US Politics Mega-thread - Page 313

On July 03 2013 09:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

So another key component of the ACA gets delayed... what a mess. Will there be a delay on the individual mandate too? Or is the delay just for businesses?

The “border surge” addition to the Senate Gang of Eight immigration bill would cut the rate of illegal immigration to the United States by as much as 50 percent, according to a congressional analysis released Wednesday.

The original version of the Gang’s bill would reduce illegal immigration by 25 percent compared to what would happen under the status quo. But the “border surge” amendment, written by Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) would lower that anywhere between one-third and one-half of the current rate.

But the CBO also had this caveat: The drop in illegal immigration would not come right away.

“It would take several years before [the Department of Homeland Security] could hire the full number of Border Patrol agents called for in the act,” the CBO wrote in its analysis.

The CBO also said Wednesday that the Senate immigration bill would still slash the deficit by billions of dollars over two decades. The legislation would cut the deficit in the first 10 years by $135 billion, once the cost of implementing the bill is accounted for. In the second 10 years, the deficit would be cut by an additional $685 billion.

Those are lower figures than what the CBO initially reported, which was an estimated $175 billion over the first 10 years and $700 billion over the second 10 years. The revised numbers take into account the cost of the border surge, which the CBO says totals roughly $38 billion.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the leader of the Gang of Eight, noted Wednesday that the border surge “further substantially” cut the rate of future illegal immigration, but said the CBO’s methodology “underestimates” the actual figures.

Still, “CBO once again vindicated immigration reform and shows how the amendment process improved the bill,” Schumer said in a statement. “CBO has reaffirmed that immigration reform reduces the debt and grows the economy.”

But critics of the Senate bill said Wednesday that the CBO’s calculations proved the legislation doesn’t go far enough to deter illegal immigration.

“Now CBO says that the Senate bill with all its promises about extra enforcement would still allow half the illegal immigration flow to continue,” Roy Beck, the executive director of NumbersUSA, said in a statement. “This CBO finding suggests that by 2020 the illegal population will have grown big enough that presidential candidates will once again be pressed to promise yet another amnesty to ‘fix a broken immigration system.’”

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/immigration-bill-border-surge-93704.html?hp=l1

A poll released late last month by a Democratic firm found that a slight majority of Texans are against the anti-abortion measure being pushed by Republican lawmakers in the state and an even larger majority think the special legislative session should focus on matters other than social issues.

The findings from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research found that 51 percent of Texas are opposed to a "proposal would put in place new restrictions and regulations on abortion providers that would likely result in the closure of all but five abortion clinics in the state of Texas, all of which are located along the I-35 corridor, and would ban most abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy" — provisions that describe the bill likely to pass the legislature during the latest special session called by Gov. Rick Perry (R). Forty-two percent support the proposal.

But a huge majority of 80 percent agreed with the following statement read by the pollsters: "A special session of the legislature should focus on issues like education, jobs, and the economy, instead of bringing up social issues like abortion that were already addressed in the regular session of the legislature."

A survey released Tuesday by Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling found that 52 percent of Texas voters were not sure about "Senate Bill 5," the official title of the legislature that was filibustered by state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) last week. Unlike Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, PPP did not describe the terms of the bill.

On July 03 2013 14:36 coverpunch wrote:

Looking at the "mind is all chemicals and physics" thread, it would seem that life begins at conception. There's no clearer line in the sand than that scientifically. But if you're going to go down that road, there's not a scientifically compelling reason why an individual life is sacred.

But my real response is what do Republicans get out of this? Is this another horse to trade? Do they score points with social conservatives and galvanize the base against liberals? Is this just a kick to remind themselves they're not dead after the gay marriage rulings last week?

It's not going to pass, that's for sure. Even if by some miracle it got through Congress, President Obama would probably relish this particular veto.

On July 03 2013 09:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

So another key component of the ACA gets delayed... what a mess. Will there be a delay on the individual mandate too? Or is the delay just for businesses?

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) readies to announce "exciting future plans" on Monday, some Texas residents appear to have no interest in a 2016 presidential run being a part of that news.

A Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey released Wednesday finds that Lone Star State voters are more interested in seeing Sen. Ted Cruz (R) run than a Perry redux. Of 500 registered voters asked, including 318 Republicans, 27 percent selected Cruz as their top choice, followed by 15 percent for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and 11 percent for current Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).

Perry finished a distant sixth on that question, at 7 percent. Perhaps the most glaring number for the governor was 74 percent going against the idea of him running in 2016 altogether.

The Democratic-leaning PPP conducted a similar survey in January, which netted equally bleak results for Perry. Nearly eight in ten Republicans advised against a 2016 run back then.

On July 03 2013 12:58 aksfjh wrote:

Dibs on natural resources mainly.

On July 03 2013 13:44 Feartheguru wrote:


You have a very poor understanding of how the world works. Most countries cannot process their natural resources economically, heck Canada can't even process it's own oil feasibly. Having good relationships with poor countries lead to resource processing contracts, engineering project contracts etc. which are big money. Plus access to rare earth metals that China has a near monopoly on.

On July 03 2013 14:36 coverpunch wrote:

But my real response is what do Republicans get out of this? Is this another horse to trade? Do they score points with social conservatives and galvanize the base against liberals? Is this just a kick to remind themselves they're not dead after the gay marriage rulings last week?

It's not going to pass, that's for sure. Even if by some miracle it got through Congress, President Obama would probably relish this particular veto.

ATLANTA (AP) — When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights act last week, it handed Republicans tough questions with no easy answers over how, and where, to attract voters even GOP leaders say the party needs to stay nationally competitive.

