In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On March 17 2017 07:51 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote: can we all agree that cutting meals on wheels is a terrible terrible decision?
i'm not completely certain I cna agree with that. but I can agree they made the decision in a terrible and unsound manner which didn't reflect actual results well. I haven't seen data closely examine the cost/benefit for the program compared to various other public support programs.
It helps millions of Americans- especially the elderly- who can't afford to spend money on more expensive programs or options (like stay-at-home nurses or nursing homes). Here's a nice breakdown:
"Meals on Wheels is a nonprofit group that receives funding from the federal government, state and local governments and private donors. “We serve more than 2.4 million seniors from 60 to 100+ years old each year,” the organization writes. “They are primarily older than 60 and because of physical limitations or financial reasons, have difficulty shopping for or preparing meals for themselves.”
If that doesn’t clear the bar for “results,” as Mulvaney put it, there’s also been a fair amount of peer-reviewed research on the efficacy of the program.
A 2013 review of studies, for instance, found that home-delivered meal programs for seniors “significantly improve diet quality, increase nutrient intakes, and reduce food insecurity and nutritional risk among participants. Other beneficial outcomes include increased socialization opportunities, improvement in dietary adherence, and higher quality of life.”
Not only that, the programs offer good bang-for-your-buck: “These programs are also aligned with the federal cost-containment policy to rebalance long-term care away from nursing homes to home- and community-based services by helping older adults maintain independence and remain in their homes and communities as their health and functioning decline.”
In other words, the programs help seniors stay at home and out of costly nursing facilities. If you’re interested in keeping a lid on health-care costs, the importance of this finding can’t be overstated.
“The average cost of a one-month nursing home stay is equivalent to providing home-delivered meals five days a week for approximately seven years,” one of the studies in the analysis found. How’s that for “results”?"
Also, Meals on Wheels only costs $3M per year. To put that in perspective, if Trump actually decides to not go on vacation for a single weekend, the money saved from that trip will more than pay for Meals on Wheels. It's such a good and highly effective program for the tiniest drop in the bucket.
3M cannot be the entire budget for what they do. So i'm assuming that's a typo and/or missing something important. aside from that, that's a nice breakdown to see. (I could play devil's advocate, but i'm not really interested in doing so unless someone really wants to see)
On March 17 2017 07:51 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote: can we all agree that cutting meals on wheels is a terrible terrible decision?
i'm not completely certain I cna agree with that. but I can agree they made the decision in a terrible and unsound manner which didn't reflect actual results well. I haven't seen data closely examine the cost/benefit for the program compared to various other public support programs.
It helps millions of Americans- especially the elderly- who can't afford to spend money on more expensive programs or options (like stay-at-home nurses or nursing homes). Here's a nice breakdown:
"Meals on Wheels is a nonprofit group that receives funding from the federal government, state and local governments and private donors. “We serve more than 2.4 million seniors from 60 to 100+ years old each year,” the organization writes. “They are primarily older than 60 and because of physical limitations or financial reasons, have difficulty shopping for or preparing meals for themselves.”
If that doesn’t clear the bar for “results,” as Mulvaney put it, there’s also been a fair amount of peer-reviewed research on the efficacy of the program.
A 2013 review of studies, for instance, found that home-delivered meal programs for seniors “significantly improve diet quality, increase nutrient intakes, and reduce food insecurity and nutritional risk among participants. Other beneficial outcomes include increased socialization opportunities, improvement in dietary adherence, and higher quality of life.”
Not only that, the programs offer good bang-for-your-buck: “These programs are also aligned with the federal cost-containment policy to rebalance long-term care away from nursing homes to home- and community-based services by helping older adults maintain independence and remain in their homes and communities as their health and functioning decline.”
In other words, the programs help seniors stay at home and out of costly nursing facilities. If you’re interested in keeping a lid on health-care costs, the importance of this finding can’t be overstated.
“The average cost of a one-month nursing home stay is equivalent to providing home-delivered meals five days a week for approximately seven years,” one of the studies in the analysis found. How’s that for “results”?"
Also, Meals on Wheels only costs $3M per year. To put that in perspective, if Trump actually decides to not go on vacation for a single weekend, the money saved from that trip will more than pay for Meals on Wheels. It's such a good and highly effective program for the tiniest drop in the bucket.
3M cannot be the entire budget for what they do. So i'm assuming that's a typo and/or missing something important. aside from that, that's a nice breakdown to see. (I could play devil's advocate, but i'm not really interested in doing so unless someone really wants to see)
yeah government doesn't supply the entire budget. But it's still important.
30 percent is a bit high because it involves another gov program that details haven't been on. the block program accounts for 18 percent of funding (Michigan numbers. varies state to state.)
also highlight program cost for a year is cheaper than a day in the hospital
On March 17 2017 09:31 dankobanana wrote: Meals on wheels is obviously a job killer. As you said, it keeps the elderly from nursing homes ))
I wouldn't be surprised if that silliness was actually an argument the White House makes lol. They also talk about saving the American taxpayer money, which has no context attached to it. Meals on Wheels costs the White House $3 million. There are over 240 million American adults. If each American adult can contribute 13 cents, that's more than enough to save millions of elderly Americans' lives. The amount of tax a person pays on ONE two-dollar cheeseburger is this much money.
On March 17 2017 07:21 Plansix wrote: [quote] Iraq............
Thank you.
It's an idiotic thing to say considering that you bombed Iraq under clinton three years prior to the war already under the same bullshit justification, but hey.
Who am i to judge someone who says "the terrorist attack three years after we bombed shit is responsible for, well, us bombing shit afterwards".
Are from the UK? I seem to remember that you are from the UK for some reason.
What exactly would that have to do with anything i just said? I live in the UK.
I just find it amusing when anyone who is from the UK talks shit about the US fucking up the Middle East. Every time I want to respond "WE LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU!"
Bitch please. We wanted the Hashemite dynasty to run shit. But nooooooooo, apparently those Sauds have some oil so why don't you just give them infinity billion dollars and see what happens. Fucking Yanks.
Some of us learned that things from Winston Churchill beyond some choice quotes. And then you all started to feel bad about that whole imperialism thing and we never really slowed down.
Britain was perfectly happy to keep empiring on until they ran out of empire. Then and only then did they start to feel bad about empiring.
