US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8278

On August 02 2017 09:36 KwarK wrote:
I'm currently getting by on reduced income while finishing up my Masters. My budget sheet reports that my monthly income from my 8-5 job, after taking out deductions for health insurance, payroll taxes, mandatory retirement contributions, and FSA is $1,551. Rent is $1,005. Utilities (electricity/gas/phone) another $131 (last month). Insurance (car + renters) another $56. No car payment but I'm setting aside $200 each month as a virtual car payment to establish a dedicated fund for car stuff. That leaves $159 to feed my wife and I, plus gas, plus out of pocket expenses such as prescriptions.

I'm bootstrapping the hell out of it. A half dozen side incomes, making all my own meals, walking to and from work, embracing the challenge. I'm ineligible for any kind of benefits anyway due to some serious money in the bank.

You'd be amazed what can be achieved if you're willing to try. Oh, and also willing to work like crazy. And also exceptionally able.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

The announcement suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities.

The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minorities to university campuses.

Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.

The project is another sign that the civil rights division is taking on a conservative tilt under President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It follows other changes in Justice Department policy on voting rights, gay rights and police reforms.

Roger Clegg, a former top official in the civil rights division during the Reagan and George Bush administrations who is now the president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, called the project a “welcome” and “long overdue” development as the United States becomes increasingly multiracial.

“The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said.

But Kristen Clarke, the president of the liberal Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, criticized the affirmative action project as “misaligned with the division’s longstanding priorities.” She noted that the civil rights division was “created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation’s most oppressed minority groups,” performing work that often no one else has the resources or expertise to do.

“This is deeply disturbing,” she said. “It would be a dog whistle that could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may come down on them for their efforts to maintain diversity on their campuses.”

The Justice Department declined to provide more details about its plans or to make the acting head of the civil rights division, John Gore, available for an interview.

“The Department of Justice does not discuss personnel matters, so we’ll decline comment,” said Devin O’Malley, a department spokesman.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the educational benefits that flow from having a diverse student body can justify using race as one factor among many in a “holistic” evaluation, while rejecting blunt racial quotas or race-based point systems. But what that permits in actual practice by universities — public ones as well as private ones that receive federal funding — is often murky.

Mr. Clegg said he would expect the project to focus on investigating complaints the civil rights division received about any university admissions programs.

He also suggested that the project would look for stark gaps in test scores and dropout rates among different racial cohorts within student bodies, which he said would be evidence suggesting that admissions offices were putting too great an emphasis on applicants’ race and crossing the line the Supreme Court has drawn.

Some of that data, he added, could be available through the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which did not respond to a request for comment.

On August 02 2017 10:29 micronesia wrote:
Frankly I wish the presidents wouldn't salute back. It doesn't make sense for the president to salute and it's definitely not rude if he doesn't do it.

Republicans lawmakers are urging Donald Trump to continue paying critical health insurance subsidies that help lower-income people afford it, amid growing concern that the president will follow through on his threat to cancel them.

Frustrated by his party’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump has dangled the possibility that he would stop the payments – a move that experts say would send insurance markets into turmoil and cause premiums to rise dramatically.

Democrats have called the threat an attempt to “sabotage” the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare.

Senator Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate health, education, labor and pensions Committee, announced on Tuesday that his committee would begin holding hearings after Labor Day to discuss bipartisan legislation “to stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance market” in 2018.

“There are a number of issues with the American healthcare system but if your house is on fire you want to put out the fire,” Alexander said in introductory remarks at the start of a committee hearing on Tuesday afternoon. “And the fire in this case is the individual health insurance market. Both Republicans and Democrats agree on this.”

Alexander publicly called on the president to continue the payments to insurance companies, knowns as cost sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies. The payments help insurance companies off-set low-income customers out-of-pocket medical expenses such as deductibles and co-payments.

“Without payment of these cost-sharing reductions Americans will be hurt,” he said.

He described the impact of cutting off the payments, which total an estimated $7bn in 2017 and cover roughly 7 million people. Without the funding, he said, the insurance markets would unravel and insurers would likely leave the marketplaces leaving consumers with few, or possibly no, coverage options to buy insurance through the marketplace exchanges.

The insurers that stay will likely have to raise insurance premiums in order to offset the loss of the payments. He cited an analysis by the America’s Health Insurance Plans that found insurance premiums would increase by roughly 20%. Middle-class Americans would largely bear the brunt of the increases, as poorer customers could still access the subsidies.

The announcement was the first attempt by senators of both parties to cooperate on healthcare after a Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act collapsed in dramatic fashion on the chamber floor. On Monday, the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of House members, unveiled a suite of fixes to the healthcare law to stabilize the insurance markets. The most significant of their five proposals would appropriate funding for the law’s cost-sharing subsidies.

Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility that he might cancel the payments to insurance companies in an attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act.

“If ObamaCare is hurting people, & it is, why shouldn’t it hurt the insurance companies & why should Congress not be paying what public pays?” Trump tweeted on Monday.

Democrats have accused the administration of trying to inject uncertainty into the insurance market.

“The American people need a president who puts their interests first,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech on Tuesday, “not someone who plays political games with their healthcare.”

On Tuesday, several Republican senators joined Democrats in urging the president to continue payments.

“Just thinking about those families that would be hurt were they not [continued], I think it would be better to continue them,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana. “And I think it would be better then for Congress to do the constitutional thing and get it appropriated for a year or two.”

Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine who helped thwart the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, said it was “absolutely essential” that the president continue funding for the subsidies.

On August 02 2017 10:45 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
It's an acknowledgement of the salute to return it. We did it in the military all the time and if they didn't want to salute back/in a hurry, they simply said "As you were." and move about their business. President's do it for the same reason and because of what Stealth said.

On August 02 2017 09:47 ChristianS wrote:

Two questions:

1) When you mention side incomes (I know churning is a big hobby of yours), how significant a part do they play in all this? Seems like when you're on less than $20,000 a year from your main income, side incomes are a pretty big part of the story.

2) If you've got that much money in the bank, why bother being so frugal? I'm almost getting the impression you find it fun to figure out how cheaply you can live, but it seems like purely in terms of time expenditure you could make more money not clipping coupons and eating out once in a while, as long as you spent the time on something productive, no?

I'm certainly no paragon of frugality, but in a lot of cases it seems like the time involved in making it work could be better spent figuring out how to make more money.