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On March 24 2018 09:31 NewSunshine wrote:
The reason the religion thing has experienced such friction is because it's a business, not someone's personal relationship or venture. Serving a gay person/couple who is just going about their business isn't doing anything to persecute you as a religious person, they're simply offering money in exchange for a service. I find it hard to buy the idea that refusing to serve gay people on the premise of your religion's backward view on gay people is anything but discrimination. Their money is the same as anyone else's, and who they choose to love is their business.
On the other hand, while I wouldn't be sad if it came to a court decision, I'm also all for that couple simply taking their business elsewhere, and letting the court of public opinion deal with a cake-maker that refuses to acknowledge gay rights. But maybe they didn't have the luxury of choice. Either way, I don't think it's a wise decision to let anyone freely deny service to gay people under the vague blanket of religious protection. It would be, how you say, a slippery slope.
And I think one of the most important things we as a society need to do is define exactly what a business and corporation is. Is it an extension of a person, Is it an independent entity from a person, or is it an entity in it of itself like a person.
Treating a company or a corporation like a person isn't a completely bad thing. Leveling a death sentence against a company and forcing it to sell off its assets on a blind open market would solve issues.
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On March 24 2018 09:52 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 09:31 NewSunshine wrote:
The reason the religion thing has experienced such friction is because it's a business, not someone's personal relationship or venture. Serving a gay person/couple who is just going about their business isn't doing anything to persecute you as a religious person, they're simply offering money in exchange for a service. I find it hard to buy the idea that refusing to serve gay people on the premise of your religion's backward view on gay people is anything but discrimination. Their money is the same as anyone else's, and who they choose to love is their business.
On the other hand, while I wouldn't be sad if it came to a court decision, I'm also all for that couple simply taking their business elsewhere, and letting the court of public opinion deal with a cake-maker that refuses to acknowledge gay rights. But maybe they didn't have the luxury of choice. Either way, I don't think it's a wise decision to let anyone freely deny service to gay people under the vague blanket of religious protection. It would be, how you say, a slippery slope. I find that universal rejection of ones civil rights just because it applies to all aspects of their lives is foolhardy. You can believe what you want about religion as long as you never intend to work a job and have it influence your life. No. Absolutely not. There’s a trade off involved, since it makes no sense for an ER nurse to refuse service to some religion, or for an artist in business for himself to be forced to create a morally reprehensible piece. That’s the trade-off that people like you are so careful to ignore. In fact, he relentlessly acknowledged anyone’s rights to buy any product he made in his store, save for one custom service of art not yet made. It sounds like you’re preferring alternative facts to govern your argument, instead of plainly dealing in freedom of conscience objections not covered by your simplistic interpretations. It sounds like you’d be stunned to hear the Supreme Court even took the case, not even acknowledging how controversial are these lines. You can have your rights, as long as you leave those at the door of your business. Sheesh.
Their right in this case is the ability to deny the rights of people who just want to be treated the same, so yes, I'm hesitant to just buy into it because it was written in a religious text. If I was a cakemaker, I wouldn't deny you a custom service for your religious beliefs, even if I disagreed vehemently with the idea of being religious, because it has nothing to do with you paying me for a service. Forget cakes, lets go with your hospital example. Were I doctor or nurse, I wouldn't dare deny you service because of your religion, nor would I deny you service because you were gay or transgender. Why would I even think of doing that? This person is ill/injured and needs my services, what they are in their personal lives is none of my concern. Yes, it is strictly business if you ask me.
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On March 24 2018 09:41 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 08:58 A3th3r wrote:On March 24 2018 08:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 24 2018 07:43 Danglars wrote:On March 24 2018 03:30 Kyadytim wrote:On March 23 2018 22:46 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 23 2018 22:09 Gorsameth wrote:On March 23 2018 22:02 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
If all trump is doing by firing everyone and placing Bolton as head of NSA to knock Stormy Daniels off the news cycle. it hasn't worked. Her 60 Minutes Interview is this Sunday night, and he lawyer tweeted this.
On one hand, "let there be tapes". On the other, no one wants to hear/see Trump getting it on. ps. Considering all the shit Trump has done and his known previous affairs. Why even worry about this? There is no real reason to assume this will do anything to his approval numbers or his supporters. Guilty pleasure. I’d love to know what’s going on in the heads of the countless devot christians who voted for him and keep supporting him. At one point, his conduct will end up hurting him, i believe. People’s ability to contradict themselves is always surprising but it’s not infinite. Meanwhike, getting my popcorns ready. That Stormy Daniel woman must be having the time of her life. Looks like being in the spotlight is what she enjoys, and it looks like she would love to make as much damage as she can... I'm kind of hoping that it's video evidence of Trump implying physical violence against her at some point after he was inaugurated or something. Also, Evangelicals really, really don't care about character unless it's a useful avenue of attack on a Democrat. With Trump, it's all about ending abortion, protecting their ability to discriminate against gays, lesbians, trans, etc., and stacking the court. Pay particular attention to the sentence I emphasized near the end. Trump could be holding daily orgies in the Oval Office and they would let it slide as long as he continues to nominate young idealogues for lifetime court appointments. During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to defend religious liberty, stand up for unborn life and appoint conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts. And he has done exactly what he promised. The pro-abortion lobby NARAL complains that Trump has been “relentless” on these fronts, declaring his administration “the worst . . . that we’ve ever seen.” That is more important to most Christian conservatives than what the president may have done with a porn actress more than 10 years ago.
Trump’s election came as religious liberty was under unprecedented attack. The Obama administration was trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious conscience and facilitate payment for abortifacient drugs and other contraceptives. During oral arguments in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, President Barack Obama’s solicitor general told the Supreme Court that churches and universities could lose their tax-exempt status if they opposed same-sex marriage.
Hillary Clinton promised to escalate those attacks. In 2015, she declared at the Women in the World Summit that “religious beliefs . . . have to be changed” — perhaps the most radical threat to religious liberty ever delivered by a major presidential candidate. Had Clinton won, she would have replaced the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with a liberal jurist, giving the Supreme Court a liberal judicial-activist majority.
