US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7705

On June 01 2017 15:17 Wulfey_LA wrote:
Complaining about donors who regularly meet with high levels of the party having more influence than people who NEVER talk to someone at the DNC is childish and naive. So what that donors are able to reach out to party leaders and influence things. How else do you think party policy gets formulated? Did you think the party would represent you without you actually participating or supporting the party in some way?

On June 01 2017 15:26 LegalLord wrote:
Not every leak gets people to care. The media cycles move fast and while it may be interesting to know how much of a jerk Johnny was to Sally within Clinton's campaign team, we eventually move on. Unless there's something that keeps us stuck to that point because it keeps coming up. Remember Bernie Sanders' rape letter? Probably not because while I guess that's part of a wholesale aspect of a candidate it's just not very interesting in terms of an actual campaign.

The reason the entire emails matter, and later the DNC matter, kept coming up was because Hillary did everything she could over the years to create the reputation that she considered herself above the law and that she loved her cronies. Every time it came up she went right ahead and reinforced that narrative. The DNC matter and the Podesta leak was most interesting in the sense that it reinforced that narrative. The shit DWS said, the aid that Donna Brazile gave to Hillary, and so on. Most of that "wholesale leaking" loses its meaning if it doesn't effectively reinforce an open issue. It wasn't just anything you could possibly find, it was just what people expected to find and got some confirmation.

There are a lot of good summaries if you want a short version. What was most striking, though, is how the course of her campaign reflects the aftermath quite perfectly: a game of cronyism with an incompetent leader, constant unwillingness to accept responsibility for wrongdoing, and tone deafness as to how real voters perceive her.

Energy policy adviser Michael Catanzaro—a former energy industry lobbyist with clients in the oil, gas, and coal sectors—“may participate in broad policy matters and particular matters of general applicability relating to the Clean Power Plan” and other Obama administration environmental rules.

“Particular matters of general applicability” generally refer to laws or regulations that affect a narrow and identifiable group—say, a single industry. In effect, Catanzaro will be free to promote policies that benefit his former clients as long as he doesn’t go to bat for them directly.

Those officials have been given freer rein to advance their former clients’ financial interests, but ethics rules have also been waived for every other “commissioned officer”—staffers who report directly to the president—in the White House who has worked for a political group in the past two years.

That will allow a number of White House staffers to collaborate with pro-Trump advocacy operations. The West Wing is stacked with officials who have made significant sums working, consulting for, or representing high-profile political organizations, including networks of groups financed by the Trump-backing Mercer family and the libertarian Koch family.

Conway herself consulted for more than 50 political, policy, and advocacy organizations last year, according to a White House financial disclosure statement.

She and Bannon will be free to continue working with two campaign vendors in particular, Glittering Steel and Cambridge Analytica, that are key components of the Mercers’ pro-Trump political endeavors. Bannon helped lead both companies, and Cambridge Analytica enlisted Conway’s consulting services last year.

On June 01 2017 16:17 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:

Ah yes, draining the swamp of it's ethics :-x

On June 01 2017 15:35 Nebuchad wrote:


A lot of people don't think it's that naive to prefer a democracy to an oligarchy. You don't seem bothered by it, which I find kind of weirdly flippant if I'm honest, but in any case that's far from the majority view. Generally when people vote for someone (which btw, is also called "supporting the party in some way"), they expect that someone to do the things that they promised them, not the things that they promised to whoever gave them the most money this time around.

The number of homeless people in Los Angeles has jumped to a new record, as city officials grapple with a humanitarian crisis of proportions remarkable for a modern American metropolis.

Municipal leaders said that a recent count over several nights found 55,188 homeless people living in a survey region comprising most of Los Angeles County, up more than 25% from last year. It is the highest number observed there, according to federal data that begins in 2007.

The total includes those in shelters and also those subsisting outside, who make up three-quarters of the population and can be found everywhere from the sidewalks of Skid Row to the beachside boulevards of Venice and the concrete channel of the Los Angeles river.

“It just bespeaks the human tragedy that’s been going on in Los Angeles for decades and decades,” said Philip Mangano, a former head of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which guides national policy. “There’s a certain group of Americans who have living situations closer to a third-world favela than what one would expect in the entertainment capital of the world.”

