US Politics Mega-thread - Page 67

On April 03 2018 11:32 IgnE wrote:


Amazon quality on a lot of things completely sucks. Plansix is right about this. Amazon is great when you know the exact item you want, but if you are just looking for something to fit a particular need, the chances that you are going to land on a flimsy, cheap product are very high, unless there are reputable brands in that niche that you know deliver quality.

On April 03 2018 11:56 Toadesstern wrote:

But that's a thing with almost everything. Some people care about certain things being high quality while other things just need to be as cheap as possible for them.
What those specific items are is subjective.

I'm pretty sure you would not want to buy wine at a supermarket, pretty much ever and yet I as well as tons of other people do so because we're not thaaaaat much into wine to tell the difference. And frankly most just don't care enough to extend your shopping trip for another 30minutes just to get proper wine.
It's literally the same with almost anything else you can think of. Some people go to a store to see which mouse fits their hand the best because it's important to them. Others just pick a cheap 5$ one because whatever

And like you said, if you know what you want you're most likely going to get it on amazon as well for most everyday kind of things.

///edit
Another example, imagine steam being broken apart into 4 different companies (idk, by genre?). People wouldn't like that either because the big selling point is that it is
a)convenient and
b)you can get everything there

If you suddenly have to check out 4 different platforms to find that game you're looking for it would certainly be less popular. People just like getting stuff at one place and amazon is for random whatever stuff. It's not like you buy furniture or a car on there. But at the end of the day what exactly entails "random whatever stuff" is really a subjective thing

On April 03 2018 12:05 KwarK wrote:
Snowden didn’t run to Russia, the US gov blocked his flight out of a Russian airport. Fortunately he had the good sense not to have any intel in his possession at that point.

On April 03 2018 11:34 GreenHorizons wrote:
The great thing about capitalism is that greed can drive efficiencies, one major problem is that it prioritizes enriching powerful people over distributing the gains of those efficiencies.

So Amazon has done a great job of removing some of the glut from the retail market as has been outlined in several posts, the problem is where that surplus value is allocated.

Instead of having tens of thousands of people making a living with some excess as retailers, Bezos has consolidated that shared wealth into his and a few shareholders pockets, in exchange he's offered a marginally better service.

So instead of pressuring out the excess enjoyed by retailers while leaving their livelihoods intact, Amazon has systematically destroyed them for self enrichment. If/when Amazon/Walmart are the overwhelmingly dominant sellers they will inevitably go to cutting qol for their lower employees and providing worse service to ensure more profit.

This is already apparent in many Walmarts around the country. Where after killing local retailers, prices rise and staffing is cut to extract more profits out of the community.

Amazon may end up being the best possible one stop shop with the most amazing interface and service and all that means is that those things will only get worse from there. Except with something like Amazon, there can't and won't be some competitor springing up to keep them honest, they will already practically own the governments where they are located and no entity short of the federal government would have the access or ability to compete.

Their domination seems somewhat inevitable, what seems possible is their appropriation back to the people who did the work that made the money.

On April 03 2018 13:52 Dan HH wrote:


What you've pointed out is the greatest economic challenge that we will face this century as far as I'm concerned. Even economist researchers from the embodiment of economic neoliberalism, the IMF, acknowledge the growing issues of capital sucking out most of the benefits to productivity that technology and the global market integration bring. And that policymakers have to counter this, capitalism isn't the self fixing miracle it was believed to be from '50 to '00.

Shunning trade and tech multinationals isn't gonna fix anything either, it's more akin to self-flagellation, Trump seems to be into that but it'll pass. Some form of redistribution seems inevitable though first we gotta find it a different name, it's a scary word to many people.

https://blogs.imf.org/2017/04/12/drivers-of-declining-labor-share-of-income/

On April 03 2018 12:37 Kyadytim wrote:
In Snowden's shoes, I would not even consider returning to the US without having already been issued a more or less blanket pardon, because the government can make all sorts of promises about a fair trial to get him into the US where they can make an example of him.

