US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7951

On June 27 2017 13:08 Danglars wrote:

I couldn't care less what happens to that channel. Upset means giving a damn at some level.

On June 27 2017 11:32 Adreme wrote:


The thing is when you focus on what is actually possible you are left in a position where you have to ask "What were congressional democrats actually ABLE to do?" Not what should be done or what could be done but what is actually possible for them to do. For around a year they had a senate majority where they needed EVERY democrat in order to pass anything of substance, which considering what a few of them were its impossible to really do. So what else were they supposed to do that they did not do. I am sure it is different on a state by state basis but on a national level what exactly were the 95% of democratic congressmen supposed to do that they did not?

On June 27 2017 13:41 GreenHorizons wrote:
10 minutes in a poor neighborhood followed by 10 minutes in a wealthy neighborhood should make it pretty clear we're REALLY far from our politicians doing the best they can with what they have.

Unless the suggestion is that Democrats (and Republicans) can't help but be beholden to corporate interests because our system is so decrepit.

On June 27 2017 12:26 Danglars wrote:

Colorado will be the first casualty. Gun laws, pot, progressive social policies & that lovely civil rights commission. Red state turned blue.

Austin has been the blueberry in Texas's tomato soup for a while. I don't think my state's fleeing residents are responsible.

It's pretty sad nationally-speaking that libs ruin their state and then transplant the destructive policies wherever they move (when the situation degrades enough to move.) I heard an Idahoan railing against new Californians in her town ... their reasons for the move were, in her opinion, linked to the policies that they called backwards.

On June 27 2017 12:14 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

Blaming the liberals is a pretty decent start.
Uncontrolled immigration being one of the main causes of the CA housing bubble.Taxes too high for businesses to thrive, Articles online about tech company workers living in tents or containers in San Fran because thats what they can afford.Fuck knows how fast food workers or cleaners survive out there.

Many already moving elsewhere, places like Austin,Texas.Where they'll vote for the same party and policies that destroyed California.The liberal trail of destruction continues...

On June 27 2017 12:14 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

Blaming the liberals is a pretty decent start.
Uncontrolled immigration being one of the main causes of the CA housing bubble.Taxes too high for businesses to thrive, Articles online about tech company workers living in tents or containers in San Fran because thats what they can afford.Fuck knows how fast food workers or cleaners survive out there.

Many already moving elsewhere, places like Austin,Texas.Where they'll vote for the same party and policies that destroyed California.The liberal trail of destruction continues...

On June 27 2017 15:34 rageprotosscheesy wrote:


Uncontrolled immigration isn't the main cause of the CA housing bubble lmao. That's like saying uncontrolled immigration is killing the Australian housing market. Its not even close to being the reason.

Its literally the most boring example of market supply and demand. Even if you close all borders, the housing market is STILL going to be terrible. Its like how everyone wants a home in inner Metro Melbourne. It doesn't have anything to do with conservatives or liberals, its got to do with locality, available amenities and employment opportunities. No one wants to live in Point Cook because internet sucks, there's no community places to do anything, you have to drive two hours just to get to work, and the only way out of your boring community is a single lane road. Everyone wants to live in Carlton or Toorak, regardless of political affiliation, because you have bars all within walking distance, you can get to the city via tram or train and your social community isn't limited to your next door neighbors.

You've got an area stuck in an peninsula with extremely attractive amenities and quality employment opportunities. So people want to live in the area because its nice. But then you have an area with low housing elasticity because the local city councils have all implemented strict urban growth boundaries and land controls (often with the support of local NIMBY residents).

A good start is to apply a vacancy tax but few governments are going to do that. It pisses off investors and speculators.
It pisses off homeowners. This is a possible part of a solution to Hong Kong's housing market but do they want to risk ~25% of their GDP? Let's be honest, few governments want to lose $$$.