The impact would have been immediate, as the court prepares to decide two cases crucial to religious liberty. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court will soon determine whether the government can compel a U.S. citizen to violate his conscience and participate in speech that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs. In National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, the court will decide whether the state of California can compel pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise access to abortion to their clients, in violation of their conscience. Those cases are being heard not by five liberals, but five conservatives, including Justice Neil M.Gorsuch — because Trump kept his promise to “appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench.”
The president is moving at record pace to fill the federal appeals courts with young conservative judges who will protect life and religious freedom for decades. He also fulfilled his promise to defend the Little Sisters from government bullying, by expanding the religious and conscience exemption to the Obamacare contraception mandate to cover both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. www.washingtonpost.com You highlight the trouble in calling these issues. For you, it’s about “protecting their ability to discriminate against gays.” For me, it’s about religious liberty, and if I were to punch up the emotion to your level, it would be to “force religious people to violate their conscience by government fiat.” This is very important in cases like the Masterpiece Cakeshop, where they will readily sell premade cakes, but will not custom build a celebratory message for a gay wedding. I think the entire lack of nuance here underlies the point: you’ve given up compromise, and the religious must go to people that aren’t activists against their rights. I’ll take a Trump that is personally abhorrent simply because he’s not crusading to force school districts to put anatomical males into female locker rooms. I can actually put my input in the local school district. Or make universities apply reduced standards for conviction and expulsion for rape accusations under Title IX. It’s definitely a disconnect, and I don’t know how much of that is willful malice against religion, against due process, and against state rights and local control. The only thing that makes sense is that some of the latter is in the mix. Forcing nuns to fully subsidize contraception is one of the stupider results from the black-and-white approach. Interesting how people who can’t compromise with their religion to not be complete assholes to gay customers are very flexible when it’s about voting for a guy who cheated his pregnant wife with a pornstar. But nevermind. So, anyway, does the whole thing work with islam with practitioners discriminating against, say, non muslim people, or have christian nuts the monopoly of being jerks under the protection of the constitution? Because, let me tell you, it’s a very, very slippery slope. And one wouldn’t want to be accused of double standard and using the constitution to justify biggotery and intolerance. I think that the point here is that this is not a video game. We're not in a Tom Clancy novel or a Farcry universe here. This is real life. Trump does make compromises to the vast white & mexican constituencies that elected him by campaigning to change the job market in such a way that things are better for most people. I understand that this upsets people who didn't vote for him. That's a bummer but what can ya do. That being said, I wish that the trade deficit that America has with other countries were a little smaller. It does seem like what the president is doing is renegotiating the trade contracts that he has with other countries in order to try & trim things down a bit. That's not such a bad idea in & of itself as long as the US economy does do well. Brazil & Peru are following the US right now & are trying to reform their own economies there so I guess what I'm saying is that there are changes that are going on right now. Specifically, Brazil is cutting the national interest rates in an effort to shake up the banking system a bit & see what comes out https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-central-bank-cuts-rate-again-sees-additional-easing-as-appropriate-1521675795https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-mixed-race-brazil-sperm-imports-from-u-s-whites-are-booming-1521711000 what campaigns to change the job market by trump are you referring to? (i.e. I have no idea what you're talking about and it seems more like a non-sequitur and/or faulty premise)
Trump is trying to lower the US trade deficit to other countries & protect local industries. That's what he's been trying to do for quite a while lately. Do you read the newspaper or pay attention to presidential politics?
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On March 24 2018 09:58 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 09:31 NewSunshine wrote:
The reason the religion thing has experienced such friction is because it's a business, not someone's personal relationship or venture. Serving a gay person/couple who is just going about their business isn't doing anything to persecute you as a religious person, they're simply offering money in exchange for a service. I find it hard to buy the idea that refusing to serve gay people on the premise of your religion's backward view on gay people is anything but discrimination. Their money is the same as anyone else's, and who they choose to love is their business.
On the other hand, while I wouldn't be sad if it came to a court decision, I'm also all for that couple simply taking their business elsewhere, and letting the court of public opinion deal with a cake-maker that refuses to acknowledge gay rights. But maybe they didn't have the luxury of choice. Either way, I don't think it's a wise decision to let anyone freely deny service to gay people under the vague blanket of religious protection. It would be, how you say, a slippery slope. And I think one of the most important things we as a society need to do is define exactly what a business and corporation is. Is it an extension of a person, Is it an independent entity from a person, or is it an entity in it of itself like a person. Treating a company or a corporation like a person isn't a completely bad thing. Leveling a death sentence against a company and forcing it to sell off its assets on a blind open market would solve issues.
This is something that I've argued for intermittently since the Citizens United decision. If corporations get the rights of actual people, they need to have the responsibilities of actual people, too. I'm not sure how corporation jail would work, but seeing as how it's often that no actual people end up in prison when a company does something flagrantly illegal, I am 100% in favor of somehow putting the entire corporation in some sort of prison. Fines that amount to less than the company profited off of its lawbreaking don't discourage lawbreaking, they just encourage accounting for the fines in the budget.
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On March 24 2018 09:58 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 09:31 NewSunshine wrote:
The reason the religion thing has experienced such friction is because it's a business, not someone's personal relationship or venture. Serving a gay person/couple who is just going about their business isn't doing anything to persecute you as a religious person, they're simply offering money in exchange for a service. I find it hard to buy the idea that refusing to serve gay people on the premise of your religion's backward view on gay people is anything but discrimination. Their money is the same as anyone else's, and who they choose to love is their business.
On the other hand, while I wouldn't be sad if it came to a court decision, I'm also all for that couple simply taking their business elsewhere, and letting the court of public opinion deal with a cake-maker that refuses to acknowledge gay rights. But maybe they didn't have the luxury of choice. Either way, I don't think it's a wise decision to let anyone freely deny service to gay people under the vague blanket of religious protection. It would be, how you say, a slippery slope. And I think one of the most important things we as a society need to do is define exactly what a business and corporation is. Is it an extension of a person, Is it an independent entity from a person, or is it an entity in it of itself like a person. Treating a company or a corporation like a person isn't a completely bad thing. Leveling a death sentence against a company and forcing it to sell off its assets on a blind open market would solve issues.
That is actually an issue I'd like to see a reasonable solution to, because I think corporations in this country get away with a lot, under the idea that "corporations are people too". On one hand, I have my views and the way I think things should be, but on the other the free market does have its virtues. Companies that are smart will see which way the wind blows and change accordingly, and ones that aren't will feel it in their bottom line. We saw this in response to the latest mass shootings and the NRA. As for the issue of gay vs. religious rights, there will be a "right" side of history with time, and it's all but given what that is, but let me make it plain that I understand these things are debated for a reason, and these are merely my opinions.
