US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9157

On November 05 2017 15:57 Kyadytim wrote:
So, Danglars, you wanted to talk about how fucked this country is? The electoral college and Senate are both inherently undemocratic in terms of giving the same power to any individual's vote. Both strongly favor less populated states. The House also has problems, but not if the Supreme Court overturns gerrymandering, they're not an imminent problem. More important is that the United States population is slowly concentrating itself into fewer states. The tl;dr here is that in 40 to 50 years, we're probably going to be looking at a situation where around 30 percent of the country controls a majority of the electoral college and a supermajority of the senate.

http://www.businessinsider.com/half-of-the-us-population-lives-in-just-9-states-2016-6
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/11/presidential_election_a_map_showing_the_vote_power_of_all_50_states.html


To make matters worse, the states with the disproportionate power will be the rural states, which tend to receive more money from the federal government than the more populous states. The more populous states unsurprisingly contribute to most of the country's GDP. Actually, cities are responsible for most of the GDP, they just tend to also be in the most populous states.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-24/map-shows-how-just-6-cities-are-responsible-quarter-americas-economy

So anyway, if demographic and economic trends don't change, by 2100 this country is probably going to have a clear majority of people with little to no say in how the country is run being taxed to support the minority whose individual votes have far more power.

To put this in terms regarding the current political schism, if economic and demographic trends don't change, in less than a century we're probably going to have a conservative minority running the federal government and using it to funnel tax revenue from strongly liberal areas with high GDP to their low GDP states. I really don't want to see people marching on Washington with the slogan "No taxation without representation," but it's fairly likely going to happen in my lifetime.


Add that on top of the current political schism where the son of the president calls Democrats "not even people," and conservatives believe they're being treated like Nazis. Yeah, this country is pretty fucked.

On November 06 2017 05:29 Danglars wrote:

I wanted to provide the article for people that still don’t get conservatism with and versus Trump. I don’t think people are open to rewriting their understood political truths or controversies.

You make a strong case for splitting the country. The coasts already see themselves as the moral authority and quasi-colonial overlords. It will be interesting to see how things turn out if the DNC gets its act together.

On November 06 2017 05:25 Danglars wrote:

Find some context, troll. I don’t read minds.

On November 06 2017 05:51 Nebuchad wrote:


The question isn't trolling in itself, you have mentioned the evils of progressivism that liberals don't care about and as a progressive I would be interested to know which of my positions are evil. I can be construed to be a troll in that I don't expect to have a fruitful conversation with you ever and yet I'm still asking you a question, but the question doesn't feel unjustified.

On November 06 2017 05:41 Nevuk wrote:

It's not different states, it's rural vs city right now. Splitting the country would be pointless

On November 06 2017 06:04 Danglars wrote:

He’s the one making it about states. I’m following the logic.

On November 05 2017 03:20 oBlade wrote:

You didn't read what was said, there's an ideological rift in the party that splits about 3 ways but mainly the interesting one is, speaking broadly here, between those who looked at past failures and thought the answer was to become a discount version of the Democrats, and those who have an ideological alternative. Only one of those has a future. Trying to be Democrats will mean you lose every time to actual Democrats. Trump has proven the viability of the latter.

On November 06 2017 06:35 KwarK wrote:
27 in a town of 600. Everyone go change your facebook flags and remember, under no circumstances should you attempt to politicize the tragedy by changing anything. This is one of those things that just has to get better on its own.

On November 06 2017 06:41 zlefin wrote:
I wonder what the few competent people in federal administration are doing to try to address such issues (shootings).
a tricky issue to solve.

On November 06 2017 06:27 Doodsmack wrote:


Okay then, there's a few flaws in the argument that Trump has presented an ideological alternative for the Republican party. Which is not all that different from what I said before, btw.

Paradise Papers: Leaks Show Wilbur Ross Hid Ties to Putin Cronies
by RICHARD ENGEL and AGGELOS PETROPOULOS

Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary in the Trump administration, shares business interests with Vladimir Putin’s immediate family, and he failed to clearly disclose those interests when he was being confirmed for his cabinet position.

Ross — a billionaire industrialist — retains an interest in a shipping company, Navigator Holdings, that was partially owned by his former investment company. One of Navigator’s most important business relationships is with a Russian energy firm controlled, in turn, by Putin’s son-in-law and other members of the Russian president’s inner circle.

