US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7110

On March 14 2017 01:47 Logo wrote:
Yeah I mean when you're talking about convincing someone or engaging in a debate things are different, people can stonewall a defense of any bad idea as long as they want if they want to.

But that's not really the same as the tabula rasa you were starting with a few posts back.

On March 14 2017 01:41 LightSpectra wrote:


"Exactly, so some problem with Breitbart's reporting isn't proof that whatever news sources you use are trustworthy. But Breitbart/FOX actually has the cajones to call out Muslim terrorists whereas your news sources are politically-correct cowards."

... you see how this can go on.

I have a relative who's a nuclear scientist. His career DEPENDS on chemistry and physics. Yet he's 100% on board with the "climate change is a Chinese hoax to shut down capitalism" conspiracy theory. Critical thinking clearly didn't save him. That's just what happens when you're in a closed circuit of media sources that radically affirm your own beliefs despite what any other news source says.

There's a reason I called it "brainwashing." If you have any success stories for how you de-brainwashed somebody, I'd love to hear it. Half my family are FOX enthusiasts.

Yes, the media do underreport some terrorist attacks. Just not the ones most people think of.

At his first address to a joint session of Congress last month, President Trump reiterated his administration’s focus on “radical Islamic terrorism.” A few weeks earlier, his administration had provided a list of terrorist attacks it claimed were underreported by the news media. The list primarily included attacks by Muslim perpetrators.

The implication was clear: Muslims do more harm than the media want you to believe. Terrorism scholars quickly discredited that suggestion.

How we did our research

When there’s a terrorist attack, the coverage seems to dominate the cycles for hours, days and sometimes weeks. How can it be accurate to claim that the media really underplays or hides terrorism? Fortunately, this is a question that we can investigate through research.

In a recent study, we found that the news media do not cover all terrorist attacks the same way. Rather, they give drastically more coverage to attacks by Muslims, particularly foreign-born Muslims — even though those are far less common than other kinds of terrorist attacks. [...]

In real numbers, the average attack with a Muslim perpetrator is covered in 90.8 articles. Attacks with a Muslim, foreign-born perpetrator are covered in 192.8 articles on average. Compare this with other attacks, which received an average of 18.1 articles.
Certainly, how much media coverage a particular terrorist attack gets is influenced by a host of factors. For example, if the perpetrator is arrested, we get more coverage of the indictment, hearing, trial and so on. Attacks against governmental facilities or employees receive more coverage. And as the adage — “if it bleeds it leads” — has it, more deaths and injuries mean more media coverage.

But even controlling for all this, attacks by a Muslim perpetrator get, on average, about 4½ times more coverage. In other words, whether intentional or not, U.S. media outlets disproportionately emphasize the smaller number of terrorist attacks by Muslims — leading Americans to have an exaggerated sense of that threat. [...]

On March 14 2017 02:00 LegalLord wrote:

Problem is that the Democrats aren't particularly "smart" as an opposition group - just rabid and directionless. They rallied far too hard behind an unelectable loser who was billed as the savior of the nation from the wrath of the evil orange orangutan enemy, a peerless hyper-qualified superstar. They turned on Comey for his last letter in a completely and utterly unproductive way (Harry Reid's response in particular), feeling betrayed by their ally who kept their electable leader out of prison (an ally whom they defended obtusely during the hearings). And those leftist ideologues, they kept the party apparatus safe from them. I mean sure, Russia conspired to remove DWS with the help of leftists over some private small talk but she's just an innocent victim of a smear campaign, like Clinton herself.

I'm only slightly exaggerating; the Democrats really have been quite stupid in how they conducted themselves over the election. And afterwards, instead of some genuine self-reflection, all they have to offer is scapegoats: Russia, Comey, racists, sandernistas who just don't get it, and so on. If they're trying to prove that they can be just as dirty and scummy as the Republicans, they're on track to a resounding success. If they're looking to show that they are a principled opposition that nevertheless doesn't let the Republican dysfunction slide, but still stands above it all, then all that they have proven is that they're not as effective at being scum as Republicans.

On the other hand, though, the coastal megacities do appear to be completely and utterly enamored with the current batch of Democrats so maybe they're doing something right after all, running up the score in safe districts.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Rick Scott and other top Florida Republicans frequently complain about government spending, but they have quietly spent more than $237 million on private lawyers to advance and defend their agendas, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Florida taxpayers have also been forced to reimburse nearly $16 million for their opponents' private attorney fees. That means an overall $253 million has been spent on legal fights since 2011, including a water war with Georgia and losing battles to test welfare recipients for drugs, trim the state's voter registration lists and ban companies that do business with Cuba from bidding on government contracts.

"A quarter of a billion dollars is a gosh lot of money," said Dominic Calabro, president of Florida TaxWatch, a business-backed group that scrutinizes state spending.

Much of the state's legal spending doesn't show up in the normal process of assembling the state's $82 billion budget.

Attorney General Pam Bondi oversees a legal budget of nearly $309 million a year that helps pay for 450 state lawyers, but all that in-house legal firepower hasn't stopped state leaders from hiring private attorneys, and no one in state government is closely tracking what their hourly rates add up to.

"We do not have that information and are unaware of a way to capture expenditures for the purchase of outside legal services that would not entail an exhaustive search of documents," said Whitney Ray, a spokesman for Bondi.

The Associated Press came up with the figure by analyzing budget documents and the results of public records requests.