The decision caught Republicans between newfound state autonomy that conservatives covet and the law’s popularity among minority, young and poor voters who tend to align with Democrats. It’s those voters that Republicans are eyeing to expand and invigorate the GOP’s core of older, white Americans.

National GOP Chairman Reince Priebus began that effort well before the court’s decision by promising, among other initiatives, to hire non-white party activists to engage directly with black and Latino voters. Yet state and national Republicans reacted to the Voting Rights Act decision with a flurry of activity and comments that may not fit neatly into the national party’s vision.

Congressional leaders must decide whether to try to rewrite the provision the court struck, but it’s not clear how such an effort would fare in the Democratic-led Senate and the GOP-controlled House. And at the state level, elected Republicans are enacting tighter voting restrictions that Democrats blast as harmful to their traditional base of supporters and groups the Republicans say they want to attract.

States like North Carolina and Virginia provide apt examples of the potential fallout. An influx of non-whites have turned those Republican strongholds into battlegrounds in the last two presidential elections, and minority voters helped President Barack Obama win both states in 2008 and Virginia again in 2012. Nationally, Republican Mitt Romney lost among African-Americans by about 85 percentage points and Latinos by about 44 percentage points, margins that virtually ensure a Democratic victory.

Yet presidential math doesn’t necessarily motivate Republicans who control statehouses and congressional districts in states most affected by the Voting Rights Act. Core GOP supporters in the region react favorably to voter identification laws and broad-based critiques of federal authority.

Gov. Rick Perry (R) likes to argue that America has no need for new gun control laws. A poll released Wednesday found that most voters in his home state of Texas have a different view.

The survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling found that 72 percent of Texas voters support “requiring background checks for all gun sales, including gun shows and the Internet,” while only 22 percent are opposed.

PPP has taken the lead in gauging the political fallout from the Senate’s failure in April to pass legislation that would have expanded background checks. The background check legislation, co-authored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), fizzled with only four Republican senators voting “yes” and four red state Democrats voting “no.”

Since the legislation went down, PPP found that some members — namely Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) — suffered a huge public backlash at home for their opposition to background checks, while red state Democrats who supported the measure, like Sens. Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA), actually drew a boost following their votes.

Along with South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R), Perry traveled to Connecticut last month to court gun makers that have threatened to leave over the state’s new gun control measures, which include restrictions on high-capacity magazines and the nation’s first dangerous weapon offender registry. Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (D) signed the reforms into law in April, nearly four months after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.

On July 05 2013 16:09 Danglars wrote:
There seems to be a purposeful conflation of two topics in gun control. Pushing for expanded background checks and pushing for limits on magazine size and military-style weapons. The legislation considered in the Senate started amid great cries for limiting the availability of guns like the Bushmaster AR-15 and extending that to other guns with specific features and high magazine sizes. The whimper that came after not enough votes were found was in the form of reducing it to just background check changes, to enable Democrats to still come away with a feather in their cap instead of a complete defeat. A salvage operation, if you will.

Pretending afterward that it was some innocent background check alteration and expansion is disingenuous. Americans can poll well, because background checks exist now and any expansion seems harmless, and simultaneously any pushes on legislation in the Senate can involve a number of other unpolled issues that forces red-state congressmen to oppose the bill. Also, way to go Perry in selling his state's freer regulations to manufacturers forced to conduct business elsewhere. That competition between states to attract business interests have been so instrumental in showing how damaging laws can be to state economies.

Job Growth Posts Large Gain in June; Rate Holds

U.S. job growth accelerated in June thanks to a big jump in hospitality and service workers, according to a report that is likely to trigger more debate about how aggressively the Federal Reserve will begin pulling back on monetary easing.

Unemployment steadied at 7.6 percent for the month, as nonfarm payrolls grew by 195,000, according to a closely watched Labor Department report Friday. Economists expected 165,000 more jobs and a decline in the unemployment rate to 7.5 percent. ...

Revisions pushed previous months' reports considerably higher: April's tally rose 50,000 to 199,000, while the May count grew 20,000 to 195,000.

On July 06 2013 00:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Link

Very good numbers.

On July 06 2013 04:01 aksfjh wrote:

Still awful numbers. At this rate, we'll reach full employment (figuring in underemployed) in a decade. But we're not going into another recession, so I guess that's cause for celebration...

On July 06 2013 04:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Oh, don't be such a downer. Best Jan - June job growth of the recovery with room for more upward revisions and no signs of a summer slowdown. We may actually get that pickup in second half growth this time around.

On July 06 2013 04:35 Phelix wrote:

Well, in the article, it says that the majority of the gains were in the hospitality industry (bartenders and waitresses), so it's not like these are stable, high-paying jobs that workers would most likely want after school for the younger generation. Instead, it's more of the temp-work, service industry jobs that serve as an gap for those higher-paying jobs.

Also, no one knows how much unemployment will increase and the effects of said unemployment will be once QE3 has a definite signal to an end (investors are reading Bernanke saying that QE3 will be speculated to end in late 2014); after all, months of 85 billion dollars being pumped into the economy must have had a positive effect in the economy.

On July 06 2013 05:26 Rassy wrote:
The 85 billions a month was not pumped into the economy.
The monney was used to buy mortgage backed securitys and bonds on the market and off the counter, this to allow a few selected big bond and mbs holders to sell their holdings at record heights before they would crash due to the rising interest.
It was a 85b/month (1 trillion totall) hand out to the rich/banks/investment funds for wich the whole country will pay due to inflation.
My guess is 3 years tops till this monney has made its way into the normal economy and inflation will rise to 5% and maybe more.

It would be interesting to see how much profit/loss the fed has on these securitys wich where purchased with printed monney, my guess is a loss of at least 10% in 1 year from now. But i think these figures will never become public.