Some of the details of Ross’s continuing financial holdings — much of which were not disclosed during his confirmation process — are revealed in a trove of more than 7 million internal documents of Appleby, a Bermuda-based law firm, that was leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The documents consist of emails, presentations and other electronic data. These were then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — a global network that won the Pulitzer Prize this year for its work on the Panama Papers — and its international media partners. NBC News was given access to some of the leaked documents, which the ICIJ calls the “Paradise Papers.”

Overall, the document leak provides a rare insight into the workings of the global offshore financial world, which is used by many of the world’s most powerful companies and government officials to legally avoid paying taxes and to conduct business away from public scrutiny. More than 120 politicians and royal rulers around the world are identified in the leak as having ties to offshore finance.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the documents also contain references to offshore interests held by Gary Cohn, Trump's chief economic adviser, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. There is no evidence of illegality in their dealings.

In Ross’s case, the documents give a far fuller picture of his finances than the filings he submitted to the government on Jan. 15 as part of his confirmation process. On that date, Ross, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for commerce secretary, submitted a letter to the designated ethics official at the department, explaining steps he was taking to avoid all conflicts of interest.

That explanation was vital to his confirmation, because Ross held financial interests in hundreds of companies across dozens of sectors, many of which could be affected by his decisions as commerce secretary. Any one of them could represent a potential conflict of interest, which is why the disclosures, by law, are supposed to be thorough.

“The information that he provided on that form is just a start. It is incomplete,” said Kathleen Clark, an expert on government ethics at Washington University in St. Louis. “I have no reason to believe that he violated the law of disclosure, but in order … for the Commerce Department to understand, you’d have to have more information than what is listed on that form.”

Ross, through a Commerce Department spokesperson, issued a statement saying that he recuses himself as secretary from any matters regarding transoceanic shipping, and said he works closely with ethics officials in the department “to ensure the highest ethical standards.”

The statement said Ross “has been generally supportive of the Administration’s sanctions of Russian” business entities. But the statement did not address the question of whether he informed Congress or the Commerce Department that he was retaining an interest in companies that have close Russian ties.

In his submission letter to the government, Ross pledged to cut ties with more than 80 financial entities in which he has interests.

The documents seen by NBC News, however, along with a careful examination of filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, tell a different story than the one Ross told at his confirmation. Ross divested most of his holdings, but did not reveal to the government the full details of the holdings he kept.

In his letter to the ethics official of the Commerce Department, Ross created two lists: those entities and interests he planned to get rid of and those he intended to keep. The second list consisted of nine entities, four of which were Cayman Islands companies represented and managed by the Appleby law firm, which specializes in creating complex offshore holdings for wealthy clients and businesses. The Wilbur Ross Group is one of the firm’s biggest clients, according to the leaked documents, connected to more than 60 offshore holdings.

The four holdings on the list of assets that Ross held onto were valued by him on the form as between $2.05 million and $10.1 million. These four, in turn, are linked through ownership chains to two other entities, WLR Recovery Fund IV DSS AIV L.P. and WLR Recovery Fund V DSS AIV L.P., which were listed in Ross’ financial disclosure prior to confirmation, but were not among the assets he declared he would retain. According to an SEC filing, those entities hold 17.5 million shares in Navigator, which constitutes control of nearly one-third of the shipping firm.

“You look at all of these names,” Clark said, referring to the financial entities, “and they actually look like a code. And what we actually have to do is find — in a sense — a code that decrypts what these names mean and what these companies actually do.”

She said the way the companies were listed was deliberately vague. “I would say this gives the appearance of transparency,” she said, referring to Ross’s disclosure documents. “It’s sort of fake transparency in a sense.”

The Office of Government Ethics, which is responsible for executive branch oversight, approved Ross’s arrangement, and it was left almost entirely unchallenged by the Senate.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said members of Congress who were part of Ross’ confirmation hearings were under the impression that Ross had divested all of his interests in Navigator. Furthermore, he said, they were unaware of Navigator’s close ties to Russia.

“I am astonished and appalled because I feel misled,” said Blumenthal. “Our committee was misled, the American people were misled by the concealment of those companies.” Blumenthal said he will call for the inspector general of the Commerce Department to launch an investigation.