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On March 24 2018 10:02 A3th3r wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 09:41 zlefin wrote:On March 24 2018 08:58 A3th3r wrote:On March 24 2018 08:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 24 2018 07:43 Danglars wrote:On March 24 2018 03:30 Kyadytim wrote:On March 23 2018 22:46 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 23 2018 22:09 Gorsameth wrote:On March 23 2018 22:02 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:If all trump is doing by firing everyone and placing Bolton as head of NSA to knock Stormy Daniels off the news cycle. it hasn't worked. Her 60 Minutes Interview is this Sunday night, and he lawyer tweeted this. https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/977015170231885825 On one hand, "let there be tapes". On the other, no one wants to hear/see Trump getting it on. ps. Considering all the shit Trump has done and his known previous affairs. Why even worry about this? There is no real reason to assume this will do anything to his approval numbers or his supporters. Guilty pleasure. I’d love to know what’s going on in the heads of the countless devot christians who voted for him and keep supporting him. At one point, his conduct will end up hurting him, i believe. People’s ability to contradict themselves is always surprising but it’s not infinite. Meanwhike, getting my popcorns ready. That Stormy Daniel woman must be having the time of her life. Looks like being in the spotlight is what she enjoys, and it looks like she would love to make as much damage as she can... I'm kind of hoping that it's video evidence of Trump implying physical violence against her at some point after he was inaugurated or something. Also, Evangelicals really, really don't care about character unless it's a useful avenue of attack on a Democrat. With Trump, it's all about ending abortion, protecting their ability to discriminate against gays, lesbians, trans, etc., and stacking the court. Pay particular attention to the sentence I emphasized near the end. Trump could be holding daily orgies in the Oval Office and they would let it slide as long as he continues to nominate young idealogues for lifetime court appointments. During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to defend religious liberty, stand up for unborn life and appoint conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts. And he has done exactly what he promised. The pro-abortion lobby NARAL complains that Trump has been “relentless” on these fronts, declaring his administration “the worst . . . that we’ve ever seen.” That is more important to most Christian conservatives than what the president may have done with a porn actress more than 10 years ago.
Trump’s election came as religious liberty was under unprecedented attack. The Obama administration was trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious conscience and facilitate payment for abortifacient drugs and other contraceptives. During oral arguments in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, President Barack Obama’s solicitor general told the Supreme Court that churches and universities could lose their tax-exempt status if they opposed same-sex marriage.
Hillary Clinton promised to escalate those attacks. In 2015, she declared at the Women in the World Summit that “religious beliefs . . . have to be changed” — perhaps the most radical threat to religious liberty ever delivered by a major presidential candidate. Had Clinton won, she would have replaced the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with a liberal jurist, giving the Supreme Court a liberal judicial-activist majority.
The impact would have been immediate, as the court prepares to decide two cases crucial to religious liberty. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court will soon determine whether the government can compel a U.S. citizen to violate his conscience and participate in speech that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs. In National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, the court will decide whether the state of California can compel pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise access to abortion to their clients, in violation of their conscience. Those cases are being heard not by five liberals, but five conservatives, including Justice Neil M.Gorsuch — because Trump kept his promise to “appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench.”
The president is moving at record pace to fill the federal appeals courts with young conservative judges who will protect life and religious freedom for decades. He also fulfilled his promise to defend the Little Sisters from government bullying, by expanding the religious and conscience exemption to the Obamacare contraception mandate to cover both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. www.washingtonpost.com You highlight the trouble in calling these issues. For you, it’s about “protecting their ability to discriminate against gays.” For me, it’s about religious liberty, and if I were to punch up the emotion to your level, it would be to “force religious people to violate their conscience by government fiat.” This is very important in cases like the Masterpiece Cakeshop, where they will readily sell premade cakes, but will not custom build a celebratory message for a gay wedding. I think the entire lack of nuance here underlies the point: you’ve given up compromise, and the religious must go to people that aren’t activists against their rights. I’ll take a Trump that is personally abhorrent simply because he’s not crusading to force school districts to put anatomical males into female locker rooms. I can actually put my input in the local school district. Or make universities apply reduced standards for conviction and expulsion for rape accusations under Title IX. It’s definitely a disconnect, and I don’t know how much of that is willful malice against religion, against due process, and against state rights and local control. The only thing that makes sense is that some of the latter is in the mix. Forcing nuns to fully subsidize contraception is one of the stupider results from the black-and-white approach. Interesting how people who can’t compromise with their religion to not be complete assholes to gay customers are very flexible when it’s about voting for a guy who cheated his pregnant wife with a pornstar. But nevermind. So, anyway, does the whole thing work with islam with practitioners discriminating against, say, non muslim people, or have christian nuts the monopoly of being jerks under the protection of the constitution? Because, let me tell you, it’s a very, very slippery slope. And one wouldn’t want to be accused of double standard and using the constitution to justify biggotery and intolerance. I think that the point here is that this is not a video game. We're not in a Tom Clancy novel or a Farcry universe here. This is real life. Trump does make compromises to the vast white & mexican constituencies that elected him by campaigning to change the job market in such a way that things are better for most people. I understand that this upsets people who didn't vote for him. That's a bummer but what can ya do. That being said, I wish that the trade deficit that America has with other countries were a little smaller. It does seem like what the president is doing is renegotiating the trade contracts that he has with other countries in order to try & trim things down a bit. That's not such a bad idea in & of itself as long as the US economy does do well. Brazil & Peru are following the US right now & are trying to reform their own economies there so I guess what I'm saying is that there are changes that are going on right now. Specifically, Brazil is cutting the national interest rates in an effort to shake up the banking system a bit & see what comes out https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-central-bank-cuts-rate-again-sees-additional-easing-as-appropriate-1521675795https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-mixed-race-brazil-sperm-imports-from-u-s-whites-are-booming-1521711000 what campaigns to change the job market by trump are you referring to? (i.e. I have no idea what you're talking about and it seems more like a non-sequitur and/or faulty premise) Trump is trying to lower the US trade deficit to other countries & protect local industries. That's what he's been trying to do for quite a while lately. Do you read the newspaper or pay attention to presidential politics?
