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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On March 18 2014 12:15 Mindcrime wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2014 08:16 Danglars wrote:On March 18 2014 06:49 IgnE wrote:
It's pretty risky to post a Fox news source article as the kernel of a rant, Danglars. My response was the same as Kwark's, and I'm surprised you were uncritical enough to take it at face value. Fox news loves posting stories of crotchety conservatives out on their western land angry that they can't do whatever they want out in the wild wild west. Oh, he's damming up a stream that's part of an interstate watershed? Well details be damned. You should know better. The standards are pretty low with TPM and HuffPo frequently cited here, and I knew others would dredge up (no pun intended) the EPA defending its actions. I take extreme issue to Mindcrime and TheFish7 amongst others characterizing it as the "findings of violation" as if the Senate itself ran an investigation! It's the EPA giving its best response to why it cited and threatened penalties and fines to a Senate Committee. It's expected to defend its actions and it did so. Calling it 'findings' gives it a mist of credibility, when in fact its just one sector of the agency forwarding on the information to their higher-ups yes, how dare i refer to a document by its name
Are you that dense? This is not about who's right or wrong, but rather allowing a due process to take place. It is plainly stated in the letter from a US Senator that a lack of due process in this case is what's troubling. Even if you clearly violated a traffic law and the law enforcement officer gave you a ticket to pay the fine, you are still entitled (a word that democrats love to use) to a due process. You can contest the fine if you choose to do so in a court of law. It's different when EPA telling you to fix your own land or pay the $75,000 fine a day.
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On March 18 2014 12:27 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2014 08:47 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:More than 5 million people have signed up for health care plans under the newly created Obamacare insurance exchanges, according to a Monday press release from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
According to the release, "the last several days have been the busiest since December, with the Call Center taking more than 198,000 calls on Thursday alone -- the busiest day since December 23 -- and more than 130,000 calls over the weekend."
The 5 million figure comes on March 17, meaning that there have been roughly 800,000 enrollments in the last 17 days. That's a pace of 50,000 or so enrollments a day, which would put the administration on pace to hit 5.7 million by the end of the month.
However, it is expected that the pace of sign ups will increase even more the closer the final enrollment date of March 31 approaches. Source This is why Republicans kept trying their hardest to get rid of it and why they went silent recently. It is officially too deeply ingrained and too many people are benefiting for it to ever go away. It's a done deal at this point.
Oh they didnt go quiet on it, they are just saving the ammo for the mid terms. Dont worry, we'll hear plenty about it soon enough. But by '16 it will definitely be a done issue and Hillcat will be brutally wrecking revenge on all real or imagined enemies of the Clinton clan.
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On March 18 2014 12:15 Mindcrime wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2014 08:16 Danglars wrote:On March 18 2014 06:49 IgnE wrote:
It's pretty risky to post a Fox news source article as the kernel of a rant, Danglars. My response was the same as Kwark's, and I'm surprised you were uncritical enough to take it at face value. Fox news loves posting stories of crotchety conservatives out on their western land angry that they can't do whatever they want out in the wild wild west. Oh, he's damming up a stream that's part of an interstate watershed? Well details be damned. You should know better. The standards are pretty low with TPM and HuffPo frequently cited here, and I knew others would dredge up (no pun intended) the EPA defending its actions. I take extreme issue to Mindcrime and TheFish7 amongst others characterizing it as the "findings of violation" as if the Senate itself ran an investigation! It's the EPA giving its best response to why it cited and threatened penalties and fines to a Senate Committee. It's expected to defend its actions and it did so. Calling it 'findings' gives it a mist of credibility, when in fact its just one sector of the agency forwarding on the information to their higher-ups yes, how dare i refer to a document by its name Gotta get in front of the trolls that see "findings of violation" and perhaps the senate.gov website and don't see it as details of an ORDER provided by the EPA itself. I'm not saying that was your intent, but it wouldn't take much to misunderstand the source.