And a cursory look at Navigator’s annual reports reveal an apparent conflict of interest. Navigator’s second-largest client is SIBUR, the Russian petrochemical giant. According to Navigator’s 2017 SEC filing, SIBUR was listed among its top five clients, based on total revenue for the previous two years. In 2016, Navigator’s annual reports show SIBUR brought in $23.2 million in revenue and another $28.7 million the following year.

The business relationship has been so profitable that in January, around the time Ross was being vetted for his Cabinet position, Navigator held a naming ceremony for two state-of-the-art tankers on long-term leases to SIBUR.

The Kremlin's inner circle
One of the owners of SIBUR is Gennady Timchenko, a Russian billionaire on the Treasury Department’s sanctions list. He has been barred from entering the U.S. since 2014 because authorities consider him a Specially Designated National, or SDN, who is considered by Treasury to be a member “of the Russian leadership’s inner circle.”

The Treasury Department statement said that Timchenko’s activities in the energy sector “have been directly linked to Putin” and that Putin had investments with a company previously owned by Timchenko, as well as access to the company’s funds.

Daniel Fried, who was the State Department sanctions coordinator under President Barack Obama, said the connection to Timchenko’s interests should have raised alarm bells.

“I would think that any reputable American businessman, much less a Cabinet-level official, would want to have absolutely no relationship — direct, indirect — … with anybody of the character and reputation of Gennady Timche
Another major SIBUR shareholder is Leonid Mikhelson, who, like Timchenko, has close ties to the Kremlin. One of his companies, Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, was placed on the Treasury’s sanctions list in 2014.

Included in the Appleby documents are details of an internal discussion that resulted in the law firm dropping Mikhelson as a client in 2014, over concerns regarding his financial affiliations.

“I would say to anybody who asked,” said Fried, “treat SDNs as radioactive. Stay away from them.”

VTB funded a $191m investment in Twitter. About the same time, Gazprom Investholding financed an opaque offshore company, which in turn funded a vehicle that held $1bn-worth of Facebook shares.
The money flowed through investment vehicles controlled by Milner, who also invested in a startup in New York that Kushner co-owns with his brother. Kushner initially failed to disclose his own holding in the startup, Cadre, when he joined Trump’s White House.
Moscow frequently used intermediaries to ensure “plausible deniability” for the actions of senior officials.
“Russia’s influence over operations – whether that be allocating funds for disinformation campaigns or providing financing to extremist movements, or others – are intentionally opaque,” said Polyakova. “They operate in the shadows.”

The Trump administration’s most senior banking watchdog appears in the Paradise Papers in connection with an offshore bank that is under investigation by US authorities for possible tax evasion.

On November 06 2017 06:50 pmh wrote:
the trump voters who are anti gay marriage,racists,and would like to go back to barter trade.

On November 06 2017 06:01 Kyadytim wrote:
Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but I am interpreting the loaded gun and flight 93 analogies to mean that if the gun fires or the plane arrives, in some fashion the United States ceases to exist as a country.

The point I was really trying to make is that the writer of the article admits that Trump is potentially as dangerous as he believes Clinton and liberals to be, but in a different way. My takeaway from that essay was that conservatives would be more okay with a scenario where everybody loses (the one bullet in the Trump revolver ends up fired) than that liberals win. What's missing from that essay is a willingness to accept that liberals want to see America thrive.

An analogy. I think that the Republican economic blueprint is disastrous. I'm pretty sure Kansas bore me out here, but that's not really the point. The point is that I never determined that conservatives would rather see Kansas collapse as a functional state in the union than change course, and I don't know any liberals who think that way. I don't know any conservatives who think that way, either.

It's not like I don't understand the feeling of needing to stop a political movement. I'd really hate to see the US become a Christian theocracy, as some Republicans indicate support for once in a while. But given the choice between the US becoming a theocracy or the US collapsing, I'd take the former. I'd hate to see it happen, but it's still salvageable. Like with Kansas, I am willing to believe that if doesn't work out well, the country can and will change course.

It's not that I don't want you or other conservatives to not care about dangers that liberalism might present.

I just find the attitude that the country falling apart is an acceptable and possibly preferable alternative to liberals getting their way to be terrifying. All my first post really wanted to do was express that sentiment.

On November 06 2017 07:08 Danglars wrote:
Liberals had their chance to show compromise and didn’t choose it. Welp, that’s that.