You couldn't teach other people how to not fuck it up super badly? Decided to just let the Yanks fuck around with the new toy and hope they got it right? Nice job.
You literally stole it out from underneath us.
Elliot Roosevelt relayed the following exchange between Churchill and FDR. + Show Spoiler +
"Of course," he remarked, with a sly sort of assurance, "of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade."
He paused. The P.M.'s [Churchill's] head was lowered; he was watching Father steadily, from under one eyebrow.
"No artificial barriers," Father pursued. "As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition." His eye wandered innocently around the room.
Churchill shifted in his armchair. "The British Empire trade agreements," he began heavily, "are--"
Father broke in. "Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are."
Churchill's neck reddened and he crouched forward. "Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Do-minions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England's ministers."
"You see," said Father slowly, "it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.
"I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now-"
"Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?"
"Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation-by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community."
Around the room, all of us were leaning forward attentively. [Harry] Hopkins [a major FDR adviser] was grinning. Commander [C. R.] Thompson, Churchill's aide, was looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic.
"You mentioned India," he growled.
"Yes. I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy"
"What about the Philippines?"
"I'm glad you mentioned them. They get their independence, you know, in 1946. And they've gotten modern sanitation, modern education; their rate of illiteracy has gone steadily down
"There can be no tampering with the Empire's economic agreements."
"They're artificial ..."
"They're the foundation of our greatness."
"The peace," said Father firmly, "cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of the peace demands and will get equality of peoples. Equality of peoples involves the utmost freedom of competitive trade. . ."
It was after two in the morning when finally the British party said their good nights. I helped Father into his cabin, and sat down to smoke a last cigarette with him.
Father grunted. "A real old Tory, isn't he? A real old Tory, of the old school."
"I thought for a minute he was going to bust, Pop."
"Oh," he smiled, "I'll be able to work with him. Don't worry about that. We'll get along famously."
"So long as you keep off the subject of India."
"Mmm, I don't know. I think we'll even talk some more about India, before we're through. And Burma. And Java. And Indo-China. And Indonesia. And all the African colonies. And Egypt and Palestine. We'll talk about 'em all."
The British Empire was a system whereby Britain placed itself at the hub of an enormously profitable global trade network, an exclusively club with its central offices in London. The United States arrived too late on the scene to contest the creation of the club or to create its own rival organization, the ascendancy of the United States depended upon the breakup of the British system of trade agreements.
Y'all stabbed us in the back, stole our empire and then mismanaged the fuck out of it. You don't get to complain that we didn't help you learn to run it more smoothly. Not after shit like Suez.
Also regarding how Empire is viewed in Britain, speaking for myself of course. I don't recall Empire coming up much when I was at school, although different schools had different syllabuses. We did the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions, the Civil War, Tudors, WWI, WWII, postwar geopolitics (Cuba etc) and then some private projects (I did Italian Unification but you could do whatever).
These days we're not very keen on racism and the like which means that there is an implicit unspoken understanding that perhaps the genocide of the indigenous populations of places didn't deserve to die and that slavery wasn't great. But no real Imperial apologism, nobody is especially sorry that it happened. And honestly I probably subscribe to that view anyway. The British ushered in a better world in their brief period of hegemony. Yes, there were great crimes, but the nature of the crimes wasn't especially different and the scale was simply a reflection of the greater power of the nation doing it. But the opposite is also true. The same arrogance that led the British to burn down the Summer Palace in 1860 also led the British to outlaw the slave trade in 1807 on the sea, as in nobody was allowed to trade slaves, British or otherwise.
It is not my intention to suggest that the British were uniquely abolitionist or moral, endless people throughout history have independently come to the philosophical conclusion that people shouldn't own people, that's not special. What was special was that conclusion being reached and then them saying "this is wrong, nobody anywhere can do this anymore" and then actually making a serious attempt to enforce that on the entire globe. I find it difficult to fault a nation that has the desire to do some fairly shitty things and the power to do them over one that has the desire to do some really shitty things but no ability to do them. Overall Empire was a mixed bag but while it certainly doesn't stand up to contemporary moral standards I think the British were probably the best the world could have hoped for as an imperial power.
There's no desire to rebuild an empire, nor much in the way at sadness at having lost it. It existed, it had its day and now that day is passed. Nobody thinks that our small island is ever again going to rule the world, nor should it. There is pride that so much of the modern world was created by the Anglosphere but not regret that it has gone.
This somewhat downplays the sheer scale of the murder though. Some 30 million Indians were deliberately starved to death in labour camps and induced famines in the late 19th century. During the second world war the germans systematically executed 10 or so million people. During the same period of time the british exported grain and rice at gunpoint out of Bangladesh, killing 4-5 million people. Then when the war was over, as everyone else was busy throwing up over the horrors of the concentration camps, the british went: “Golly that’s an excellent idea” and 10 years later in Kenya they made sure to write nice slogans like “Labour and Freedom” on the gates to the concentration camps were 1-1.5 million people were kept. (10s of thousands died) And this is after the “west” supposedly realized that genocide is bad form. Anyways it’s true that it’s in the past, it’s probably true that any other nation or empire would have acted similarly (or rather, they did, the scale was just smaller on account of being less successful). However, I would argue that the failure of british society to honestly face up to the monstrosities still in some ways does matter. Perhaps if british society felt more guilt over empire they would have refrained from dropping napalm in Vietnam, maybe they wouldn’t have gone to Iraq etc. I don’t know, assigning guilt to people long since dead is always kinda weird, but I do care about human life and dignity in the present, and to the extent that history and guilt prevents people from killing each other I think its useful.
It's an idiotic thing to say considering that you bombed Iraq under clinton three years prior to the war already under the same bullshit justification, but hey.
Who am i to judge someone who says "the terrorist attack three years after we bombed shit is responsible for, well, us bombing shit afterwards".
Are from the UK? I seem to remember that you are from the UK for some reason.
What exactly would that have to do with anything i just said? I live in the UK.
I just find it amusing when anyone who is from the UK talks shit about the US fucking up the Middle East. Every time I want to respond "WE LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU!"
Bitch please. We wanted the Hashemite dynasty to run shit. But nooooooooo, apparently those Sauds have some oil so why don't you just give them infinity billion dollars and see what happens. Fucking Yanks.