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On March 18 2014 11:39 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2014 08:26 oneofthem wrote:
lol you take issue with the word 'finding' when the report cited nothing but factual information? is any part of it wrong? Specifically, "findings of violation" and "senate findings pdf." The EPA saying what the EPA fined and penalized for is another thing entirely. Show nested quote +On March 18 2014 11:00 BallinWitStalin wrote:On March 18 2014 08:16 Danglars wrote:
Maybe if they hadn't tried to use a Clean Water Act regulation (and associated pond exception), you'd have a point here, Seb40.
So his Six Mile Creek is a tributary of a river which is a tributary of another river that is a navigable interstate water. This is pretty rich. He changed a "40-foot reach of the creek" too. Oh god. Call the police. This is the only part I'm going to bother responding to, because the rest is kind of silly (not that this isn't silly either, this is just a common mistake people make in their logic when arguing about this sort of thing). You seem to be making the argument "well it's just a small pond, who cares". You are correct in that one pond probably isn't going to make a big deal. But then his neighbor looks at it and says "hey, I want one of those too". And then another person installs a pond, and another, and pretty soon Joe everybody who can afford it has a pond disrupting a stream, and the river/watershed is fucked. Watershed development in that regard is all or nothing, you can't piecemeal let people manipulate waterways however the fuck they want on their own property, because if everyone did then the waterway will be damaged/destroyed. Either everybody can build one (and the stream/river gets screwed), or nobody can, that's just the only sensible way to make it work. I can get into the scientific reasons why doing this sort of thing is bad, but I'd rather not, if you're interested in the impacts of artificial stream manipulation and damming on flooding, native fauna, etc. just google it, it's a well studied issue. Then again, you probably don't like environmental scientists, why trust those nutjobs anyways? You can talk about innocent before proven guilty, appeals processes, etc. all you want, but if he's doing something that is deemed to be damaging to the environment the agency will deal with it, that's how it goes. I am sure he would be capable of challenging it in court, getting a temporary stay on the "fines" or whatever, and then when the courts found that he built a dam they'd be like "pay up" and he's fucked. I think that it's likely there's a dam there violating regulations. If there wasn't something there violating important regulations and the EPA did this, then they could probably get sued for a shitpile of money and it would look really bad. Maybe they did fuck up, maybe they don't have jurisdiction (they should, though, the watershed is interstate so that basically settles it in my mind, it would be fucking retarded to let upstream states with shit environmental regulations ruins rivers for downstream states). But then again, there's people who will jump on anything the government does and argue that it's bad. Links from fox news and other related sites that have slogans like "Free minds, free markets" are probably not the best sources of information on the issue, and probably have a lot of ideological bandwagoning cluttering their information :/ The structural limits on power are important. Let the foolish dismiss them at their own peril. You know what, if all his neighbors join the pond craze and that impacts 700 feet of river in Wyoming, then let the free citizens of Wyoming and their state departments deal with it using legally appointed bodies and lawfully passed legislation. I'm sorry to have to point it out more clearly, but they're using a Clean Water Act regulating water pollution of trans-state waterways to meddle in local issues with localized impact. It is a regulatory bait and switch clearly opposed to the thrust of the CWA, but what the EPA thinks it can get away with it can. Just look at their latest proposed rules under the CWA for proof. My walking and breathing on the sidewalk is "damaging to the environment." Oh yes, BallinWithStalin, they've labeled CO2 emissions as pollutants, and certain exertions might cause me to expel more of it. So, we aren't even in the realm of some agency having to deal with it, we are talking about who deems it damaging and how they can punish you for it. An unaccountable bureaucracy, maybe? Their cousins at the IRS thought to play politics with their decisions, and the personnel involved will just get shuffled around to other departments after wrongdoing. "They could probably get sued for a shitpile of money"--This is so laughable it's absurd. You find the nearest justifiable argument, interpret Congressional laws broadly, and then dare the free citizens to fight back and sue for their rights. If you can't afford the lawyers, too bad, you are strictly liable. There are no balances on this kind of power, and no judge and jury ruling before a nameless regulator, which you might never meet, nails you for tens of thousands of dollars. Congress can pass more laws if there's some state with lax regulations hurting a state downstream in some manner. The man with a small creek that altered some 40 feet of its path is not hurting Utah, and of course we aren't told the dangerous pollutants that the EPA alleges were released into this creek feeding a tributary feeding a trans-state river. I know you like to skim and all, and dismiss out of hand your opponents argument when offering your own, but the senators that sent a letter making his case did say it well, both in manner and application. They aren't interested in protecting waterways, they're acting in a thuggish manner. Show nested quote +“EPA appears more interested in intimidating and bankrupting Mr. Johnson than it does in working cooperatively with him,” the senators noted of the severe fines Johnson faces. “…Fairness and due process require that EPA base its Compliance Order on more than an assumption. Instead of treating Mr. Johnson as guilty until he proves his innocence by demonstrating his entitlement to the Clean Water Act section 404(f)(1)(C) stock pond exemption, EPA should make its case that a dam was built and that the Section 404 exemption does not apply. As it stands now, EPA’s failure to demonstrate in detail how Mr. Johnson’s building activities constituted the construction of a dam prejudices his opportunity to meaningfully respond to the Compliance Order.”