I do pay attention; and that's not what he's actually doing, hence my confusion.
he's putting up a smokescreen of helping people; but it's very clear that he's NOT actually trying to "change the job market in a way so things are better for most people", because the underlying economics of how those things work are well understood, and what he's doing isn't actually helping people at all, but is hurting.
he also clearly doesn't even understand how the trade deficit works; and he's already signed multiple pieces of legislation that made it bigger, often for no worthwhile gain.
i'm just gonna mark this down to myself as the faulty premise case I suspected earlier.
oh, and the people upset at trump for doing the stuff in this area are often so upset because they knew it's a fundamentally bad idea.
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On March 24 2018 09:58 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 09:31 NewSunshine wrote:
The reason the religion thing has experienced such friction is because it's a business, not someone's personal relationship or venture. Serving a gay person/couple who is just going about their business isn't doing anything to persecute you as a religious person, they're simply offering money in exchange for a service. I find it hard to buy the idea that refusing to serve gay people on the premise of your religion's backward view on gay people is anything but discrimination. Their money is the same as anyone else's, and who they choose to love is their business.
On the other hand, while I wouldn't be sad if it came to a court decision, I'm also all for that couple simply taking their business elsewhere, and letting the court of public opinion deal with a cake-maker that refuses to acknowledge gay rights. But maybe they didn't have the luxury of choice. Either way, I don't think it's a wise decision to let anyone freely deny service to gay people under the vague blanket of religious protection. It would be, how you say, a slippery slope. And I think one of the most important things we as a society need to do is define exactly what a business and corporation is. Is it an extension of a person, Is it an independent entity from a person, or is it an entity in it of itself like a person. Treating a company or a corporation like a person isn't a completely bad thing. Leveling a death sentence against a company and forcing it to sell off its assets on a blind open market would solve issues.
Unfortunately, since corporations are more like rich people than ordinary people, they evade justice and will do so for the foreseeable future.
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It sucks because in theory, if everyone making below a certain amount (say 60k for arguments' sake) just stopped coming in to work, the country would be crippled (and workers' rights might have to be addressed). Unfortunately there would be an unlimited number of "scabs" or people who would go in to work regardless of the low pay.
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I know I missed it, but the dictator's parade is still a go? I read he signed a $30mil budget for it.
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United States41937 Posts
On March 24 2018 10:55 mierin wrote:
It sucks because in theory, if everyone making below a certain amount (say 60k for arguments' sake) just stopped coming in to work, the country would be crippled (and workers' rights might have to be addressed). Unfortunately there would be an unlimited number of "scabs" or people who would go in to work regardless of the low pay.
Most Americans don't generate anything like the value equivalent to the purchasing power in their labour. The value of their labour is amplified through artificial barriers to trade, the dominance of the dollar as a global currency, the exploitation of the third world, and American ownership of the means of production globally.
The reality is that minimum wage workers are only underpaid in relative terms when compared to previous generations and their American peers.
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Trump just officially banned Transgenders (again) from the military against the wishes of pretty much every military leader.
More fodder for the 2018/20 election I guess. Can't see this not being immediately undone with the new president.
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On March 24 2018 12:56 On_Slaught wrote:
Trump just officially banned Transgenders (again) from the military against the wishes of pretty much every military leader.
More fodder for the 2018/20 election I guess. Can't see this not being immediately undone with the new president.
Or the wave of incoming lawsuits.
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On March 24 2018 12:56 On_Slaught wrote:
Trump just officially banned Transgenders (again) from the military against the wishes of pretty much every military leader.
More fodder for the 2018/20 election I guess. Can't see this not being immediately undone with the new president.
Right before he did this, he was ordered by the justice department to hand over a list of military leaders he had consulted before the initial ban/tweet last year, which he completely failed to do (because how can you hand over an empty list?)
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On March 24 2018 10:55 mierin wrote:
It sucks because in theory, if everyone making below a certain amount (say 60k for arguments' sake) just stopped coming in to work, the country would be crippled (and workers' rights might have to be addressed). Unfortunately there would be an unlimited number of "scabs" or people who would go in to work regardless of the low pay.
I think it's relevant that the standard bearer of the Democratic party had a story of scabbing that they bragged about and told as a romantic story.
Something like that is virtually impossible when neither party would support it under pretty much any circumstances and people feel inextricably connected to either party.
On March 24 2018 12:25 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 10:55 mierin wrote:
It sucks because in theory, if everyone making below a certain amount (say 60k for arguments' sake) just stopped coming in to work, the country would be crippled (and workers' rights might have to be addressed). Unfortunately there would be an unlimited number of "scabs" or people who would go in to work regardless of the low pay. Most Americans don't generate anything like the value equivalent to the purchasing power in their labour. The value of their labour is amplified through artificial barriers to trade, the dominance of the dollar as a global currency, the exploitation of the third world, and American ownership of the means of production globally. The reality is that minimum wage workers are only underpaid in relative terms when compared to previous generations and their American peers.
I can't say whether you're right or wrong about the surplus value of labor created by US workers (though I'm skeptical of your position), but a more equitable sharing of the surplus value of nationally created value (GDP/PPP) is justification enough for raising the minimum wage. Moreover the point of minimum wage is the philosophical position that no company that can't afford to pay it's workers a living wage should exist in this country, not simply that workers are owed fair compensation for the surplus value created by their labor.