CNN is imposing strict new publishing restrictions for online articles involving Russia after the network deleted a story and then issued a retraction late Friday, according to an internal email obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The email went out at 11:21 a.m. on Saturday from Rich Barbieri, the CNNMoney executive editor, saying "No one should publish any content involving Russia without coming to me and Jason [Farkas]," a CNN vice president.

"This applied to social, video, editorial, and MoneyStream. No exceptions," the email added. "I will lay out a workflow Monday."

The new restrictions also apply to other areas of the network — not just CNNMoney, which wasn't involved with the article that was deleted and retracted.

On June 27 2017 16:03 tomatriedes wrote:
Good to see at least one media outlet now trying to rein in the anti-Russian scaremongering:



https://www.buzzfeed.com/passantino/cnn-russia-coverage-publishing-restrictions?utm_term=.bv9W4AXXY#.otMzB3OOj

More than 15,000 Americans were losing their jobs each day in June 2009, as the US struggled to climb out of a painful recession following its worst financial crisis in decades.

But Jay Sekulow, who is now an attorney to Donald Trump, had a private jet to finance. His law firm was expecting a $3m payday. And six-figure contracts for members of his family needed to be taken care of.

Documents obtained by the Guardian show Sekulow that month approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family and their businesses.

Telemarketers for the nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (Case), were instructed in contracts signed by Sekulow to urge people who pleaded poverty or said they were out of work to dig deep for a “sacrificial gift”.

“I can certainly understand how that would make it difficult for you to share a gift like that right now,” they told retirees who said they were on fixed incomes and had “no extra money” – before asking if they could spare “even $20 within the next three weeks”.

In addition to using tens of millions of dollars in donations to pay Sekulow, his wife, his sons, his brother, his sister-in-law, his niece and nephew, and their firms, Case has also been used to provide a series of unusual loans and property deals to the Sekulow family.

Attorneys and other experts specialising in nonprofit law said the Sekulows risked violating a federal law against nonprofits paying excessive benefits to the people responsible for running them. Sekulow declined to detail how he ensured the payments were reasonable.

“This is all highly unusual, and it gives an appearance of conflicts of interest that any nonprofit should want to avoid,” said Daniel Borochoff, the president of CharityWatch, a Chicago-based group that monitors nonprofits.

Sekulow, 61, is the president of Case and the chief counsel of its sister organization, the American Center for Legal Justice (ACLJ). He has become one of Trump’s most vocal defenders since joining the team of attorneys representing the president amid investigations into possible ties between his campaign and Russia.

Sekulow did not respond to a series of detailed questions from the Guardian.

His spokesman, Gene Kapp, said in an emailed statement: “The financial arrangements between the ACLJ, Case and all related entities are regularly reviewed by outside independent compensation experts and have been determined to be reasonable. In addition, each entity has annual independent outside audits performed by certified public accounting firms. Further, the IRS has previously conducted audits of the ACLJ and Case and found them to be in full compliance of all applicable tax laws.”

Sekulow is an ally of the conservative televangelist Pat Robertson and made his name in Washington by fighting against abortion rights and efforts to legalise same-sex marriage.

He founded Case in 1988 to build on a successful appearance at the US supreme court on behalf of the group Jews For Jesus, after an earlier career as a real estate attorney ended in bankruptcy and legal disputes. Sekulow has gone on to use Case as a platform for legal action to defend Christians against perceived encroachments on their rights.

Case raises tens of millions of dollars a year, much of it in small amounts from Christians who receive direct appeals for money over the telephone or in the mail. The telemarketing contracts obtained by the Guardian show how fundraisers were instructed by Sekulow to deliver bleak warnings about topics including abortion, Sharia law and Barack Obama.

On June 27 2017 14:04 Buckyman wrote:

Needs more explanation. I can think of several contrasting lessons one could take from such an expedition.



That's a reasonable hypothesis derived from public choice theory, although I don't think he meant that.

On June 27 2017 13:14 Plansix wrote:

They resigned and CNN retracted the story. That is how it is done. They lost their jobs. I'm not a huge fan of CNN, but at least their reporters resigned after peddling bullshit.