“We are skeptical of the Compliance Order’s claim that Six Mile Creek—into which Mr. Johnson allegedly discharged dredged and fill material— ‘is and was at all relevant times a waters of the United States’,” the senators continued. “…EPA has an obligation to more fully support its claim that Six Mile Creek is a jurisdictional water. If instead the Compliance Order stands as an example of how EPA intends to operate after completing its current ‘waters of the United States’ rulemaking, it should give pause to each and every landowner throughout the country.” Maybe next time you're in court you might realize how wonderful it is for both sides to offer up allegations and their evidence, and a judge and jury make a decision on it.
Honestly, there's not much point in responding to your post. It's pretty ridiculous. This isn't an issue of "breathing CO2", I've already demonstrated how this issue is bigger than some random dude doing shit on tributaries on his own properties. Local development along upstream tributaries affects people downstream.
Your arguments are absurd, I'm going to stop at this point, and everyone who's read the various sides in this thread as well as the (poorly written) article and senate document can make up their own minds.
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TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Gov. Chris Christie's campaign manager was kept informed of complaints over traffic backups near the George Washington Bridge even while lanes remained blocked, according to emails released Monday about the apparent political payback plot orchestrated by the governor's aides.
More emails involving two-time Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien were made public in a legal filing by the state legislative panel investigating the closures. They are the latest documents to be turned over to a judge considering Stepien's request to quash a subpoena from the panel looking into the deliberate attempts to create gridlock in the town of Fort Lee.
One email shows Christie's top appointee at the bridge agency, Bill Baroni, looping in Stepien on a letter of complaint on the fourth full day of the September lane closures.
"Thanks," Stepien replied after being forwarded the letter from Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, where traffic backed up for hours, stalling school buses and emergency vehicles.
In another exchange, Stepien sends a complimentary message after Baroni told a legislative panel that the lane closures were part of a traffic study, a story that has since been discredited.
"I know it's not a fun topic ... but you did great," Stepien wrote in late November, a few weeks after Christie easily won re-election.
Christie maintains he didn't know about the lane closing operation but the scandal has cast a shadow over his administration and raised questions about his chances if he runs for president in 2016.
Source
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We are living in a police state. The NSA should be shut down. Freedom has all but evaporated, since without privacy there can be no freedom.
This is like the final step in the complete destruction of privacy. While collection of metadata destroys anonymity, the NSA has determined fuck it, why be bound by strictures that maintain secrecy (i.e. the contents of a message)? Let's just record everything so we can watch everybody all the time.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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This post about the book on China, extolling the virtues of modularity and multinational firms that focus on design, misses the point. China has become the manufacturing headquarters of the world and operates under a serious import deficit with little internal demand relative to its production capacity. What this means is that sustained world demand for Chinese goods is the only thing propping up China's growth rate.
American corporate profitability is so high right now because of technological innovation that has drastically cut labor requirements and outsourcing to places like China where the production costs, which while still lower now, were dramatically lower a decade ago. The national review article sees it as a positive thing that US-based firms can still collect the bulk of value by agilely positioning themselves away from physical production and towards portfolios of intellectual property. The reality is that this is essentially a transfer of wealth from Chinese factories towards American corporations, driven by the debt-financed spending of American consumers. The bottom 99% of the American population which has seen stagnant wages for the last couple decades are responsible for sustaining the demand keeping the whole thing going.