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On March 24 2018 09:19 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 09:07 iamthedave wrote:On March 24 2018 07:43 Danglars wrote:On March 24 2018 03:30 Kyadytim wrote:On March 23 2018 22:46 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 23 2018 22:09 Gorsameth wrote:On March 23 2018 22:02 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:If all trump is doing by firing everyone and placing Bolton as head of NSA to knock Stormy Daniels off the news cycle. it hasn't worked. Her 60 Minutes Interview is this Sunday night, and he lawyer tweeted this. https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/977015170231885825 On one hand, "let there be tapes". On the other, no one wants to hear/see Trump getting it on. ps. Considering all the shit Trump has done and his known previous affairs. Why even worry about this? There is no real reason to assume this will do anything to his approval numbers or his supporters. Guilty pleasure. I’d love to know what’s going on in the heads of the countless devot christians who voted for him and keep supporting him. At one point, his conduct will end up hurting him, i believe. People’s ability to contradict themselves is always surprising but it’s not infinite. Meanwhike, getting my popcorns ready. That Stormy Daniel woman must be having the time of her life. Looks like being in the spotlight is what she enjoys, and it looks like she would love to make as much damage as she can... I'm kind of hoping that it's video evidence of Trump implying physical violence against her at some point after he was inaugurated or something. Also, Evangelicals really, really don't care about character unless it's a useful avenue of attack on a Democrat. With Trump, it's all about ending abortion, protecting their ability to discriminate against gays, lesbians, trans, etc., and stacking the court. Pay particular attention to the sentence I emphasized near the end. Trump could be holding daily orgies in the Oval Office and they would let it slide as long as he continues to nominate young idealogues for lifetime court appointments. During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to defend religious liberty, stand up for unborn life and appoint conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts. And he has done exactly what he promised. The pro-abortion lobby NARAL complains that Trump has been “relentless” on these fronts, declaring his administration “the worst . . . that we’ve ever seen.” That is more important to most Christian conservatives than what the president may have done with a porn actress more than 10 years ago.
Trump’s election came as religious liberty was under unprecedented attack. The Obama administration was trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious conscience and facilitate payment for abortifacient drugs and other contraceptives. During oral arguments in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, President Barack Obama’s solicitor general told the Supreme Court that churches and universities could lose their tax-exempt status if they opposed same-sex marriage.
Hillary Clinton promised to escalate those attacks. In 2015, she declared at the Women in the World Summit that “religious beliefs . . . have to be changed” — perhaps the most radical threat to religious liberty ever delivered by a major presidential candidate. Had Clinton won, she would have replaced the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with a liberal jurist, giving the Supreme Court a liberal judicial-activist majority.
The impact would have been immediate, as the court prepares to decide two cases crucial to religious liberty. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court will soon determine whether the government can compel a U.S. citizen to violate his conscience and participate in speech that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs. In National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, the court will decide whether the state of California can compel pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise access to abortion to their clients, in violation of their conscience. Those cases are being heard not by five liberals, but five conservatives, including Justice Neil M.Gorsuch — because Trump kept his promise to “appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench.”
The president is moving at record pace to fill the federal appeals courts with young conservative judges who will protect life and religious freedom for decades. He also fulfilled his promise to defend the Little Sisters from government bullying, by expanding the religious and conscience exemption to the Obamacare contraception mandate to cover both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. www.washingtonpost.com You highlight the trouble in calling these issues. For you, it’s about “protecting their ability to discriminate against gays.” For me, it’s about religious liberty, and if I were to punch up the emotion to your level, it would be to “force religious people to violate their conscience by government fiat.” This is very important in cases like the Masterpiece Cakeshop, where they will readily sell premade cakes, but will not custom build a celebratory message for a gay wedding. I think the entire lack of nuance here underlies the point: you’ve given up compromise, and the religious must go to people that aren’t activists against their rights. I’ll take a Trump that is personally abhorrent simply because he’s not crusading to force school districts to put anatomical males into female locker rooms. I can actually put my input in the local school district. Or make universities apply reduced standards for conviction and expulsion for rape accusations under Title IX. It’s definitely a disconnect, and I don’t know how much of that is willful malice against religion, against due process, and against state rights and local control. The only thing that makes sense is that some of the latter is in the mix. Forcing nuns to fully subsidize contraception is one of the stupider results from the black-and-white approach. The religious right in America aren't exactly the posterboys for compromise, though, are they? The push/pull here is pretty obvious; the government doesn't want to violate religious liberty, but a lot of people think 'religious liberty' is equal to 'discriminate against gay people', which is something the government also doesn't want. Both sides think their side should win out, for whatever reason. Your argument for going with Trump is fine, provided you accept that Evangelicals have given up the moral high ground. You cannot make the argument 'I'm supporting Trump while condemning Trump'; the conscientious thing to do would surely have been not to vote if Hilary really is as bad as your side claims, and Trump... well, Trump absolutely is as bad as everyone thinks he is and most of your side - including yourself - know it. When gay people are mostly campaigning to be treated like everyone else and Christians are campaigning to treat them like they're different, there's no easy solution. Long-term, though, the gays are likely to win out. As are trans people, actually, but that will take quite a long time since I don't think many people even know what a trans person really is yet, let alone understand them. The opposite is in fact true. The crusaders against any common sense religious liberty accommodations are rejected in favor of zero-compromise “discrimination” framings. Your rights are meaningless, because I choose to interpret your religion as merely an excuse for discrimination. And, well, it’s saddening but a lot of people have adopted that mean-spirited attitude against the religious faithful. It’s totally counter-factual too—if the real goal was discrimination, they would refuse other services to gay couples. Instead, companies like Masterpiece Cakeshop serve all customers of any religion and creed the full extent of services not involving their custom religious ceremony artistic creations. I don’t really think you understood my post based on the remainder of what you’ve written. Christians will accept someone that doesn’t campaign so vociferously against their civil rights if that’s the current trend. The indifference of a morally repugnant individual is preferential to these moral busybodies that agitate against personal liberty. It’s that people in agreement with your point of view have made themselves so odious in lawmaking that they’ve made a great many alternatives easily acceptable.
You would have to be wilfully blind not to be aware that Christian lawmakers love to trample on civil liberties. Need I remind you that Mike Pence very recently said 'we will see the end of abortion in our time'? There are plenty of Christians in America who - if they had their way - would strip the rights from a lot of different vulnerable groups based on 'religious' reasoning. Didn't Roy Moore specifically say he felt gays deserve no rights? Christians are the definition of moral busybodies, poking their noses into other people's lives and bedrooms and telling them to live their lives in a way the religious deem 'more moral'.
It's not a 'mean-spirited attitude' its acknowledgement of a truth that religious people choose to conveniently ignore. Did you read that article about how black Christians are leaving evangelical churches in increasingly large numbers?
How can you argue that it is not discrimination when you literally just wrote that they deny a particular service that they offer to gay people because they are gay? That is literally what discrimination is. They want the liberty to discriminate against gay people by denying them a particular service. Because they're gay. If they were not gay, the service would be available to them.