The Chinese government said that tariffs on about $3 billion worth of US imports are going into effect Monday, hitting 128 products ranging from pork, meat and fruit to steel pipes.

Experts say they expect further retaliation from China once the Trump administration reveals more details on which products its planned $50 billion in tariffs will target.

"Trump's planned tariffs are not only going to hamper the United States' economic well-being and continued progress, and burden its people with higher costs of living, but also pose a grave threat to the current global trading system," the article said.

On April 03 2018 20:22 zlefin wrote:
I think people are being too hyperbolic in calling what snowden might get a fake or show trial (or at least claiming so definitively that it would be such). It might have flaws, but it's a disservice to the terms to equate them with what actual sham trials are like.

As I know from my own case, even Snowden's own testimony on the stand would be gagged by government objections and the (arguably unconstitutional) nature of his charges. That was my own experience in court, as the first American to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act

I had looked forward to offering a fuller account in my trial than I had given previously to any journalist --- But when I finally heard my lawyer ask the prearranged question in direct examination – Why did you copy the Pentagon Papers? – I was silenced before I could begin to answer. The government prosecutor objected – irrelevant – and the judge sustained. My lawyer, exasperated, said he "had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell the jury why he did what he did." The judge responded: well, you're hearing one now.

And so it has been with every subsequent whistleblower under indictment, and so it would be if Edward Snowden was on trial in an American courtroom now.

Without reform to the Espionage Act that lets a court hear a public interest defense – or a challenge to the appropriateness of government secrecy in each particular case – Snowden and future Snowdens can and will only be able to "make their case" from outside the United States.

On April 03 2018 20:40 farvacola wrote:
Ellsberg had his charges dismissed, and "why did you do it" explanations are usually only relevant at sentencing, a trial stage Ellsberg never got to because his apparently "unfair trial" led to his being vindicated.

In spite of being effectively denied a defense, Ellsberg began to see events turn in his favor when the break-in of Fielding's office was revealed to Judge Byrne in a memo on April 26; Byrne ordered it to be shared with the defense.

On May 9, further evidence of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg was revealed in court. The FBI had recorded numerous conversations between Morton Halperin and Ellsberg without a court order, and furthermore the prosecution had failed to share this evidence with the defense. During the trial, Byrne also revealed that he personally met twice with John Ehrlichman, who offered him directorship of the FBI. Byrne said he refused to consider the offer while the Ellsberg case was pending, though he was criticized for even agreeing to meet with Ehrlichman during the case.

On April 03 2018 21:13 zlefin wrote:
those cites establish very clearly that it's NOT in any a sham trial; but is in fact, a proper trial with a fully functioning judiciary system.

Today, the Chinese government announced tariffs on 128 American products, including food. Pork will be taxed 25 percent, and wine, dried fruit, and nuts are now subject to a 15 percent duty.

The announcement comes in response to the tariffs President Trump recently imposed on steel and aluminum. Trade officials from each country are negotiating, and it's not yet clear how long the duties will be in effect, or what the lasting impact will be for American producers and growers.

But for businesses who already have shipments in transit, there are immediate effects. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly spoke with someone whose business is already feeling the tariffs directly. Jim Zion, managing partner at Meridian Growers in Fresno, Calif., distributes almonds, pistachios, and pecans to markets like China.

Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

How many nuts does California sell to China?

In any given year, California exports anywhere between 60 to 70 percent of its almonds, pistachios, and walnuts. Arizona exports about the same amount of its pistachios and pecans. China has been one of the largest markets for the last few years. At one time, one out of every four pistachios grown in California was destined for China.

How big a deal will this 15 percent tariff be for your business?

For anything that we were shipping, that's what we call "on the water" — in transit to China — we will have to ask our buyers how they would like to handle the additional cost, because obviously this wasn't factored in when we made the original contract.

Either we're going to have to give them a discount to cover this additional cost, or, if we can't come up with an agreement, we will divert those containers to another destination that doesn't have a tariff. If we can't do that, we'll have to bring them back. Regardless, this will definitely cost us some money out of our pocket to take care of these issues.

