US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3630

On April 18 2016 23:44 Mohdoo wrote:
Predictions for today's immigration ruling? I think it's gonna go 4-4.

On April 19 2016 04:33 IgnE wrote:


Export led growth will lift everyone out of poverty. Why try the long arduous path of ISI when we can burn fossil fuels until fusion gets here?

A bit ambivalent anyway on that IP regime right? Internal contradictions between lifting everyone out of poverty and benefitting the free flow of (American) capital.

On April 19 2016 05:12 oneofthem wrote:
high information voting in california

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/360000-californians-register-for-wrong-party.html

On April 19 2016 04:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:
Running 3rd party if someone else gets formally nominated seals Trump in the talk radio and GOP mediasphere as the man who handed an "easily winnable" election after the "catastrophic disasters of the Obama presidency" to Clinton. All his power, gone.

I use quotes because I can almost guarantee those words would be spoken in the punditsphere ad nauseam.

Also Paul Ryan can't run until people have forgotten how utterly forgettable, vapid, and ineffectual he was as Romney's VP pick, it's just a waste of his time.

On April 19 2016 04:11 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Why do you think he would? Genuine question. He seems to me like a winning synthesis: he looks like a wonk (even though he is not) and could convince moderates voter who haven't been following, and he has always acted the way he is, as a total extremist that tea party people seem to like.

I don't see anyone more qualified to run.

On April 19 2016 04:56 Lord Tolkien wrote:

6-2 most likely, otherwise a 5-3.

Justice Kennedy has previously voted (and written the majority opinion) largely favor of the federal government in the case of illegal immigration: specifically the highly important Arizona v. United States, which should be noted was a 5-3 opinion, with Kagan not participating (Kagan would almost certainly have joined with the majority, however).

Roberts is also very much likely to take a dim view of the states' justification and evidence of injury (they're claiming injury from the drivers licenses they'd have to issue to undocumented immigrants), and his record shows that he's been very cautious about expanding the avenues through which an entity (individual, corporation, and state) can sue or litigate, and it's highly improbable that he will accept Texas' argument and evidence for injury (being highly flimsy at best, and overly political at worst).

There is no chance of a 4-4.


Final note, the opening arguments were made today. It won't be decided until much later.

On April 19 2016 06:14 Mohdoo wrote:


Where to even begin with the condescending remarks here. I've got so many ideas that I can't even bring myself to choose one. Is California an open or closed primary? It sounds like it is open, but it is considered "somewhat open"?

On April 19 2016 06:14 Mohdoo wrote:


Where to even begin with the condescending remarks here. I've got so many ideas that I can't even bring myself to choose one. Is California an open or closed primary? It sounds like it is open, but it is considered "somewhat open"?

FOR YEARS, THE Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United was depicted by Democrats as the root of all political evil. But now, the core argument embraced by the Court’s conservatives to justify their ruling has taken center stage in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — because Clinton supporters, to defend the huge amount of corporate cash on which their candidate is relying, frequently invoke that very same reasoning.

The crux of the Citizens United ruling was that a legal ban on independent corporate campaign expenditures constituted a limit on political speech without sufficient justification, and thus violated the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. A primary argument of the Obama Justice Department and Democrats generally in order to uphold that campaign finance law was that corporate expenditures are so corrupting of the political process that limits are justified even if they infringe free speech. In rejecting that view, this was the key argument of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the five-judge conservative majority (emphasis added):

For the reasons explained above, we now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

Does that sound familiar? It should. That key argument of the right-wing justices in Citizens United has now become the key argument of the Clinton campaign and its media supporters to justify her personal and political receipt of millions upon millions of dollars in corporate money: “Expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” — at least when the candidate in question is Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, the Clinton argument actually goes well beyond the Court’s conservatives: In Citizens United, the right-wing justices merely denied the corrupting effect of independent expenditures (i.e., ones not coordinated with the campaign). But Clinton supporters in 2016 are denying the corrupting effect of direct campaign donations by large banks and corporations and, even worse, huge speaking fees paid to an individual politician shortly before and after that person holds massive political power.

On April 19 2016 07:11 oneofthem wrote:
lol just lol greenwald is a 'source'

What is beyond doubt is that Secretary Clinton just gutted the basis for her long opposition to the Citizens United decision.

But the Democratic presidential front-runner stands poised to bludgeon her general election opponent with Republicans’ favorite political superweapon: the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which earlier this decade launched a new era of unbridled fundraising.

Clinton’s massive campaign machine is built of the very stuff — super PACs, secret cash, unlimited contributions — she says she’ll attack upon winning the White House.