And all of that ignores the argument that marriage doesn't have to be religious and can be entirely secular. I don't know if this is the case in America, but in the UK churches need a license from the state to perform a marriage. They don't need a licence to perform Sunday mass, however.
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How can you argue that it is not discrimination when you literally just wrote that they deny a particular service that they offer to gay people because they are gay? That is literally what discrimination is. They want the liberty to discriminate against gay people by denying them a particular service. Because they're gay. If they were not gay, the service would be available to them.
And all of that ignores the argument that marriage doesn't have to be religious and can be entirely secular. I don't know if this is the case in America, but in the UK churches need a license from the state to perform a marriage. They don't need a licence to perform Sunday mass, however.
So much this. I do personally have quite a chip on my shoulder about religion, but despite my pessimism it still amazes what goes to court / becomes an issue. How was denying someone a service you offer on the basis of sexuality ever on the cards, how did cake-shop owners or whatever have you ever think to do that, or that it was acceptable?
It's not denying the rights of the religious, it's denying them the special privilege to discriminate. Like that special privilege they have to not paying taxes despite the strong involvement in politics that has emerged. The majority of US citizens are christian, and even so the religion is ridiculously over-represented in US politicians, there is seriously no risk they are going to get persecuted in a hurry. Having a belief doesn't give you carte blanche to discriminate against gay people. Imagine if an inter-racial couple was denied service for the same reason, there'd be hell to pay and rightly so.
Especially with the current republican platform, religion has massively overstepped its boundaries in US politics, and shouldn't expect the diplomatic shielding it often enjoys in the public eye. If you want to be involved in politics and power, expect to be checked upon.
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So what we are doing selecting issues of extraordinary importance that the American people, issues which by and large are not covered in the corporate media. You got three people in America who own more wealth than the bottom half of the American society — three people. Is that moral? We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth.
MH: One statistic I came across recently made my head spin, the Tyndall Report looked at nightly news broadcasts in 2016, election year, they found a mere 32 minutes was devoted over 2016 to substantive policy issues, most of those minutes were on foreign policy and terrorism, zero minutes on poverty, zero on inequality, zero on infrastructure, zero on climate change. Isn’t that a disgrace?
BS: Unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. And unless we understand that, you can’t understand why Donald Trump is president of the United States, you can’t understand why most people in America are giving up on the political process, we have the lowest voter turnout of any major country on Earth, so we have got to raise political consciousness in a way that the corporate media has never gone near.
MH: You mention Donald Trump. It’s not just issues that are kind of censored by omission, it’s people, and you’ve been one of those people in recent years who’s been kind of quote-unquote excluded. Again, another study found in 2015, Clinton, Hillary Clinton got six times as much coverage as you did, Donald Trump got 16 times as much coverage as you did; one study of ABC World News Tonight found that Trump got 81 minutes of coverage in 2015, and you got 20 seconds.
BS: Did we get 20 seconds?
MH: Wow!
BS: Must’ve been a mistake. 20 seconds!
MH: What did you say? What were the 20 seconds?
BS: Now, none of this shocks me. Look, none of this shocks me. I mean, right now you’ll have Stormy Daniels, whatever her name is, getting far more coverage than the fact that the middle class of this country has been the climbing for 40 years.
Look, there are a couple of reasons. Guess what? The corporate media year is owned large corporations. I know that’s a shocking statement.
MH: Hence the name!
BS: (laughs) But that is the reality. What is their function? Their function is to make money. And also their function is protect their own interests. You think the people who own the major corporations, whether it’s media or elsewhere, want to talk about income and wealth inequality, ant to talk about disastrous trade policies, want to talk about Wall Street? That’s not the issue they want to talk about. They want to keep us entertained, and, in fact, in many ways they want to deflect attention away from issues that might bring about real substantive changes in this country, politically and economically.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/23/deconstructed-podcast-we-need-to-talk-about-inequality-with-bernie-sanders/
Great podcast interview between Mehdi Hasan and Bernie Sanders. Something I've also noticed about the (neo)liberal press- they would rather talk about anything else than the extremely high and growing rate of poverty and inequality.
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On March 24 2018 10:02 A3th3r wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 09:41 zlefin wrote:On March 24 2018 08:58 A3th3r wrote:On March 24 2018 08:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 24 2018 07:43 Danglars wrote:On March 24 2018 03:30 Kyadytim wrote:On March 23 2018 22:46 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 23 2018 22:09 Gorsameth wrote:On March 23 2018 22:02 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:If all trump is doing by firing everyone and placing Bolton as head of NSA to knock Stormy Daniels off the news cycle. it hasn't worked. Her 60 Minutes Interview is this Sunday night, and he lawyer tweeted this. https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/977015170231885825 On one hand, "let there be tapes". On the other, no one wants to hear/see Trump getting it on. ps. Considering all the shit Trump has done and his known previous affairs. Why even worry about this? There is no real reason to assume this will do anything to his approval numbers or his supporters. Guilty pleasure. I’d love to know what’s going on in the heads of the countless devot christians who voted for him and keep supporting him. At one point, his conduct will end up hurting him, i believe. People’s ability to contradict themselves is always surprising but it’s not infinite. Meanwhike, getting my popcorns ready. That Stormy Daniel woman must be having the time of her life. Looks like being in the spotlight is what she enjoys, and it looks like she would love to make as much damage as she can... I'm kind of hoping that it's video evidence of Trump implying physical violence against her at some point after he was inaugurated or something. Also, Evangelicals really, really don't care about character unless it's a useful avenue of attack on a Democrat. With Trump, it's all about ending abortion, protecting their ability to discriminate against gays, lesbians, trans, etc., and stacking the court. Pay particular attention to the sentence I emphasized near the end. Trump could be holding daily orgies in the Oval Office and they would let it slide as long as he continues to nominate young idealogues for lifetime court appointments. During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to defend religious liberty, stand up for unborn life and appoint conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts. And he has done exactly what he promised. The pro-abortion lobby NARAL complains that Trump has been “relentless” on these fronts, declaring his administration “the worst . . . that we’ve ever seen.” That is more important to most Christian conservatives than what the president may have done with a porn actress more than 10 years ago.
Trump’s election came as religious liberty was under unprecedented attack. The Obama administration was trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious conscience and facilitate payment for abortifacient drugs and other contraceptives. During oral arguments in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, President Barack Obama’s solicitor general told the Supreme Court that churches and universities could lose their tax-exempt status if they opposed same-sex marriage.