Do you have an estimate for how much money this will cost?

Pistachios today are selling for about $3.50 a pound on a wholesale basis. So 15 percent of that would be around $0.50 a pound, which, in a container of 44,000 pounds is about $22,000.

If we have to divert that load to another destination, that could cost us anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000.

And if we have to bring it back, anytime we bring a container back to the United States, by the time we bring it back and go through customs and everything, that additional cost could be $10,000. So out of pocket this could cost us anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 per container.

The hidden crisis on college campuses: 36 percent of students don’t have enough to eat

Caleb Torres lost seven pounds his freshman year of college — and not because he didn’t like the food in the dining hall. A first-generation college student, barely covering tuition, Torres ran out of grocery money halfway through the year and began skipping meals as a result.

He’d stretch a can of SpaghettiOs over an entire day. Or he’d scout George Washington University campus for events that promised free lunch or snacks. Torres told no one what he was going through, least of all his single mom.

“She had enough things to worry about,” he said.

Now a senior and living off-campus, in a housing situation that supplies most of his meals, Torres is finally talking about his experience with the hunger problem on America’s college campuses: a quiet, insidious epidemic that researchers say threatens millions of students every year.

According to a first-of-its-kind survey released Tuesday by researchers at Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, 36 percent of students on U.S. college campuses do not get enough to eat, and a similar number lack a secure place to live. The report, which is the first to include students from two-year, four-year, private and public universities, including GWU, found that nearly 1 in 10 community college students have gone a whole day without eating in the past month. That number was 6 percent among university students.

Researchers blame ballooning college costs, inadequate aid packages and growing enrollment among low-income students — as well as some colleges’ unwillingness to admit they have a hunger problem. College hunger is not a new issue, researchers caution. But it appears to be growing worse, and not merely because college is getting more expensive.

"Prices have gone up over time," said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy at Temple and the lead author of the report. "But the rising price is just a piece. This is a systemic problem."

Goldrick-Rab's report is based on data from 43,000 students at 66 schools and used the Department of Agriculture's assessment for measuring hunger. That means the thousands of students it classifies as having "low food security" aren't merely avoiding the dining hall or saving lunch money for beer: They're skipping meals, or eating smaller meals, because they don't have enough money for food.

On top of that, the report found, 46 percent of community college students and 36 percent of university students struggle to pay for housing and utilities. In the past year, 12 percent of community college students and 9 percent of university students have slept in shelters or in places not intended as housing, or did not know from one day to the next where they would sleep.

Measuring college hunger and homelessness is difficult. Researchers depend on universities to distribute the surveys and on a self-selecting group of students to fill them out.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told special counsel Robert Mueller in a classified August 2, 2017, memo that he should investigate allegations that President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was "colluding with Russian government officials" to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, prosecutors in the Russia probe revealed late Monday night.

Mueller was also empowered by Rosenstein to investigate Manafort's payments from Ukrainian politicians, a cornerstone of the Trump adviser's decades-long lobbying career that has resulted in several financial criminal charges so far.

The revelation of the August 2 memo comes amid a broader court filing from Mueller's prosecutors that offers a full-throated defense of their investigative powers and indictments thus far. In the filing, the special counsel's office argues that a federal judge should not throw out Manafort's case. Manafort has sought to have the case dismissed, arguing that the charges against him are outside of Mueller's authority.

The filing Monday night crystallizes the extent to which Rosenstein, who has come under fire by President Donald Trump and others, has backed the investigation's actions. (Rosenstein oversees Mueller's investigation following Attorney General Jeff Sessions' recusal.)

The memo, attached to Monday night's court argument and not previously disclosed even to Manafort, describes how Rosenstein's public order that appointed Mueller in May left out some details so it didn't confirm "specific investigations involving specific individuals."

Most of the investigations and individuals that Rosenstein named in that memo are now redacted -- amounting to almost a full page of withheld information.