US Politics Mega-thread - Page 136

On April 25 2018 02:28 ticklishmusic wrote:
I like the burbs tbh, but I would rather commute to them, rather from then. I could pay half the rent if I lived in the burbs, but IMO living 5 minutes from work is actually worth the price.

On April 25 2018 03:45 Kyadytim wrote:
There's also differences in an acceptable commute based on how the commute takes place. One hour of sitting on a bus or train is less bad than one hour of driving, because the commute isn't consuming your energy or attention the same way driving does. Of course, America has fairly unimpressive public transportation, so being able to commute by bus or train on the schedule you want isn't always possible.

Earlier this month, the non-profit Portland Equity in Action put up 25 billboards around the city with bold-lettered slogans like "Black Narrative," "De-Escalation Not Militarization," "Black Lives Matter," and "Where Was My Presumption of Innocence?"

The public ad campaign, according to the group's website, is aimed at "highlighting racial disparities in access to power structures and policy, as well as media coverage and representation within institutions throughout the Portland area."

And in a distinctly Portland brand of supportive but unhelpful vandalism, a "Portland…Is Your White Fragility Showing?" billboard on Southeast Belmont Street and 26th Avenue was defaced recently with a green spray-painted retort: "Yes it is. ACAB." (For those of you not up on your anarchist lingo, that's short for "All Cops Are Bastards.")

On April 25 2018 02:46 Mohdoo wrote:

Yeah I set my max commute time to 15 minutes. Anything more than that just feels like a shitty way to live.

On April 25 2018 07:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


"supportive but unhelpful vandalism" made me laugh out loud. I instantly thought of a super-patriotic billboard - perhaps with a picture of the American flag and a bald eagle and the Statue of Liberty - saying "America!" with the words "Fuck yeah!" in black, painted over part of it, in true Team America: World Police fashion.

A D.C. federal judge has delivered the toughest blow yet to Trump administration efforts to end deportation protections for undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers,” ordering the government to continue the Obama-era program and — for the first time — to accept new applicants.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates called the government’s decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals “virtually unexplained” and therefore “unlawful.” However, he stayed his ruling for 90 days to allow the Department of Homeland Security a chance to provide more solid reasoning for ending the program.

In his decision Tuesday, Bates said the Trump administration’s decision to phase out the program starting in March “was arbitrary and capricious because the Department failed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful.”

Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives and lobbyists on Tuesday that they should increase their campaign donations to influence lawmakers, revealing that he would meet only with lobbyists who contributed to his campaign when he served in the House.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lobbyists at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

Mr. Mulvaney, who also runs the White House budget office, is a longtime critic of the Obama-era consumer bureau, including while serving in Congress. He was tapped by President Trump in November to temporarily run the bureau, in part because of his promise to sharply curtail its enforcement actions.

Since then, he has frozen all new investigations and slowed down existing inquiries by requiring career employees to produce detailed justifications for their work and by sharply restricting the bureau’s access to bank data, arguing that its investigations created unnecessary online security risks. And he has scaled back the agency’s efforts to go after payday lenders, auto lenders and other financial services companies accused of preying on vulnerable consumers.

But he wants Congress to go further and has urged it to wrest funding of the independent watchdog from the Federal Reserve, a move that would give lawmakers — and those with access to them — more influence on the bureau’s actions. On Tuesday, he implored the financial services industry to help support the legislative changes he has requested to diminish the bureau’s power by increasing campaign donations.

Mr. Mulvaney said that trying to sway legislators that way was one of the “fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy. And you have to continue to do it.”

On April 25 2018 10:15 Kyadytim wrote:
www.nytimes.com
This just looks so indefensibly awful to me. He's explicitly talking about buying access to politicians by giving them campaign funds, and calling influencing lawmakers by throwing money at their re-election campaign one of the "fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy." I can't help but read this as "Citizens United didn't go far enough. Rather than money being an equal form of political speech, money needs to be the most important political speech."

I was in Moscow. And a lot of the people knew - they were there, and they had an amazing time. And they're terrific people, you know I was getting along with them so great. I really loved my weekend, I called it my 'weekend in Moscow'.

On April 25 2018 14:05 KwarK wrote:
Trump on his non overnight stay in Moscow

On April 25 2018 14:37 Mohdoo wrote:

Where he "met oligarchs and other very high level government officials", as he said.

Edit: why can't I find this source now

On April 25 2018 05:52 Mohdoo wrote:
Next up in local Portland news, I loved this headline:

In True Portland Style, a Racial Justice Billboard Was Defaced With Supportive Graffiti




Worth pointing out: no, we are not all crazy. But we've got a lot more crazies than most places.

On April 25 2018 12:41 mierin wrote:


Campaign finance reform is inarguably the biggest issue the US faces. It really doesn't matter who you vote for, it matters who sponsors who you vote for, which isn't transparently disclosed.