On June 27 2017 14:50 TheTenthDoc wrote:
I dunno if being anti-pot is really "conservative" in an ideological sense, anyway. At least growing up in a state where people demanded the freedom to drive without seat belts while talking on their cell phones it seemed weird those same people didn't want the freedom to smoke pot.

I feel like a good part of it is hippies cementing weed's association with the left more than anything that drives opposition to decriminalization from the organized wings of the right (of course, the far right wants weed for all).

On June 27 2017 22:05 Danglars wrote:

Bro I responded to Hannity & Fox News.

President Trump, who is fond of dining at his Trump International Hotel near the White House, will have some company Wednesday — a roomful of people who paid as much as $35,000 or $100,000 each to be there.

The money will go to two joint fundraising operations — Trump Victory, which will take in large donations and Trump Make America Great Again Committee for smaller-dollar donors.

When Trump Victory started sending out invitations four weeks ago, it announced the price points, but kept the venue secret until a prospect had RSVP'd.

"There's nothing flat-out illegal about it, but it's pay-to-play," said Richard Painter, former White House ethics counsel in the George W. Bush administration and a critic of Trump's ethical standards. "The appearances are terrible."

Trump has merged two problems — first, Painter points to the usual Washington practice of powerful officeholders selling access to big donors; and second, the new opportunity for interest groups to steer cash to his businesses.

The fundraiser is emblematic of the way Trump has seemed to close a circle of politics, money and influence unlike any past president. During the campaign, some of Trump's companies did business with his campaign. It paid $8.7 million, for example, to TAG Air (the Trump company that owns most of his airplanes) and $2 million to Trump Tower, the building where he housed the campaign headquarters. His private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, received $435,000. Even Trump Ice, his bottled water brand, got $3,000.

In total, $1 out of every $10 that went into his presidential campaign went back to Trump in some way, and $1 out of every $5 Trump donated found its way back Trump brands and properties.

In the White House, Trump uses his properties for official business, and they appear to profit from it. Over the winter, he spent many weekends at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida, sometimes meeting with foreign leaders while club members looked on. The club doubled its annual dues to $200,000 and appears to have upped its revenue.

Trump's 2016 personal financial disclosure showed Mar-a-Lago had revenues of 29.8 million; in 2017, it went up to $37.3 million. (The two reporting periods are not identical, and overlap for several months, so a direct comparison can't be made.)

When Trump International opened for business last fall, a few blocks from the White House, it initially faltered. But after Trump moved into the White House, it became a go-to spot for foreign diplomats and interest groups to hold events.

Earlier this month, Justice Department filings revealed that the hotel benefited from $270,000 in payments tied to Saudi Arabia. (After news broke of the payments, the Trump Organization said it would donate the funds at the end of the year.)

Now, for the first time, Trump is explicitly using Trump International to solicit money to hold onto the presidency. The individual ticket price is $35,000; joining the host committee costs $100,000 (some of it presumably coming from donors invited by a host committee member). And Trump Make America Great Again has been raffling off a small number of tickets, plus accommodations and round-trip travel.

Together, Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again raised $372.1 million to elect Trump in 2016, and $9.9 million in the first three months of this year, according to Federal Election Commission reports. (As joint fundraising committees, they distribute their income mainly to the RNC and Donald J. Trump For President.)

The Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign did not respond to queries about the event.

"All it takes is a contribution of $1 or more," the TMAGA event email says.

The fine print at the bottom says, "No purchase, payment or contribution necessary to win. Contributing will not improve your chances of winning."

On June 27 2017 22:11 Plansix wrote:

But you never seem to take the time to post an article about how he peddling conspiracy theories. Or how Fox News seems to avoid the headline new of the day if it is negative towards the White House.

On June 27 2017 22:33 Nevuk wrote:

Trump's administration has done a great job shining some light on some of the worst people in the country.