US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8023

On July 07 2017 03:57 Danglars wrote:


A bit of cultural criticism. It's pretty funny what's happened post November 2016.

On July 07 2017 04:56 Dromar wrote:


Exactly. High schoolers are inundated with the idea that a college graduate makes on average $X more per year compared to someone with just a high school diploma, it's a good investment in your future, etc. And to some degree that's all true, but the information is being misapplied.

For a generation now, students have gone to college after graduating high school because "that's what you do," as long as you're not poor and your grades are good enough. And if you don't have money, you can go into debt (don't worry, it's an investment). And if your grades aren't good, you can go to a 2 year college, or tech school (you'll get in somewhere. It's never said like this, but there will ALWAYS be a school willing to take your money).

Students very much "know" they're supposed to go to college, but very often have no idea what they want to do with their life, what they want to go to college for, or how a college education could (or could not) benefit them. Meanwhile, they are just maturing into adults, which can be very confusing on its own, and often have questionable priorities.

I often advocate for students to wait a few years after high school before deciding to go to college or not. It results in much wiser, much more results-oriented students, who much more often come out with valuable skills and connections. If not, they may not waste their time and money in the first place.

On July 07 2017 05:28 nojok wrote:

In France we also have a lot of courses where they take way more students than what the job market can absorb but it does not end up with them having a massive debt, just a useless diploma. It does not change that much from the society's perspective, money and energy are wasted, but people still have an easier time to come back from those near useless studies.

On July 07 2017 04:41 GreenHorizons wrote:


pitifully or disgracefully bad: He shuddered as he watched his team's dismal performance.

But whatever, Republicans are an embarrassment as well. It's pretty frustrating/pathetic we leave these idiots in charge.

Sen. John Hoeven is the latest Republican senator to come out against party leaders' plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, sharing his reservations at a roundtable in North Dakota this week.

According to the Bismarck Tribune, Hoeven participated in a discussion at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine on Wednesday. There, he told constituents that he "doesn't support the (health care) bill as it stands," though the Tribune noted that Hoeven also expressed confidence that the bill could be improved, and cited premium costs as an area of concern.

Hoeven's reservations add him to a growing list of Republicans who are withholding their support, further imperiling legislation that already faced long odds. He is at least the tenth GOP senator to say he'll oppose the bill in its current form. With a slim majority in the Senate, Republicans can only afford to lose two of their 52 senators for the bill to pass under reconciliation.

Hoeven's office also put out a statement Wednesday further detailing his position. "Premiums and deductibles in North Dakota and across the nation continue to rise and some areas of the country will be left with little or no insurer competition next year. That is why we're working to reform our health care system. While I do not support the Senate health care bill in its current form, we continue working on the legislation with the goal of providing greater access to health care and more affordable health insurance."

Hoeven's remarks Wednesday seemed to clarify his stance on the bill -- he had issued a noncommittal statement in early June saying that he would "review this legislation," wait for a score from the Congressional Budget Office, and then determine how he would vote. That CBO score showed the Senate Republican health care bill would leave 22 million fewer Americans with health insurance by 2026 than under Obamacare.

Furthermore, Hoeven's progression -- entering the July 4 congressional recess undecided, facing pressure from constituents while home, then coming out against the bill -- is the precise scenario that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants feared when they were forced to punt on a health care vote until after the break.

On July 07 2017 04:26 GreenHorizons wrote:


Dim? Try...dismal?

https://twitter.com/derekwillis/status/882669894055100416

On July 07 2017 05:36 LegalLord wrote:

Yes, I've seen the other guys. But I've also seen you guys so it pretty much balances out.

On July 07 2017 05:34 Mohdoo wrote:
There is always going to be intrinsic value in increasing total average knowledge across a population, though. The US has a lot of issues with people being educated on a farm. It is important that these people are able to get away from cattle and corn and do something more. If nothing else, for their own growth and to be less of a drag on the population as a whole.

On July 07 2017 06:01 Buckyman wrote:



Depends on what they learn. A 4-year degree in laziness and alcohol consumption is arguably worse than whatever they'd learn on a farm.

On July 07 2017 06:14 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
community colleges do a good job with technical training programs. although the one I went too got in trouble because all their welding students got their certificated year 1 then got a full time job and never finished the second year so the graduation rate was ridiculously low.