This is problematic on many levels. Most importantly perhaps, any financial shock in an increasingly vulnerable, increasingly connected global financial network that creates a drop in demand is going to set off a chain reaction, destroying the profitability of a rapidly expanding Chinese manufacturing sector and the profitability of American corporations which depend on being able to sell their foreign-made high-margin goods to the credit-class of America.
But it also speaks to one of the inherent contradictions of capital. Capital depends on consumption of new goods in order to realize a rate of return. In order to turn labor power into increased capital, someone has to buy the new goods being produced. When you have an entire underclass (i.e. "the 99%") that hasn't seen any increases in wages to supply the demand for rising profits, you need credit to bridge the gap between today's value and tomorrow's expectation. If those wages never go up, eventually the mounting pile of debt becomes too unwieldy and collapses.
Technological innovation and outsourcing, in combination with vastly increasing debt levels, these past couple decades have allowed American capital to retain a profitable return on investment by cutting manufacturing costs, because they can afford to extract more of the labor value from a Chinese laborer than they can from a God-fearing American. China's production costs are rising though, and it won't be easy to continue cutting production costs. On the other end, however, you are hitting the upper limits for consumer demand in the United States. Something is going to give eventually.
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Robot Snowden promises more US spying revelations
Vancouver (AFP) - Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden emerged from his Russian exile Tuesday in the form of a remotely-controlled robot to promise more sensational revelations about US spying programs.
The fugitive's face appeared on a screen as he maneuvered the wheeled android around a stage at the TED gathering, addressing an audience in Vancouver without ever leaving his secret hideaway.
"There are absolutely more revelations to come," he said. "Some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come." source
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On March 19 2014 11:26 IgnE wrote:This post about the book on China, extolling the virtues of modularity and multinational firms that focus on design, misses the point. China has become the manufacturing headquarters of the world and operates under a serious import deficit with little internal demand relative to its production capacity. What this means is that sustained world demand for Chinese goods is the only thing propping up China's growth rate. American corporate profitability is so high right now because of technological innovation that has drastically cut labor requirements and outsourcing to places like China where the production costs, which while still lower now, were dramatically lower a decade ago. The national review article sees it as a positive thing that US-based firms can still collect the bulk of value by agilely positioning themselves away from physical production and towards portfolios of intellectual property. The reality is that this is essentially a transfer of wealth from Chinese factories towards American corporations, driven by the debt-financed spending of American consumers. The bottom 99% of the American population which has seen stagnant wages for the last couple decades are responsible for sustaining the demand keeping the whole thing going. This is problematic on many levels. Most importantly perhaps, any financial shock in an increasingly vulnerable, increasingly connected global financial network that creates a drop in demand is going to set off a chain reaction, destroying the profitability of a rapidly expanding Chinese manufacturing sector and the profitability of American corporations which depend on being able to sell their foreign-made high-margin goods to the credit-class of America. But it also speaks to one of the inherent contradictions of capital. Capital depends on consumption of new goods in order to realize a rate of return. In order to turn labor power into increased capital, someone has to buy the new goods being produced. When you have an entire underclass (i.e. "the 99%") that hasn't seen any increases in wages to supply the demand for rising profits, you need credit to bridge the gap between today's value and tomorrow's expectation. If those wages never go up, eventually the mounting pile of debt becomes too unwieldy and collapses. Technological innovation and outsourcing, in combination with vastly increasing debt levels, these past couple decades have allowed American capital to retain a profitable return on investment by cutting manufacturing costs, because they can afford to extract more of the labor value from a Chinese laborer than they can from a God-fearing American. China's production costs are rising though, and it won't be easy to continue cutting production costs. On the other end, however, you are hitting the upper limits for consumer demand in the United States. Something is going to give eventually.
If we were hitting the upper limits of demand, that would mean we were supply constrained. That would show up in greatly accelerated inflation. Demand is actually really low right now, despite the consumer spending numbers showing growth.