Some of us learned that things from Winston Churchill beyond some choice quotes. And then you all started to feel bad about that whole imperialism thing and we never really slowed down.
Britain was perfectly happy to keep empiring on until they ran out of empire. Then and only then did they start to feel bad about empiring.
You couldn't teach other people how to not fuck it up super badly? Decided to just let the Yanks fuck around with the new toy and hope they got it right? Nice job.
You literally stole it out from underneath us.
Elliot Roosevelt relayed the following exchange between Churchill and FDR. + Show Spoiler +
"Of course," he remarked, with a sly sort of assurance, "of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade."
He paused. The P.M.'s [Churchill's] head was lowered; he was watching Father steadily, from under one eyebrow.
"No artificial barriers," Father pursued. "As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition." His eye wandered innocently around the room.
Churchill shifted in his armchair. "The British Empire trade agreements," he began heavily, "are--"
Father broke in. "Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are."
Churchill's neck reddened and he crouched forward. "Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Do-minions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England's ministers."
"You see," said Father slowly, "it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.
"I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now-"
"Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?"
"Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation-by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community."
Around the room, all of us were leaning forward attentively. [Harry] Hopkins [a major FDR adviser] was grinning. Commander [C. R.] Thompson, Churchill's aide, was looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic.
"You mentioned India," he growled.
"Yes. I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy"
"What about the Philippines?"
"I'm glad you mentioned them. They get their independence, you know, in 1946. And they've gotten modern sanitation, modern education; their rate of illiteracy has gone steadily down
"There can be no tampering with the Empire's economic agreements."
"They're artificial ..."
"They're the foundation of our greatness."
"The peace," said Father firmly, "cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of the peace demands and will get equality of peoples. Equality of peoples involves the utmost freedom of competitive trade. . ."
It was after two in the morning when finally the British party said their good nights. I helped Father into his cabin, and sat down to smoke a last cigarette with him.
Father grunted. "A real old Tory, isn't he? A real old Tory, of the old school."
"I thought for a minute he was going to bust, Pop."
"Oh," he smiled, "I'll be able to work with him. Don't worry about that. We'll get along famously."
"So long as you keep off the subject of India."
"Mmm, I don't know. I think we'll even talk some more about India, before we're through. And Burma. And Java. And Indo-China. And Indonesia. And all the African colonies. And Egypt and Palestine. We'll talk about 'em all."
The British Empire was a system whereby Britain placed itself at the hub of an enormously profitable global trade network, an exclusively club with its central offices in London. The United States arrived too late on the scene to contest the creation of the club or to create its own rival organization, the ascendancy of the United States depended upon the breakup of the British system of trade agreements.
Y'all stabbed us in the back, stole our empire and then mismanaged the fuck out of it. You don't get to complain that we didn't help you learn to run it more smoothly. Not after shit like Suez.
Also regarding how Empire is viewed in Britain, speaking for myself of course. I don't recall Empire coming up much when I was at school, although different schools had different syllabuses. We did the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions, the Civil War, Tudors, WWI, WWII, postwar geopolitics (Cuba etc) and then some private projects (I did Italian Unification but you could do whatever).
These days we're not very keen on racism and the like which means that there is an implicit unspoken understanding that perhaps the genocide of the indigenous populations of places didn't deserve to die and that slavery wasn't great. But no real Imperial apologism, nobody is especially sorry that it happened. And honestly I probably subscribe to that view anyway. The British ushered in a better world in their brief period of hegemony. Yes, there were great crimes, but the nature of the crimes wasn't especially different and the scale was simply a reflection of the greater power of the nation doing it. But the opposite is also true. The same arrogance that led the British to burn down the Summer Palace in 1860 also led the British to outlaw the slave trade in 1807 on the sea, as in nobody was allowed to trade slaves, British or otherwise.
It is not my intention to suggest that the British were uniquely abolitionist or moral, endless people throughout history have independently come to the philosophical conclusion that people shouldn't own people, that's not special. What was special was that conclusion being reached and then them saying "this is wrong, nobody anywhere can do this anymore" and then actually making a serious attempt to enforce that on the entire globe. I find it difficult to fault a nation that has the desire to do some fairly shitty things and the power to do them over one that has the desire to do some really shitty things but no ability to do them. Overall Empire was a mixed bag but while it certainly doesn't stand up to contemporary moral standards I think the British were probably the best the world could have hoped for as an imperial power.
There's no desire to rebuild an empire, nor much in the way at sadness at having lost it. It existed, it had its day and now that day is passed. Nobody thinks that our small island is ever again going to rule the world, nor should it. There is pride that so much of the modern world was created by the Anglosphere but not regret that it has gone.
This somewhat downplays the sheer scale of the murder though. Some 30 million Indians were deliberately starved to death in labour camps and induced famines in the late 19th century. During the second world war the germans systematically executed 10 or so million people. During the same period of time the british exported grain and rice at gunpoint out of Bangladesh, killing 4-5 million people. Then when the war was over, as everyone else was busy throwing up over the horrors of the concentration camps, the british went: “Golly that’s an excellent idea” and 10 years later in Kenya they made sure to write nice slogans like “Labour and Freedom” on the gates to the concentration camps were 1-1.5 million people were kept. (10s of thousands died) And this is after the “west” supposedly realized that genocide is bad form. Anyways it’s true that it’s in the past, it’s probably true that any other nation or empire would have acted similarly (or rather, they did, the scale was just smaller on account of being less successful). However, I would argue that the failure of british society to honestly face up to the monstrosities still in some ways does matter. Perhaps if british society felt more guilt over empire they would have refrained from dropping napalm in Vietnam, maybe they wouldn’t have gone to Iraq etc. I don’t know, assigning guilt to people long since dead is always kinda weird, but I do care about human life and dignity in the present, and to the extent that history and guilt prevents people from killing each other I think its useful.
The Brits weren't in Vietnam, it was a French colony, not one of ours. Camps designed to control the population are a valid and successful anti-guerrilla tactic, and it's not like the colonies where the colonial powers refused to fight guerrilla warlords did so well. It was the Japanese who starved Indochina, not the British, and a part of WWII. People seem to forget that immediate decolonialization was a tragedy. The fact that it was no longer a European tragedy doesn't change that. Hell, it was the pariah states where the colonial elites retained power against the wishes of their brothers in the motherland that actually survived better. Ripping an illegitimate power structure and economy away did no favours to those suffering beneath it who lacked the framework to replace it.