Hillary Clinton promised to escalate those attacks. In 2015, she declared at the Women in the World Summit that “religious beliefs . . . have to be changed” — perhaps the most radical threat to religious liberty ever delivered by a major presidential candidate. Had Clinton won, she would have replaced the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with a liberal jurist, giving the Supreme Court a liberal judicial-activist majority.
The impact would have been immediate, as the court prepares to decide two cases crucial to religious liberty. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court will soon determine whether the government can compel a U.S. citizen to violate his conscience and participate in speech that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs. In National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, the court will decide whether the state of California can compel pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise access to abortion to their clients, in violation of their conscience. Those cases are being heard not by five liberals, but five conservatives, including Justice Neil M.Gorsuch — because Trump kept his promise to “appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench.”
The president is moving at record pace to fill the federal appeals courts with young conservative judges who will protect life and religious freedom for decades. He also fulfilled his promise to defend the Little Sisters from government bullying, by expanding the religious and conscience exemption to the Obamacare contraception mandate to cover both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. www.washingtonpost.com You highlight the trouble in calling these issues. For you, it’s about “protecting their ability to discriminate against gays.” For me, it’s about religious liberty, and if I were to punch up the emotion to your level, it would be to “force religious people to violate their conscience by government fiat.” This is very important in cases like the Masterpiece Cakeshop, where they will readily sell premade cakes, but will not custom build a celebratory message for a gay wedding. I think the entire lack of nuance here underlies the point: you’ve given up compromise, and the religious must go to people that aren’t activists against their rights. I’ll take a Trump that is personally abhorrent simply because he’s not crusading to force school districts to put anatomical males into female locker rooms. I can actually put my input in the local school district. Or make universities apply reduced standards for conviction and expulsion for rape accusations under Title IX. It’s definitely a disconnect, and I don’t know how much of that is willful malice against religion, against due process, and against state rights and local control. The only thing that makes sense is that some of the latter is in the mix. Forcing nuns to fully subsidize contraception is one of the stupider results from the black-and-white approach. Interesting how people who can’t compromise with their religion to not be complete assholes to gay customers are very flexible when it’s about voting for a guy who cheated his pregnant wife with a pornstar. But nevermind. So, anyway, does the whole thing work with islam with practitioners discriminating against, say, non muslim people, or have christian nuts the monopoly of being jerks under the protection of the constitution? Because, let me tell you, it’s a very, very slippery slope. And one wouldn’t want to be accused of double standard and using the constitution to justify biggotery and intolerance. I think that the point here is that this is not a video game. We're not in a Tom Clancy novel or a Farcry universe here. This is real life. Trump does make compromises to the vast white & mexican constituencies that elected him by campaigning to change the job market in such a way that things are better for most people. I understand that this upsets people who didn't vote for him. That's a bummer but what can ya do. That being said, I wish that the trade deficit that America has with other countries were a little smaller. It does seem like what the president is doing is renegotiating the trade contracts that he has with other countries in order to try & trim things down a bit. That's not such a bad idea in & of itself as long as the US economy does do well. Brazil & Peru are following the US right now & are trying to reform their own economies there so I guess what I'm saying is that there are changes that are going on right now. Specifically, Brazil is cutting the national interest rates in an effort to shake up the banking system a bit & see what comes out https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-central-bank-cuts-rate-again-sees-additional-easing-as-appropriate-1521675795https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-mixed-race-brazil-sperm-imports-from-u-s-whites-are-booming-1521711000 what campaigns to change the job market by trump are you referring to? (i.e. I have no idea what you're talking about and it seems more like a non-sequitur and/or faulty premise) Trump is trying to lower the US trade deficit to other countries & protect local industries. That's what he's been trying to do for quite a while lately. Do you read the newspaper or pay attention to presidential politics? You are aware that tariffs raise the prize of US produced goods right? So it means that either people pay more for the products on the shelves in the US or the factory makes less money and has to fire people.
It doesn't improve the job market, it actively worsens them.
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On March 24 2018 19:35 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2018 10:02 A3th3r wrote:On March 24 2018 09:41 zlefin wrote:On March 24 2018 08:58 A3th3r wrote:On March 24 2018 08:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 24 2018 07:43 Danglars wrote:On March 24 2018 03:30 Kyadytim wrote:On March 23 2018 22:46 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 23 2018 22:09 Gorsameth wrote:On March 23 2018 22:02 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:If all trump is doing by firing everyone and placing Bolton as head of NSA to knock Stormy Daniels off the news cycle. it hasn't worked. Her 60 Minutes Interview is this Sunday night, and he lawyer tweeted this. https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/977015170231885825 On one hand, "let there be tapes". On the other, no one wants to hear/see Trump getting it on. ps. Considering all the shit Trump has done and his known previous affairs. Why even worry about this? There is no real reason to assume this will do anything to his approval numbers or his supporters. Guilty pleasure. I’d love to know what’s going on in the heads of the countless devot christians who voted for him and keep supporting him. At one point, his conduct will end up hurting him, i believe. People’s ability to contradict themselves is always surprising but it’s not infinite. Meanwhike, getting my popcorns ready. That Stormy Daniel woman must be having the time of her life. Looks like being in the spotlight is what she enjoys, and it looks like she would love to make as much damage as she can... I'm kind of hoping that it's video evidence of Trump implying physical violence against her at some point after he was inaugurated or something. Also, Evangelicals really, really don't care about character unless it's a useful avenue of attack on a Democrat. With Trump, it's all about ending abortion, protecting their ability to discriminate against gays, lesbians, trans, etc., and stacking the court. Pay particular attention to the sentence I emphasized near the end. Trump could be holding daily orgies in the Oval Office and they would let it slide as long as he continues to nominate young idealogues for lifetime court appointments. During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to defend religious liberty, stand up for unborn life and appoint conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts. And he has done exactly what he promised. The pro-abortion lobby NARAL complains that Trump has been “relentless” on these fronts, declaring his administration “the worst . . . that we’ve ever seen.” That is more important to most Christian conservatives than what the president may have done with a porn actress more than 10 years ago.