The AP review found that Florida has spent more than $237 million on outside lawyering since 2011, a figure that averages to nearly $40 million a year, plus nearly $16 million reimbursing private attorney fees on opposing sides.

Hiring private counsel in expenditures that fall outside the normal budget process seems common in state governments around the country, though perhaps not on the same scale as during the Scott administration.

New York has spent more than $86 million since 2012, or about $17 million a year, on outside lawyering, according to that state's comptroller. California's Democratic leaders recently approved payments of $25,000 a month to former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his law firm to defend the state's interests against President Donald Trump's policies.

In Florida, it was the soaring cost of the state's water war against Georgia — more than $41 million in the last 18 months alone— that started to raise eyebrows when the Department of Environmental Protection sought more money in January.

Rep. Carlos Trujillo, a Miami Republican and House budget chief, called the department's legal spending a "runaway train."

His response when told that the overall state tab for private legal fees is about a quarter-billion dollars?

"Insane," Trujillo said.

Trujillo said "nobody is disputing" that defending Florida's water rights is important, but "as taxpayers and constituents, we have the right to ask: 'Is it necessary, are we overpaying?'"

House Speaker Richard Corcoran, who ordered a legislative review, was even more blunt: "We are getting gouged, and that needs to be fixed."

A spokeswoman for Scott, Jackie Schutz, sought to downplay the outside legal costs during Scott's administration, saying that private law firms are sometimes necessary "when there are complex legal matters or specific expertise needed."

"It's no surprise that our office vigorously defends the laws we sign," she said.

The decades-long water dispute took a new and expensive turn when Scott asked the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 to limit the water Georgia takes from the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint river basin. Florida argues that Georgia has guzzled more than its share of water at the expense of Florida's oyster industry.

Bondi's office handed the case over to one of the world's most prestigious firms, Latham & Watkins, whose lawyers charge up to $825 an hour. The firm's bills to date almost doubled the funding Scott personally requested in late 2014 to repair the Apalachicola Bay watershed.

Scott, an attorney and multimillionaire businessman who ran one of the nation's largest for-profit hospital chains, has backed the use of taxpayer money to bolster the state's legal team with private attorneys for defending his initiatives, despite the rising costs.

"It's important to make sure that Florida gets the water it deserves," Scott said.

Ryan Matthews, the interim secretary for the Department of Environmental Protection, said last week that his staff "carefully reviews every invoice." He also said that since July 2015, DEP has denied more than $3 million in legal expenses and hourly charges.

A spokesman for Bondi's office noted that her agency's lawyers are assigned to duties such as handling criminal appeals and Medicaid fraud cases. Bondi's office must approve the hiring of outside attorneys by state agencies. Her office keeps a list of outside lawyers hired and hourly fees charged.

But no one keeps track of the overall spending. The governor, Legislature and other state elected officials, such as Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, do not have to report their spending on legal fees to the state's chief legal officer.

To capture that total, the AP sought public records on all the firms hired and outside lawyers used. It asked agencies how much they spent. The office of Florida's Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater maintains a website where the public can see spending on individual contracts, and provided information on legal settlements.

Calabro said the state may be hiring outside counsel for good reasons, but the cost of this lawyering "has hardly gotten any attention" by either Democrats or Republicans.

and little in the way of concrete demonstrations of wrongdoing

A company owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, stands to receive more than $400 million from a prominent Chinese company that is investing in the Kushners’ marquee Manhattan office tower at 666 Fifth Ave.

The planned $4-billion transaction includes terms that some real estate experts consider unusually favorable for the Kushners. It provides them with both a sizable cash payout from Anbang Insurance Group for a property that has struggled financially and an equity stake in a new partnership.

The details of the agreement, which is being circulated to attract additional investors, were shared with Bloomberg. It would make business partners of Kushner Cos. and Anbang, whose murky links to the Chinese power structure have raised national security concerns over its U.S. investments. In the process, an existing mortgage owed by the Kushners will be slashed to about a fifth of its current amount.

On March 14 2017 02:46 LightSpectra wrote:
When making sure that your Head of State wasn't elected on the back of a foreign agent is a windmill, I'd hate to see what the real issues are.

On March 14 2017 03:18 LightSpectra wrote:
You've just leapt into a fire of wild assumptions there. I have no idea what (if any) illegal connections Trump has to the Kremlin, and I'm not making any assumptions. I just think it should be investigated. If there's nothing bad there, then those "russophobic" Democrats will look like fools. If there's something bad, then something should be done about it. I don't see how anybody can argue against this unless they're Trump supporters and terrified there's something bad waiting to be discovered.

By the way, I did not vote for Clinton, and I do in fact think she should've been prosecuted over the email server.

On March 14 2017 04:00 Danglars wrote:

Nobody's waiting for an investigation, have you even been listening? They've been content to level allegations in their absence. Maybe you personally prefer to think Clinton was bad enough for starters, but the obvious move is to press for an investigation and leave the daily articles about allegedly sinister dealings for Breitbart. If you've missed the last two months, I have very little sympathy. I am looking for honest people that can understand the faux prosecutorial briefs are not news stories, and do great damage to future results of investigations, should the wildest accusations prove true. Honestly, I don't know how seriously I can take anyone that purports to call certain things wild accusations under common understanding of the term, and will not agree to the same standard for their own side when the original posts illustrate the same.