banking is regularly relied on for expertise and 'real talk' by fed policy makers. don't really see why hillary should be castigated for talking to them. would also depend on what they are talking about. banking regulation or just general future forecast on what sectors will do well.
by the by link fixed
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Could you fix that link, please?
Thanks for fixing, interesting read.
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On February 04 2016 23:29 oneofthem wrote:investment banking is regularly relied on for expertise and 'real talk' by fed policy makers. don't really see why hillary should be castigated for talking to them. would also depend on what they are talking about. banking regulation or just general future forecast on what sectors will do well. by the by link fixed
She didn't have a conversation with them she gave a paid speech. (basically if you want to pay off a politician you pay them to speak at your event....you don't care what they have to say you just want to let them know you are giving them money.)
Good link... having an actual free market is definitely more important than capitalism itself.
Although the graph looks like "the mean" isn't far off from what it is (basically Most of the time there are these high margins....and every so often they collapse for a year or 2, but ~80% of the time it is relatively high)
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Let's be real, most of us would take 250K from GS to talk in a heartbeat 
Anyways, Clinton doesn't really care about 600K. She expects to be paid because her time is valuable, but money is not really going to be a huge part in her decision. If she slaps down regulation on banks, is she gonna be like "oh no I won't get 200K gigs from GS anymore?". Not really. She may have been broke when she left the White House, but there are so many ways for her to get money that a few hundred thousand is a drop diluted in an ocean. There's no denying the optics aren't great, but the media is playing it up a lot more than it needs to be, but hey that's the media. Her and the Clinton Foundation get much bigger chunks of money from other sources, but no one ever says she's in the pocked of Bill Gates because they gave the Clinton Foundation 25M.
+ Show Spoiler +I have some friends at GS and other banks (and a lot of people I dislike work in IB as well) and this is how they get famous people to speak. There's an event, let's say a women in leadership thing for newly promoted female VP's (so they've survived 3 years as analysts). A MD or other exec serves on a nonprofit board with Hillary or is her friend or something. He/she called Hillary up and says "want to talk about your leadership to a group of young women?". Hillary says yes or no, then they tell their staff to sort out the dates, amount of honoraria, etc.
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On February 05 2016 01:26 ticklishmusic wrote:Let's be real, most of us would take 250K from GS to talk in a heartbeat  Anyways, Clinton doesn't really care about 600K. She expects to be paid because her time is valuable, but money is not really going to be a huge part in her decision. If she slaps down regulation on banks, is she gonna be like "oh no I won't get 200K gigs from GS anymore?". Not really. She may have been broke when she left the White House, but there are so many ways for her to get money that a few hundred thousand is a drop diluted in an ocean. There's no denying the optics aren't great, but the media is playing it up a lot more than it needs to be, but hey that's the media. Her and the Clinton Foundation get much bigger chunks of money from other sources, but no one ever says she's in the pocked of Bill Gates because they gave the Clinton Foundation 25M. + Show Spoiler +I have some friends at GS and other banks (and a lot of people I dislike work in IB as well) and this is how they get famous people to speak. There's an event, let's say a women in leadership thing for newly promoted female VP's (so they've survived 3 years as analysts). A MD or other exec serves on a nonprofit board with Hillary or is her friend or something. He/she called Hillary up and says "want to talk about your leadership to a group of young women?". Hillary says yes or no, then they tell their staff to sort out the dates, amount of honoraria, etc.
Well I doubt she is totally 'in their pocket', but the money was spent to influence her. It influences who Hillary knows well enough to talk to about things(access). Optics are also important. Would you accept 200K to speak at a KKK meeting, or NAMBLA? (Severe examples because we are not in politics and so the optics matter less to us)
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On February 05 2016 01:26 ticklishmusic wrote:Let's be real, most of us would take 250K from GS to talk in a heartbeat  Anyways, Clinton doesn't really care about 600K. She expects to be paid because her time is valuable, but money is not really going to be a huge part in her decision. If she slaps down regulation on banks, is she gonna be like "oh no I won't get 200K gigs from GS anymore?". Not really. She may have been broke when she left the White House, but there are so many ways for her to get money that a few hundred thousand is a drop diluted in an ocean. There's no denying the optics aren't great, but the media is playing it up a lot more than it needs to be, but hey that's the media. Her and the Clinton Foundation get much bigger chunks of money from other sources, but no one ever says she's in the pocked of Bill Gates because they gave the Clinton Foundation 25M. + Show Spoiler +I have some friends at GS and other banks (and a lot of people I dislike work in IB as well) and this is how they get famous people to speak. There's an event, let's say a women in leadership thing for newly promoted female VP's (so they've survived 3 years as analysts). A MD or other exec serves on a nonprofit board with Hillary or is her friend or something. He/she called Hillary up and says "want to talk about your leadership to a group of young women?". Hillary says yes or no, then they tell their staff to sort out the dates, amount of honoraria, etc.
I fully understand why it would cost a lot of money to get a famous person to speak to a group of people, regardless of the target audience. That's not so much a problem for me (I mean, it's still a fucking absurd amount of money, but whatever). But for me, in order for our political system to change, the incentive/funding structure needs an entire overhaul.