Trump’s election came as religious liberty was under unprecedented attack. The Obama administration was trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious conscience and facilitate payment for abortifacient drugs and other contraceptives. During oral arguments in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, President Barack Obama’s solicitor general told the Supreme Court that churches and universities could lose their tax-exempt status if they opposed same-sex marriage.
Hillary Clinton promised to escalate those attacks. In 2015, she declared at the Women in the World Summit that “religious beliefs . . . have to be changed” — perhaps the most radical threat to religious liberty ever delivered by a major presidential candidate. Had Clinton won, she would have replaced the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with a liberal jurist, giving the Supreme Court a liberal judicial-activist majority.
The impact would have been immediate, as the court prepares to decide two cases crucial to religious liberty. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court will soon determine whether the government can compel a U.S. citizen to violate his conscience and participate in speech that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs. In National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, the court will decide whether the state of California can compel pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise access to abortion to their clients, in violation of their conscience. Those cases are being heard not by five liberals, but five conservatives, including Justice Neil M.Gorsuch — because Trump kept his promise to “appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench.”
The president is moving at record pace to fill the federal appeals courts with young conservative judges who will protect life and religious freedom for decades. He also fulfilled his promise to defend the Little Sisters from government bullying, by expanding the religious and conscience exemption to the Obamacare contraception mandate to cover both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. www.washingtonpost.com You highlight the trouble in calling these issues. For you, it’s about “protecting their ability to discriminate against gays.” For me, it’s about religious liberty, and if I were to punch up the emotion to your level, it would be to “force religious people to violate their conscience by government fiat.” This is very important in cases like the Masterpiece Cakeshop, where they will readily sell premade cakes, but will not custom build a celebratory message for a gay wedding. I think the entire lack of nuance here underlies the point: you’ve given up compromise, and the religious must go to people that aren’t activists against their rights. I’ll take a Trump that is personally abhorrent simply because he’s not crusading to force school districts to put anatomical males into female locker rooms. I can actually put my input in the local school district. Or make universities apply reduced standards for conviction and expulsion for rape accusations under Title IX. It’s definitely a disconnect, and I don’t know how much of that is willful malice against religion, against due process, and against state rights and local control. The only thing that makes sense is that some of the latter is in the mix. Forcing nuns to fully subsidize contraception is one of the stupider results from the black-and-white approach. Interesting how people who can’t compromise with their religion to not be complete assholes to gay customers are very flexible when it’s about voting for a guy who cheated his pregnant wife with a pornstar. But nevermind. So, anyway, does the whole thing work with islam with practitioners discriminating against, say, non muslim people, or have christian nuts the monopoly of being jerks under the protection of the constitution? Because, let me tell you, it’s a very, very slippery slope. And one wouldn’t want to be accused of double standard and using the constitution to justify biggotery and intolerance. I think that the point here is that this is not a video game. We're not in a Tom Clancy novel or a Farcry universe here. This is real life. Trump does make compromises to the vast white & mexican constituencies that elected him by campaigning to change the job market in such a way that things are better for most people. I understand that this upsets people who didn't vote for him. That's a bummer but what can ya do. That being said, I wish that the trade deficit that America has with other countries were a little smaller. It does seem like what the president is doing is renegotiating the trade contracts that he has with other countries in order to try & trim things down a bit. That's not such a bad idea in & of itself as long as the US economy does do well. Brazil & Peru are following the US right now & are trying to reform their own economies there so I guess what I'm saying is that there are changes that are going on right now. Specifically, Brazil is cutting the national interest rates in an effort to shake up the banking system a bit & see what comes out https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-central-bank-cuts-rate-again-sees-additional-easing-as-appropriate-1521675795https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-mixed-race-brazil-sperm-imports-from-u-s-whites-are-booming-1521711000 what campaigns to change the job market by trump are you referring to? (i.e. I have no idea what you're talking about and it seems more like a non-sequitur and/or faulty premise) Trump is trying to lower the US trade deficit to other countries & protect local industries. That's what he's been trying to do for quite a while lately. Do you read the newspaper or pay attention to presidential politics? You are aware that tariffs raise the prize of US produced goods right? So it means that either people pay more for the products on the shelves in the US or the factory makes less money and has to fire people. It doesn't improve the job market, it actively worsens them.
Do you think there is any sort of problem with China having such a large trade imbalance with the US? Is this something that can and should continue indefinitely? Is it fair that China has trade barriers that make it very difficult for companies like Tesla to compete there? Apart from the threat of tariffs what else could be done to make China budge on such issues?
Musk spoke out against two things that he says have made things “very difficult” for Tesla. First, he explained to the president how the US places a 2.5 percent tariff on cars imported to the US from China, while China places a 25 percent tariff on US imports. Then he brought up how, in China, the government forces foreign automakers that want to manufacture cars in the country to partner with a Chinese car company.
In a message to The Verge, Musk said he wants Trump to pressure China to change its stance on these issues. “It is better if all countries lower tariffs,” he wrote. But when Trump read Musk’s tweets during the press event where he announced the tariffs, he said that “at some point,” he’s likely to enforce what he called a “reciprocal, a mirror tax,” where he’ll match the tariffs China has put on US imports.
Tesla has exported cars to China for years now, and they sell well in the country, accounting for around 9 percent of the EV market there. To get around the 25 percent import tariff, though, the company has explored setting up a factory. While other major carmakers like GM have acquiesced to China’s manufacturing rules, Tesla has resisted partnering with local carmakers, and has been pushing the government there for an exemption. The government reportedly won’t budge, and so the two sides are at an impasse.
On Twitter, Musk complained this was unfair since there are “five 100 [percent] China-owned EV auto companies in the US,” (presumably referring to startups like NIO, Faraday Future, SF Motors, and Byton). He also said that Tesla tried to work with the Obama administration on this imbalance, but that “nothing happened.”
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17097158/elon-musk-tesla-trump-china-tariffs-trade-twitter
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On March 24 2018 05:03 bo1b wrote:
I just don't understand how hiring Bolton is justifiable, after all the things that have come out of Trump's mouth regarding the Iraq war and those involved.
We've seen some mental gymnastics leading up to this event but this is something else.
Haha.
I know, it's like all the hypocrisy we see from liberals feting the likes of pro-Iraq invasion warhawk neocons Bill Kristol and David Frum as #resistance heroes merely for throwing some criticism at Trump.
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EPT
