US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4847

On August 30 2016 05:30 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Up until we see an ad out to join Trump's "Deportation Force" for a low $20 donation to his campaign.

Donald Trump's new $10 million TV ad cites two contradictory tax plans -- one that Trump has explicitly ruled out and another that he has yet to endorse -- raising more questions about what policies the GOP presidential nominee supports.

Trump's new ad seems generic enough for a Republican politician. In it, he promises lower taxes, more jobs, and growth for small businesses.

But an examination of the fine print supporting the claims provides confusion, not clarity.

For the ad's claim that "working families get tax relief," it refers viewers not to an analysis of Trump's own tax proposals, but to a white paper by House GOP leaders about their own tax reform plan. Similarly, the next section promising "millions of new jobs" directs viewers to an analysis of the House GOP plan by the conservative Tax Foundation.

Trump has not endorsed the House GOP plan outright, but his new proposal, announced earlier this month, has some similarities. Most notably, they both advocate collapsing the tax code into three brackets with rates of 12%, 25%, and 33%. But there are also important differences: Washington Post columnist Allan Sloan reported that Trump's plan would preserve a deduction on business loans that the House GOP plan would scrap that would save up to $1.2 trillion in revenue over 10 years.

Things get even more confusing as the commercial continues. The ad's next two claims that Trump would make "wages go up" and "small businesses thrive" refer to his old tax plan from last year, which had drastically different rates, including a 0% bracket at the bottom and a top rate of 25%. The on-screen citation directs viewers to a Tax Foundation analysis of that now-defunct proposal from September 2015.

The United States said it would welcome its 10,000th Syrian refugee of this fiscal year on Monday, meeting Barack Obama’s target more than a month ahead of schedule.

The US has traditionally been a generous host for refugees but has been criticized by activists for moving too slowly to respond to the Syrian crisis, which has dragged on for more than five years.

The US president sought a sixfold increase in the number of Syrian refugees provided safe haven in the United States. After a slow start, the administration was able to hit the goal just a few weeks before Obama convenes a summit on refugees during the 71st session of the United Nations general assembly.

Obama would have been hard-pressed to make the case for other countries to do more with the US failing to reach a goal that amounts to only about 2%of the 480,000 Syrian refugees in need of resettlement. Millions more Syrians have fled to neighboring states such as Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and to countries in Europe since the civil war broke out in 2011.

“Our 10,000th Syrian refugee will arrive this afternoon,” the national security adviser, Susan Rice, said in a statement, adding that the administration had met the goal “more than a month ahead of schedule”.

Rice said the number represented a “sixfold increase from the prior year”, and called it “a meaningful step that we hope to build upon”.

She noted that refugee admissions represented only “a small part of our broader humanitarian efforts in Syria and the region”.

“On behalf of the president and his administration, I extend the warmest of welcomes to each and every one of our Syrian arrivals, as well as the many other refugees resettled this year from all over the world.”

Rice said the summit in New York City will highlight the contributions the US and other nations have made to help refugees. She said the US has committed to working with the international community to increase funding for humanitarian assistance and double the number of refugees afforded the opportunity to resettle.

On August 30 2016 05:54 Plansix wrote:
Except that the areas that employee illegal immigrants normally have close to 100% employment already. It has nothing to do with people not wanting the jobs. There is a shortage of labor and it isn’t viable to US citizens to do the work seasonally.

On August 30 2016 07:38 Danglars wrote:

Well-run guest worker programs will probably exist or be expanded should Trump get elected and have his way.

The Obama administration could end its use of private immigration detention centres, the US homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, said on Monday.

The announcement follows a landmark decision by the US Department of Justice to phase out private prisons, after a stinging independent review found they were drastically less safe than publicly operated centres. The move, made earlier in August, led to intense pressure on the homeland security department to conduct a similar review, as it relies more heavily on the use of privatised facilities.

Johnson said his department’s advisory council has been tasked to examine whether “immigration detention operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should move in the same direction” as the justice department. The panel will have until the end of November to make recommendations, and will consider “all factors … including fiscal considerations” related to ICE’s use of private centres.

The agency’s use of private detention centres has long been criticised by human rights advocates. An investigation published by Human Rights Watch in July found evidence of substandard medical care at a number of facilities, while protests at privately operated family detention centres in Texas have become commonplace.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains a total of 33,676 people, as of the beginning of August, with an overwhelming 24,567 (or 72%) of these held in the country’s 46 private detention facilities. Conversely, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prisons operates only 13 private prisons, which hold around 11% of the federal prison population. The federal prison population has also declined in recent years, while the numbers of those detained in ICE facilities has increased.

Grace Meng, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, argued the DHS review should occur in a “different context” from the DoJ decision.