On July 07 2017 06:01 Buckyman wrote:



Depends on what they learn. A 4-year degree in laziness and alcohol consumption is arguably worse than whatever they'd learn on a farm.

On July 07 2017 06:19 zlefin wrote:

hehe, you know a program is good when people get hired before they even finish :D

(not necessarily but it is an amusing thought)

On July 07 2017 06:20 Mohdoo wrote:


Someone working hard at a university will always yield a greater net benefit to society than someone working hard at a farm. Unless of course they are in some form of engineering or science involving farming. In which case, you would be improving farming as a whole rather than manual labor. But just in terms of the whole "working class" perspective, it is just grunt work. The kind of work that is on its way to being automated (or already has) is not something we should be patting people on the back for dedicating their lives too. It will put them in a bad position and cost society as a whole in the same way we have all these useless coal workers now. They were well trained for what they did, but now they work at walmart. Future employment and net benefit to society should always be considered. My point is that holding someone's overall quality constant, there is a net benefit when this person dedicates themselves to increasing their capabilities and knowledge in a university.

The U.S. is in the midst of an opioid crisis. Millions of Americans are addicted to the powerful prescription painkillers, and tens of thousands are dying each year from overdoses.

A new report out Thursday offers a bit of hope: Doctors are prescribing opioids less often, and the average dose they're giving patients has dropped, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, the number of patients getting opioids is still too high, and doctors are giving their patients prescriptions that last longer, according to the report in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

"The bottom line is that too many [people] are still getting too much for too long," says Anne Schuchat, the CDC's acting director. "And that is driving our problem with drug overdoses and drug overdose deaths in the country."

"We're in the midst of the worst drug addiction epidemic in United States history, but we are still massively overprescribing," says Andrew Kolodny, an addiction specialist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

For the new report, CDC researchers analyzed opioid prescribing patterns in the U.S. from 2006 to 2015, including county-level prescribing from 2010 through 2015.

Here's the good news:

The annual prescribing rate by doctors dropped 13 percent, from 81 prescriptions per 100 people to 71 prescriptions per 100 people, according to the report.

Doctors are also prescribing high doses of opioids less often. High-dose prescribing fell 41 percent, from 11.4 per 100 people to 6.7 per 100 people, the CDC says.

The overall amount of opioids prescribed in the U.S. dropped 18 percent, from a peak of 782 MMEs — morphine milligram equivalents — per capita in 2010 to 640 MMEs per capita in 2015, the researchers found.

Now, here's the bad news:

The length of prescriptions increased from an average of 13 days in 2006 to 18 days in 2015. That's concerning because the longer a person has access to the drugs, the greater their chances of becoming addicted, Schuchat says.

Moreover, U.S. doctors are still prescribing three times as many opioids as they were in 1999 and three times more than their European counterparts, according to the CDC.

Schuchat says it's enough for "every American [to] be medicated around the clock for three weeks."

"That's a lot of opioid use," she says.

The latest data show that there are significant variations in how doctors prescribe opioids around the country.

The counties where opioids are prescribed the most are scattered around the country, but tend to be places that have high numbers of white, unemployed people with lower levels of education, the CDC found.

"There [were] six times more opioids being prescribed in the highest-prescribing counties compared to the lowest-prescribing counties," Schuchat says. "And that amount can lead to a much higher risk for opioid addiction, overdose and death."

The latest data precede guidelines the CDC issued in 2016 aimed at reducing unnecessary opioid prescriptions.

"It's too soon for us to gauge whether guidelines have had an impact on prescribing nationally, but we've seen 25,000 downloads of our checklist," says Schuchat.

Kolodny and Schuchat hope that more doctors will start prescribing opioids much more carefully. They should try harder to use safer drugs, physical therapy and other ways to alleviate their patients' pain whenever possible, they say.

"We do see some improvement," Schuchat says. "But we know we have much more to do. We think we are starting to correct the course. But turning a ship of this size will take time."

In another development, the drug company Endo Pharmaceuticals announced Thursday that it would comply with a Food and Drug Administration request to stop selling Opana ER — the extended-release version of its opioid painkiller Opana. The FDA asked the company to pull Opana ER after finding evidence that an increasing number of people are crushing, dissolving and injecting the drug, leading to the spread of HIV, hepatitis C and a serious blood disorder.