Indeed, a Center for Public Integrity investigation reveals that Clinton’s own election efforts are largely immune from her reformist platform.

Chaos erupted at a Virgin Islands Republican Party Territorial Committee meeting regarding delegates over the weekend, and the pandemonium has been further muddled by wildly differing tales from the Virgin Islands’ GOP leadership that now include accusations of battery and defamation.

The Territorial Committee sought to correct the record Monday, issuing a “statement of facts to correct false representations.” In it, the committee charges Gwendolyn Hall Brady “physically attacked” its parliamentarian after Saturday’s meeting adjourned.

“Officers of the Virgin Islands Police Department concluded the parliamentarian had been a victim of a ‘simple assault,’” the statement said, citing national committeewoman Liliana Belardo de O’Neal as a witness. The committee’s chairman, John Canegata, is listed as the contact on the release.

The assault charge is a rebuttal to an email Vice Chairman Herbert Schoenbohm sent out Saturday, writing that a “senior citizen” woman “was the obvious victim of assault.”

The meeting, which took place Saturday at Canegata’s shooting range in St. Croix, involved what delegates would be seated at the Republican National Convention this summer – a contentious issue as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz scrap for delegate support across the country.

The Virgin Islands Republican Party sent out a press release Saturday noting that the committee filled three vacancies that morning. Canegata appointed Garfield Doran, Jevon Williams and David Johnson, the release said, adding that it was ratified by the committee. Following ratification, Fred Espinosa moved a motion to adjourn, which was seconded, thus ending the meeting.

On April 19 2016 07:51 oneofthem wrote:
point is you are linking an 'analysis' piece while giving a 'source'. this is not news or truefax.

the issue itself is akin to bernie taking tax deductions. within the current legal landscape pacs are the strategic equilibrium. if you dont use them you lose. this is nothing but an intentionally obtuse piece of attack

The Environmental Protection Agency has released a major upward revision to its estimates of total emissions of methane, a hard-hitting if short-lived greenhouse gas, in an annual inventory that the agency submits to the United Nations. The revisions will further up the stakes in a political battle over regulations that the agency is preparing to issue that could affect operations at thousands of oil and gas wells.

“Data on oil and gas show that methane emissions from the sector are higher than previously estimated,” said the agency in a news release upon the report’s release. “The oil and gas sector is the largest emitting-sector for methane and accounts for a third of total U.S. methane emissions.”

Prior inventories, such as last year’s report, which provided data through the year 2013, had suggested that the U.S.’s highest source of methane was ruminant animals like cattle and other livestock, rather than the oil and gas industry.

The agency revised upward total methane emissions in the U.S. for the year 2013 from 636.3 million metric tons to 721.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, driven in significant part by increased estimates of emissions from oil and gas operations. And the overall methane emissions number is still higher for 2014, the most recent year in the inventory, at 730.8 million metric tons.

“What EPA essentially is doing is restating the numbers using the better data, that has been collected from the field,” said Mark Brownstein, who heads the oil and gas program at the Environmental Defense Fund, which has focused heavily on the methane issue in recent years. “What has long been thought is that emissions in the field are higher than what had been historically reported in EPA’s emissions inventory, and now, when you use that better data, it is higher.”

Some of the most substantial upward revisions involved emissions from natural gas and petroleum systems across the country — an emissions source that has increasingly been targeted by environmentalists, who say that the boom in domestic oil and gas production has driven greater methane emissions.

On April 19 2016 07:55 CannonsNCarriers wrote:


Substantively, are we sure they are that bad? Republicans would raise that money anyways, now Dems have a chance to compete. There are a few liberal billionaires out there. And do you remember Bush3 and Rubio? Those two doofuses were powered solely by SuperPAC money and they crashed and burned. The Rich have always paid for the political system in the country (unions used to be more powerful but are now much weaker). I am not seeing the SuperPACopolypse.

On April 19 2016 06:33 cLutZ wrote:


The thing about the standing issue, is Texas almost certainly has standing under the most recent precedents in the Mass. v. EPA case.

A second issue I see with the standing point is that Texas could argue (and would be correct in my estimation) that if they changed their eligibility standards for drivers licenses and invented their own non-federal standard they would be sued. And probably sued successfully by an immigrant advocacy group that points to the Arizona case and says "Immigration is the domain of the Federal government." So IMO, standing is pinched between a rock and a hard place (if you are intellectually honest, which is always an issue for the Court).

On the substantive side, I say its a toss up and have no idea what will happen.