On August 30 2016 08:27 Plansix wrote:

Well run and Trump are two things that do not go together. Evidence has shown he isn't very good at running things.

On August 30 2016 09:30 ticklishmusic wrote:
okay, i'll bite. what's so bad about the "liberal" guest worker program?

(also remind me if trump is currently for or against H1B visas, i forget)

On August 30 2016 09:30 ticklishmusic wrote:
okay, i'll bite. what's so bad about the "liberal" guest worker program?

(also remind me if trump is currently for or against H1B visas, i forget)

On August 30 2016 09:04 Danglars wrote:

It's looking worse and worse for him in swing states so we might never get to put that to test. I mean this by the liberal standards for how big government should function, not the conservative standards that he hasn't espoused since the primary. It is very clear that the US should provide a guest worker program if anybody succeeds in closing the porous border because of seasonal jobs.

On August 30 2016 10:39 Danglars wrote:


He's won't do it while reducing government's size and overall role, which is the conservative position. Trump, not giving a quantum of consideration to that topic and being very liberal generally, will be judged by the functioning only, and how it affects various groups.

The Cannonball river flows into the mighty Missouri about 50 miles due south of Bismarck, North Dakota.

At its confluence, a protest encampment – really a series of camps, on both sides of the Cannonball, strewn with kitchens and canteens, portable toilets, stabling for horses, sweat lodges and tall teepees, and stands selling indigenous art – has sprung up.

The inhabitants are there to block the planned $3.7bn Dakota Access Pipeline, which would transport fracked crude from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to a refinery near Chicago.

Many at the encampment speak of two prophecies, dating back to the 1890s. A leader called Black Elk foretold that in seven generations, the Native American nations will unite to save the Earth; another legend predicted that a zuzeca snake – a black snake – would threaten the world. For many of the protesters here, the pipeline is that black snake. They are the seventh generation: their moment of destiny has come.

The pipeline’s planned route takes it close to the northern boundary of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and the town of Cannon Ball within it, which means it would cross the Missouri immediately upstream, endangering, protesters say, the reservation’s drinking water and threatening sacred sites. At Standing Rock, they have put their bodies between the water and the oil.

A few days earlier, on 24 August, a federal judge in Washington DC delayed a ruling over whether indigenous rights were violated by the approval of the project. Tribal members say they were not sufficiently consulted about the route and are suing for an injunction.

The population of the camp ebbs and flows. Many have given up jobs and brought their families here, and a core of between 500 and 1,000 people live here semi-permanently. Some, such as Wiyaca Eagleman, a member of the Sicangu Lakota from Rosebud, South Dakota, have been here since the beginning of April. He plans to be here, he said, “as long as it takes”.

Hundreds more join when they can, swelling the camp’s numbers on weekends. Others come when they get time and bring what supplies they can.

It is an unprecedented gathering. Members of more than 90 Native American nations and tribes have a presence here, according to Eagleman, who has become a sort of unofficial spokesman for the protest camp. Up the road, where the building site was besieged, the flags of many of those nations now fly together. The unity on display here is a dream come true for Eagleman. “There has been no moment like this in history,” he said.

On Saturday, a delegation from the Crow nation arrived from Montana, bearing offerings of firewood and 700lb of buffalo meat. That’s truly historic: the Crow and the Lakota have been enemies for more than a century. They were at war once; the Crow acted as scouts for Gen George Custer. Buffalo meat has powerful symbolic value: a gesture of solidarity and friendship from longtime former foes.

Dennis Banks, a member of the Chippewa nation of Minnesota and one of the founders of the civil rights group the American Indian Movement in the 1960s, who met the Crow delegation, recounted the meeting. “The main speaker said, ‘I know you think of Crow as working with the enemy – but we too struggled for water rights, treaty rights’,” Banks said.

Trump weighed in each time there was a new revelation about the sexting or reports on a potential Weiner political comeback. In his commentaries, Trump repeatedly predicted that Weiner could “never be healed.” Trump also hurled a wide variety of insults at Weiner, including calling him a “sick puppy,” “sleazebag,” “unwanted porn star,” “sexual pervert,” a “whacko sicko sexter” and many more.

...

Federal Election Commission reports show Trump donated to Weiner’s campaign account in 2007 and 2010 for a total of $4,300. While the donations may have sparked Trump’s fascination with the former congressman, they clearly aren’t the only factor behind Trump’s fixation on Weiner. In a conversation with Yahoo News on Monday, Michael Cohen, a longtime attorney at Trump’s real estate company, Weiner may have earned Trump’s ire by firing back with his own insults. Cohen suggested Trump lets no slight go unanswered.

“This is personal to him because Anthony Weiner has continuously attacked Mr. Trump,” Cohen said. “You know it just doesn’t work that way.”