US Politics Mega-thread - Page 296

On June 23 2013 12:16 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I don't want to be one of those conspiracy people but some events are too coincidental.



Source

On June 23 2013 18:47 balls516 wrote:
as long as all the information he has comes out it really doesnt matter where he ends up.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made a push Sunday for his fellow Republicans to get behind immigration reform, saying if it faills the GOP will be blamed and "our party is in trouble with Hispanics.

"As to the Republican Party, here is my firm belief, America is not divided on this, Graham said on Fox News Sunday. "Seventy percent of Americans including Republicans support an earned pathway to citizenship over a thirteen year period where you get in the back of the line, learn the language and pay a fine. So to the Republican Party this is a chance to improve our economy, reduce the deficit by $890 billion to get border security you will never see in your lifetime, to regain our sovereignty. And if it fails and we are blamed for its failure our party is in trouble with Hispanics, not because we are conservative but because of the rhetoric and the way we've handled this issue. I want to get reattached to the Hispanic community, sell conservatism pass comprehensive immigration reform and grow this party. The party has to be bigger than Utah and South Carolina. The Hispanic community is very close to our values but we have driven them away over this issue. Let's fix the problem for the good of the country and the good of the party. This bill does that."

On June 23 2013 12:05 oneofthem wrote:
scientific models are replaced by better scientific models that are backwards compatible and account for past facts. this is different from a model being wrong, and it doesn't support skepticism about science in general.

basically it's not about proving current science wrong, distrusting it etc. it's about doing better science and overriding the current theories after you have developed better ones.

Trade deal would benefit US more than EU, Ifo study finds

The US would gain more than the EU from a transatlantic trade deal, according to a study to be released on Monday.
Its report concludes that a transatlantic agreement would reduce trade flows within Europe and damage many developing countries.

Economists at the Munich-based Ifo institute, a German economic think-tank, found that a trade deal would lead to a 13.4 per cent increase in US income per head in real terms over the “long term” but only an average 5 per cent rise among the EU’s 27 member states. ...

On June 24 2013 06:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Link

Full study, here.

I hope it goes through and that it's as comprehensive as possible. There's been push back from European countries that want a better deal (ex. France wants exemptions on "cultural products"). However, Europe currently needs an economic boost more than the US so now's the time to ink a deal.

On June 24 2013 06:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Link

Full study, here.

I hope it goes through and that it's as comprehensive as possible. There's been push back from European countries that want a better deal (ex. France wants exemptions on "cultural products"). However, Europe currently needs an economic boost more than the US so now's the time to ink a deal.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, host David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story of the NSA’s massive spying program, whether he should be charged with a crime if he had helped source Edward Snowden.

“To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” Gregory asked at the end of their conversation.

Greenwald replied that it was “pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies,” and that there was no evidence to support Gregory’s claim that he had “aided” Snowden.

Gregory responded by saying there are questions as to whether Greenwald is a journalist “with regard to what you’re doing,” but he didn’t say what those questions were. He added that he was merely posing a question, not “embracing anything.”

After the exchange, Greenwald tweeted: “Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?” Others wondered whether Gregory would have asked the same of Neil Sheehan, the New York Times writer who published the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s.

The Guardian journalist was on the show to discuss his source’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday morning.

On June 24 2013 05:18 Shiori wrote:

This is kinda like what I'm saying. It's unlikely that we're gonna have theories which pass peer review and obey the scientific method which are completely invalidated by new evidence. At best, we'll find some exception or revolutionary data that causes us to expand our theory to account for that evidence. All the results that were true beforehand wouldn't just stop being true.

Alchemy never really worked afaik. Most of what we've taken from it are scientific instruments. But I could be wrong. Plus, alchemy predated the scientific method/peer review anyhow.

The Supreme Court sided with big corporations Thursday when it ruled 5-3 that companies can write contracts that force small businesses to challenge monopolistic practices on an unaffordable individual arbitration basis rather than through class-action lawsuits, effectively killing the ability of small businesses to defend themselves in court against larger predatory ones.