If you're putting those on the tally of colonialism then you better be putting Uganda, Rwanda, Zaire etc on the tally of anti-colonialism while giving apartheid credit for keeping South Africa from being Zimbabwe.
On March 17 2017 07:29 Plansix wrote: [quote] Are from the UK? I seem to remember that you are from the UK for some reason.
What exactly would that have to do with anything i just said? I live in the UK.
I just find it amusing when anyone who is from the UK talks shit about the US fucking up the Middle East. Every time I want to respond "WE LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU!"
Bitch please. We wanted the Hashemite dynasty to run shit. But nooooooooo, apparently those Sauds have some oil so why don't you just give them infinity billion dollars and see what happens. Fucking Yanks.
Some of us learned that things from Winston Churchill beyond some choice quotes. And then you all started to feel bad about that whole imperialism thing and we never really slowed down.
Britain was perfectly happy to keep empiring on until they ran out of empire. Then and only then did they start to feel bad about empiring.
You couldn't teach other people how to not fuck it up super badly? Decided to just let the Yanks fuck around with the new toy and hope they got it right? Nice job.
You literally stole it out from underneath us.
Elliot Roosevelt relayed the following exchange between Churchill and FDR. + Show Spoiler +
"Of course," he remarked, with a sly sort of assurance, "of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade."
He paused. The P.M.'s [Churchill's] head was lowered; he was watching Father steadily, from under one eyebrow.
"No artificial barriers," Father pursued. "As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition." His eye wandered innocently around the room.
Churchill shifted in his armchair. "The British Empire trade agreements," he began heavily, "are--"
Father broke in. "Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are."
Churchill's neck reddened and he crouched forward. "Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Do-minions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England's ministers."
"You see," said Father slowly, "it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.
"I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now-"
"Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?"
"Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation-by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community."
Around the room, all of us were leaning forward attentively. [Harry] Hopkins [a major FDR adviser] was grinning. Commander [C. R.] Thompson, Churchill's aide, was looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic.
"You mentioned India," he growled.
"Yes. I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy"
"What about the Philippines?"
"I'm glad you mentioned them. They get their independence, you know, in 1946. And they've gotten modern sanitation, modern education; their rate of illiteracy has gone steadily down
"There can be no tampering with the Empire's economic agreements."
"They're artificial ..."
"They're the foundation of our greatness."
"The peace," said Father firmly, "cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of the peace demands and will get equality of peoples. Equality of peoples involves the utmost freedom of competitive trade. . ."
It was after two in the morning when finally the British party said their good nights. I helped Father into his cabin, and sat down to smoke a last cigarette with him.
Father grunted. "A real old Tory, isn't he? A real old Tory, of the old school."
"I thought for a minute he was going to bust, Pop."
"Oh," he smiled, "I'll be able to work with him. Don't worry about that. We'll get along famously."
"So long as you keep off the subject of India."
"Mmm, I don't know. I think we'll even talk some more about India, before we're through. And Burma. And Java. And Indo-China. And Indonesia. And all the African colonies. And Egypt and Palestine. We'll talk about 'em all."
The British Empire was a system whereby Britain placed itself at the hub of an enormously profitable global trade network, an exclusively club with its central offices in London. The United States arrived too late on the scene to contest the creation of the club or to create its own rival organization, the ascendancy of the United States depended upon the breakup of the British system of trade agreements.
Y'all stabbed us in the back, stole our empire and then mismanaged the fuck out of it. You don't get to complain that we didn't help you learn to run it more smoothly. Not after shit like Suez.
Also regarding how Empire is viewed in Britain, speaking for myself of course. I don't recall Empire coming up much when I was at school, although different schools had different syllabuses. We did the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions, the Civil War, Tudors, WWI, WWII, postwar geopolitics (Cuba etc) and then some private projects (I did Italian Unification but you could do whatever).
These days we're not very keen on racism and the like which means that there is an implicit unspoken understanding that perhaps the genocide of the indigenous populations of places didn't deserve to die and that slavery wasn't great. But no real Imperial apologism, nobody is especially sorry that it happened. And honestly I probably subscribe to that view anyway. The British ushered in a better world in their brief period of hegemony. Yes, there were great crimes, but the nature of the crimes wasn't especially different and the scale was simply a reflection of the greater power of the nation doing it. But the opposite is also true. The same arrogance that led the British to burn down the Summer Palace in 1860 also led the British to outlaw the slave trade in 1807 on the sea, as in nobody was allowed to trade slaves, British or otherwise.
It is not my intention to suggest that the British were uniquely abolitionist or moral, endless people throughout history have independently come to the philosophical conclusion that people shouldn't own people, that's not special. What was special was that conclusion being reached and then them saying "this is wrong, nobody anywhere can do this anymore" and then actually making a serious attempt to enforce that on the entire globe. I find it difficult to fault a nation that has the desire to do some fairly shitty things and the power to do them over one that has the desire to do some really shitty things but no ability to do them. Overall Empire was a mixed bag but while it certainly doesn't stand up to contemporary moral standards I think the British were probably the best the world could have hoped for as an imperial power.
There's no desire to rebuild an empire, nor much in the way at sadness at having lost it. It existed, it had its day and now that day is passed. Nobody thinks that our small island is ever again going to rule the world, nor should it. There is pride that so much of the modern world was created by the Anglosphere but not regret that it has gone.
This somewhat downplays the sheer scale of the murder though. Some 30 million Indians were deliberately starved to death in labour camps and induced famines in the late 19th century. During the second world war the germans systematically executed 10 or so million people. During the same period of time the british exported grain and rice at gunpoint out of Bangladesh, killing 4-5 million people. Then when the war was over, as everyone else was busy throwing up over the horrors of the concentration camps, the british went: “Golly that’s an excellent idea” and 10 years later in Kenya they made sure to write nice slogans like “Labour and Freedom” on the gates to the concentration camps were 1-1.5 million people were kept. (10s of thousands died) And this is after the “west” supposedly realized that genocide is bad form. Anyways it’s true that it’s in the past, it’s probably true that any other nation or empire would have acted similarly (or rather, they did, the scale was just smaller on account of being less successful). However, I would argue that the failure of british society to honestly face up to the monstrosities still in some ways does matter. Perhaps if british society felt more guilt over empire they would have refrained from dropping napalm in Vietnam, maybe they wouldn’t have gone to Iraq etc. I don’t know, assigning guilt to people long since dead is always kinda weird, but I do care about human life and dignity in the present, and to the extent that history and guilt prevents people from killing each other I think its useful.