Tom Waldman, a spokesperson for the homeless services authority, confirmed that “we appear to have set a record this year”, and added that the region has the “tools and resources” to resolve it.

While national numbers for 2017 have not yet been released, until last year homelessness had trended downward in the US. But a number of states – including in the west, which has some of the highest per-capita rates of homelessness in the country – have gone the opposite direction in recent years. California’s and Washington state’s numbers have been rising; Hawai’i is up more than 30% since 2007. High rents and a low supply of affordable housing are often labeled as the main culprits.

Los Angeles does not have the most homeless people in the US. That dubious distinction belongs to New York, which tallied approximately 74,000 people last year. But New York has a “right to shelter” provision, and only a tiny proportion spend the night outside. California cities, including Los Angeles, lead the nation in the percentage of their homeless populations who reside in places not fit for human habitation – in vehicles or the tent cities that now seem a permanent feature of the local landscape.

Surprisingly, the number of homeless veterans in Los Angeles has spiked to 5,000, despite the fact that eliminating veteran homelessness has long been a national focus. And there are twice as many people inhabiting cars.

“It’s very disheartening to see an increase of this magnitude,” said Mike Alvidrez, CEO of the Skid Row Housing Trust, which builds housing for homeless people with disabilities. “I think on the other side of the coin, this is a call to action.”

About 14,000 homeless people were moved into housing in Los Angeles in 2016. And in a sign of the urgency permeating the city, voters have chosen twice in the span of one year to tax themselves to provide for homeless residents. $1.2bn will go to building treatment facilities and affordable housing, of which the city hopes to construct 8,000 to 10,000 units, and a projected $3.5bn over 10 years is earmarked for additional services.

The significance of this investment should not be underestimated. Still, some in the city are sounding a note of caution over the possible impact of the Trump administration, which is in favor of cutting revenue streams that Los Angeles would use to help pay for new homes. “That means that we have to finance more of the unit and that results in funding fewer units,” said Yolanda Chavez, an assistant city administrative officer.

Los Angeles’ homeless count numbers are not the final word on the scale of the problem. They are considered a snapshot, and indicate how many people were tallied on just a handful of nights as volunteers trawled the streets with clipboards. This method is not completely precise, and does not show how many experience homelessness at other points over the course of the year, a figure that could be larger.

Localities across the US have been releasing their 2017 results in dribs and drabs. On the west coast, the news has been sobering. Alameda county, home to the cities of Oakland and Berkeley, is up 40% over 2015. Seattle and San Diego figures have also risen, and the situation in the latter has been described a “a tableau of squalor and suffering”.

San Francisco and New York have not yet announced their numbers, and they will be watched closely. Like Los Angeles, the cities are considered a bellwether of the homelessness crisis in the US.

On June 01 2017 16:50 Simberto wrote:


What you call "campaign donations" in the US is called "bribery" in other parts of the world. You give money to a politician so he does what you want them to do, to your advantage, and completely ignoring what the majority of the people they rule do.

I know that most countries have some sort of donations to parties, but the US is just insane in this regard. You don't even donate to parties, which is bad enough. You donate to single politicians. And your politics class is almost entirely financed via donations. It is absurd.

This is one of the major problems the US system has. The absurd and open bribery, that totally distorts the system to benefit a few wealthy people, as opposed to the large amount of average people. The other major problem is the two-party system, which leads to animosity and rewards making the other party look bad and hurting them over looking good yourself.

In my opinion, those are the two things that you need to find a way to fix before you can actually shoulder the rest of your problems. These should be on the top of your political agenda, but obviously the people in power have no interest in doing any of that, as the system as is benefits them. I know that that isn't easy, but it is what you have to do to have a stable system to the benefit of all, instead of an unstable corruptocracy for the benefit of the ultrawealthy.

On June 01 2017 15:35 Acrofales wrote:

Let's see what parable fits here. Yes. How about this one?

A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help.

Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, "Jump in, I can save you."

The stranded fellow shouted back, "No, it's OK, I'm praying to God and he is going to save me."

So the rowboat went on.

