US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5789

On October 28 2016 06:22 KwarK wrote:

What? They encourage it. Plasma is twice a week. That's the normal amount. They tell you to do that.

The WikiLeaks emails reveal a Hillary Clinton campaign team fixated on climate change — yet reluctant to make overly sweeping promises about what they’d do about it.

Campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked inbox offers a veritable road map to the energy policy that Clinton would execute in the White House, as well as clear lessons to the environmental and industry groups that are getting ready to lobby her administration if she wins. And climate change and related issues feature prominently in the approximately 25,000 messages WikiLeaks has released so far from Podesta’s account.

“Climate change” comes up in more than 1,200 of the emails released as of Friday, or more than Obamacare and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant combined — and almost as many as the 1,444 emails that mention the name “Sanders.”

Clinton’s energy proposals have produced fewer easy sound bites than Bernie Sanders’ call to ban fracking or Donald Trump’s promises to put coal miners back to work. But the hacked emails, dating from before and after Podesta joined the campaign after serving as a senior adviser to the Obama White House, show Clinton’s team to be as driven by policy details and the power of pragmatic messaging as the candidate herself — while grappling with the contradictions inherent in a campaign year when grandiose promises are more popular than realistic proposals.

Taxing carbon polls horribly, her advisers fret, but politicians will need to get behind some climate plan to drastically reduce carbon output. Natural gas has spurred jobs and exports, but it produces methane pollution that cries out for regulation. The federal ethanol mandate is arguably failing to deliver its promised gains for national security and the planet, as one aide wrote last year, but calling for reform too loudly risks losing support in corn country.

And Clinton’s team think it’s deeply unrealistic to call for a quick end to oil drilling, as some green groups and Sanders supporters demand — but it’s also fanciful to think that the current U.S. oil boom should continue indefinitely.

Several threads in the emails also detail the choreography Clinton’s aides engaged in before she revealed her long-planned public opposition to the Keystone XL oil pipeline last year.

Among the biggest themes contained in the emails: Like Obama, Clinton wants the left to push her.

President Barack Obama accepted his nomination for reelection in 2012 with a call for “shared responsibility,” effectively reminding liberals dissatisfied with his record at that point that it was their job to lobby him in their direction. Green activists listened and kept pushing. They cheered as Obama sloughed off the “all-of-the-above” energy rhetoric of his first term and spent significant political capital on global warming, from regulations on power plants to the recently ratified Paris climate deal.

The Clinton team whose private discussions WikiLeaks is dragging into public view appears in the mold of Obama, wary of unrealistic proposals from the left but ready to engage with critics who want more.

The presidential front-runner’s private quip that anti-fossil fuel activists should “get a life,” seen in context, reads like more of a rejoinder to remove their heads from the clouds than a personal slam.

On October 28 2016 06:31 LegalLord wrote:
It's perfectly possible to live quite reasonably with an even more extreme situation, like living on minimum wage in NYC, LA, or SF, if you're good with finances.

Problem is that most people who are good with finances don't stay that poor for very long. Selection bias plays a role here.

On October 28 2016 06:36 Plansix wrote:
There is literally no way for me to donate plasma twice a week without losing like 4+ hours to doing it. I already have an hour commute as it is. I already own this house thing that takes up a lot of my time and I like to write.

On October 28 2016 06:31 Mohdoo wrote:
I also think the idea of giving plasma as a necessary part of income is completely insane. I did not go to college to live like that.

On October 28 2016 06:31 Mohdoo wrote:
These people are not likely to be living in a low crime, nice neighborhood. My underlying assumption here is that if someone goes to college for something useful, they should be able to live in a nice area and not have to give plasma every week.

On October 28 2016 06:39 IgnE wrote:
part of the problem with these hypothetical scenarios is that while they are possible in theory, socially constructed personhood in the United States requires a certain amount of affluent consumption. even if you were living in nyc or san fran on minimum wage "successfully" it would be very difficult to have time or the resources to do anything but go to work and come home while eating some of the cheapest food there is, dressed in the cheapest clothing, etc. and barring a few upper class voyeurs/poverty adventurers who spend a few years slummin it before returning to the upper middle class, if you are successfully living on minimum wage in those places it is a precarious existence with no exit in sight.

On October 28 2016 06:33 KwarK wrote:
If everyone tried to help themselves in the exact ame way then it wouldn't work so nobody should try to do anything.
- Igne

On October 28 2016 06:10 KwarK wrote:

We've done this dance before and I'm sure we'll do it again before you learn to use Excel but basically right now I make an unremarkable income (still a while from finishing my CPA) but I still save far more than 5k/year and certainly wouldn't reduce my savings as a percentage of total income over time. You start with the assumption that it can't be done, set conditions that mean it won't be done and then conclude that you're right. The only problem being people like myself who are defying all your ironclad assumptions.

Hell, something as simple as donating blood plasma ($20/hr 4 hours a week) and throwing it in savings is worth half a mil over a working life. You are the textbook example of the crab bucket mentality. You refuse to take responsibility for improving your own life and so you must try to undermine anyone who disproves your own delusions of helplessness.

In a 2011 memo, an aide to Bill Clinton laid out the messy relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the former president's personal interests, detailing how some foundation donors also paid Clinton to speak and provide consulting services.

The memo was released on Wednesday as part of a Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta's hacked emails.

Doug Band, a long-time aide to Bill Clinton, wrote the 2011 memo as part of an internal audit at the Clinton Foundation. In trying to explain his role in the Foundation, Band also brought up a series of instances he and his consulting company, Teneo Holdings, helped Bill Clinton secure for-profit contracts.

The memo, which was being circulated to some in Clinton's inner circle including Podesta, reinforces Republican criticisms of the blurred lines between the foundation and professional interests of the Clintons and their associates.

“Independent of our fundraising and decision-making activities on behalf of the Foundation, we have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities — including speeches, books, and advisory service engagements," Band wrote. "In that context, we have in effect served as agents, lawyers, managers and implementers to secure speaking, business and advisory service deals. In support of the President’s for-profit activity, we also have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”

At one point, Band even referred to the former president’s money-making enterprises as “Bill Clinton, Inc.”

On October 28 2016 06:32 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
One of the reasons voters have trust issues with Clinton: her team seems to be polling what is most popular but also practical, take a stand while also not taking a position.



Source

On October 28 2016 06:40 KwarK wrote:

Sure, you allocated the time to living somewhere other than where you work and writing and that's fine. You don't have to make my choices. Just don't deny that you had choices, claim that the system is rigged and then take your luxuries for granted. That's all I ask.

On October 28 2016 06:31 LegalLord wrote:
It's perfectly possible to live quite reasonably with an even more extreme situation, like living on minimum wage in NYC, LA, or SF, if you're good with finances.

Problem is that most people who are good with finances don't stay that poor for very long. Selection bias plays a role here.

On October 28 2016 06:52 ticklishmusic wrote:


this pretty much hits the nail on the head. though lifestyle inflation is the biggest problem for most people.

On October 28 2016 06:52 ticklishmusic wrote:


this pretty much hits the nail on the head. though lifestyle inflation is the biggest problem for most people.