The Brits weren't in Vietnam, it was a French colony, not one of ours. Camps designed to control the population are a valid and successful anti-guerrilla tactic, and it's not like the colonies where the colonial powers refused to fight guerrilla warlords did so well. It was the Japanese who starved Indochina, not the British, and a part of WWII. People seem to forget that immediate decolonialization was a tragedy. The fact that it was no longer a European tragedy doesn't change that. Hell, it was the pariah states where the colonial elites retained power against the wishes of their brothers in the motherland that actually survived better. Ripping an illegitimate power structure and economy away did no favours to those suffering beneath it who lacked the framework to replace it.
If you're putting those on the tally of colonialism then you better be putting Uganda, Rwanda, Zaire etc on the tally of anti-colonialism while giving apartheid credit for keeping South Africa from being Zimbabwe.
And when the French left you went in with the Americans and started bombing. Britain was starving 10s of millions in india when the anglo-japanese alliance was still in effect. As for ww2, I think its appropriate to blame the Japanese empire for a lot of things, but the deaths in india must surely be the responsibility of the British. https://www.amazon.com/Churchills-Secret-War-British-Ravaging/dp/0465024815 I guess people argue that the mere threat of Japanese invasion changed Churchills policies visa vi feeding the region, however considering that the policies were the same when the British were allied with japan I don’t find that argument particularly convincing.
(And a comprehensive list would be both too long, and beyond me. I chose india because of the sheer numbers, and kenya because of how ridiculously recent it was.)
What exactly would that have to do with anything i just said? I live in the UK.
I just find it amusing when anyone who is from the UK talks shit about the US fucking up the Middle East. Every time I want to respond "WE LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU!"
Bitch please. We wanted the Hashemite dynasty to run shit. But nooooooooo, apparently those Sauds have some oil so why don't you just give them infinity billion dollars and see what happens. Fucking Yanks.
Some of us learned that things from Winston Churchill beyond some choice quotes. And then you all started to feel bad about that whole imperialism thing and we never really slowed down.
Britain was perfectly happy to keep empiring on until they ran out of empire. Then and only then did they start to feel bad about empiring.
You couldn't teach other people how to not fuck it up super badly? Decided to just let the Yanks fuck around with the new toy and hope they got it right? Nice job.
You literally stole it out from underneath us.
Elliot Roosevelt relayed the following exchange between Churchill and FDR. + Show Spoiler +
"Of course," he remarked, with a sly sort of assurance, "of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade."
He paused. The P.M.'s [Churchill's] head was lowered; he was watching Father steadily, from under one eyebrow.
"No artificial barriers," Father pursued. "As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition." His eye wandered innocently around the room.
Churchill shifted in his armchair. "The British Empire trade agreements," he began heavily, "are--"
Father broke in. "Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are."
Churchill's neck reddened and he crouched forward. "Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Do-minions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England's ministers."
"You see," said Father slowly, "it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.
"I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now-"
"Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?"
"Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation-by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community."
Around the room, all of us were leaning forward attentively. [Harry] Hopkins [a major FDR adviser] was grinning. Commander [C. R.] Thompson, Churchill's aide, was looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic.
"You mentioned India," he growled.
"Yes. I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy"
"What about the Philippines?"
"I'm glad you mentioned them. They get their independence, you know, in 1946. And they've gotten modern sanitation, modern education; their rate of illiteracy has gone steadily down
"There can be no tampering with the Empire's economic agreements."
"They're artificial ..."
"They're the foundation of our greatness."
"The peace," said Father firmly, "cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of the peace demands and will get equality of peoples. Equality of peoples involves the utmost freedom of competitive trade. . ."
It was after two in the morning when finally the British party said their good nights. I helped Father into his cabin, and sat down to smoke a last cigarette with him.
Father grunted. "A real old Tory, isn't he? A real old Tory, of the old school."
"I thought for a minute he was going to bust, Pop."
"Oh," he smiled, "I'll be able to work with him. Don't worry about that. We'll get along famously."
"So long as you keep off the subject of India."
"Mmm, I don't know. I think we'll even talk some more about India, before we're through. And Burma. And Java. And Indo-China. And Indonesia. And all the African colonies. And Egypt and Palestine. We'll talk about 'em all."
The British Empire was a system whereby Britain placed itself at the hub of an enormously profitable global trade network, an exclusively club with its central offices in London. The United States arrived too late on the scene to contest the creation of the club or to create its own rival organization, the ascendancy of the United States depended upon the breakup of the British system of trade agreements.
Y'all stabbed us in the back, stole our empire and then mismanaged the fuck out of it. You don't get to complain that we didn't help you learn to run it more smoothly. Not after shit like Suez.
Also regarding how Empire is viewed in Britain, speaking for myself of course. I don't recall Empire coming up much when I was at school, although different schools had different syllabuses. We did the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions, the Civil War, Tudors, WWI, WWII, postwar geopolitics (Cuba etc) and then some private projects (I did Italian Unification but you could do whatever).
These days we're not very keen on racism and the like which means that there is an implicit unspoken understanding that perhaps the genocide of the indigenous populations of places didn't deserve to die and that slavery wasn't great. But no real Imperial apologism, nobody is especially sorry that it happened. And honestly I probably subscribe to that view anyway. The British ushered in a better world in their brief period of hegemony. Yes, there were great crimes, but the nature of the crimes wasn't especially different and the scale was simply a reflection of the greater power of the nation doing it. But the opposite is also true. The same arrogance that led the British to burn down the Summer Palace in 1860 also led the British to outlaw the slave trade in 1807 on the sea, as in nobody was allowed to trade slaves, British or otherwise.