As far as technological innovation goes, that's a phantom that every generation has chased after since the invention of the printing press. Yes, (some) people have to be retrained, but that retraining is largely exaggerated in terms of damage and importance. It only really becomes a problem when capital and technological investments seem more attractive (by far) than training new workers. With inflation (and thus demand) so low, firms don't feel pressure to produce more, so they focus on reducing costs by investing in technology and not workers.
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I meant that demand has hit its ceiling, not that that ceiling is high. I don't really know how you misread it given the rest of the context around it.
As far as technological innovation goes, people just aren't needed to make things anymore. You can argue that people are being "retrained" to do service industry jobs, but that's not really the same thing. Capitalism doesn't work in a society where the service industry workers rely on demand from other service industry workers so that they, themselves, can pay for services from those same workers.
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If I understood Igne right he's saying China is selling all the stuff and America is buying all the stuff. That works up to the point where America can't buy more stuff (they're financing it through debt ,because they don't sell enough stuff themselves)which will cripple China because they don't have anyone anymore to sell their stuff to.
I think that makes a lot of sense. It's basically the big problem of globalization. We have strong export countries with poor workers and weak export countries with rich workers, and without some kind of fiscal transfer from the rich to the poor we'll end up with a really bad trade balance
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On March 19 2014 13:48 Nyxisto wrote:
If I understood Igne right he's saying China is selling all the stuff and America is buying all the stuff. That works up to the point where America can't buy more stuff (they're financing it through debt ,because they don't sell enough stuff themselves)which will cripple China because they don't have anyone anymore to sell their stuff to.
I think that makes a lot of sense. It's basically the big problem of globalization. We have strong export countries with poor workers and weak export countries with rich workers, and without some kind of fiscal transfer from the rich to the poor we'll end up with a really bad trade balance
It's not really that big a deal, sounds like everything is being brought more balanced to me. China's workers get wealthier, America's workers get poorer to bring labor to a level playing field. Workers wages on a macro level shouldn't outpace inflation. If you want a better lifestyle, work on yourself in a micro economic scale. I fail to see too many cases where anyone in the western world cannot obtain a roof over their head, food on the plate, clothing on the back, and meaningful social ties. They always look at someone they have never met's lifestyle and get green with envy wanting some huge change in the system to knock that person down with no thought to the unintended consequences. No crises was really ever unforeseen in the financial system and when imbalances are brought to capitulation, those who see it and play the game better will to extremely well. Again, what is wrong with China getting theirs, and America getting theirs?
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Most slave owners also provided a roof, food, clothing, and social ties to other slaves. Slaves always look at white people and get green with envy wanting some huge change in the system.
Honestly I can't tell if you've been trolling for the last 100 posts. "No crises was really ever unforeseen." What? Without a massive public bailout the world financial system would have been reduced to rubble in 2008. You can talk about the wage slaves having ipods if you want, but world trade imbalances impart significant fragility to an already ailing world economy. But you would probably look at a major financial collapse as a "market correction." And hey, we would still be better off than people a thousand years ago right?
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Our lives are pretty much always getting better, humanity and hard working, intelligent people will get along fine when problems break things that need to be broken. You don't build problems over a year, only to fix them in a week. Trade imbalances are a slow correction because Chinese factory worker making 1 dollar an hour when they should be worth 20 is as big a problem as Walmart greeters making 10 dollars and hour when they should be making 7.
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On March 19 2014 13:48 Nyxisto wrote:
If I understood Igne right he's saying China is selling all the stuff and America is buying all the stuff. That works up to the point where America can't buy more stuff (they're financing it through debt ,because they don't sell enough stuff themselves)which will cripple China because they don't have anyone anymore to sell their stuff to.
I think that makes a lot of sense. It's basically the big problem of globalization. We have strong export countries with poor workers and weak export countries with rich workers, and without some kind of fiscal transfer from the rich to the poor we'll end up with a really bad trade balance
It's already outdated with China's wages heavily increasing and businesses returning to the US and Europe. China is already reforming to a more consumption based economy and the last numbers showed more imports than exports.
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EPT
