US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3226

For weeks, the labels have hung over Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign like dirty laundry: Deceitful. Cynical. Willing to do anything to win.

The attacks from Mr. Cruz’s Republican rivals have challenged his core campaign promises of integrity and conservative purity, cresting on Monday when he dismissed his communications director, Rick Tyler, for spreading a misleading video about Marco Rubio’s views on the Bible.

“There is a culture in the Cruz campaign, from top to bottom,” a Rubio spokesman, Alex Conant, said, “that no lie is too big and no trick too dirty.”

The episode threatened to tarnish Mr. Cruz’s brand. But not his campaign manager’s.

As Mr. Cruz has elbowed into the top tier of candidates, his campaign has reflected the brand of its principal architect: Jeff Roe, an operative with a reputation for scorching earth, stretching truths and winning elections.

“When you win campaigns,” Mr. Cruz said last month of the man he hired, “the people that lose tend to be unhappy about it.”

On March 09 2016 00:46 Falling wrote:
I honestly wouldn't take away from Trump's acumen. It is simply is not the case that an inheritor of great wealth will necessarily be able to turn around and maintain the wealth, never mind turn it into something greater. I don't know how true it is, but I've seen several articles claim that the majority of wealthy families (new money) lose it by the second, but certainly by the third generation. The articles then speculate one what those other families were doing right. But new money can very often have the first generation that are hard working and with good business sense, but the next two generations waste it all away, maybe on high/ wasteful living or else simply bad business enterprises. But Trump expanding what he was given... that should never be a line of attack on him, in my opinion. Sure he had a big step up that I will never have. But he DID something with it. And that's the point.

The FBI has quietly revised its privacy rules for searching data involving Americans’ international communications that was collected by the National Security Agency, US officials have confirmed to the Guardian.

The classified revisions were accepted by the secret US court that governs surveillance, during its annual recertification of the agencies’ broad surveillance powers. The new rules affect a set of powers colloquially known as Section 702, the portion of the law that authorizes the NSA’s sweeping “Prism” program to collect internet data. Section 702 falls under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), and is a provision set to expire later this year.

A government civil liberties watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Group (PCLOB), alluded to the change in its recent overview of ongoing surveillance practices.

The watchdog confirmed in a 2014 report that the FBI is allowed direct access to the NSA’s massive collections of international emails, texts and phone calls – which often include Americans on one end of the conversation. The activists also expressed concern that the FBI’s “minimization” rules, for removing or limiting sensitive data that could identify Americans, did not reflect the bureau’s easy access to the NSA’s collected international communications.

FBI officials can search through the data, using Americans’ identifying information, for what PCLOB called “routine” queries unrelated to national security. The oversight group recommended more safeguards around “the FBI’s use and dissemination of Section 702 data in connection with non-foreign intelligence criminal matters”.

As of 2014, the FBI was not even required to make note of when it searched the metadata, which includes the “to” or “from” lines of an email. Nor does it record how many of its data searches involve Americans’ identifying details – a practice that apparently continued through 2015, based on documents released last February. The PCLOB called such searches “substantial”, since the FBI keeps NSA-collected data with the information it acquires through more traditional means, such as individualized warrants.

On March 09 2016 02:29 KwarK wrote:
Zuckerberg's daughter is going to be fine. If someone has a billion dollars and only gives you a million you're still way richer than someone who is left every penny of a 100k inheritance.

On March 09 2016 02:57 GreenHorizons wrote:
It takes ~$10m inheritance and a pulse to make more than most American's make working hard.

Staying rich is about as impressive as not forgetting to breathe.

The most viable line of attack around his business practices is that he's a fraud, but one must remember the Greenspan minded folks don't exactly believe what he did was really fraud.

Ted Cruz is threatening to make one of the biggest gambles of the 2016 season: diving into Florida to knock off Marco Rubio.

Cruz has little chance of winning the March 15 Florida primary, but he’s showing signs he might compete by opening field offices and sending surrogates to stump in the state while his super PAC prepares to strafe Marco Rubio with a seven-figure ad buy.

The aim: pull enough voters away from Rubio to ensure Donald Trump wins the state’s 99 delegates and deny the Florida senator any pick-up opportunity elsewhere by forcing him to defend his turf. Doing that gives Trump a bigger lead in delegates, but it means Cruz has calculated he can catch up.

“Cruz thinks he can do well against Trump in a head-to-head race. And he needs to kill Rubio to do it,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, whose survey released showed Trump leading Rubio 38 percent to 30 among Florida Republicans.

Whether it’s an elaborate headfake or expert play to kill off a rival 2016 contender, the Texan aims to force Rubio to spend more time and money defending his home turf, freeing up Cruz to more easily compete for delegates in eight states and U.S. territories that hold contests between Tuesday and Saturday.

But the strategy is risky. Cruz doesn’t want Trump to get too strong, and he needs to pad his delegate count on March 15 too. Attention paid to Florida cuts into resources available in places where Cruz could have more clear-cut opportunities to win delegates, including in conservative North Carolina, which awards delegates proportionally, and Missouri, which employs a hybrid method.

And at this point, every delegate counts.

On March 09 2016 02:59 KwarK wrote:
Median income is 30k. If we assume that living expenses are at least 20k then a married couple working for an entire lifespan together could maybe get up to a mil (inflation adjusted) with compounding returns.

On March 09 2016 03:12 Nyxisto wrote:
The stories about rich guys going broke left and right is mainly soccer stars who are twenty two and insane when it comes to money or businesses which is only natural, they lose a lot of money from time to time. If we're talking about private property in real estate or blue chips it's really quite impossible to end up poor.

On March 09 2016 03:13 GreenHorizons wrote:


Oh yeah, of course. I just mean to point out that they will make more and still have ~$10m+ to pass on.

Anyone who goes from being wealthy to not being wealthy has no one to blame but themselves. A stark contrast to the reality of millions of people,who no matter how hard they work, there are simply not enough opportunities/resources for all of them to be wealthy.

I think it's pretty silly how hard some people work to defend people's ability to be wealthy for doing nothing, and how little effort, by comparison, they put into making sure anyone who works hard can get ahead.