It is not my intention to suggest that the British were uniquely abolitionist or moral, endless people throughout history have independently come to the philosophical conclusion that people shouldn't own people, that's not special. What was special was that conclusion being reached and then them saying "this is wrong, nobody anywhere can do this anymore" and then actually making a serious attempt to enforce that on the entire globe. I find it difficult to fault a nation that has the desire to do some fairly shitty things and the power to do them over one that has the desire to do some really shitty things but no ability to do them. Overall Empire was a mixed bag but while it certainly doesn't stand up to contemporary moral standards I think the British were probably the best the world could have hoped for as an imperial power.
There's no desire to rebuild an empire, nor much in the way at sadness at having lost it. It existed, it had its day and now that day is passed. Nobody thinks that our small island is ever again going to rule the world, nor should it. There is pride that so much of the modern world was created by the Anglosphere but not regret that it has gone.
This somewhat downplays the sheer scale of the murder though. Some 30 million Indians were deliberately starved to death in labour camps and induced famines in the late 19th century. During the second world war the germans systematically executed 10 or so million people. During the same period of time the british exported grain and rice at gunpoint out of Bangladesh, killing 4-5 million people. Then when the war was over, as everyone else was busy throwing up over the horrors of the concentration camps, the british went: “Golly that’s an excellent idea” and 10 years later in Kenya they made sure to write nice slogans like “Labour and Freedom” on the gates to the concentration camps were 1-1.5 million people were kept. (10s of thousands died) And this is after the “west” supposedly realized that genocide is bad form. Anyways it’s true that it’s in the past, it’s probably true that any other nation or empire would have acted similarly (or rather, they did, the scale was just smaller on account of being less successful). However, I would argue that the failure of british society to honestly face up to the monstrosities still in some ways does matter. Perhaps if british society felt more guilt over empire they would have refrained from dropping napalm in Vietnam, maybe they wouldn’t have gone to Iraq etc. I don’t know, assigning guilt to people long since dead is always kinda weird, but I do care about human life and dignity in the present, and to the extent that history and guilt prevents people from killing each other I think its useful.
The Brits weren't in Vietnam, it was a French colony, not one of ours. Camps designed to control the population are a valid and successful anti-guerrilla tactic, and it's not like the colonies where the colonial powers refused to fight guerrilla warlords did so well. It was the Japanese who starved Indochina, not the British, and a part of WWII. People seem to forget that immediate decolonialization was a tragedy. The fact that it was no longer a European tragedy doesn't change that. Hell, it was the pariah states where the colonial elites retained power against the wishes of their brothers in the motherland that actually survived better. Ripping an illegitimate power structure and economy away did no favours to those suffering beneath it who lacked the framework to replace it.
If you're putting those on the tally of colonialism then you better be putting Uganda, Rwanda, Zaire etc on the tally of anti-colonialism while giving apartheid credit for keeping South Africa from being Zimbabwe.
And when the French left you went in with the Americans and started bombing. Britain was starving 10s of millions in india when the anglo-japanese alliance was still in effect. As for ww2, I think its appropriate to blame the Japanese empire for a lot of things, but the deaths in india must surely be the responsibility of the British. https://www.amazon.com/Churchills-Secret-War-British-Ravaging/dp/0465024815 I guess people argue that the mere threat of Japanese invasion changed Churchills policies visa vi feeding the region, however considering that the policies were the same when the British were allied with japan I don’t find that argument particularly convincing.
(And a comprehensive list would be both too long, and beyond me. I chose india because of the sheer numbers, and kenya because of how ridiculously recent it was.)
The famine was caused by the food supplies for the region being cut off by the Japanese successes in Indochina. The famine relief was limited due to WWII. I don't know what this bullshit about the threat of Japanese invasion is but the famine happened after the Japanese invasion. Burma fed Bengal and Burma was occupied, nothing to do with the threat, the place they got food from was conquered by the enemy.
Chalk them up to the Japanese, I ain't taking them. This is about as silly as blaming Churchill for a housing shortage in 1940s London, sure, he was the man in charge, but he wasn't the one bombing the houses.
On March 17 2017 09:31 dankobanana wrote: Meals on wheels is obviously a job killer. As you said, it keeps the elderly from nursing homes ))
I wouldn't be surprised if that silliness was actually an argument the White House makes lol. They also talk about saving the American taxpayer money, which has no context attached to it. Meals on Wheels costs the White House $3 million. There are over 240 million American adults. If each American adult can contribute 13 cents, that's more than enough to save millions of elderly Americans' lives. The amount of tax a person pays on ONE two-dollar cheeseburger is this much money.
I mean.. Okay. Now don't get me wrong, i like to harp on stupidity of trump or americans cheering for him. This here is not the case, it's an honest try to get one of those people to try and explain objectively, why $3 millions for a good cause have to be cut, but military spending has to be upped by more than 150 times that.
I actually didn't know it was only $3 million, i assumed it was around a couple of billions maybe (naive, but the hell do i know what meals on wheels costs - i'm around 20 years away from needing it -.-).
I honestly can't get it in my head how somebody looks at this (not just liberals, ANY sane person) and thinks "finally, they get rid of that shit". Even more pathetic that it actually can be suggested without repercussion.
LL, you were russian or something, no? How does russia handle their elderly?
On March 17 2017 09:31 dankobanana wrote: Meals on wheels is obviously a job killer. As you said, it keeps the elderly from nursing homes ))
I wouldn't be surprised if that silliness was actually an argument the White House makes lol. They also talk about saving the American taxpayer money, which has no context attached to it. Meals on Wheels costs the White House $3 million. There are over 240 million American adults. If each American adult can contribute 13 cents, that's more than enough to save millions of elderly Americans' lives. The amount of tax a person pays on ONE two-dollar cheeseburger is this much money.
I mean.. Okay. Now don't get me wrong, i like to harp on stupidity of trump or americans cheering for him. This here is not the case, it's an honest try to get one of those people to try and explain objectively, why $3 millions for a good cause have to be cut, but military spending has to be upped by more than 150 times that.
I actually didn't know it was only $3 million, i assumed it was around a couple of billions maybe (naive, but the hell do i know what meals on wheels costs - i'm around 20 years away from needing it -.-).