It's not that I think Hillary will say "oh no I won't get their money anymore". It's more the concern that those who have given her (and other politicians, this is not a problem unique to her) massive sums of money for whatever reason will have their opinions and input weighted much more heavily than those who haven't given remotely comparable funds. It's not like this is a secret - it's a widely acknowledged aspect of our political system that lobbying and virtually unlimited campaign contributions tip the scales disproportionately in one direction.
The fact that she can just shrug off $600k is one thing. What bothers me more is that of any of the candidates on either side, she's the one saying she'll fix the broken system while simultaneously reaping every benefit she can from it.
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On February 05 2016 01:39 jcarlsoniv wrote:The fact that she can just shrug off $600k is one thing. What disgusts me more is that, of any of the candidates on either side, she's the one saying she'll fix the broken system while simultaneously reaping every benefit she can from it. And herein lies the problem with Hillary trying to co-opt Bernie's positions: she comes across as a total hypocrite.
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On February 04 2016 23:29 oneofthem wrote:investment banking is regularly relied on for expertise and 'real talk' by fed policy makers. don't really see why hillary should be castigated for talking to them. would also depend on what they are talking about. banking regulation or just general future forecast on what sectors will do well. by the by link fixed Capitalism or the form of capitalism which we have now? At the moment it heavily favours multinationals over SMEs. That's more due to the complexity of regulation and it not being up to date to a globalised world.
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On February 05 2016 01:39 jcarlsoniv wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2016 01:26 ticklishmusic wrote:Let's be real, most of us would take 250K from GS to talk in a heartbeat  Anyways, Clinton doesn't really care about 600K. She expects to be paid because her time is valuable, but money is not really going to be a huge part in her decision. If she slaps down regulation on banks, is she gonna be like "oh no I won't get 200K gigs from GS anymore?". Not really. She may have been broke when she left the White House, but there are so many ways for her to get money that a few hundred thousand is a drop diluted in an ocean. There's no denying the optics aren't great, but the media is playing it up a lot more than it needs to be, but hey that's the media. Her and the Clinton Foundation get much bigger chunks of money from other sources, but no one ever says she's in the pocked of Bill Gates because they gave the Clinton Foundation 25M. + Show Spoiler +I have some friends at GS and other banks (and a lot of people I dislike work in IB as well) and this is how they get famous people to speak. There's an event, let's say a women in leadership thing for newly promoted female VP's (so they've survived 3 years as analysts). A MD or other exec serves on a nonprofit board with Hillary or is her friend or something. He/she called Hillary up and says "want to talk about your leadership to a group of young women?". Hillary says yes or no, then they tell their staff to sort out the dates, amount of honoraria, etc. I fully understand why it would cost a lot of money to get a famous person to speak to a group of people, regardless of the target audience. That's not so much a problem for me (I mean, it's still a fucking absurd amount of money, but whatever). But for me, in order for our political system to change, the incentive/funding structure needs an entire overhaul. It's not that I think Hillary will say "oh no I won't get their money anymore". It's more the concern that those who have given her (and other politicians, this is not a problem unique to her) massive sums of money for whatever reason will have their opinions and input weighted much more heavily than those who haven't given remotely comparable funds. It's not like this is a secret - it's a widely acknowledged aspect of our political system that lobbying and virtually unlimited campaign contributions tip the scales disproportionately in one direction. The fact that she can just shrug off $600k is one thing. What bothers me more is that of any of the candidates on either side, she's the one saying she'll fix the broken system while simultaneously reaping every benefit she can from it.
Senator Dodd and Obama were up to their asses in donations from Wall Street. Senator Dodd and President Obama voted/signed into law Dodd-Frank which has successfully caused megacorps to divest their riskier wings to avoid designation as being a SIFI (systemically important financial institution) [see GE divesting GE Capital].
My point is, get over hypocrisy arguments. The rich and the powerful run this country (as they always have and always will). If you want to change things, you need to play in the realm of the rich and the powerful (have you seen the people the Republican primary candidates hang out with and rely on for their big donations?). The Democrats have a record of actually doing something about Wall Street (Dodd-Frank and the Holder DOJ suing and getting money from practically all of the megabanks). Compare this to the Republicans who are actively running on repealing Dodd-Frank and bringing us right back to 2008.
// More on Dodd-Frank from KThug: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/half-a-loaf-financial-reform-edition/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body
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People can complain about hypocrisy of trying to limit the amount of money in politics while accepting it, but it’s the game now. We don’t’ have state media. We don’t regulate the number of ads someone can buy. We don’t regulate much of the process of communication to voters. We barely regulate the requirements for third party to purchase a political ad or what happens if that third party commits fraud.
So expecting a candidate to hamstring themselves and also run isn’t that viable. Of course there are the Sanders of the world, but he is going to have to work with the democratic party if he gets the nomination and they take money from banks.
There is a problem with money an influence in the political process in the US that goes beyond free speech. It gets into “elections for media profit” and the volume of third parties eclipsing the candidates themselves. But to fix it, people gotta get elected. I would rather someone be up front about taking money from a bank than slipping it behind some third party because they are worried I won’t approve. People need to have a more nuanced opinion than “any money from big companies is bad, only no money from big companies is good.”
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