In the case, called American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant, the eatery and a group of other small businesses alleging antitrust violations by the credit card giant banded together in a class-action suit to make their cause valuable enough to attract a lawyer. They alleged that American Express “used its monopoly power to force them to accept its bank-issued knock-off credit cards as a condition of taking regular, more elite American Express cards—and then [charged] them 30 percent higher fees for the privilege,” reports Stephanie Mencimer in Mother Jones.

In response, American Express referred to the small print in its contract with the businesses, which blocked the companies from suing both individually and together. The credit card company insisted each business had to submit its claim to a private arbitrator employed by American Express.

The merchants figured that the process would cost each of them $1 million to collect a maximum possible amount of $38,000. The small businesses pressed forward with their case and prevailed in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the arbitration clause referred to by American Express “was unconscionable because it prevented the plaintiffs from having their claims heard in any forum,” Mencimer writes.

However, the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority is ever the protector of big business, “has made class action litigation much harder to bring, mostly notably in 2011 when it struck down a huge sex discrimination case brought by 1.5 million women working at Walmart,” Mencimer continues.

An amicus brief submitted in the case on behalf of the small businesses, by lawyers for AARP, Public Justice, and the American Association for Justice warned that if the court sided with American Express, “statutes intended by Congress to protect weaker parties against stronger parties will essentially be gutted. Small businesses might as well move to a different country where they no longer enjoy the protection of the antitrust laws. At the whim of an employer, workers could be required to prospectively waive their Title VII [anti-discrimination] rights. Consumer protection laws such as the Truth in Lending Act could be silently, but inescapably, repealed by corporations with the stroke of a pen.”

The decision could have bad consequences for all types of institutions and individuals. Mencimer writes: “[I]f the court ruled that Amex could use an arbitration clause in a contract with a much less powerful party to escape punishment under” an existing antitrust act, “there’s no reason why a big company couldn’t create contracts that prevent people from filing sex discrimination, consumer fraud, or other similar claims in any venue. Laws that Congress passed to protect the public could simply be voided through artfully written arbitration clauses that create expensive hurdles to pressing a claim.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in the case, wasn’t impressed. He said the law is not obligated to make court action affordable to all parties. He agreed that “if a big company breaks the law and screws you, but you signed a contract with an arbitration clause giving away your right to sue or bring class action, you don’t have a case, even if federal law says you do.”

Justice Clarence Thomas concurred. He said Italian Colors voluntarily entered into its agreement with American Express. But, as Mencimer points out, “anyone who’s ever tried to open a bank account knows it’s virtually impossible to engage in commerce these days without being forced to sign a contract in which you forgo your right to sue the company if it rips you off.”

Justice Elena Kagan gets this point. In her biting dissent aimed squarely at Scalia, she called the majority opinion a “betrayal of our precedents and of federal statutes like antitrust laws.” She observed that the court would never uphold an arbitration agreement that explicitly banned merchants from bringing an antitrust claim, yet that’s effectively what the Amex contract does by compelling merchants to give up the option of class actions in court. She noted that by ignoring several precedents, the majority is providing companies “every incentive to draft their agreements to extract backdoor waivers of statutory rights.” That is, they will use contracts to immunize themselves from laws they don’t like.

Kagan was blunt: “If the arbitration clause is enforceable, Amex has insulated itself from antitrust liability—even if it has in fact violated the law. The monopolist gets to use its monopoly power to insist on a contract effectively depriving its victims of all legal recourse. And here is the nutshell version of today’s opinion, admirably flaunted rather than camouflaged: Too darn bad.”

He said the law is not obligated to make court action affordable to all parties

even if federal law says you do

On June 24 2013 09:12 Gorsameth wrote:
ah America .....

. Except you know the whole system works on the basis that anyone should be able to sue if there is legitimate reason.

. So what is the point of laws if we can arbitrary break them because of contract.

Why cant a doctor kill me if i sign a paper yet a company can do anything it wants so long as i sign.

How the hell do people like this get appointed to the supreme court when this very decision undermines everything that law stands for.