I honestly can't get it in my head how somebody looks at this (not just liberals, ANY sane person) and thinks "finally, they get rid of that shit". Even more pathetic that it actually can be suggested without repercussion.
LL, you were russian or something, no? How does russia handle their elderly?
3 million is clearly not the actual number. that'd only be a small part of their overall budget (and from waht I can see, most meals on wheels are locally incorporated, with their being a national body that helps distribute/manage/even stuff out). they also probably rely a lot on free volunteer labor. so it's not really relevant to the question of how good a job they do for the cost, cuz there's a lot else going on. iirc I asked them once long ago when I was doing research and their costs came to around $9/meal (in an area where everything is kidna pricey). though that was just some answer from a local gorup that I asked, dunno how carefully looked at it was.
On March 17 2017 09:31 dankobanana wrote: Meals on wheels is obviously a job killer. As you said, it keeps the elderly from nursing homes ))
I wouldn't be surprised if that silliness was actually an argument the White House makes lol. They also talk about saving the American taxpayer money, which has no context attached to it. Meals on Wheels costs the White House $3 million. There are over 240 million American adults. If each American adult can contribute 13 cents, that's more than enough to save millions of elderly Americans' lives. The amount of tax a person pays on ONE two-dollar cheeseburger is this much money.
I mean.. Okay. Now don't get me wrong, i like to harp on stupidity of trump or americans cheering for him. This here is not the case, it's an honest try to get one of those people to try and explain objectively, why $3 millions for a good cause have to be cut, but military spending has to be upped by more than 150 times that.
Isn't that just making the picture i paint worse, if it is already that underfunded that voluntary labour is a necessity?
I also didn't comment on how good/bad a job they do, i'm asking what kind of mindset you need to have to assume that they shouldn't be doing it at all.
Can confirm that 16,667 is more than 150.
.. well. Don't know what to say, your number would've made my argument considerably more vibrant. For some reason i went 500/3, kind of a brainfart there.
edit: also said "more than 150". I obviously meant around 16.5k with that, which is more than 150. *cough*
On March 17 2017 09:31 dankobanana wrote: Meals on wheels is obviously a job killer. As you said, it keeps the elderly from nursing homes ))
I wouldn't be surprised if that silliness was actually an argument the White House makes lol. They also talk about saving the American taxpayer money, which has no context attached to it. Meals on Wheels costs the White House $3 million. There are over 240 million American adults. If each American adult can contribute 13 cents, that's more than enough to save millions of elderly Americans' lives. The amount of tax a person pays on ONE two-dollar cheeseburger is this much money.
I mean.. Okay. Now don't get me wrong, i like to harp on stupidity of trump or americans cheering for him. This here is not the case, it's an honest try to get one of those people to try and explain objectively, why $3 millions for a good cause have to be cut, but military spending has to be upped by more than 150 times that.
I actually didn't know it was only $3 million, i assumed it was around a couple of billions maybe (naive, but the hell do i know what meals on wheels costs - i'm around 20 years away from needing it -.-).
I honestly can't get it in my head how somebody looks at this (not just liberals, ANY sane person) and thinks "finally, they get rid of that shit". Even more pathetic that it actually can be suggested without repercussion.
LL, you were russian or something, no? How does russia handle their elderly?
3 million is clearly not the actual number. that'd only be a small part of their overall budget (and from waht I can see, most meals on wheels are locally incorporated, with their being a national body that helps distribute/manage/even stuff out). they also probably rely a lot on free volunteer labor. iirc I asked them once long ago when I was doing research and their costs came to around $9/meal (in an area where everything is kidna pricey). though that was just some answer from a local gorup that I asked, dunno how carefully looked at it was.
I believe a lot of the funding comes from other avenues (like individual donors and foundation contributions) besides the $3 million from the federal government, but it's such a silly thing to remove from the federal budget because: 1. It basically costs nothing; 2. The removal is detrimental for millions of people's health and well-being; 3. The very gesture symbolizes a dismissal of care for one of our country's most sacrosanct demographics: the elderly.
They should leave it alone. Or heck, I think an awesome power play- if Trump was smart- would be for Trump to say that he's removing the $3 million burden from all American taxpayers and deciding to single-handedly donate $3 million of his own money, with no strings attached, to Meals on Wheels. That'd be a pretty awesome thing to do, although that may slippery slope into him being asked to donate to other charities and foundations as well.
The GOP Healthcare Bill is officially dead as Susan Collins set to vote against it.
President Donald Trump suffered the second bipartisan rebuke from Congress over his wiretapping claims in two days — and left it to his embattled spokesman, Sean Spicer, to explain that the president didn’t actually mean what he wrote.
The Republican chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday shot down Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Their statement comes a day after the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee also cast doubt on Trump’s claim.
The stunning rebukes from senior Republicans are the latest sign that many in the GOP are increasingly frustrated with a president who has made a habit of hurling inflammatory insults on Twitter at his political rivals — or even his reality-television rivals — often without evidence and sometimes based on conspiracy theories.
A defiant Spicer on Thursday responded by accusing reporters of ignoring key information and the intelligence committee leaders of speaking before they have all the facts.
In a heated news conference, Spicer also sought to recast Trump’s words, saying the president’s tweets about Obama ordering the tapping of his phones were not meant to be taken literally. He pointed to news reports indicating some Trump associates might have been under surveillance during the campaign because of suspected ties to Russia.
"There's no question that there were surveillance techniques used," he said.
Spicer's news conference came after Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina and ranking member Mark Warner of Virginia issued a joint statement saying they had seen no evidence to support Trump’s wiretap allegation.
“Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016,” Burr and Warner said.
On Wednesday, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who was a member of the Trump transition team’s executive committee, said he doesn’t think “there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.”
“Are you going to take the tweets literally?” Nunes said. “If you are, then clearly the president was wrong.”
The leaders of the intelligence committees were briefed last week behind closed doors by FBI Director James Comey, who is set to be asked on Monday to comment publicly on Trump’s claim during testimony before the House panel.
Nunes added that while it doesn’t appear Trump Tower was wiretapped, he is concerned that Trump campaign aides could have been under inadvertent surveillance.
This is called incidental collection, and it can occur when people in the United States communicate with a foreign target of U.S. surveillance. The identities of Americans whose communications are inadvertently collected are normally kept secret, though they can be “unmasked” under certain circumstances for foreign intelligence purposes.