Then a motorboat came by. "The fellow in the motorboat shouted, "Jump in, I can save you."

To this the stranded man said, "No thanks, I'm praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith."

So the motorboat went on.

Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, "Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety."

To this the stranded man again replied, "No thanks, I'm praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith."

So the helicopter reluctantly flew away.

Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, "I had faith in you but you didn't save me, you let me drown. I don't understand why!"

To this God replied, "I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?"

On June 01 2017 19:12 Broetchenholer wrote:


I think there was another Republican that pushed this narrative even further. He wasn't arguing that climate change is real but god will simply take care of it when his favourite species becomes endangered. Hewas saying, manmade climate change cannot be real, because how could we be so arrogant to believe we could destroy the world god gifted us with. God would never allow us to influence his world in such a drastic manner.

"[M]y point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous,", Senator James Inhofe Source:newrepublic.com

On June 01 2017 18:44 GreenHorizons wrote:


I feel like I could have used this back when people were saying the tens of millions Clinton got leading up to her run and the hundreds of millions more she ran through her campaign had no influence on her decisions.

On June 01 2017 20:19 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Ruse and shine America!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/870234811616677889

As he built support for his signature political issue, Donald Trump formed a powerful partnership with a non-profit group dedicated to families of those killed by undocumented immigrants, but now some of those families are alleging they were exploited by both the non-profit group and — to a lesser extent — by President Trump.

More than a dozen families involved in the Houston-based Remembrance Project — including two who spoke at the Republican National Convention and several more who spoke at Trump’s rallies or were featured in his campaign ads — have parted ways with the organization, according to people familiar with the situation, including six of the families.

Several of the families say they feel let down partly because the charity has done nothing to help them financially, despite suggesting that the money it raised — including $52,00 or more raised with Trump’s help — would be used to assist victims’ families. A handful of the families are planning a new group through which they intend to provide such assistance. Several others have demanded that the Remembrance Project refrain from using their names and likenesses — as well as those of their deceased loved ones — in its marketing materials, and some discussed legal action to force the group to comply.

“We were used, abused and exploited, and what’s worse is that my son was used abused and exploited and is still being used, abused and exploited,” said Brenda Sparks, a former Remembrance Project participant whose son Eric Zepeda died in September 2011 at age 22 after being struck while riding his motorcycle by a car driven by an undocumented immigrant.

“Trump used the Remembrance Project to get to us, and the Remembrance Project also used him,” said Sparks, who was among the so-called “Angel moms” who Trump brought on stage at rallies and speeches to tell their stories, including at the August 2016 speech at which he laid out his hardline immigration plan.

Trump himself was the key attraction at a Houston fundraiser for the Remembrance Project less than two months before Election Day. Taking time away from his high-octane campaign rallies, the then-Republican nominee spoke at a luncheon in Houston featuring about 40 people who had lost loved ones to crimes by undocumented immigrants.

The Remembrance Project sold tickets to the event for as much as $10,000 per table, claiming in promotional materials — some featuring video of Trump at a rally calling the group “incredible” — that proceeds would “sponsor a stolen life,” and thanking donors for “support and contributions made that assists an #AngelFamily.”

“Nothing has moved me more deeply than the time I’ve spent with the families of the Remembrance Project,” Trump said when he took the stage that afternoon.

Families affiliated with the Remembrance Project say they’ve not received any direct help from the group, despite several requests, and the group’s leader says that was never the intention.

In interviews, Sparks and several other family members also expressed frustration that Trump has reversed himself on a pledge to repeal an executive order signed by former President Barack Obama deferring deportation proceedings for immigrants who entered the country illegally as children.

But Sparks and several other victims’ family members who have spent time privately with Trump say they are holding out hope that he’ll revert back to his previous position. And they also say they believe that his attraction to their cause — which became an animating theme of his campaign and later his presidency — was less about politics, and more about genuine concern for them, and the country writ large.

They are less convinced about the motivations of the woman who co-founded the Remembrance Project, Maria Espinoza. The family members of six victims and three allies who’ve turned away from the group describe Espinoza as an over-promiser who used them to get close to Trump, and to boost her own profile and influence.