Nunes and his panel’s ranking membeer, Adam Schiff of California, sent a letter Wednesday to the intelligence community, asking for the names of campaign officials who have been unmasked.
The ranking member of the House intelligence committee says it appears President Trump revealed classified information during a Fox News interview on Wednesday while refusing to disclose evidence that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower.
In the interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Trump said that the Central Intelligence Agency had been hacked during Obama’s tenure.
“I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked,” Trump said. “That was during the Obama years. That was not during us.”
He probably was referring to the Wikileaks matter. Which is public knowledge.
The problem with Trump is we don't know if he's leaking classified information or his media viewing habits.
It is public knowledge that Wikileaks released info that it SAID was from the CIA. If it is or isnt, is/ WAS classified until trump blurted it out.
Look up every single time Spicer is asked if the leaks are from the CIA. "It is policy not to confirm or deny leaks" (Or something like that)
While he didn't leak it, because the act of a president saying something declassifies information. He still did confirm that it is information from the CIA.
It was already all but confirmed. And Trump more likely than not only found out from the media.
Was it public knowledge that the CIA was hacked during the Obama years?
On March 17 2017 11:40 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: The GOP Healthcare Bill is officially dead as Susan Collins set to vote against it.
Hopefully!
Sen. Susan Collins comes out against House GOP healthcare bill
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key centrist vote in the Senate, said in an interview published Thursday that she opposes the House GOP ObamaCare replacement bill as it is currently written.
“This is not a bill I could support in its current form,” Collins told the Portland Press Herald. “It really misses the mark.”
Collins pointed to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the bill earlier this week, which found that 24 million more people would be uninsured by 2026 under the plan. In particular, like other more centrist lawmakers in both chambers, Collins pointed to the finding that low-income people and seniors would have to pay far more for insurance under the House GOP bill than under ObamaCare.
“This bill doesn’t come close to achieving the goal of allowing low-income seniors to purchase health insurance,” Collins said. Collins’s announcement illustrates how tough the path ahead for the bill is. It is already a serious question as to whether the measure has enough votes to pass the House, where both conservatives and centrists have strong objections.
However, the path appears even harder in the Senate, where Republicans can lose just two votes. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has already said he opposes the bill, in addition to Collins. Other conservative senators, including Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have strong objections, as do a range of more centrist Republican senators.
House Republican centrists are worried about voting for the bill if it is only destined to die in the Senate.
One possible change to the bill being pushed by some Republicans in both chambers is to increase the tax credits for low-income people and seniors, to address the affordability problems.
“This is so complex. It’s important we do this right,” Collins said.
The ranking member of the House intelligence committee says it appears President Trump revealed classified information during a Fox News interview on Wednesday while refusing to disclose evidence that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower.
In the interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Trump said that the Central Intelligence Agency had been hacked during Obama’s tenure.
“I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked,” Trump said. “That was during the Obama years. That was not during us.”
He probably was referring to the Wikileaks matter. Which is public knowledge.
The problem with Trump is we don't know if he's leaking classified information or his media viewing habits.
It is public knowledge that Wikileaks released info that it SAID was from the CIA. If it is or isnt, is/ WAS classified until trump blurted it out.
Look up every single time Spicer is asked if the leaks are from the CIA. "It is policy not to confirm or deny leaks" (Or something like that)
While he didn't leak it, because the act of a president saying something declassifies information. He still did confirm that it is information from the CIA.
It was already all but confirmed. And Trump more likely than not only found out from the media.
Was it public knowledge that the CIA was hacked during the Obama years?
It was never confirmed by the government in any way.
But the bar on this one is really fucking low. Wikileaks claimed the CIA was hacked, which can mean a lot of things. I doubt they are all working off one server with all secret data on it in a big vault waiting for Tom Cruise. And how compromised is hacked? What did they get? Did they get in, got nothing and the CIA found out?
Specific details are cool, wikileaks provided very little. So sure it was public knowledge that someone hacked the CIA at some point to some degree because people just assume that happened at some point.
Elections have consequences people, when you want the country to be run like a Business don't be shocked when you find yourself expendable.
President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating funding for economic development programs supporting laid-off coal miners and others in Appalachia, stirring fears in a region that supported him of another letdown on the heels of the coal industry’s collapse.
The 2018 budget proposal submitted to Congress by the White House on Thursday would cut funds to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and the U.S. Economic Development Administration. The Washington-based organizations are charged with diversifying the economies of states like West Virginia and Kentucky to help them recover from coal’s decline.
The proposed cuts would save the federal government $340 million and come as the Republican president seeks to slash a wide array of federal programs and regulations to make way for increased military spending.
But they are perceived by some in Appalachia as a betrayal of his promises to help coal miners.
"Folks that live in Appalachia believe that the ARC belongs to them," said federal ARC Co-Chair Earl Gohl, bemoaning the proposed cut. "It's really their organization."
Republican Congressman Hal Rogers, who represents eastern Kentucky's coal counties, said he would fight to restore the funding when Congress negotiates the budget later this year.
“It's true that the president won his election in rural country. I would really like to see him climb aboard the ARC vehicle as a way to help us help ourselves," Rogers said.
Four hundred of the 420 counties ARC operates in voted for Trump in November's election.
The 52-year old agency has run more than 650 projects in Appalachia's 13 states between 2011 and 2015 costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Its programs, some launched under Democratic former President Barack Obama, are expected to create or retain more than 23,670 jobs and train and educate over 49,000 students and workers, the organization said.
Trump vowed during his campaign that the White House would put American coal miners back to work, in part by cutting environmental regulations ushered in by Obama, mainly aimed at curbing climate change but characterized by Trump as hampering the industry.
However, many industry experts and coal miners doubt that rolling back regulation alone can revive the coal mining industry, which faces stiff competition from abundant and cheap natural gas in fueling U.S. power generation.
It is so clear that they had no idea what they were proposing to cut when they created this budget. They looked at the big numbers, cut stuff they felt was useless and just dumped it out there. No digging into why those agencies existed or what they did. Just cut it because Bannon and others don't like government workers. Better known as civil servants.
EPT
))![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gxC7IMd.jpg)
